Thanks for this, Norman. I’m grateful for this platform because it offers the opportunity for both long-form thought and considered response in a way that I’ve missed. I hope my experience is resonant.
Punk and hardcore let me maintain an adolescent worldview a lot longer in my life than it was useful.
As a child who felt everything very intensely, it felt safe to see the world as black and white. I grew up thinking it was me versus the world. Through punk, I learned that instead of me versus the world, there could be an US! I just had to follow the rules. Vegan, straight edge, poor, anarchist - very clear identities and each defined by what it isn’t. These rules let me feel safe. As I write this, I’m struck at just how Jungian it all is!
Rebelling against rules and then embodying them. Then being ashamed of being dogmatic about rules. Then acting out the shame by doubling down on the importance of the rules. Yikes.
When I dropped out, it was because I was exhausted with defining myself by what I didn’t do and what I was opposed to. If I am fixated on what I’m not, I become defined by that thing. I can’t be anything more than it, all I can be is not-it. My identity and self image were both incredibly fragile.
One thing I wish we could have done as a community is create spaces which allowed us to address the shame we experience from living in a capitalist economy while also striving to create a just and equitable society. That friction takes a lot of maturity to accept and it’s a hell of a lot easier to just stuff it down and ignore it. I don’t know if I would have been mature enough before my late-30s to embrace that (lots of therapy has definitely helped), but maybe having that option would have sped me up.
I hope Kevin sharing his reality changes how some folks feel about bands doing eternal reunion shows and “celebrating 30 years of ___.” This is the bed we made by forcing ourselves to take a vow of poverty and now we’ve got to lie in it.
There’s the saying that change feels impossible until it’s already happened and I find a lot of hope in that. I don’t love spending $15 on a DIY show, but if it means the folks from Planet on a Chain can come to the east coast then you better believe I’m going to pay it.
Maybe we’re on the precipice. Maybe we’re already past it.
Thank you so, so much for this piece. It touched me really deeply. For a subculture that is heavily entwined with leftist politics we have yet to really grapple with the ways that capitalism has shaped the way we view ourselves and our work at a fundamental level. Valorizing suffering may be a defense mechanism against what is often a very harsh world but it is not a model I want to replicate. I hope touring artists start organizing.
Regarding someone copying your intellectual or other products, profiting without compensation to the creators, that's theft. Not sure how those dudes sleep at night, create your own content! Big corporate companies pay millions of dollars a year to stop counterfeiters. At the very least, since you probably don't have millions, I would have an attorney / friend do me a favor and draft me a cease and desist letter.
Regarding $5 entry at shows, otherwise a revolution by the fans ; ). Many 'fans' are posers in the punk scene. They'll make a big stink about paying $10 in their thrift store uniform, then drive home in a nice car and pick up an oat milk latte at Starbucks...
In my limited experience in the music world, there's a pretty big divide between the musicians, fanzine writers etc and the typical fandom. How are you not willing to pay $20 or $25 to go see three or five bands play their hearts out? It's not like you're going out to see live music two nights a week, 365, so relatively speaking it's probably pretty insignificant versus other non-necessities you pay for on a daily basis. The music and the words didn't write themselves, the musicians didn't enter a portal and just show up at your club. I just don't think a lot of people have a real understanding of what goes into putting out quality music, it's inconvenient for them to have to think about it. It blows my mind when I see how much money the mainstream is paying to see acts like Taylor Swift etc! Somehow the working class masses are coming up with 500 to $1,000 a ticket! (My youngest daughter is a fan. I just don't get Taylor Swift!!?) Dua Lipa, yaas queen!
I think for a lot of these people going to shows and not wanting to pay, it's sort of shows their true colors. It's more of just a Friday night social occasion, then a truly meaningful experience. If you really love a band or a scene enough you'll spend the money and come out and support it. And anyone that was truly that broke that couldn't get into a show that found me outside, I always got them in.
That said when I played music, I never expected to make a living at it. But there were various people that toured with me that didn't have a backup income. And getting paid or being treated right at club could mean the difference between eating that night or not eating. Big win for Europe on that front. When you're a lowley hardcore band like CFA touring in America, you were lucky to get paid at the end of the night never mind even a couple of pizzas!
