buying in to the sellouts

Trying to keep street cred or whatever in art, is fashion. Fashion doesn't matter. David Eggers has a much better treatment of that you can find online.

But maybe selling out has a second meaning, one that matters. Compromising artistic integrity for capital gain? That sounds a little restrictive to me. Pandering is better. For bosses, critics, whoever. That's death.

But, and I need to emphasize this, not pandering to crowds. People aren't stupid, they have taste. I refuse to believe for a second that I somehow am able to better judge a song or book than the next person. Sure, the major industries push things that are easily digestible rather than good, but that doesn't affect people's taste. Hipster smugness for liking a band until they got popular is simple snobbery. The hipster assumes he or she is so much smarter for liking the band until other people liked them, then the changed, dumbed down. Because the hipster can't enjoy what everyone does, that would make them just like everyone else. We can't have that, can we?

Trying not to sell out, as Eggers describes it, is definitely pandering. When my art stops being for me, when it not longer is about my desire to make art, it's a sellout--hollow.

But there's more here. That's too simple an answer. What about popularity? What does it do? More importantly, how do you make art without pandering?

Let's only talk about music for a bit, keep things in perspective. It works well because what I love in music, what I do, is punk, and it's hard to find another genre so paranoid about not selling out. And selling is the operative word here, rejecting the corporate side of the music industry is, if I can be forgiven for such a sweeping statement, practically the point of punk. And I still firmly believe in that, despite all the posturing that comes along with that attitude, it matters. A friend put it quite succinctly at a recent show, something along the lines of "this music isn't about marketability, but passion". Getting heavy, no?

Maybe you saw the trick there--a little sleight of hand we punks, especially hardcore kids, love to pull. I'll be a bad magician and point the trick out: it's pretty easy to not care about record sales when you aren't selling records. It's not like Def Jam or Universal is kick down our doors. 100 people at a show is a good turnout because there are only a few hundred people in the city who enjoy this music enough to come see it live. No one reviewing our albums is about as decent insulation from the critics as I could hope for. I don't have to make the choice to keep it real, I've only got the one way to keep.

I've painted a fairly disingenuous picture, haven't I? The ivory dumpster of punk rock. And while there isn't a whole lot of money with this genre, one could still play punk and at least make a career out of it, all the while claiming legitimacy. Rancid has. They are a popular band, there is no doubt about that. They played a conference centre last time they were here, not some hall. And while they managed to get popular and preserve a good chunk of their original fanbase, many resent their rise. In the 90s, they merited much respect by staying with their tiny original label, Epiteth--which some nowadays, without the slightest hint of irony, condemn as a corporate sellout label. It must be maddening, if they care to think about it. They make music that people like, so why is entertaining people such a bad thing?

A good response comes from Tim Armstrong himself, frontman of the band. He was once asked what defines now a young person as a punk. In his own rambling, mildly confused way, he pointed out that if that kid felt like an outcast and came to music deliberately as an outsider--chances are it would be some type of punk. And then a man who many think speaks for the genre shrugs and asks "who am I to say what's punk?"

That answer, like most things, could benefit from a step back. I've been talking about making music like it just happens. There's another side to this lack of attention that starts with motivation. We can't be in it for anything beyond the music. There isn't anything else for 99% of us. Punk rockers, by and large, have day jobs--as do the majority of indie artists. Making music, or any art, despite their daily lives. No one plays noise to be famous. People want to be in the Pussycat Dolls for that.

That's important. In fact, that's the whole point of this rambling example. The guys from Rancid aren't rich (and remember they're near the pinnacle of popularity within the genre), the members of Converge, another popular band, aren't even full time. To make art in the cracks of life, to work around a job that you may hate, brings meaning to the process. In zen, inner peace can be achieved in a garden, but is earned in a traffic jam or battlefield or final exam. Same thing here. Those that are lucky or good enough to do it all the time should be applauded. Until they forget why they started--that's when trouble starts.

So Rancid will keep selling albums, though even now they're starting to get a little stale, irrelevant even. But as long as it's never a job to them--which they demonstrate with their live shows--the trimmings are irrelevant. The first time I heard that band it was magic, and I'm glad that so many others feel the same way too. But it's magic, not a catchy song you wouldn't mind hearing when you're drunk at a club. That's because good music is played the same whether it's for a hall or a stadium.

Selling out isn't only about labels, or the stupid sense of legitimacy that Eggers so refreshingly attacks. It comes from a lack of passion, a dulling of the process. Letting art get easy.

Turns out I've come full circle back to him: if something is good, it's good. Simple. The music industry is bloated with stale, copycat, manufactured pieces of garbage because those who run it have dollar signs in their eyes. The art world is full of thin works because the disconnected critics rule it. But the true artists are still there, no matter the circumstances.