Steve Albini, Thurston Moore, and the Spectrum of Indie Belief

GQ’s Steve Albini interview, published online just yesterday, has already stirred a ridiculous debate amongst music fans and critics. Albini is, of course, notoriously cranky about the “mainstream” and major labels–and to a large degree, rightfully so.  But in the GQ piece he used Sonic Youth’s 1990 signing with DGC as the epitome of artistic irresponsibility.  And as we’re aware, on the internet this sort of beef will inevitably get people talking.

I’ve been thinking about this sort of debate a lot over the past couple years, and I thought I’d share some thoughts on Sonic Youth’s 1980s and 1990s label existence, because I think it sheds some light on the ever-slippery nature of “indie” and “major” that Albini–ever the ideologue–likes to handily present as black-and-white.

The full(er) story indeed presents Moore and the rest of the band as anti-Albinis in many ways: musical pragmatists and proud capitalists as well as Capital “A” Artists, who wanted that always elusive label combination of effective distribution, honest accounting, creative control, and cool coworkers.

The fact that Sonic Youth almost got all of those things on their own terms is quietly amazing in its own way, but the fuller narrative, I think, just as interesting for the light it casts on the contingent nature of “indie” as a cultural category that always gets defined in wildly different ways.  On one end of the spectrum Albini represents the dyed-in-the-wool punk lifer.  Sonic Youth…well, they basically predicted where indie is today (and thankfully so!).

After the jump, I piece together the narrative, more or less, from a few sources.  To be clear: this is less about taking sides in a trumped-up, poorly reported “beef” than expounding a bit on the contingency of indie.

First, an excerpt from the controversial part of Albini’s GQ interview (Note that the interviewer introduces the Sonic Youth/major label question to Albini, which is sort of like introducing the raw steak question to a pitbull):

What about bands like Sonic Youth, who signed to a major label with a full adult understanding of the choice they were making.
…a lot of the things that happened as a direct result of their association with the mainstream music industry gave credibility to some of the nonsense notions that hover around the star-making machinery. A lot of that stuff was offensive to me and I saw it as a sellout and a corruption of a perfectly valid, well-oiled music scene. Sonic Youth chose to abandon it in order to become a modestly successful mainstream band—as opposed to being a quite successful independent band that could have used their resources and influence to extend that end of the culture. They chose to join the mainstream culture and become a foot soldier for that culture’s encroachment into my neck of the woods by acting as scouts (…)

Albini makes a good point–there’s validity in the authenticity-laden “keep with your roots” approach to making music–but as is his wont, he too-easily lapses into the ill-founded idea that there’s an actual Main Stream into which bands are able to steer their ships.

Moreover, Albini strategically ignores the messy, often downright unethical reality of 80s indie labels.  He knows all too well that indie was far from “well-oiled” in the 1980s, when Sonic Youth were trying to gain a national foothold for their music, using indie’s rickety infrastructure.  Albini’s quoted in this 2006 Magnet article about SY’s early relationship with Homestead Records–run by Wharton Business School grad Barry Tenenbaum:

“My favorite retarded trick is he would make the numeral and literal amounts of the check different, so our bank couldn’t cash it,” says Albini. “It was like dealing with a small child who’s trying to hide cookies under his pillow. I’m sure it did earn him a small aggregate profit, being so duplicitous about everything. But it seems like so much work to be that devious about small amounts of money.”

Albini dismisses the notion that human error was to blame. “You can’t have a mistake on every single statement without it being intentional,” he says. “It’s impossible. Just by chance, you’d get one of them right, you know?” (…)

Sonic Youth were dealing with a label with tons of indie cred, but…well, the article continues:

Thurston Moore recalls some bad vibes during a business meeting with Homestead management: “Bob Bert, our drummer at the time, said we have an important meeting with Barry, and that we should tape it. It wasn’t like we were trying to sneak the tape in and record the meeting. We were going over some brass tacks with Barry, who’s a totally old-school business dude … Talking to this guy was like talking to the parents in the Peanuts cartoon. It was all ‘wah-wah-wah.’ I could see the look in his eye when he saw the red light on the Walkman. He was completely freaked out by it. He made us turn it off, and the mood in the room just turned nefarious.”

