From Cubist Castle 03.13.09: Take That, Elitist Jerk

Posted by Jon Kinsey on 03.13.2009

This week, From Cubist Castle casts it's beady little eye over the most villified and hated fan in the whole of musicdom - the Elitist Jerk!!

Hi folks. It's time for this weeks thrilling installment of From Cubist Castle. A series of unfortunate events has led to me pushing the column I had planned for this week over to next Friday, so if you were looking for my three band lowdown, then you'll be disappointed I'm afraid. Instead, I'm going to look at a phenomenon that is all too prevalent in independent music – fan elitism.

Before I do, I just want to revisit last week's column for a moment. In case anyone missed it, which you might well have done since it went out on Saturday rather than in the usual Friday slot, I took a look at mainstream music and explained why I cannot bear to listen to it. One of the main cruxes of my argument was that Big Music don't understand what a good song is, they simply understand what sells. One reader, the rather cryptically named Guest#3974 left me a comment which queried this central plank of my rhetoric: -

you say that executives knowingly put out awful music and that they know what sells, and then you say they don't know what good music is? For one thing, 'good music' is all based on opinion and kinda difficult to measure. But if you admit that they know whats bad and know what sells, clearly they must know the opposite, which is what is good. I dunno.

This got me thinking that maybe I didn't make my point as clearly as I could have. I firmly stand by the idea that record bosses put out poor songs knowing that they can make money from them, and shy away from good songs, but I reject the argument that they must know what's good in order to shun it.

The first key point that the poster makes is that "good music" is a subjective idea and it is difficult for one person to inflict their ideas of inherent goodness within music on everyone else, because they will have a different measuring stick for quality. He does, to an extent, have a point, though I cannot follow his argument through to the conclusion he believes to be logical. Clearly, we must all accept that some music is better than others, just as some books or some architecture stand in triumph over their rivals. Only a lunatic would argue that DJ Otzi's 2001 summer hit "Hey Baby" is on the same plateau as, for the sake of argument, Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind". It clearly isn't. As soon as one accepts that difference, one also has to accept that all music was not born equal, and there must be an objective element below which a qualitative analysis of "good" cannot fall – the Otzi Line, if you will. Also, it is worthwhile remembering, at this juncture, that the extent to which you like a song has no baring on it's "goodness". I like Daniel Bedingfield's "If You're Not The One", even though it is a diabolically bad song. Likewise, I recognize that "Freebird" is a great song, even though I can't stand it and flat out refuse to listen to it.

Definitionally, there may be a lack of common ground but the live issue remains the poster's original point – If bosses know what's bad, then surely they must be able to recognize it's opposite. I wholeheartedly dispute this point, though I will clarify my thoughts, since I may have confused the issue last week. I suggest that the big bosses of Big Music have very little musical knowledge. They are wise as to trends and have a vast marketing savvy and using these talents can work out what song will sell. Oftentimes, though, they are not music men. With a very narrow exception (I can only think of one off the top of my head), label bosses have not worked their way up through the music industry. They are businessmen who are parachuted in to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. My argument last week was that they release rubbish knowing that they can make money from it. I do not believe that they make any qualitative judgment as to the standard of a song; they simply make a business judgment as to its "viability". Reverting to an example I used last week, your typical record company boss is listening to two songs and needs to decide which one to release. First he is played something fronted by a man in a novelty suit. He has appeared on a prime time television show and his face is known throughout the world. The standard of the song falls below the "Otzi Line". Next, he is played "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake, which is widely regarded as a classic and has inspired generations of musicians. The record boss releases the novelty song not, in my submission, because he knows that it is bad, but because he knows that it will make him money. Likewise, he doesn't turn down the Drake track because it is good, but because he knows that the bulk of the music buying public won't take to it. He does not need to know whether something is good or bad – the bottom line decides that for him.

