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Arcade Fire Wins Grammy, prompting Americans to wonder who they are anyway

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ALoveSupreme:

--- Quote from: Ptommydski on 15 Feb 2011, 08:32 ---I don't want to cross-post this debate from Electrical but here in the UK we have a different view of them because they've been a major label band for many years now. They've had that sickly major label marketing since they left Rough Trade and thus, it doesn't feel like as much of a surprise.

--- End quote ---

Not everyone over there, apparently

Johnny C:
tommy, i'm not saying that you said the band was bad – i deliberately didn't say that, in fact, because you're right and that doesn't have anything to do with it. but i disagree with you that having someone do press for you doesn't make you indie. that's not a hard line – it's an arbitrary one. when i spoke with oliver from a place to bury strangers two years ago to do an article on his band for my pissant college newspaper, i did it through a press guy. they were on killer pimp records at the time. that label barely has a website. meanwhile oliver's band was embarking on a huge tour across north america, he had to run death by audio back in new york, and he was still building boutique guitar pedals. that doesn't embody the independent ethos somehow? like i said above – where do we draw the line? is building your own website okay or not? do you have to run things out of a gmail account?

give me something here because i'm having a hard time figuring out why the only model for independence should be fugazi – who had, by the way, almost a decade's worth of positive press to their lead dude's former act – or black flag – whose revolving-door band members quite frequently hated actually being in that band – or shellac – whose frontman is like a world-renowned record producer who had a fairly acclaimed couple of bands prior to his current act, and who tour for vacation.

you want to argue the mercury records bit, that's totally fair, and you've got some valid points, though i'd argue that deliberately ignoring everything the arcade fire did as a band touring the entire world without a cent of major label money and selling a million fucking records in the process is somewhat intellectually dishonest. what i'm saying, i guess, is that the absolute hard line beyond signing to a major is wrong, and if you want to be giving a kid starting a band advice in list form like you did up there, it's a foul bit of rhetoric to append "by the way don't ever hire a booking agent or press guy." that kid went to go see the fucking weakerthans, who help run an anarchist printing press, and decided he wanted to pick up a guitar and start playing independent music. don't front on him just because you think the weakerthans aren't independent.

we can play this game all day, by the way; i'm pretty sure you know as many bands on mint and arts & crafts and what have you as i do. and those bands are as independent as any. i'm not interested in an ever-narrowing list of arbitrary criteria that make increasing demands of the few hours the members of those bands afforded in a day. i'm interested in if they have an ethos that says "i'll do things the way my art demands i do them."

Johnny C:
i think there is something of a rhetorical slight against them, though! especially saying that having a manager isn't independent, which like i'm pretty sure i made a compelling case about above! you're making out people who actually work to help bands like this out to be like GWAR's sleazy p. martini or something. a lot of bands choose managers, i'd argue, to help them remain independent – so that they can work with someone and get things done on their own terms without it consuming every waking hour of the day.

there's a weird undercurrent to the argument against management and press and ancillary dudes that those are somehow people who are going to cover the way a band does business in like grime or something, like they're rendered unclean by association. i'm not really feeling that for the reasons i've described above. the strike thing is totally arbitrary, which like i've said is the whole problem with the argument. fugazi did it. fugazi had a lot of other factors at play. fugazi got lucky, in a lot of ways. i'm not denying that it's impossible, i'm denying that to say "canada's a big fucking country and touring it for two months and then touring it again in three months for another two month stretch is going to be extraordinarily difficult to coordinate, i could use some help," it doesn't make you less independent. it makes you an adult aware of how much work you can feasibly handle. it's that shit, mostly, not the mercury records argument, that has my back up.

Johnny C:
like, again – the weakerthans? g7 welcoming committee? anarchist press? julie doiron, jagjaguwar, sappyfest? when god told jonah "find me one person who hasn't committed a sin here and i won't blow up the town" he was being way too harsh, i think in the 21st century we can admit that.

Scandanavian War Machine:
this is one of those rare occasions where i actually agree with johnny.


...but i'm pretty open-minded so if tommy makes a decently compelling argument, my mind could be changed.

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