Three Chords to Freedom

A quick reminder the sun will still rise tomorrow

“A woman on the radio talks about revolution
When it’s already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about
Didn’t know it could feel this good to be alive.”

Right Here, Right now - Jesus Jones

Things are getting a little dicey on the world stage to say the least. We’ve been threatened with this or that version of annihilation so many times that I’m starting to experience apocalypse burn out. This isn’t as terrible as it sounds, however. In a way it’s been quite freeing to learn the stock market is fake, weather weapons are going mainstream, and Moloch-worshipping baby eaters are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to hold it all together. Somehow throughout all this it feels like the black pills I’m supposed to be popping with everyone else a the moment have been alchemichally transformed through the red phase and now I’m finally getting my first taste of the white.

Case in point is the huge story that everyone missed this week, where Live Nation and it’s subsidiary Ticketmaster lost a massive anti-trust lawsuit which will break up the monopoly that wiped out local artists in favor of corporate establishment slop. In case you didn’t notice during the pandemic, there were only a handful of well-known artists speaking out with the notable iconoclast Roger Waters leading the charge. It was a huge disappointment to watch my former punk rock and industrial heroes like Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, and Al Jourgensen roll up their sleeves for Government Flu shots while demanding audience members produce their “papers” to get into shows. Although literally disconcerting, it made me step back and asked myself what had happened to the crazy scenes out there and why all the hype and money was going towards glorified oldies festivals instead of scrappy newcomers carving out an audience on their own?

The answer is complicated, but the best way I can boil it down is that LiveNation destroyed the underground music ecosystem by removing the mid-level clubs and venues from the equation. Their agreements were structured in such a way that to cross them or Ticketmaster meant losing access to the more mainstream venues, and with medium venues closing and streaming replacing physical media that was effectively a financial death sentence for aspiring artists. That’s bad enough on it’s own, but the mid-level acts also created an environment where it was possible for struggling underground musicians sustaining themselves on day jobs and pure enthusiasm to develop a cult following and compete for opening slots when a tour would come through town.

It’s far less risky for promoters to try out something strange when they know the main act will fill the club, so the openers were the place where audiences and minor labels could search for hidden gems. Even the untrained eye can tell if there’s crossover potential by watching the reaction of a crowd who mostly showed up for something else, and many bands who had their demos thrown in the trash managed to succeed anyway because an enterprising executive noticed the bouncers had their jobs cut out for them when that same group took the stage.

Maybe it’s just me, but as someone from the East Coast scene during the 90’s I don’t see anyone even remotely resembling the rawness of John Spencer Blues Explosion, Morphine, or Six Finger Satellite making the rounds these days. I can still find a decent amount of gems on Bandcamp but most of the good stuff that scratches that itch is coming out of Europe. Of course the reason experimental and alt acts can still carve out a living over there is that they don’t have a monopoly that punishes innovation while encouraging endless recycling of watered-down nostalgia and computer farts.

What most journalists covering the story skip over is that the issue is not just purely financial vs artistic. Typically it’s raw male energy that pushes forms to the breaking point and either pulls back from the edge (John Spencer), blows off the doors and transforms into something completely different (Six Finger Satellite), or strips away everything that is unnecessary until all that remains is the pure emotion (Morphine). Untamed male energy is especially dangerous for senile elderly oligarchs running a dying empire into the ground because (to borrow Chris Martenson’s analogy) it like trying to hold a basketball underwater. The harder they push it down the more potential energy there is to be released when it finally makes it’s explosive rise to the surface, and now that people are starting to figure out how badly we’ve all been ripped off it might not be long until the public square is festooned with elitist entrails.

The truth is the system can’t afford some ambitious upstart creating a worthy successor to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Back then the boomers were still distracted with good paying jobs, cheap housing, and Miami Vice on the TV set. Now we have entered the “Saint Luigi” era, and if an artistic work that powerful managed to slip through the cultural cracks and go mainstream the results for establishment power would be catastrophic. It’s quite possible for LiveNation to elevate challenging new artists within their monopoly system, but instead they opt for the safe and familiar artists who inherently understand that their prosperity depends on sticking to corporate-approved talking points and not rocking the boat too hard.

As far as the local scene in Honolulu I had honestly given up after The Wave closed in 2006. It wasn’t the only venue that had alternative acts, but compared with all the other locations that shut down around that time it was clearly the most iconic. At that point it seemed like all the local bands who weren’t playing covers were forced to give up their dreams of breaking out, while the musicians with sufficient talent and the drive to succeed were forced to flee for greener pastures on the mainland. At the time I had a lot going on just trying to survive so I shrugged my shoulders and just accepted the fact that nightlife was going to be reggae or nothing, at least until the next market crash where renting out performance spaces would become affordable again.

Although the official crash hasn’t arrived, the LiveNation story rekindled my interest and with a minimal bit of research I discovered that a whole new generation of noisy angry music is rising from the ashes. It’s still consolidating and finding it’s voice, but the basic infrastructure is coming together and soon there will be enough of an audience to encourage the newly-liberated touring acts to stop in for a visit and at very least break even on the trip. Once that happens and the hunt begins for worthy opening acts then the cycle can begin again, and we can return to producing our own culture vs overpaying for whatever mainstream leftovers wash ashore.