In my final year at college I helped start a music magazine that briefly went nationwide. For a little while we covered a brutally hip range of ‘indie’ and electronica acts: Interviewing, smooching, listening to a lot of great new music and occasionally finding time to publish some decent writing.

So here’s the article, the point of which dovetailed neatly with it’s consequences. The names have been changed…

Pop Music Sucks

Two music journalists sit outside a franchise coffee house. Young, urbane and ostentatiously hip, they are arguing. Their discussion, staged in the controversial milieu of a Starbucks decorated to match the Autumnal colours of their Abercrombie togs, is about something vital. As the boy raises a Venti Caramel Frappuccino to his lips, suckling the frothy mass of corporate cream and coffee, the girl berates his immovable pretension. She nurses a tiny herbal tea and readjusts her nautically themed mini as he mocks her trivial preferences. Outside a Starbucks on the Camden Road, these tragic hips are fighting, not about the re-ignition of the cold war, nor the global financial meltdown. Our heroes, writers for a pretentious indie publication both, are arguing about authenticity in music.

A struggle rages high in the battlements of scene. On one side, popsters like Bon Dijonaise and Meadbh Glint protest that the crowd is too exclusive, an elitist misrepresentation of the interests of its core and wannabe’s; snobbishly avoiding popular music in favour of credible indie darlings. Ranged against them are folk like myself, Snedar Vashni, Tove Chumbly, you know the crowd. We see a cultural landscape supersaturated with pop coverage, radio stations payola’d and market researched into little more than store fronts for the latest Timbaland remix, the newest leather jacketed major label ‘indie’ stars, the latest on-screen Abba revival. We are, as we see it, though our individual tastes may differ radically, concerned that our independent musical presses be places original music can be discussed, seriously and frivolously.

At face value, this argument is trivial, a petty squabble among dilettantes over the etiquette of formal dining. Look a little deeper and it resonates with a crisis of cultural capital, an argument about the validity and future of Western culture itself. Last year, Adbusters magazine, a publication which hopped up on Chomsky, Baudrillard and Naomi Klein, attempts to use the glamour of industrial capitalism (fashion shoots, photoshop, ironic distance) to subvert its consumerist message, wrote a sterling attack on hipsterism. This latest global subculture, the magazine argued, represents a departure from youth movements of the past, from the hippies and the punks, a departure even from the hedonistic valueless underground raves of the 90′s, in that it is wholly constructed, marketed and cool hunted; meaning nothing, representing nothing, remixing historical motifs into ironic outfits and flickering kinetoscopes of fringe interest. Dan Hancox, writing in the Guardian, dismissed Adbusters critique. Hipsterism, Hancox wrote, is nothing more than “fashion people, doing what fashion people have always done.”

At a time when the culture is more self-conscious, more aware of its history and artifice than ever before, a crisis of confidence has descended. A variety of dichotomies; authenticity versus inauthenticity, sincerity by contrast to ironic distance, original cut into remix, taste as distinct from fashion, symptomise the implosion of the counterculture, the final digestion of a pill designed to be too difficult to swallow. In 2006, iconic lower East Side club CBGB’s closed its doors. Large men with hammers moved in, cracking away graffiti encrusted walls, where once Poly Styrene made love to the audience like a Viet Cong Millie Small. The plan was to move the place, lock stock and branded barrel to Las Vegas. Fortunately the rock gods intervened, fatally popping owner Hilly Kristal’s cash lined clogs. It seemed like any vestiges of punk, once the epitome of the rejection of sanitised, monetized pop, officially died with him.

What we now term the counter-culture arose spontaneously, a modern version of ancient processes of cultural evolution. It stands in stark contrast to the fictive mainstream tele-visual culture, constructed and marketed from watered down replications of the past. Adbusters’ argue that the desire for authenticity, prizing the real and innovative over derivative artifice, has grown so large in the contemporary capitalist dystopia that, commercialised sans radical intent, it becomes just another currency, traded for street cred by vacuous hipster fuckitalls.

