Low-balling the advance
Harvey Danger's contractual negotiations bear out Harrington's description. "We were getting offered this amazing money. We decided we didn't want to do it," Nelson says. Ultimately it seemed smarter to low-ball the advance to get a solid contract—"one without a lot of theft." Under the contract, Nelson says, he and his bandmates aren't making any more money than they were at their day jobs. But the band does have "total control over creative. The structure is set up so that we sink or swim based on our own decisions." In fact, Harvey Danger already refused two of London's requests: Adding extra songs to the re-release of merrymakers, and rerecording "Flagpole Sitta" to leave out the word "god-damn."
Rock is dead! Long live rock!
Maybe there will come a day when the music industry doesn't have to have huge hits in order to justify its existence. Until that time, new indie labels are springing up with heartening regularity. In Seattle, tiny indies like RX Remedy, Slabco, and Fire Breathing Turtle are putting out local bands with little fanfare outside the Northwest.
"The bottom's gonna fall out," predicts Rob Roth of Truly. "That's what happened in the late '80s. There was that Spin cover "Is Rock Dead?" with Paul Westerberg on it—then boom! A few weeks later, Nirvana. But even though it was one band, Nirvana, it was a movement with a lot of bands, an undercurrent—you could go back to Patti Smith and the Ramones. It's more about a groundswell and people taking the responsibility for their culture in their own hands. It's a cyclical thing. [Now] other people are starting to rediscover it or continuing to do it, and people will go back to indie labels and stop looking to Spin or MTV for what's next."
Like Roth, Pilot's Jeremy Wilson has a survivor's optimism. "Artists have to realize, it's gotta come from yourselves, and you can't rely on anybody. In the early days, there was that kind of ideal, that romantic idea—how is that supposed to exist now? You're looking at an industry that's totally corrupt—they commercialize stuff, degrade it to its lowest common denominator, so they can sell it. All of a sudden, you have these fabricated products that mean nothing.
"As much as big capitalists want to think that the common man is stupid, people have seen through all of that. The cool thing now is that there's a table that's set and ready for new things to come forward.... The ideal is new independents. If something is real, organized, and visionary, it can grow as interest in it grows. Start from Seattle and let the repercussions go outward."
Related Links and information:
All audio clips require the
Truly website
http://www.seanet.com/~bigenormous/truly/
Truly audio clip
Harvey Danger website
http://www.blarg.net/~hdanger/
Harvey Danger audio clip
Severna Park website
http://www.thefunk.com/severnapark/
Severna Park sound clip