Sounds like a small version of the Reviled Mainstream Label Tactics, doesn’t it?  And a version of same which came at a crucial point in Sonic Youth’s own narrative, when they were big enough to embark on their first national tour–arranged by Homestead’s long-suffering genius Gerard Cosloy–but without the strength of a financially-secure publicity infrastructure.

Most importantly, according to Michael Azerrad’s seminal Our Band Could Be Your Life, there wasn’t an inkling of Albini-esque anti-mainstream bluebloodedness in the band:

“At that time, there was no such thing as ‘Be proud to be indie,’” Moore says.  “Bring indie was just sort of like, there was nothing else you could be–major labels had no interest.”  Sometimes a feeler would go out, though–Warner Brothers had once asked for a copy of Bad Moon Rising.

Moore was enthusiastically angling to get SST’s attention, as well–at the time, they were the American indie label.  His campaign entailed leaving the signature “Hello to Black Flag from Sonic Youth” in venue bathroom stalls, and as Azerrad claims:

…even the whole Creedence/1969/Americana concept (of Bad Moon Rising) seems like a calculated attempt to ingratiate themselves with SST…(whose) beloved Minutemen outspokenly championed Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Compared to Homestead–which the band was no doubt eager to leave anyway–SST was a huge step up in visibility, coolness, album advances, everything.  The band responded with EVOL (and a non-coincidental fascination with celebrity culture), which garnered their first national press, followed by the amazing Sister in 1987.

But then Moore started sniffing similarities to Homestead.  Again, from Our Band:

“SST’s accounting was a bit suspect to us,” Moore says, an alarmingly common complaint of SST bands.  The band was also disturbed that the label had been firing employees.  “We didn’t like what was going on over there–it seemed sort of odd,” says Moore.  “People we liked were being let go.” (…)

By 1987 SST had started to show unmistakable signs of hubris, such as releasing over eighty titles that year, a ridiculous amount even by major label standards. (…)

When they split from SST, Sonic Youth started talking with Paul Smith, who ran the UK indie licensing entity Blast First, and who was trying to start a US label with Sonic Youth as the crown jewel.  Azerrad explains the band’s role in this entrepreneurial endeavor (which most likely also explains the roots of Albini’s lingering stink-eye):

In 1987 Smith set up a New York office and began trying to lure all the U.K. Blast First artists, including Dinosaur Jr (SST), Big Black (Touch & Go), the Butthole Surfers (Touch & Go), and Sonic Youth.  But despite Sonic Youth’s enthusiastic lobbying, none of the other bands made the move.  Even worse, Big Black’s Steve Albini was annoyed at them for trying to spirit away the best-selling artists on his good friend Corey Rusk’s Touch & Go label; Sonic Youth’s relationship with Albini was never the same.

Breaking from SST was both a good and bad idea.  They escaped the unexplained accounting practices, but were left somewhat adrift with a fledgling go-getter managing what would become their magnum opus.  Smith had partnered with Enigma (distro: Capitol, half-owned by EMI) for the US release of Daydream Nation (Moore didn’t want to sign straight up with a major, according to Azerrad, because it would have delayed the release and missed year-end critics’ lists).  Capitol unsurprisingly had no idea what to do with Daydream, and thus totally botched the distribution of one of post-punk’s defining achievements, leaving it a quintessential critic’s album for years.

But to Moore, this was more a failure of Smith–with whom the band had a falling out–and less one of “major label” culture.  Again, it bears repeating that Moore didn’t believe in the indie/major dichotomy of Albini, Jello Biafra, Maximumrockandroll, and the like.  Far from it.  Instead, Moore saw indie culture slowly creeping into the corporate world as an opportunity.  Azerrad highlights Moore’s ostensible Faustian bargain:

…the indie scene wasn’t an alternative network of dedicated music fans anymore, it was now just another industry looking for increased market share–and not doing it very well.  If that was the case, Sonic Youth figured, why not work with people who knew what they were doing? “I didn’t feel any allegiance for the independent scene anymore, that’s for sure,” said Moore, “because it was in disarray as far as I was concerned.”

Again, it’s not that Sonic Youth were necessarily “right” or “wrong” in opting for a major label deal; it’s that Moore and the band were pragmatists, not ideologues.  In 1990, Geffen released Goo.