Perhaps both hipsterism’s ironic recycling of pop culture, and its contradictory obsession with the underground, are really both reactions to a contradiction which has always existed at the heart of the counter-culture; the illusion of authenticity. Whether it be white academic musicologists scouring the Mississippi delta in the 1930′s for the ‘pure’ black roots of blues (and ‘discovering’ Led Belly), hippies in hemp smocks writing protest songs in a reconstructed ‘folk’ idiom, or hell contemporary gaelgoir hips ordering Guinness in a dead language in Dublin’s Conradh, what we assume to be authentic is most often deliberately constructed to serve a social function.

If hipsterism is no less organic than the most cynically moulded Louis Walsh pop hit, then why regard it as intrinsically better?

Authenticity, in relation to music, is often used synonymously with sincerity, and it is in this sense (according to Webster’s “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character”) that pop music can never be considered authentic. As a medium of mimicry, chart music has no intrinsic character beyond stylist buffed billboard illusion. At the same time, whether fusion (think Simon Bookish), remix (Pittsburgh copyfighter Girl Talk) or revival (Appalachian flavoured indie darling Joanna Newsom), ‘independent’ music is by definition sincere – no matter how commodified.

This distinction is epitomised in the parallel careers of two of the twentieth century’s biggest stars. David Robert Jones, known to us all as David Bowie, and Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie, most often referred to simply as ‘the hag’. Both are multi-decade internationally platinum selling musicians, purveyors of the latest cultural trend, instantly recognisable icons whose celebrity transcends familiarity with their work. Yet it’s hard to think of two musicians more differently regarded. Bowie, despite his gradual drift into irrelevance, produced some of the most critically acclaimed contemporary hipness of the last five decades. His work as a writer, singer and producer across glam rock, new romantic, krautrock and disco, inspires some of today’s most important acts. His many and varied persona leave whole subcultures in their wake.

From one perspective there is nothing honest about David Bowie. The man’s whole shtick is illusion. His characters are mythological archetypes: Nietzschean supermen, imaginary rock stars, mimes and white bluesmen. Yet it would be impossible to term Bowie inauthentic. Whether manifesting the destiny of a doomed rocker or a cocaine fuelled fascist, Bowie was ever the artist, producing rich, often accessible but consistently multi-layered work which sprang from his interests in literature, the occult and history; his explorations of persona, of celebrity, of sanity, rather than a slavish addiction to prevailing tastes or market research.

In stark contrast, witness Madonna. Similarly commercially successful, possibly even more famous, she is an iconic personification of liberated libidinous femininity. Madonna too has explored varied musical styles and riffed lyrically and through her cinematic roles on her own iconic status. Madonna like Bowie, has collaborated with a host of musicians and producers, from Timbaland to William Orbit. However, while both artists have produced commercially successful anthems, Bowie’s music is considered hip, while critical opinion of Madonna’s oeuvre has at best lauded her inarguable cultural significant, and at worse labelled her a crass slag.

What distinguishes these two musicians? In part, it’s the machine. Madonna’s talent has never been music, but rather the ability to affix herself to the mast of the good ship pop, pitching this way and that to catch the gusts of fashionista taste. By contrast, Bowie has often worked closer to the coal seam, whether it be the cutting edge of glitter rock, Berlin minimalism or electronica. While never creating a wholly original genre, his four decades of boundless creative energy produced celebrated work in a multiplicity of voices. Bowie’s hip was always artificial- up till 2003′s Reality LP, characters and narratives were not intended as literal representations of his personality. Yet his art remained authentic, because it was so rarely insincere.

There are two primary meta-theories of artistic interpretation. To the social constructionist, taste is encultured (and thus entirely relative); by contrast the evolutionary perspective, while acknowledging a multiplicity of preferences, posits that taste (and hence critical evaluation) is at least in part routed in innate critical faculties, adaptive human universals. To the relativist, the only value of a work of art is its situation in the contextual system of the western canon. By contrast, if we acknowledge that it is not merely our physiology, but our neurophysiology that we inherit, that commonalities of cognitive function facilitate mutual comprehension (including the acquisition of language and yes music); then one work of art can be viewed as objectively better than another. One artist can be accurately be described as a genius, another a fraud. Bowie’s music managed to articulate the fears and hopes of two generations, while Madonna’s is consumed as chewing gum. Sweet, disposable and yet grotesquely indelible chewing gum.