Trying to live with punk/hardcore value system and neo-liberal capitalism are like have two different ethical frameworks at play at the same time (and our guiding ethics are more important than our opinions). It can't structurally work on a community or societal level. It's the same as speaking two languages at the same time. They will never reconcile.
That aside. People still have power, all of it actually. This reminded me of an Italian band "Heirophant" that flew from Italy to Australia in 2015. The promoter botched the tour and l watched an amazing band play an amazing set to 7 people on the opposite side of the planet. After the show. I asked for a $15 shirt and pushed a hundred dollar bill into the guitarist hand. He argued against it but l told him l had a bed and a pantry with food... and now a concert l would remember for years. That was all the cash l had on me and... it still wasn't enough! Part of it all is, knowing art has tangible worth. Part of it is, making sure you as an individual tell artists you value what they bring into the world! Don't wait for a system or scene to tell you that's what you should do.
Over the past decade, I've had discussions similar to this and have always come down on the same side as you did here. At it's core, music is work. Even if a lot of that labor is unseen—writing, rehearsing, even driving from show to show—there's still a sense that we are supporting our community by effectively choking it out monetarily. The only persuasive argument I've heard is that since minimum wage has remained so low in so many places, raising the door price makes punk and hardcore inaccessible to certain folks. While I think that's a fair point, I still believe we do more to dismantle our communities by walling off these conversations and refusing to provide monetary support in a meaningful way. It's what burns people out, never to return again.
What an excellent and nuanced article. Well done. Even as a Substack consumer I've pondered this question. While I love it gives so many great writers and outlet, there comes a point where if I pay for a subscription to everyone I read, my monthly media budget is through the roof. So what is fair? How much do I owe to the bands that helped me construct my own sense of self? Is there a way to support alternative systems where the revenue distribution is more equitable? Hard questions to answer.
Also Kevin Seconds working at amazon reminded me of this article written by Tom Wolfe that came out in 2009 about NASA called "One giant leap to nowhere" that appeared in the New York Times.
"Three months after the landing, however, in October 1969, I began to wonder ... I was in Florida, at Cape Kennedy, the space program’s launching facility, aboard a NASA tour bus. The bus’s Spielmeister was a tall-fair-and-handsome man in his late 30s ... and a real piece of lumber when it came to telling tourists on a tour bus what they were looking at. He was so bad, I couldn’t resist striking up a conversation at the end of the tour. Sure enough, it turned out he had not been put on Earth for this job. He was an engineer who until recently had been a NASA heat-shield specialist. A baffling wave of layoffs had begun, and his job was eliminated. It was so bad he was lucky to have gotten this stand-up Spielmeister gig on a tour bus. Neil Armstrong and his two crew mates, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, were still on their triumphal world tour ... while back home, NASA’s irreplaceable team of highly motivated space scientists irreplaceable! there were no others! ...anywhere! ... You couldn’t just run an ad saying, “Help Wanted: Experienced heat-shield expert” ... the irreplaceable team was breaking up, scattering in nobody knows how many hopeless directions."
I have several points I want to make. Do you remember when Steve Albini wrote that article back in the early 1990s about “how major records labels work.” I didn’t read it at the time because I wasn’t a musician but i recently read it and the aftermath of that article and I believed albini said so many bands signed to major record labels because they were being treated extremely poorly by their independent label. For some reason I thought independent record labels were honest like dischord but boy was I wrong. Plus an former acquaintance of mine James toth was on a major and I asked him what was it like to be on major and his response was “everything albini wrote in that article was true.” Also on a somewhat related note I watched a video interview that nardwuar did with Ian mackaye and nardwuar was outraged that some record store in Vancouver were selling old punk shirts for a hundred dollars. And Ian’s response was “people only charge what other people are willing to pay.” Plus I have come to realize that words don’t have fixed definitions and sometimes get co-opted by people who shouldn’t be using them. For example the hallmark channel morning show has a “DIY” segment about to make crap you see on the hallmark morning show from using crap from your house to make crap that is on the hallmark channel.
