The Social Economics of Indie Rock (Part 1)
I’ve talked many people’s ears off about Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath’s The Rebel Sell, aka Nation of Rebels outside Canada.
The book was issued as a paperback this past summer, after a long run in hardcover and translation into nearly every language on Earth. It’s a riposte and reality check for those who blame brands and advertising alone for the excesses of sociopathic corporations operating in an overly free market. Most notably, they take to task No Logo author Naomi Klein and Adbusters honcho Kalle Lasn for missing a bigger point: that so-called counterculture is actually the driving force behind consumer culture, not the antidote to it.
Where I find the book particularly interesting is in its analysis of “cool” as a kind of positional good, a term they use to explain a status item that only a few people can possess at any one time. For example, a house in a desirable neighborhood is a positional good, because the amount and availability of them is limited, compared to a cool commodity like a new iPod.
When it comes to indie bands (and the people who love them) there’s a lot of jockeying to occupy the “cool” position. And in its own way, there is a cashless economy of meaning - a social economy - that drives the scene forward, pulling the mainstream along in its wake.
The book contains a telling indie-music anecdote. Fellow Toronto author (and occasional dueling-reviews opponent) Hal Niedzviecki laments the corporate predictability of manufactured Top 40 music, so he sets out to find authentic music that can’t be co-opted. He goes to see a hotly touted underground band called Braino.
At the beginning, he’s keen to watch the reaction of the ‘chattering poseurs’ in the bar, as their bourgeois complacency is earnestly épatéed by Braino’s ‘self-conscious, ironic mélange of avant-jazz, rock, punk, soundtrack, and barbershop.’ But as the evening wears on, even Niedzviecki admits they make “a big, awkward, painful noise,” that is “annoying music. You want to walk out.”
The authors remark that if Hal’s wish was granted, and alternative took over the charts, then that would become the new top 40 and hipsters would hate that too, on principle. And truly un-co-optable music is pretty direly unlistenable - pointing out Lou Reed’s 1975 Metal Machine Music.
So what’s going on here, from an economic standpoint?
An individual has a natural desire for greater status within his group - to differentiate himself, attract mates, etc - and the market responds to that desire, providing products like cars with bigger tailfins, new colours of lipstick, and alternative/indie rock that promises true Rebellion.
The fact that the consumer “rebels” against consumer society by purchasing a different, perhaps rarer product, strikes not even a glancing blow against capitalism or consumerism. In fact, it utterly reinforces the logic of markets - that they provide a very efficient means of fulfilling individual desires.
The social economy of indie rock behaves surprisingly like any market for luxury goods - hot bands are akin to couture fashions or boutique winemakers. Everyone wants to be seen with it, wear it, have it, because it denotes membership in an exclusive club. When it becomes too popular, well - we declare it “so, like, yesterday” and continue our quest for authenticity.
Indie rock’s hidden forces have real economic impact, too. For instance: As the band gained worldwide attention with its second album, copies of Belle and Sebastian’s scarce first pressing of Tigermilk were fetching upwards of £400 in specialist record shops. Surely, the ownership of these precious slivers of vinyl conferred a heightened sense of status, of belonging to a rarefied clique, of being a purer, nobler, better fan of the band than, well, you.
Thus for the dedicated follower of fashion(© forever, Ray Davies) it’s crucially important to be seen liking bands that no-one else knows about, even if you can’t hum their tunes or dance to them without jeopardizing one’s cruciate ligaments.
And of course, none of this is new. Punk sneeringly displaced the formerly-cool schoolboy profundities of Genesis and Pink Floyd – just as they in turn had dislodged their Sixties pop predecessors, as grimly as a Sith apprentice dispatching his master.
These changes in musical taste seem as regular as the new spring Miu Miu collection, and given the long hangover we have with paranoid 50s Mass Society theory - that an unseen cabal of corporations and media make us buy products against our will, and requires total conformity to do so - we sometimes think our pop culture is cunningly planned for us as well.
Pete Meaden’s excellent photobook Mods! describes a clique of Ace Faces at the best 1960s London discotheques, who always had the latest suits, the latest dance styles, the latest records, before anyone else did; he suspected them of having some sort of Mod supreme council below the Scene club that decided such things. “Of course, there wasn’t,” he recollected in 1979.
What really propels changes in taste and style are consumers themselves, who consume competitively in order to maintain or enhance their own personal status within their peer group. Some of these things are commodities whose status you can ‘buy your way into,’ like the newest model iPod or Motorola Razr phone. Some of these are luxury statements - to purchase a bigger SUV than the other VP, or conversely, the smallest Smart car for the city. Or even to declare that you are purchasing no car at all, because you don’t need one. Why? Because you own a positional good - something others cannot have while you occupy it - like a house in Mile-End, or a genuine factory loft in the King/Spadina area.
Marketers don’t create these status desires; they pick up on them and reflect them back at us. A Mile-End house is genuinely desirable because it’ll be on narrow, leafy streets of genuine 1900s red-brick duplexes and row houses, in a walkable neighborhood close to shops, restaurants, work, schools and services - while maintaining the edgy cachet of real local, non-chain businesses and - bonus! - a real live immigrant/ethnic community(tm)!
Now, you can’t just make “more” Mile-End, like ordering up a few thousand more Sony PSPs. There are a limited number of places to live within its confines; rents are high, and prices are higher.
So in a market where demand exceeds supply, alternatives arise. One up-and-coming neighborhood after another will be designated “the new Plateau” by real-estate mongers; first it’s Verdun, then it’s the “Canal District,” aka a sexed-up St-Henri and Little Burgundy.
So it is with indie rock. How many bands are touted as “the new (insert name of successful band here?)”
Next: The Great 2002 Broken Social Scene Indie-Economic Bubble.
We’ve already seen Williamsburg hipster band backlash, and an emo backlash seems brewing on the horizon – or at least on LiveJournal.
November 10, 2005 1:30 AM