For this is the function of pop music, the very reason behind its omnipresence. Pop is the aural representation of a culture that celebrates banality in the guise of ingenuity, conformity disguised as individualism, and the accrual of wealth as talent. ‘Pop music’, chart music, is by definition that which is neither necessarily good nor original, but merely purchased often. Setting aside the rigged and managed measurement of sales; the implicit assumption of the whole game is that which sells most is best. At least until next week. Perhaps this is the reason for hipsterism’s clichés, its thrift store fashions, its ironic distance and blog-inspired fixations. The desire to seek out quality despite commerce, to approve through consumption only briefly, to move on before such approval is appropriated, nullified and codified in next seasons diesel jeans, in Holy Fuck’s new remix.

As I sip my iced coffee, I tell Meadbh of my visceral reaction to pop, to vocodered power ballads and over-produced country songs, to saccharine R&B and big-me-up hiphop. It’s the same instant headache, the sulphur burp twinge you feel seeing a spandex micro mini or a concrete underpass – functional mass production minus aesthetic considerations. It isn’t elitism, it’s taste. Thankfully Andreas Pavel invented the stereobelt (though the Sony Corporation stole the idea, rechristening it the Walkman), making it possible to travel on public transfort, enter a clothing store or shopping mall, or pick up a cinema ticket without collapsing into a speaker-vandalising, Duffy-assassinating rage. That’s the problem with pop, it fills every crevice with at best inane, and at worst perversely nonsensical lyrics, and tired vaudevillian melodies. Pop bursts, over-compressed and without warning, from taxis, hospital lobbies and the leaky headsets of the perpetually bewildered. It seeps and jangles, depositing earworms like September flu. Hits that chew through your brain and leave you jibbering for days.

There are inarguably exceptions. Popular songs that are none the less classics, indie classics that are, despite all the odds, popular. These are diamonds in the dustbin, poppies in the sewage pipe. Almost universally, pop music acts to dull the sensibilities and nullify the critical faculties, lulling the listener into temporary senility. Its message is equipotency, uniformity, apoliticism, hypersexualised infantilism, and the illusion of choice. That’s the whole point. Pop music is designed to appear controversial, whilst saying nothing truly dangerous. It’s not merely bad, it’s insidious. Who will Britney kiss next? Which part of Janet Jackson’s greased up anatomy will slip ‘accidentally’ into the public eye? When will the Bay City Rollers reform? Who the fuck cares? Pop music sucks.

At P Con last week they ran a fun little contest. The idea was to produce a complete short story (SF, horror or fantasy) in just 100 words.

In the end my efforts didn’t place, though I’m egotistical enough to suspect the judge didn’t grok them what-so-ever. Perhaps he just preferred the story about the farting dragon…

In any case, it was a fun little writing excercise. Here are two brief tales I entered. Interestingly enough, I think this is one contest that might be significantly easier in “mainstream” fiction, as the requirement for a conceptual payload is lower.

‘Wrz’

One hundred words, Moreziff thought, an epic work! Firing off a micro-tweet to his sixteen thousand followers he asked, ’1C wrz comp, suj?’ Within seconds, replies pattered his retina. ‘Stl frm bux’, suggested t#_a.
+^ZF frowned. He was under twenty one.

Three AdverTweets bought +^ZF the lock pick needed to DDOS the gun-locker’s router. A gratifying click. There, next to his dad’s Columbian cigarettes and Coldplay LPs, dust free but yellowing in their zip lock bags. He picked one at random, running a finger under the title, annunciating each letter, brow damp with effort. N-I-N-E-T-E-E-N..

Post Nerd

The singularity never happened. America fell to the toll of Church bells. They left those men up in the sky. Our ‘safe’ reactors turned to cankers on the land. Without surface metal we couldn’t start again.