Music brings so much meaning not only to the lives of those who make/perform it, but to those who consume it. Fans should absolutely be willing to pay enough to make sure that those musicians should not be living hand to mouth. Capitalism blows so much, but punk, hardcore, just the idea of community, should mean that we have solidarity and mutual aid for one another. I'll gladly pay $30 for a DIY show if I know that each band is gonna cover their gas costs and make a profit.
Has it though? The Sex Pistols were basically a boy band put together to sell clothes. The very point of commercializing "punk" was to contain and control certain segments of society [but first they had to establish a dress code]. I don't know if you noticed or not, but... punks are some of the most conformist people these days — conformists who will gladly do the bidding of the establishment (and will employ violence to do so). That was the goal, so... mission accomplished, I guess.
I am not so cynical. I'd also only credit the Sex Pistols with cultivating a specific kind of fashion and nihilism, but the Ramones pre-dated them and the Clash better understood the assignment. Are there "punks" who are awful? Of course. Awful people are everywhere. But my experience with the hardcore community has also exposed me to some of the best people I've ever met in the world. I discovered this community when I was 12 years old. I am 49 years old now. I still believe that we are still capable of great things, that we are capable of changing things for the better, and I am happy to die on that hill.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who has a relatively high position at a major label. If we chose to pay for something - and honestly, if art has value to you and gives you joy or grief or anything, then whhy aren't you paying? - how can we best ensure our money gets as close to the maker of the art as possible? Bandcamp? The band's personal site? The label? My friend suggested buying straight from the label is of the most benefit to the band. But I really have no idea
I think one of the problems is that that question has many answers. The only universal answer, in my opinion, is buying something from bands on tour. The lion's share of the revenue will go to the band after cost of goods. Bandcamp is good, and Bandcamp Fridays even better. Otherwise, as is always the case, use your best judgment and do your best. Even just thinking about it like this puts you in a good place. x
Thanks for this, Norman. I’m grateful for this platform because it offers the opportunity for both long-form thought and considered response in a way that I’ve missed. I hope my experience is resonant.
Punk and hardcore let me maintain an adolescent worldview a lot longer in my life than it was useful.
As a child who felt everything very intensely, it felt safe to see the world as black and white. I grew up thinking it was me versus the world. Through punk, I learned that instead of me versus the world, there could be an US! I just had to follow the rules. Vegan, straight edge, poor, anarchist - very clear identities and each defined by what it isn’t. These rules let me feel safe. As I write this, I’m struck at just how Jungian it all is!
Rebelling against rules and then embodying them. Then being ashamed of being dogmatic about rules. Then acting out the shame by doubling down on the importance of the rules. Yikes.
When I dropped out, it was because I was exhausted with defining myself by what I didn’t do and what I was opposed to. If I am fixated on what I’m not, I become defined by that thing. I can’t be anything more than it, all I can be is not-it. My identity and self image were both incredibly fragile.
One thing I wish we could have done as a community is create spaces which allowed us to address the shame we experience from living in a capitalist economy while also striving to create a just and equitable society. That friction takes a lot of maturity to accept and it’s a hell of a lot easier to just stuff it down and ignore it. I don’t know if I would have been mature enough before my late-30s to embrace that (lots of therapy has definitely helped), but maybe having that option would have sped me up.
I hope Kevin sharing his reality changes how some folks feel about bands doing eternal reunion shows and “celebrating 30 years of ___.” This is the bed we made by forcing ourselves to take a vow of poverty and now we’ve got to lie in it.
There’s the saying that change feels impossible until it’s already happened and I find a lot of hope in that. I don’t love spending $15 on a DIY show, but if it means the folks from Planet on a Chain can come to the east coast then you better believe I’m going to pay it.
Maybe we’re on the precipice. Maybe we’re already past it.
Thank you so, so much for this piece. It touched me really deeply. For a subculture that is heavily entwined with leftist politics we have yet to really grapple with the ways that capitalism has shaped the way we view ourselves and our work at a fundamental level. Valorizing suffering may be a defense mechanism against what is often a very harsh world but it is not a model I want to replicate. I hope touring artists start organizing.