I hope that clears it up

Take That, Elitist Jerk

There is a breed of music fan that is more objectionable, more offensive and more intolerant than any other. They drive the people around them to despair, or to war. They convene in covens in dark corners of dive bars content in the company of their peers – mainly because no one else will have them. The band they follow is the most important thing in their life, and fandom of the band is a closed circle into which no one else is allowed to step.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please meet the Elitist Jerk

I think you all know the type – they are the sort of people who own the band's first single, which was limited to four copies on Cd-R-s and are happy to condemn anyone expressing an interest in "their" band who doesn't share their over-zealous, almost obsessional interest. There is an annoying trait among these "cool dude" fans to equate length of service with authenticity. If you haven't been to forty gigs a year and followed the band around the country, if you weren't there at their first ever performance, you are clearly not a proper fan. Don't sit with us, don't talk to us, don't look at us. You are not worthy. These are the sort of people, quite simply, who give music fandom a bad name.

Generally, the rule of thumb seems to be "The Smaller the band, the arsier the fans". Here, in South Wales, it is exceptionally common to be one degree removed from a band on the local music scene, or from a local producer. We have a fair amount of venues booking local acts in a catchment area that is comparatively small. Coupled with this is a long standing encouragement of performance art and music in Welsh schools and colleges, due in no small part to the Eisteddfod tradition. The result is that there are a lot of bands being given the environment and the freedom to form and a lot of venues willing to book them to play. Generally, if you are between the ages of sixteen and thirty in mu neck of the woods, you are either in a band that is being booked regularly or you know someone who is. The Welsh musical topography is, therefore, littered with bands who are big enough to secure a local fan base, but small enough not to be noticed outside the M4 corridor. I have no doubt that the same is true in college towns across the world. Bands form, remain self-contained within their own little pockets and then breakup, barely ripples in the water. It is these bands which, perhaps more than any other, seem to attract the crackpot elitists, the "too cool for school" mob who dress identically and wear their hair in the same way, use the same five word vocabulary and are immediate and vicious in their demolition of anything and anyone they see as being inferior to them. This invariably totals the majority of the population.

It seems to me that these people derive their whole purpose, their whole sense of self-importance, from the fact that they follow a band that most of the world hasn't heard of. The vast majority of the time this is because the band in question isn't very good, or disintegrates under its own weight before the word can get out. But to those plucky few, they are better than Elvis and bigger than Jesus. The band, and their perceived closeness to it, is the defining factor of their existence. The key to this elitism is, in my observation at least, that many of the people in question believe themselves to be in the band's inner circle and behave as if they are the closest of friends even when, often times, the people they follow so obediently would not recognize them if they dropped their trousers and started fellating them.

These are the fans that are unnecessarily protective of their heroes. Unless you can pass a series of tests to prove your authenticity, then you are nothing in their eyes. And God help you if you happened upon their idols on the soundtrack of a film, or an advert - you might as well curl up and die.

I've been considering this peculiarity from the microcosm of the micro band but it applies equally to larger outfits, who have done enough to secure a wider acclaim, but are still small enough that the elitists can feel intimate with their icons.

One such band is Colorado group Devotchka. I won't say too much about them here as they are a big part of my column for next week, but they are a brilliant illustration of my point. For ten years, they toiled in almost complete obscurity, playing background music in brothels or in street performances, before releasing a series of albums, which, while very good, attracted little public attention. They had a dedicated fanbase who appreciated their music and felt that they were part of their own elite little gang. Happy in the thought that there weren't very many of them and that they all had a secret that the world was unaware of.

Them something strange happened. The Devotchka song "How It Ends" was used to advertise a little known video game called Gears of War 2. The campaign was a huge hit and, as a result, blasted the band into global prominence. I am not ashamed to say that I had never heard of them prior to seeing that advert, but the day after I first set my eyes on it, I rushed out and bought How It Ends. One video game advert made them more popular than ten years worth of hard graft. That, as far as I can see it, is a wonderful thing. A band that has paid their dues, trudging round the circuit year after year is now basking in the success that they quite clearly deserve. And yet, if you trawl the message boards and take even a cursory look at the comment section on YouTube, one thing is profoundly clear. The old school fans of the band are not happy that their music is finding a new audience; an audience who have discovered Devotchka in the most unclean, impure and contemptible way possible.