We huddle around the fires we burn to keep the lean lean wolves at bay. Jill rolls a three. “Acne, you lose your column in ‘Seventeen’. You date Fred.”
They both groan. Jill swigs from her man-skin flask, flashes bloody teeth. I laugh. “Your college application arrives. What do you do?”
Outside, in heavy rain, a dragon roars.

The downside of user generated content is that creators, coders, artists, and authors – the ones producing the content – are engaging in a one sided relationship. Their work, once contributed, can become wholly owned and controlled by the company they provide it to. If the creative work becomes part of a larger whole then this non reciprocal relationship means that while the website, book, or games they’ve added to can freely use their contributions, the opposite is not true.

My friends and I experienced the flip side of social media this week. Two years ago we entered a contest to be part of a video by the punk group ‘Yeah Yeah Yeahs’. The collaboration asked fans to dress up like the band and film themselves dancing around to the song ‘Cheated Hearts’, a track from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s second LP ‘Show Your Bones’.

It wasn’t an original idea, the Welsh indie group Feeder had done pretty much the same thing almost five years before, with their fantastic video ‘Just a Day“; but we liked the band, we liked the song, and it looked like fun.

My friends and I duly spent an evening getting dressed up in ludicrous costumes and makeup, and filming ourselves in various states of confusion. Afterwards, we ripped our tapes to computer and sent the originals, along with a release providing the band and their representatives with ownership of “all worldwide rights in the material submitted”. This rather lunatic agreement is pretty standard as far as user generated content goes, and though we didn’t like it, it was required to contribute.

A few months later we received a notice from the band, to the effect that our performance was to be included in the final video, and that we would receive a prize for our contribution. Shortly afterwards the band sent us a token bunch of signed pictures, stickers, patches and the like.

Finally the Cheated Hearts video was released. Rather than being exclusively fan made, it intermixed contributions from fans and a second official band video.

Despite being flattered (and embarrassed!) at be flashed across MTV around the world, we were a little disappointed that our contribution (it’s at the 3.04 mark) was a just 3 seconds long. So we took our footage, synced it to the song and uploaded our own fan edit video, as did a variety of other folks [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. It was something to email our friends about, a bit of humiliating fun to play at parties. Our finished video was no great shakes, but we liked it, as did just under seven thousand other folks on Youtube. However, I can’t show it to you, because apparently someone at Universal didn’t. Here it isn’t..

The video has been removed from Youtube, removed from Youtube listings and cannot be accessed from the site. Last Sunday (October 19th), I received notice from Youtube that one of those dreaded Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) ‘takedown notice‘ had been sent to them – they don’t tell you from whom – claiming ownership of the song included in the video.

All such DMCA copyright notices require is for someone to claim ownership of a video, or of audio or visual elements which appear in a video. There is no defence for ‘fair use‘, for parody or educational purposes. All someone who wants a video – any video – removed from Youtube has to do, is to fill in this form on the Youtube site and email it off. The video will be instantly removed. The individual, group or company claiming ‘infringement’ doesn’t have to demonstrate ownership.

Like I said, they don’t tell you who sent the notice, but it’s not hard to guess. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are signed to Interscope Records, a label owned by the Universal Music Group. According to the (user generated!) encyclopaedia Wikipedia, UMG includes the largest music publishing company in the world, Universal Music Publishing Group, and is one of the ‘Big 4′ record labels controlling much of the music industry.

Legally, what with the release we signed and the screwy DMCA, I figured we didn’t have a leg to stand on. But I sent an email to the Electronic Frontier Foundation anyway. The EFF are an organisation who monitor emerging internet and copyright law, and attempt to redress the misuse of copyright legislation. I asked them if making a so called ‘DMCA Counterclaim‘ (the only way to fight a DMCA take down notice), from outside the US would make me personally liable to legal action. The EFF were kind enough to get back to me this morning.

