17 Indie Artists on Their Oddest Odd Jobs That Pay the Bills When Music Doesn’t (not a poll)

The Magic Band were living on a cup of lentils a day when they were working on "Trout Mask Replica" but that's apropos of nothing

I think this was more a manipulative cult leader head-trip tactic on the part of the good Captain than an actual economic reality but if it prevented them becoming Razorlight it was worth it

Sometimes I think about Freedy Johnston selling that farm to feed the band...that land would be worth so much money now

as a carly rae jepsen thinkpiece writer who somehow also manages to write about indie musicians struggling to make ends meet, i fucking hate this conversation

Maybe somebody could organize a benefit project for struggling pop musicians, call it "Band Aid" or something

irl lol

How many Christmases have bands missed because they were on the road? Did they even know?

Tonight thank god it's them instead of U2

U2 should give out grants, otherwise the next Pete Yorn could fall through the cracks.

I think this was more a manipulative cult leader head-trip tactic on the part of the good Captain than an actual economic reality but if it prevented them becoming Razorlight it was worth it

Possibly, though Beefheart himsekf was still relying on food parcels from his granny!

Making a living in the sense we are discussing is also related to the lack of affordable housing in big cities.

u2 should pay their taxes moreike

ouch, I bet that hurts, sic

where is Jia Tolentino’s piece about indie musicians struggling to make money, and when did she quit writing about Trump committing sexual assault and about youth vaping and Brett Kavanaugh and Miss America and novels and abortion law?

where is Ryan Bird’s piece about indie musicians struggling to make money, and where does he get paid to write about music?

I only checked the first and last btw, perhaps all the other pieces contained links to paid writers’ sad thoughts about indie musicians

Credits per the liner notes of Emotion.

two different people are credited with "all instruments" for track 14... seems fishy to me... CRJ needs to tighten up her oversight of the payroll.

carly rae jepsen is a tax-avoidance scheme CONFIRMED

I think some of capitalism's best work is ruthlessly exploiting middle class indie kids and making them miserable!

the Beefheart side-quest in this thread is delightful

expecting a tweet with the "[x]: statement / [also x]: contradictory statement" construct to accurately refer to the same people is as futile in this instance as it always is

at any rate, sic, the point isn't at all that the same writers are doing exactly this dual thing. that's not how the "___:. also ____:" trope works. the point is that there are many, many more long pieces about e.g. carly rae jepsen et al than there are about e.g. cass mccombs, but when the mccombs piece runs, people lament the state of the biz. part of the state of the biz is it supports the already-successful & devotes whole pieces to their sales, the nature of their popularity, etc., and doesn't leave a lot of room for "look, you've never heard of cass mccombs, but his music's tremendous, here's a long piece about his new one, we're giving it as much ink as we gave carly rae because it's at least as good"

the core complaint here is, I think, that the broadly-considered "music press" (meaningless concept almost in 2019) is more the entertainment business press, and its priorities involve the maintenance of a sort of hierarchy, though I don't like the word "hierarchy" in this context. an order, anyway. that order involves more attention to the people whose merit has already been demonstrated by their having become famous. this isn't really a new complaint, but I think it is one that's been hand-waved a lot since the 80s or so

xp right!

“some people say one thing, but a completely different group of people say an entirely unrelated thing” is a pretty pointless call-out

I think some of capitalism's best work is ruthlessly exploiting middle class indie kids and making them miserable!

WOW this is an excellent take would buy a t-shirt

as a carly rae jepsen thinkpiece writer who somehow also manages to write about indie musicians struggling to make ends meet, i fucking hate this conversation

it's cool man, we've all gotta eat

Making a living in the sense we are discussing is also related to the lack of affordable housing in big cities.

glad someone other than me brought this up. I know people who would be making a comfortable middle-class living from music ... if they lived places that weren't the SF Bay Area/NYC/LA ... but, if they lived places other than where they do, they would be way less likely to have the income/opportunities that they currently do.