David Geffen had been a major figure since starting the Laurel Canyon indie singer/songwriter haven Asylum in the early 70s. He started his namesake label with major funding from Warner in 1980, and 10 years later, he would sell that to MCA, became a billionaire, and found the more boutiquey DGC as Geffen’s more progresive, “new talent” imprint.  By 1994, thanks to the “scouting” of Sonic Youth and the cash of DGC, the world had been introduced to Weezer, Beck and Nirvana (whose In Utero, of course, would be produced by Albini as a punk-as-fuck response to the band’s massive fame).

In a July 1992 Spin interview at the height of the grunge/alternative feeding frenzy, Thurston defended signing to DGC for three primary reasons: working with cool, knowledgeable label folk, working on music without holding a day job, and most importantly, working with a label more on the up-and-up than Homestead or SST.  Given the band’s pragmatism and their general (refreshingly so) lack of ideological indie fervor, it’s a totally understandable move:

Thurston: “Look, we’re able to work 24 hours a day at making music.  We don’t have day jobs like most of the musicians we know, working in record stores or copy places.” (…)

It’s a different time now.  The majors all have alternative departments staffed with people from the indie scene.  We could have waited and signed now, and yes, we probably could’ve gotten more money.  Big deal.  We signed for a rather modest amount so we could have complete control over the music.” (…)

“I don’t think most of our fans understand what goes on politically in corporate rock.  Let’s face it, we’re living in corporate America.  And you know what? This record company treats us better than any indie label ever did.  I don’t like the term, but I guess the operative word is professional.”

Kim: “When we were on some indie labels, a lot of times the label was learning as they went.  And they didn’t have the resources we enjoy no.  We don’t work for DGC, we work with them.”

The “we’re living in corporate America” bit really sticks out to me.  How 80s is this: Sonic Youth had seen through the worst aspects of corporate culture–shady financial dealings, zero respect of labor by management–while on two tiny indie punk labels.  And a major with distro is going to be that much worse?

Speaking to Pitchfork.tv’s Nitsuh Abebe in 2008, Moore specified the band’s reasons:

…when we first signed to Geffen Records, it was cool, they were like friends of ours. Ray Farrell from SST Records was working there, Mark Kates, who we knew from college radio, was working there. It was at this time where a lot of people coming out of the scene that we developed together in the 80s, you know, with independent music, were, sort of, getting work at major labels, you know. Post-college radio…so it just kinda made sense, to some degree, that we would sort of, like, work together on this.” (…)

I’m grateful they put our records out. And it was also a sort of secure situation. I mean, we had health care, things like that.

Who wouldn’t want to be able to make music for a living, with health care, while working right alongside one’s trustworthy indie pals?  If you’re not one of the dying breed of indie bluebloods, the answer to me would be “no one!”

In another 2008 interview with the Seattle Times Moore further underscores the reality of what “indie” meant to a lot of musicians and label owners: personality, uniqueness, the capacity to relate to your co-workers and feel a direct stake in their benefit:

Geffen Records, at that time, was kind of considered an independent, among those other major labels…the label was a self-sufficient label that utilized the WEA – Warner, Elektra, Atlantic – distribution system…And they had a little house. Their office was like this old, little house on Sunset Boulevard, sort of a holdover from a great era, the late ’60s, early ’70s L.A. music scene.

Of course, it should go without saying that Sonic Youth released some amazing music on Geffen–polished a bit from the Homestead and SST stuff sure, but polished mostly very well–and released that music to a ton of people like me.  At 15, I saw the video for “100%” on MTV, and whoosh, my hair seemed to want to stop being cut.  I got my Santa Cruz skateboard out of the garage, and I was lucky enough to be tall and gawkily skinny for the first time in my life.  The “Youth Against Fascism” lyric “I believe Anita Hill” was my first real musical experience with feminism, and an honest-to-goodness unforeseen alternative to the cartoonish portrayal of adult sex I was getting via CNN and Saturday Night Live. I got a gig at the Franklin College radio station as a DJ, right when it was time to proselytize with one of the band’s most infectious songs, “Bull in the Heather” (”it’s like their own version of Lou Barlow’s ‘Natural One,’” I’d say).  I thought then and still think that Moore’s DGC-backed 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts is ridiculously underrated.