I call this the Juno Complex. In 2008, Juno came to cinemas worldwide. The movie itself was predicable, slightly dull and by no means worthy of the gargantuan volume of praise that was heaped upon it. The soundtrack, however, might possibly be one of the best in cinema history. It was as if someone had put together a particularly brilliant mix tape that just happened to be playing at the same time as some moving pictures. It brought a fair amount of attention across the pond to one of my favorite bands, Belle and Sebastian, who contributed two of their best songs to the project – "Expectations", a bleak, angsty look at teenage life through the eyes of a mis-understood schoolgirl and "Piazza, New York Catcher", the song of two travelers who find themselves at a loose end in San Francisco on the eve of a Giants v Mets game. (Stuart Murdoch and I are similar, in the sense that we are both Brits who share an unhealthy fascination with America's National Pastime. Unfortunately, that is where the analogy ends – only one of us is a lyrical genius who married a model). The songs are played at prominent points in the film and, as such, people started buying into the B & S mythos.

Belle and Sebastian fans tend to be an easy going bunch and the vast majority of us were immeasurably pleased to find songs that we have loved for years brought into the public eye, in order that a new generation of fans can learn to appreciate them. There have however been some rumblings, in distant corners of the internet, from some of the more militant followers who are upset that the film has brought new admirers to the fold, people who "don't really appreciate the band". Aside from the fact that this is massively insulting to people who clearly share a common interest, it implies, by the very fact that the comment exists, that the people drawing these conclusions automatically assume that they are better than those coming fresh to the music. It is closeted, insular thinking, selfish to the extreme and unnecessarily prejudicial.

It isn't just confined to the Internet however. I happened to mention to an acquaintance how, as a result of appearing on the Juno soundtrack, B & S sales in America were picking up and people, some of whom had never heard the band before, were starting to listen. The chap with whom I was talking turned to me and said something to the effect of "Don't you hate it when that happens?" He was genuinely perplexed as to why I found this a positive thing.

It really shouldn't be that hard to grasp. A band I love are finally getting the attention that they deserve. Okay, it's ten years too late and every indication seems to suggest that Belle and Sebastian as we know it is no more, but if more people get to listen to their songs, how can it possibly be a bad thing? If only half of the new fans take only half of the wonder as I have from those songs, then the world is already a better place.

This selfish elitism goes against the grain for me. Surely the very point of being an educated music fan is to shout about your obsession from the rooftops. Remember that feeling that you had when you first listened to a particular song. If you're interested enough in music to take time out of your day to read this column, then I know for a fact that you've had it. It that feeling that runs up from the pit of your stomach. It's your brain boggling at what you've just heard, wondering how you could have existed three minutes ago without that track in your life. It is one of the greatest experiences in the world and, ultimately, it is what makes us a fan and fuels our drive to discover new things – we are always a slave to that feeling, desperately searching for it once again. Think of a song, any song, which made you feel that way. There are thousands of other people out there who have never heard it, for whom that shock and wonder is still to come. I would suggest that it is our honor, our right and our obligation to make as many people aware of the brilliance around us as we possibly can. That is why I keep coming back, week in and week out and write this column. It is in the hope that someone will read it and find something new and rewarding and that, ultimately, they might pass it on.

In Devotchka's case, it's Juno Complex working overtime. That a few hundred blinkered young things can't let the rest of the world in, let others share in their enjoyment and magnify it accordingly, is phenomenally frustrating. That it is happening over and over again, band by band, country by country the world over, is in it's own way, a tragedy.