Regarding someone copying your intellectual or other products, profiting without compensation to the creators, that's theft. Not sure how those dudes sleep at night, create your own content! Big corporate companies pay millions of dollars a year to stop counterfeiters. At the very least, since you probably don't have millions, I would have an attorney / friend do me a favor and draft me a cease and desist letter.
Regarding $5 entry at shows, otherwise a revolution by the fans ; ). Many 'fans' are posers in the punk scene. They'll make a big stink about paying $10 in their thrift store uniform, then drive home in a nice car and pick up an oat milk latte at Starbucks...
In my limited experience in the music world, there's a pretty big divide between the musicians, fanzine writers etc and the typical fandom. How are you not willing to pay $20 or $25 to go see three or five bands play their hearts out? It's not like you're going out to see live music two nights a week, 365, so relatively speaking it's probably pretty insignificant versus other non-necessities you pay for on a daily basis. The music and the words didn't write themselves, the musicians didn't enter a portal and just show up at your club. I just don't think a lot of people have a real understanding of what goes into putting out quality music, it's inconvenient for them to have to think about it. It blows my mind when I see how much money the mainstream is paying to see acts like Taylor Swift etc! Somehow the working class masses are coming up with 500 to $1,000 a ticket! (My youngest daughter is a fan. I just don't get Taylor Swift!!?) Dua Lipa, yaas queen!
I think for a lot of these people going to shows and not wanting to pay, it's sort of shows their true colors. It's more of just a Friday night social occasion, then a truly meaningful experience. If you really love a band or a scene enough you'll spend the money and come out and support it. And anyone that was truly that broke that couldn't get into a show that found me outside, I always got them in.
That said when I played music, I never expected to make a living at it. But there were various people that toured with me that didn't have a backup income. And getting paid or being treated right at club could mean the difference between eating that night or not eating. Big win for Europe on that front. When you're a lowley hardcore band like CFA touring in America, you were lucky to get paid at the end of the night never mind even a couple of pizzas!
Keith Burkhardt
Trying to live with punk/hardcore value system and neo-liberal capitalism are like have two different ethical frameworks at play at the same time (and our guiding ethics are more important than our opinions). It can't structurally work on a community or societal level. It's the same as speaking two languages at the same time. They will never reconcile.
That aside. People still have power, all of it actually. This reminded me of an Italian band "Heirophant" that flew from Italy to Australia in 2015. The promoter botched the tour and l watched an amazing band play an amazing set to 7 people on the opposite side of the planet. After the show. I asked for a $15 shirt and pushed a hundred dollar bill into the guitarist hand. He argued against it but l told him l had a bed and a pantry with food... and now a concert l would remember for years. That was all the cash l had on me and... it still wasn't enough! Part of it all is, knowing art has tangible worth. Part of it is, making sure you as an individual tell artists you value what they bring into the world! Don't wait for a system or scene to tell you that's what you should do.
Over the past decade, I've had discussions similar to this and have always come down on the same side as you did here. At it's core, music is work. Even if a lot of that labor is unseen—writing, rehearsing, even driving from show to show—there's still a sense that we are supporting our community by effectively choking it out monetarily. The only persuasive argument I've heard is that since minimum wage has remained so low in so many places, raising the door price makes punk and hardcore inaccessible to certain folks. While I think that's a fair point, I still believe we do more to dismantle our communities by walling off these conversations and refusing to provide monetary support in a meaningful way. It's what burns people out, never to return again.
What an excellent and nuanced article. Well done. Even as a Substack consumer I've pondered this question. While I love it gives so many great writers and outlet, there comes a point where if I pay for a subscription to everyone I read, my monthly media budget is through the roof. So what is fair? How much do I owe to the bands that helped me construct my own sense of self? Is there a way to support alternative systems where the revenue distribution is more equitable? Hard questions to answer.
