Empire of Dirt - Wendy Fonarow Music Culture

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I be in a hut somewhere in Papua New Guinea? Wasn’t anthropology something to do with people in third world countries? How could anything as enjoyable as going to shows have anything to do with science? Science should be sterile and unpleasant and have nothing to do with pleasure.

      My desire to undermine these prejudices has been a consistent factor in my selection of subject matter. Anthropology is a comparative science. The stereotypical anthropologist studies a remote and small-scale community. However, our own culture should not be ignored or left to other fields. Without a comparative element, the tendency has been to generalize the case study to the ubiquitous. Additionally, the fact that a cultural spectacle is locally considered to be popular entertainment does not preclude its cultural relevance. If this were Balinese shadow theater, its anthropological value would be recognized immediately, but when we transfer these concerns to the institutions of our own society, which we otherwise tend not to question, the legitimacy of studying cultural forms that are characterized as low or popular is disputed.

      What people presumed from my interest in music as a social scientist was that I would eventually be writing about it in some public forum; therefore, I was considered to be similar to a journalist. Many fans reacted positively, seeing a chance to talk with me as an opportunity to voice their opinions. My research also resulted in a change of attitude among some music professionals, who exhibited some caution in conversations with me. The British music industry is savvy regarding issues of journalistic and media representation. People wanted to know what my angle was.

      About five months into my fieldwork, I was asked to help out at Domino Records, a then-fledgling independent. I felt that this was a chance to give back to the indie community, but working at Domino had many unforeseen consequences. Given the threadbare staff, I wore several professional hats, which gave me new perspectives on indie music. In the office, I participated in many of the challenges involved in running a record company, negotiating press coverage for artists, dealing with issues around musicians’ royalties, and organizing guest lists. I took Domino’s bands out on tour and experienced gigs as work, booking hotel rooms and making sure that bands were safely transported from one venue to another, and that equipment was set up on time. I experienced first hand the difficulties involved in putting on a live show. I quickly understood the cynicism that so many longtime crew members had about touring, and even the boredom that bands would speak of when they had to wait for six hours upon arriving in a new city with nothing to do until showtime.

      Working at Domino had other unexpected consequences. It changed the way I was perceived by those in the community. It changed my role from one fraught with ambiguity to one that could be easily understood. I was no longer a vague plus one, or an anthropologist, whatever that meant. I was now seen as having vested interests rather than being a disinterested observer. I was still working as an anthropologist, but now I was “the American I talked to on the phone at Domino.” The caution that I had observed while I was considered an unknown quantity disappeared. Now I was just another record industry person. I became affiliated with Domino’s pedigree of staunch independence. I found out how a person is treated when she is perceived to have credibility, the cultural capital of the indie world. I saw people’s faces light up when I said the name of an independent company rather than a major corporation. Suddenly, I was immersed in the large labyrinth of favors and indebtedness. At the Reading festival one year earlier, I was happily left alone to videotape audiences from the side of the stage. The next year, when I was working at Domino, it was “Can you get a ticket for my friend?” and “I’ll just use your production pass for a minute to get into the photo area.” I was now seen to be responsible for other people rather than someone that required caretaking.

      When I returned to America to resume academic pursuits, my friends in the American music industry thought of me differently. My work at the British record company now meant that I was a potential colleague. The following summer I was hired by Reprise Records in Burbank and returned to London to work for the artists and repertoire (A&R) department. A year later I was working full time at MCA Records in Los Angeles as an A&R manager, and this went a long way toward funding my writing. Working for a major corporation in America, I saw that these industry professionals seemed more concerned with keeping their jobs than with getting the job done.

      During the initial period of my research, the music movements of the new wave of new wave, Britpop, lo-fi, and trip-hop were lauded and bashed in the pages of the British weekly music press. Since indie music is led by a weekly press that constantly looks for new musical trends to fill its pages, these microscenes have been fast and furious—gothic, industrial, shoe-gazing, T-shirt bands, Madchester, crusty, Britpop, emo, or the early indie shambling scene, to name just a few of the most well known. During the period of my research, the British Phonographic Institute’s rules for the formatting of singles have changed four times.19 Writing about indie often seems like trying to hit a moving target: as soon as you hit one part, another part has already moved. I entered the field during the festival season of 1993 and returned home near the end of 1994. I continued to gather information on my many subsequent trips to the United Kingdom. I spend several more summers and autumns in London and Manchester. To date, several elements of indie have already changed. In 2005, indie is far more receptive to dance music, and there are far fewer prohibitions on synthetic technologies than was the case in the early to mid-1990s. The two weekly papers are now one. The gender ratio of females to males has begun to approach greater parity, though it is still strongly skewed toward males. Yet I still feel gleeful when I pick up a New Musical Express and find the same kinds of arguments from years ago, reframed in terms of a new band or the “new” trend of “miserabilism.” My research hasn’t ended. I continue my annual pilgrimages to the British music festivals, and my home in the United States is often co-opted by visiting friends, colleagues, or even friends of colleagues who have appeared in Los Angeles only to find that their hotels haven’t been booked. In 2002, I finally made it to the Big Day Out tour, the premier independent festival of the Australian circuit, and I have an eye on going on tour in Japan.

      Outsiders often represent contemporary rock music as a heathen, immoral, degenerate, hedonistic enterprise filled with idolatry for false idols (Cohen 1971, 1980, Denisoff and McCaghy 1973, Hall 1979, Martin and Segrave 1988, McRobbie and Thornton 1995, Rublowsky 1967, Young 1971). However, for those who participate in the indie community, music, music practices, and one’s participation are meaningful cultural enterprises with ethical implications. Chapter 1 deals with the question of how to define the parameters of indie culture. I examine each of the contested, non-exclusive definitions of indie. Indie extols local/independent authority, the direct experience of music in a live setting, simplicity, the ordinary, asceticism in consumption, and a nostalgic gaze that looks back at a mythologized past of childhood innocence. Indie calls for a return to an imagined “golden age” of music prior to its debasement by the corpulent Leviathan music industry. Indie views its own aesthetic practices and the practices of others through a screen of ethics. It demonstrates at its core that aesthetics is a matter of morality. Indie, like cultural systems in general, has its share of contradictory impulses and practices. At a fundamental level, indie articulates the complementary and opposing principles of Puritanism, Romanticism, and pathos, which I review in detail in chapter 1.

      Chapters 2 through 4 detail participatory spectatorship and the participant structure of indie gigs. Chapter 2, “The Zones of Participation,” sets forth the basic outline of the participant structure of the indie gig and its three discrete zones of activity. For the audience members at an indie gig, there are different modes of participation, depending on where one locates oneself within the venue. At successful performances where there are abundant spectators, the area closest to the stage is usually characterized by vigorous movement and high density. Immediately behind is a less compact group of spectators standing relatively still, watching the performance, drinking, and/or smoking. In the back of the venue, in the areas around the bars, people mill about, chatting, ordering drinks, and paying attention to

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