So where does this leave us? We could re-upload the video to Youtube or another streaming service, potentially leaving us (well, me) exposed to legal action under the DMCA or it’s European equivalent. I’m no lawyer, so I’ve no idea what the potential penalties are in this area. If I’m quick (you only get 14 days, and five have already passed), I could submit a DMCA counterclaim, which as Eva points out above, could theoretically expose me to conviction for perjury in a San Francisco court, and to a lawsuit for damages (sic) from Universal Music. I could on the other hand use Youtube’s internal tools, which became available as a link from my account’s ‘my videos’ page, once the DMCA claim was received. These provide a variety of unhelpful options – I can permanently mute the audio element of the video, replace the audio with content licensed by Youtube (the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s aren’t an option, and even if they were, the audio wouldn’t be correctly synced), or dispute the claim – which again could result in the deletion of my account, if the ‘copyright owner’ upholds their claim, which seems likely. Or I could write this blog post, publicise the issue and perhaps in an ideal world where clouds are made of candy and butterflies whistle sweet music on Summer afternoons, get this unfair claim withdrawn.

My friends and I don’t blame the band. We doubt very much that they, or indeed anyone from their immediate label, contacted Youtube after being shocked and appalled by our ‘misuse’ of their copyright. Likely an automated piece of software, somewhere in the bowels of a Universal subsidiary, scanned the video’s audio track, and spat out a legal notice. What bothers us are a) the unfairness of the situation – the idea that we can’t share something we created because an element of it is ‘owned’ by a megacorporation, and b) the precedent that cases like this set. All creative work (important and monumental, or just plain silly and fun) is built upon the groundwork of existing culture – whether it be the brothers Grim appropriating European mythology, or Led Zeppelin integrating blues riffs into rock and roll music. As the range of instruments we use become virtualised – from the game engines used in Machinima, to level design tools like those of Little Big Planet – they fall under the ownership of vast faceless corporations, and the legal purview of laws written and paid for my US media conglomerates. This can leave creators, remixers and contributors powerless in the face of legal sanctions. My friends and I helped (in however small a way) to create something, which was then used as a promotional tool. It’s only fair that we get to remix and share our efforts in return.

I ran a virus scan with AVG, and spyware scans with the old faithfuls AdAware and Spybot, which uncovered nothing. So I just assumed Digiweb were going through a rough patch, and we’d downloaded more than I was accounting for. Then today, IE 7 crashed (forgive me, I occasionally open the beast when I don’t want to risk real work crashing in Firefox from a time wasting flash game), and I Ctrl+Alt+Delete’d to kill the process. Low and behold Veoh, a video sharing service, whose client I had installed – grudgingly, and after checking a couple of spyware databases – to download Japanese cartoons for my girlfriend, was running a service, one not explicitly mentioned in the installer. The Veoh service was not only chewing up bandwidth, but resuscitated itself – Trojan like – every time I killed it, and insisted on being manually deleted.

I’m disgusted, it seems obvious the program uses its client not merely to P2P file requested from user to user, reducing it’s bandwidth overheads, but to serve packets even when apparently shut down; effectively using your computer as part of the networks swap file. This is very different from openly running the client in the taskbar on startup, which though rude behaviour, is obvious, common, and easily fixed. A windows service, is by contrast much more opaque to users, and this is the first time I’ve seen one run like this, effectively stealing system resources.

To quote the Veoh FAQ..

‘In essence, Veoh has designed a globally-hosted video server, capable of transferring enormous amounts of video in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional systems.’

Indeed. A fraction of the cost, to them.

Instead, each user’s computer participates in the network, providing bandwidth for other users. This is the only cost: your unused resources.

Unused resources are things like spare processor cycles. This is not Folding@home, the Veoh service eats bandwidth, at what can become a very real cost to you.

Let this be a warning, if you’re running the program, and don’t have literally tens of gigs of monthly bandwidth to spare (and who does?), uninstall now.
If you really must use Veoh, which does seem to have a wide variety of Anime YouTube lacks (a cynic might speculate the site is seeded from Topsites to build up the user base), follow these instructions to prevent the service from starting with your computer.

Your computer will reboot, free of bandwidth stealing nastiness.

I’ve done a little reading and apparently Veoh also has the wonderful habit of deleting files you have already downloaded from your hard drive, if ‘content providers’ decide they violate copyright. What a nasty little outfit.