Re: Carly Rae
This is not including her touring crew for the album, so if you think about it, CRJ is making way more musicians and music-related employees make ends meet and pay rent than any of those indie musicians.

This is verging on the logic for giving tax breaks to large corporations -- it's definitely "trickle down theory" for sure

I feel like one of the key factors in "being able to devote enough time to one's musical career: y or n" is rent control -- granted, I probably spend way more time asking way more people about how much they pay in rent (or for mortgage/taxes/etc) than most people do -- so maybe I'm "too close" ?

weird how no one ever mentions that one of the major factors driving down the value of musician labor is the fact that so many people are willing, even enthusiastic, enough about doing it that they will do it for free. capital exploits this. They don't need to increase anyone's wages because there is literally a vast labor pool that will volunteer to exploit themselves and (perhaps after a little conniving/false promises/duplicitous business practices) give away their goods for free. this is not true of any other kind of labor I can think of.

that's why there will never be a strike or a meaningful union - because the creation of music historically has always been a communal/hobbyist practice that is open to pretty much anyone and that people do for the sheer enjoyment of it. the only real analogy is sports - where pro athletes are the equivalent of major label superstars.

all creative fields which contain unpaid internships

superhero IP contractors

pro athletes have unions that collectively bargain and they strike all the time.

well, more often, the owners lock them out all the time, but there have been strikes in all major sports

now I'm remembering why I stopped posting

so many people are willing, even enthusiastic, enough about doing it that they will do it for free ... this is not true of any other kind of labor I can think of.

visual artists
writers
filmmakers
fashion design
political activism
actors
comedians
models
...

oh wait -- I thought of another one -- parents

the thing is, this gets into the issue of what constitutes labor and whether all labor should be "monetized" or "transactional"

also I realized I forgot to post "lol @ Cass being from Concord" upthread

the fact that people incubate fetuses for 9 months without getting paid a living wage just blows my mind sometimes ...

in their own bodies? then they deal with having to handle these helpless creatures' filth and clean up after them, and listen to them make painful high-pitched noises .... idk, like, being a musician and not getting paid makes way more sense to me, at least.

weird how no one ever mentions that one of the major factors driving down the value of musician labor is the fact that so many people are willing, even enthusiastic, enough about doing it that they will do it for free. capital exploits this. They don't need to increase anyone's wages because there is literally a vast labor pool that will volunteer to exploit themselves and (perhaps after a little conniving/false promises/duplicitous business practices) give away their goods for free. this is not true of any other kind of labor I can think of.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, April 11, 2019 12:34 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm, see my 'strikebreaker' comment upthread

also I realized I forgot to post "lol @ Cass being from Concord" upthread

can you explain what this means to us non-west coast people? Is it a wealthy suburb or something, or...?

it's a really boring middle-class suburb -- prob when Cass was growing up it was pretty white and Republican (though it has gotten more liberal in recent years) -- it was immortalized in a Negativland song from one of their earliest albums

the "chorus" was "very stupid, very stupid, very stupid and dumb"

That sums it up, I guess! Now I wanna hear that Negativand song.

It's available for free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLQ293VZzRc

They are stealing the very food out of the mouths of indie musicians.

wait - are you talking about Negativland or babies?

Both.

ok i will let them know

The Magic Band were living on a cup of lentils a day when they were working on "Trout Mask Replica" but that's apropos of nothing as this thread is a nostalgiac look back to the days when Razorlight were given half a million and six months to hone their important second album.

1. I'm pretty sure that The Magic Band would rather they hadn't been living on a cup of lentils a day, although I'm quite sure a lot of the stories surrounding that album is just bullshit in the name of good old rock mythology.

2. Where did you get that figure from? Loveless cost £250,000 - for some reason I doubt the second Razorlight album cost that much.

she can also make the best album of the year (Feeling...) with just a computer and little else; see also other perennial fgti favourite Total Freedom

I love Total Freedom and think he's a legend. I believe he also works at Chipotle.

1. I'm sure but, you know, there wasn't that much money around, not like the 1990s.
2. You think I know how much the second Razorlight album cost to record?

(xp)