Baby Has Grown Ugly - It's No Longer Cute
a quick programing note
I took part in an episode of Axe To Grind last night focused on the role of money and big business in hardcore - like most of these sort of chats in devolved, to some extent, into a circular back and forth of ‘what ifs’ and ‘whatabouts.’ Despite this, I feel its worth a listen for sure and I can’t thank the dudes over there enough for having me on.
One thing that I don’t feel really comes through is my belief that this isn’t a totally black and white issue - like much of life, it is a series of sorta grayscale compromises. That said, I feel that in a lot of ways, hardcore is in a weird place where the general nonchalance around injections of cash from corporations, incursions of major label affiliated ‘indie’ labels, and notions of ‘making it’ and ‘success’ from a mainstream perspective has becoming troubling at best and deserves to be pushed back on.
Life is a series of choices and at the end of the day, those choices are on each of us to determine and align them with our own ethics. Your business is your business and mine is mine. That said, what has long made hardcore/punk interesting, for me at least, and helped to maintain its long term vitality is those who participate in said culture control that culture. We created it, we took it over but I see the winds shifting away from that notion lately, and it concerns me.
For me, hardcore/punk is about the freedom to do and create freely and selling it for short turn, personal gain, tends to cheapen it. Packaging up rebellion, selling kids to other kids - it slowly erodes and whittles away at the thing until it just becomes another music genre rather than an active, creative subculture.
I don’t have answers, maybe I’m being hyperbolic but, when the dust clears on the current era, and all the outside cash and interest dries up, I don’t want to see what remains of hardcore is a diluted version of its former self.
I welcome your thoughts, by all means tell me I’m full shit.
Whenever this topic comes up these days I think back about 15 years to when Scion was throwing money at hardcore bands (one of which was my own) hoping for some cheap marketing. Bands like Integrity, Ceremony, Magrudergrind, Pulling Teeth, and a handful of others played free shows sponsored by the car company or used their money to make records and videos. Not that many years after that, the company had folded and most of those bands were still going by the same ethos they were when they started, they just had a bit more cash to keep doing what they loved doing.
I'm not trying to say that corporate interests always, or ever, care about the bands they are involved with. But we live in an age where the vast majority of people do not buy physical copies of releases anymore. Not all bands have the luxury of being on tour regularly and sustaining what they're doing through merch sales. Sometimes, corporate sponsorship means our favorite bands get to record our next favorite record, or I get to see my all-time favorite band in a big-ass field with some of my best friends, or a rad new band gets to do what they love instead of working shitty jobs.
There is almost no independent distribution anymore. Most of us listen to music provided by streaming services owned by some of the most powerful corporations in media. Independent venues are dropping like flies.
These days, I don't think of integrity as an empty bank account and no way for people to hear what you're saying. I think of it as being honest and authentic about who you are and why and how you do what you do, and using your platform bring joy and bring positive change.
I have similar thoughts and worries about the current state of the scene as well - you put it quite cogently in saying that your business is your own, and my business is mine. If a band playing Hardcore really wants to “make it” or is swayed by the glamor of playing the grand Taco Bell stage like Scowl, or fucking Madison Square Garden like Turnstile - then that’s their prerogative and best of luck, I guess. It just falls on the complete opposite side of the spectrum when it comes to the ethos of Hardcore and DIY as a whole. My only hope is that people continue to play Hardcore because they want to play Hardcore and for no other reason than that.