This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Dan Ozzi talked with BrooklynVegan about his upcoming book, Sellout: Yeah, I think, you know, obviously record labels are in the business of making money, and they tend to put gasoline where the kindling is. So something that’s said in the book a lot by many people is that record labels put out like 100 records a year, and the president only gives a shit about the two that are doing well. So in a case like Rise Against, yeah I’m sure the president of their label didn’t even know who they were, until they started looking at the SoundScan numbers, and they’re like, “Wait, this band that we put no money into seems to be selling how many copies on their own? Maybe let’s put some marketing money into them.” So I think all these bands that signed to major labels thinking the people who worked there were just going to make them into stars were really naive. The ones that seemed to do the best were the best that went to a major label and were like “We’re gonna work really hard until the boss takes notice.” And Rise Against is probably the best example of that, workhorses who eventually did well enough to get the attention of people who could loosen the purse strings. I’ve read about half of the book so far, and it’s very good. If you grew up listening to these bands, or arguing about who sold out in the AbsolutePunk forums: it’s a must read. more Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos, tweets, etc.
I struggle to even remember now if I was the type of person to claim "sellouts" about bands - though I know I came to not enjoy Rise Against's music as much with each passing release. But now that we have the benefit of hindsight and seeing that the punk and emo bands of our youth don't even get signed to majors anymore, and it's all pretty niche within the realm of popular modern music - it all feels pretty silly to have ever judged or resented bands for getting money while they could. Plus I think we all grow up and realize those judgements are petty BS anyway.
I really, really want to read it. I even thought quite hard to somehow offer to translate it to Polish if it would be found beneficial. "Tranny" was published here in Poland, but I couldn't tell how many people would hop on board with this one.
Also, forgot to comment what I wanted - I was always fascinated by the topic and that people would really care. Never had any problems with bands making money or aiming for whatever they saw fit, even when I was a teenager and didn't understand much of it. Rarely did I think to put the blame on a label if the quality of music went down or whatsoever. It's really cool to see how it all shifted nowadays and how we're looking back at some of the albums that were initially hated all around etc.
I think people have also come to realize that sometimes their favourite bands changed their sound because they wanted to, not because label execs tossed a sack of money on a recording studio's table.
Reminds me how hilarious this thread was back in the day: https://www.punknews.org/article/6290/rancid-joins-the-bunny
Can't believe they've left those up for so long. Shows how vile comments sections were in the early 00's.
Ha, true but I'd like to believe, at least in terms of music discourse, things have gotten fairly more constructive and civil. Even looking at Stereogum comments from, like, 2006, everyone was just trying to out-wit each other and bending over backwards to present themselves as having "interesting" music taste (which, really, just meant they listened to a lot of jangly indie rock).