Also Kevin Seconds working at amazon reminded me of this article written by Tom Wolfe that came out in 2009 about NASA called "One giant leap to nowhere" that appeared in the New York Times.
"Three months after the landing, however, in October 1969, I began to wonder ... I was in Florida, at Cape Kennedy, the space program’s launching facility, aboard a NASA tour bus. The bus’s Spielmeister was a tall-fair-and-handsome man in his late 30s ... and a real piece of lumber when it came to telling tourists on a tour bus what they were looking at. He was so bad, I couldn’t resist striking up a conversation at the end of the tour. Sure enough, it turned out he had not been put on Earth for this job. He was an engineer who until recently had been a NASA heat-shield specialist. A baffling wave of layoffs had begun, and his job was eliminated. It was so bad he was lucky to have gotten this stand-up Spielmeister gig on a tour bus. Neil Armstrong and his two crew mates, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, were still on their triumphal world tour ... while back home, NASA’s irreplaceable team of highly motivated space scientists irreplaceable! there were no others! ...anywhere! ... You couldn’t just run an ad saying, “Help Wanted: Experienced heat-shield expert” ... the irreplaceable team was breaking up, scattering in nobody knows how many hopeless directions."
Norman,
I have several points I want to make. Do you remember when Steve Albini wrote that article back in the early 1990s about “how major records labels work.” I didn’t read it at the time because I wasn’t a musician but i recently read it and the aftermath of that article and I believed albini said so many bands signed to major record labels because they were being treated extremely poorly by their independent label. For some reason I thought independent record labels were honest like dischord but boy was I wrong. Plus an former acquaintance of mine James toth was on a major and I asked him what was it like to be on major and his response was “everything albini wrote in that article was true.” Also on a somewhat related note I watched a video interview that nardwuar did with Ian mackaye and nardwuar was outraged that some record store in Vancouver were selling old punk shirts for a hundred dollars. And Ian’s response was “people only charge what other people are willing to pay.” Plus I have come to realize that words don’t have fixed definitions and sometimes get co-opted by people who shouldn’t be using them. For example the hallmark channel morning show has a “DIY” segment about to make crap you see on the hallmark morning show from using crap from your house to make crap that is on the hallmark channel.
Norm, you are so awesome!!!
Music brings so much meaning not only to the lives of those who make/perform it, but to those who consume it. Fans should absolutely be willing to pay enough to make sure that those musicians should not be living hand to mouth. Capitalism blows so much, but punk, hardcore, just the idea of community, should mean that we have solidarity and mutual aid for one another. I'll gladly pay $30 for a DIY show if I know that each band is gonna cover their gas costs and make a profit.
Has it though? The Sex Pistols were basically a boy band put together to sell clothes. The very point of commercializing "punk" was to contain and control certain segments of society [but first they had to establish a dress code]. I don't know if you noticed or not, but... punks are some of the most conformist people these days — conformists who will gladly do the bidding of the establishment (and will employ violence to do so). That was the goal, so... mission accomplished, I guess.
I am not so cynical. I'd also only credit the Sex Pistols with cultivating a specific kind of fashion and nihilism, but the Ramones pre-dated them and the Clash better understood the assignment. Are there "punks" who are awful? Of course. Awful people are everywhere. But my experience with the hardcore community has also exposed me to some of the best people I've ever met in the world. I discovered this community when I was 12 years old. I am 49 years old now. I still believe that we are still capable of great things, that we are capable of changing things for the better, and I am happy to die on that hill.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who has a relatively high position at a major label. If we chose to pay for something - and honestly, if art has value to you and gives you joy or grief or anything, then whhy aren't you paying? - how can we best ensure our money gets as close to the maker of the art as possible? Bandcamp? The band's personal site? The label? My friend suggested buying straight from the label is of the most benefit to the band. But I really have no idea
I think one of the problems is that that question has many answers. The only universal answer, in my opinion, is buying something from bands on tour. The lion's share of the revenue will go to the band after cost of goods. Bandcamp is good, and Bandcamp Fridays even better. Otherwise, as is always the case, use your best judgment and do your best. Even just thinking about it like this puts you in a good place. x