The American Underground Punk Music Movement and Me
The recent development that has most profoundly influenced my thinking is the emergence of the American underground punk music movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My personal involvement in this musical, cultural, and entrepreneurial phenomenon helped to develop a number of my enduring opinions: that creativity, art, passion, and business are not mutually exclusive; that there are a variety of perspectives outside of those suggested by mainstream culture; and, most importantly, that any dream is obtainable.
Dramatic cultural collisions and developments in recording technology during the 1950s and 1960s fuelled the eruption of groundbreaking, vibrant new styles into the American musical landscape. However, by the late 1970s, mainstream American music had largely become homogenized and formulaic. A handful of major corporate record labels developed a virtual monopoly via an entrenched system of recording studios, radio stations, distribution chains, magazines, and performance venues. With art driven by the balance sheets and marketing departments of large corporations, innovation was predictably stifled and a generation of Americans grew up with the firmly implanted notion that popular music was the domain of superstars and mega-corporations, something to be purchased and consumed, and not a participative, creative, accessible milieu.
Despite this stifling environment, innovative individuals continued to create music on a small, autonomous scale during the early 1980s. Lacking access to the mainstream system, entrepreneur-musicians such as Greg Ginn of SST Records and the band Black Flag, and Ian Mackaye of Dischord Records and the band Minor Threat, formed independent record labels to release their bands’ music, simply because no one else would do it. While virtually unnoticed at the time, these were the first critical steps toward the formation of a grassroots, country-wide, artistic, cultural, and business network that became known as the American underground punk movement. Existing outside of the mainstream, this system was fuelled by the collective force of many small contributors, each following their own artistic and entrepreneurial muses. Over the course of the 1980s, this underground movement came to include not only independent bands and record labels, but also distributors, stores, magazines, and performance venues, and spawned a new business and artistic philosophy: DIY, or “Do It Yourself.” The DIY philosophy states, simply, that artists and entrepreneurs need not seek the backing of mainstream structures to create and distribute their products. To realize your dream, you must simply decide to “do it yourself.” If you want to put out a CD, record one in your basement, pay to have it pressed, and start selling copies instead of waiting for someone else to come along, discover you, and do it for you. Many DIY supporters would also suggest that this system is intrinsically superior to the corporate system, ultimately creating better, more relevant music.
Like many teenagers of my generation, I harboured dreams of being a rock star. However, my conservative middle-class upbringing in the late 1970s and early 1980s left me with the impression that starting a rock band and making records was not an available path. Assuming that my musical career would be limited to playing guitar in my room, I trundled off to college at 17, an entirely mediocre guitarist with what I thought to be very low potential in the music world. In college, I had the good fortune to encounter other music enthusiasts who had discovered records released by underground punk labels like SST and Dischord. Entirely new to me, this music struck me as being inspirational and innovative, and I quickly became a fan. When these bands came to town on tour, I observed firsthand the modest circumstances under which an underground punk band operated and realized that it was possible to be a musician without being an untouchable superstar backed by a huge corporation. For the first time, I realized that touring rock musicians were regular people, like me. Further investigation revealed that the records and the record labels behind them were also low budget affairs, often run leanly out of a living room or basement. These life-altering revelations led me to realize that I, too, could be in a touring rock band; I too could make and sell records. All I needed to do was take the DIY first step.
Upon graduating from college in 1991, I returned to my home town of Seattle and formed a band called “Sicko” with several friends, and set about booking shows and working on recordings. With no hope of securing a major-label contract, I chose to emulate my DIY heroes at SST and Dischord, paying to press and release five hundred copies of the band’s first single on my own label, Top Drawer Records. While this record was by no means a smashing success, it garnered early interest in the underground scene, and paved the way to bigger performances and better recognition, building the cachet of the band. By 1993, we were signed to a local independent record label, touring the US in support of our first full length album, and enjoying the collective welcome of the underground punk scene. Supportive punk enthusiasts around the country and the world bought our records, attended performances, and wrote warm reviews. Over a period of 8 years, the band grew in stature and commercial success, ultimately allowing us to release 5 full length CDs and tour the US, Japan, Canada, and Spain.
In 1998, while signing autographs outside of a Tokyo club where we had just played to fifteen hundred Sicko fans, it occurred to me that although my dreams of being a rock star had evolved significantly since the early 1980s, I had still achieved them on a fundamental level. It had taken relentless practice, dedicated self promotion, exhausting cross country tours, and years of extremely low income, but the band and I had clearly gained significant success as musicians. With initiative, constant work, and a little inspiration from DIY innovators, the dream that seemed so unlikely to a mediocre 17 year old guitar player had been achieved. Having lived through this success story, I feel entirely justified in holding the belief that any dream is obtainable.
Another lesson that my experience as a rock musician taught me is that creativity, art, passion, and business are entirely compatible concepts. While the most obvious supporting example for this statement would be the act of writing a song that is sold to a consumer on a CD, there are many others. For example, the process of producing band merchandise such as buttons, stickers, t-shirts, and videos required my creativity to conceptualize a product, my artistic sense to design the product, and my passion to maintain quality and integrity in the product from inception to the narrowly defined entrepreneurial act of the sale. The theme of creativity and business co-existing has persisted in my life beyond rock music settings, and into current professional ones. Whether I am searching for an innovative way to promote a rock tour, or finding a way to deliver a six month enterprise ecommerce application in four months, creativity and business operate hand in hand.
While my experiences as a rock musician were largely defined by the creation of music and related products for consumption by music fans, other aspects of my experience took place entirely outside of the creative business context. A favourite Sicko lyric of mine reads, “We’ve danced on stages from Spain to Tokyo, and we’ve slept on the floors of the world.” Intended as a joke regarding the low-budget nature of touring, this line also indicates the intimate level on which we experienced the landscapes through which we toured. Typical of underground punk bands, we travelled by van for weeks at a time, stayed in fans’ homes, and dealt directly with a wide variety of people, experiencing firsthand a diversity of cultural and ideological mindsets across our own country, and to some extent, around the world. Access to alternative media surrounding the underground punk scene broadened the scope of ideas to which I was exposed, and reinforced my growing appreciation for the range of individual opinion. This appreciation continues today: consuming the pages of El País, Le Monde, The Financial Times, bbc.co.uk, and The Economist; as well as MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Google News, and The Seattle Times, I find the diversity of available views energising and thought provoking. On a practical level, in a world increasingly described by mainstream leaders and media in binary terms such as right/left, and red/blue, I find myself well prepared to consider a broader set of options.
My years spent making records and touring in an underground band shaped my thinking in profound ways. After countless triumphs, defeats, and interesting experiences, I have come to believe deeply in the compatibility of creativity and business, the variety of human perspective, and, most critically, that any dream is within my reach. However, I never would have had the opportunity to develop these views if not for the nurturing context of the American underground punk movement and its derivative philosophy of initiative, DIY.