this is not a new (relative to 2005) line of thinking for biafra. he was calling people out on this shit all through the 80s - anarchy for sale is a good example, but it's not the only one. and, it wasn't just jello pointing it out, either. early crass is incredibly critical of the british punk movement. and, try reading the kind of popular historical accounts of punk rock they teach to kids in music history classes nowadays. they're really surreal. it seems like history is going to record punk rock as something that vivienne westwood created to sell bracelets to teenagers.
i can't comment on the case in much depth, but i know that even east bay acknowledged that the royalty thing was an "accounting error". i don't know what "accounting error" actually means. but it seems clear that the crux of the case wasn't about royalties but about control over the discography. honestly? jello may have run the label, but these kinds of decisions should have been democratic - up to veto power by any single member, including whatever drummer was on whatever recording. i'm not sure jello held up to that ideal the way you'd expect him to. that doesn't excuse the decisions that were made by the other band members, but it does present a lesson about the value of democratic decision making, namely that when shit devolves into clashes of egos it rarely works out well for anybody involved.
there's a kind of pseudo-marxist theory driving the idea of youth culture music as propaganda, but i think there's more than enough evidence to draw on since the beatniks to deduce that marx was completely wrong. if you go back a few thousand year to plato (socrates), he said something rather interesting. i'm paraphrasing because i don't want to look it up, but it was roughly this:
when you see musicians begin to gather, you know that some change is occurring.
what i remember about the statement (i don't even remember what text it's in) is it's ambiguity in terms of cause and effect. even back in ancient greece, it was clear that social change and music are correlated together. but, which one is the cause of the other? or are they interrelated?
what i think the empirical evidence since the beatniks demonstrates is that music cannot produce change because it gets co-opted as soon as it tries. it seems like there's a pattern. a message is paired to an art form, and it begins by attracting people that get the message. but, as the message grows, it becomes converted into a product. what that means is that by the time it reaches the status quo it's just a package for sale. the masses consequently interact with it the same way they'd interact with any other product for sale. the next step is that it becomes emulated through the filters of the status quo, and that's when it becomes co-opted. there's not even a place for "selling out" or for corporations to come in and buy everything out. it's the market that co-opts it on it's own. that's the reason music is always so much more powerful at the core of it's development, regardless of whether you're speaking of raw punk power or elaborate progressive rock. blink 182 is to the dead kennedys as journey is to king crimson.
but, i think the market could only be capable of co-option in the first place if the art represents something that the status quo can connect to. that is, the change must have already occurred. i think socrates' observation is consequently better read as that when you see musicians gather, you know they are reacting to a social change that has already happened.
i'd suggest re-evaluating 20th century musical movements in this socratic context, rather than the usual marxist one. could the hippies have been a result of the kind of social change brought out by the beatniks and also by the civil rights movements? and could punk have been more than a reaction to the hippies, but a consequence of the kind of change they brought out? i think we already mostly understand alternative rock as a result of punk rock, and most movements that have existed since then (excluding the reactionary movements) as results of alternative culture and/or punk.
but, taking that perspective changes the rules of the game. it takes the wind out of the sails, but the approach has clearly failed, so we need to try and understand why. all of a sudden, political music becomes about preaching to the choir - which is not something that nobody else has put together, but is maybe something that hasn't been separated out into it's own kind of thought quite yet.
so, what do we do then? well, maybe we stop pretending that music can create social change and start understanding that music reflects social change that has already occurred. that doesn't mean we should abandon music. it has recreational and enjoyment value, of course. but, if we can realize this we can start focusing our political energy in other places...
but, to get back to the point, i imagine that once jello developed into a role of some power over his label he adopted some of the characteristics he spent so much time satirizing. i don't want to psychoanalyze the guy on youtube, but all that shit didn't come from nowhere. alternative tentacles, uber alles, indeed.
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deathtokoalas
that's very competitive, hierarchical thinking...
Alex Murray
it is true, though. DK without Jello is a joke.
deathtokoalas
i think there are plenty of people that could have filled in for jello, should the band have decided to move on without him. i don't like how things turned out. but it doesn't mean jello has some kind of heightened importance, or was irreplaceable.
