Defeat Records

I’m going to start with a fact… I don’t have a lot of respect for Victory Records. To me, it looks an awful lot like they’re doing their level best to suck the life and soul out of rock music, by swamping the market with bands such as Hawthorne Heights and Aiden. Lacklustre emo-pop basically represents the shameless corruption of the legacy of bands such as Fugazi, Rites of Spring and Sunny Day Real Estate. Thanks to bands like those who form a large part of Victory’s roster, “emo” is a now a word viewed as an insult of the highest order by almost anyone in the world.

And quite rightly, because it now applies to a generation of teenagers who thrive on a diet of faux-disaffection and juvenile angst. Chuck Palahniuk once referred to “an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables…”

But he was wrong. Our generation isn’t pumping gas (because it’s five dollars a gallon), and we’re not waiting tables. We all seem to be sitting around – uncomfortably, because our jeans are too small – and listening to music which has precisely no substance whatsoever. And we’re doing it all in the name of individuality, without realising that there can only be so many “individuals” who look exactly the same.

But I don’t really care about the image… that’s your choice. If you think it looks good, I’ve got no right to tell you it doesn’t. No, reader, my problem is with something far more glaringly obvious: it’s the fact that the alternative music scene, which sets itself so sanctimoniously on a pedestal above all the “manufactured” music out there, seems to be drawing closer and closer to the MTV wet-dream that started it all.

Don’t you see? Your music has no heart left. It’s a fantasy, that stems from this burning desire to be all grown up and be taken seriously. Everyone reached the stage, all at once, where blink-182 and their songs about farting weren’t cool anymore. Suddenly, we were all in love, even if we weren’t, and we had to go home and write a song about it. And before you ask, yeah, I did it too.

“Unique” is now rolling off production lines and into stores, and “alternative” means “mainstream”. The world is turning upside down, and no-one seems to have figured it out yet. The men and women at the independent labels have caught up with the major labels in terms of marketing accumen, and now they know how to target you. And you’re hardly a difficult shot, because vulnerability is part of the lifestyle, isn’t it? You might as well paint a bullseye on your chest and hope for inspiration.

So, like irresponsible superheroes, a few of these new alternative marketing maestros are misusing their powers. A&R men are now using a completely different model of what the fringe kids want to listen to, because you made it too easy for them. They’re not looking for cutting-edge music for a demanding market anymore. All they want is a pretty frontman, a catchy name made up from a fairly short list of buzzwords, and some “deep” songwriting.

Times are hard for honest musicians, because even the music that promises to make you think, for people who don’t want to listen to the latest pop-princess or gangsta rap star, is lying through its teeth.