But of course, none of this good luck and wide exposure was going to last forever.  Deregulation and mergers spiraled out of control, MTV ceased being anything other than the VMAs, liquor magnates controlled the pocketbook for musical careers.  This sort of thing is what makes guys like Albini say “I told you so!” From the same interview:

I think six months to a year after we’d signed with them is when they did their corporate merger with Seagram’s (I think that happened in 1995 -ed.), and it became part of the bigger picture (…)

I don’t want to complain about Geffen so much, but it just became a company we didn’t have any sort of personal relationship with for a number of years at the end there. They kept hiring and firing people at such a rate that it didn’t do anybody any good…people disappear and are replaced with a whole other crew of new, young hopefuls wanting to break into the corporate record industry. That happened consecutively, to the last two or three records there, and it was disastrous, in a way (…)

I always thought, at some point, the perception of any band like us that’s on a label like that, it gets somewhat devalued just because of the personality of the label, which is sort of faceless, in a sense.

In 2008, SY left DGC after 18 years.  Think about the steadiness of Sonic Youth’s catalog over that time: 9 albums, a few dozen great songs.  I discovered the band with Dirty at 15, and I’ve more or less grown up with them as a constant companion.

But that’s not all: when they left the major, they returned, somewhat full-circle, to perhaps the greatest indie rock label–certainly the one that balanced adventurousness and experimentation with solid career guidance and support for long-termers.  While Sonic Youth were busy being indie-famous on a major and aging incredibly gracefully, Cosloy was getting Matador off the ground.  Two years after the band reunited with the good dude from Homestead, they would play Matador’s 21st birthday party as one of the label babies.  As a symbolic bookend to the other end of their recently-ended 18 year relationship, they focused their set mainly on their classic immediate pre-DGC run: EVOL, Sister, Daydream Nation.

The indie that Sonic Youth came back to isn’t totally different than the one they left; it’s just bigger and, in many ways, stronger.  In the Pitchfork TV interview, Lee Ranaldo explained the major/indie decision in part by raising the ever-important question of distribution:

…when we moved to a major, it was partly for better distribution, and that situation is not really the same anymore. I mean, a record label like Matador can pretty much distribute as easily as a major, at this point. And in a way, because they’re music lovers, they’re a little bit more savvy about where they can get the records, in a certain way.

While Sonic Youth were on DGC, some interesting collaborations were taking place just slightly out of most people’s everyday experience with music.  In 1993, sniffing the dollar signs of alternative but knowing that keeping their corporate name out of the equation was key, Warner Music Group formed the Alternative Distribution Alliance with Sub Pop.  ADA now circulates Matador’s music (and a ton of other indies).

Distribution and promotion are the keys to successful indie; they always have been.  The good, long-lasting indies know this–Secretly Canadian started its own distro arm while still only servicing voracious European fans of the first Songs: Ohia 7″ back in 1997.  By 2009, they were strong enough to help out a few of those dispossessed by the Touch & Go distribution arm’s closing.  In 2010, labels seem to have totally shed the old psychic baggage of partnering with corporations like Warner in order to gain access to their big box monopoly.  And thankfully, it seems, the majority of indie fans aware of the situation don’t care either–they can buy at their local spots too.  Perhaps I’m stretching things a bit, but Sonic Youth signing to a major in 1990–spurred by pragmatism, bad histories with dodgy indies, and just the right amount of youthful/artistic naivete–laid some of the foundations toward helping us be okay with it 20 years later, at a moment that inspired the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones to recently opine, “the difference between major and indie labels now has less to do with aesthetics than with the way bands conceive of their careers”

Steve Albini gets a lot of press when he rants not just because he’s cranky, but because he’s incredibly smart and well-spoken–enough to serve as the primary exponent of a Puritanical artistic ideology that we’ve equated over the years to “indie.”  But that doesn’t mean he’s right.  I’m trying not to speak of some Platonic ideal when I say that indie labels in 2010, because they’re more willing than ever to embrace the usefulness of major corporations without sacrificing their artistic integrity, seem tantalizingly close to reaching the distribution, promotion, and personal connection levels that Sonic Youth fantasized about DGC maybe being in 1990.

But perhaps more importantly, I think the largely negative online reaction to Albini’s latest tirade, and the fact that it seems positively archaic at this point, only highlights that the now-three-decade reign of this punk-derived ideology doesn’t resonate with that many people anymore, and is perhaps fading away for good.