7 ms·

Dead Kennedys guitarist goes after the modern music industry

66 points by rottyguy 11y ago

rorykoehler 11y ago
More people that don't understand that the music industry business model has changed. Not only this but the competitive environment in which the industry operates has also changed (ie music is not as valuable in the eyes of the average listener due to things like video games taking that attention space). Plenty of great music is coming out at the moment, from exactly the type of indie labels they lament not existing anymore. It's just the successful contemporary indie labels have appropriate business models to deal with the current environment. The days of making millions selling plastic boxes are over. Time to move on.
ilamont 11y ago
When the HN headline mentioned "DK frontman" and "goes after the modern music industry" I was kind of incredulous because the original singer Jello Biafra had a reputation of taking advantage of his fellow bandmates through the Alternative Tentacles record label he controlled (which released all of the DK records). I admired Biafra's caustic lyrics which nailed so many things that are wrong with our government and society (then and now) but it seemed a bit hypocritical for him to take the moral high ground on the ills of the music industry. Turns out "frontman" in the article is now guitarist East Bay Ray working with a pretty much reformed band. No mention of Jello or the other 70s/80s members, but you can get an idea of the convoluted history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys
- dang 11y ago
  Ok, we replaced 'frontman' with 'guitarist' in the title above.
- adfm 11y ago
  Explain the hypocrisy, please. I'd seriously like to understand that. Last I heard, he tried to keep from having good his music from being used in a TV commercial. And the impression I get from this article, not only were the rest of the band pissed he wouldn't sell out, they were torqued that he was supporting smaller "no name" acts, which is kind of what YC does, in a way, right? http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Dead-Kennedys-legal-feud-3240445.php http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Dead-Kennedys-legal-feud-32...
  - ilamont 11y ago
    In 1997, an employee at Alternative Tentacles Records discovered that DEAD KENNEDYS had been underpaid $76,000 in royalties over a 10-year period. Biafra did not tell his fellow band mates about the underpayment but instead attempted to use the band's own royalties as a bargaining chip to get the others to sign to his label in perpetuity worldwide. Later, a whistle blower at the label informed the band that these were actually royalties owed to them and when confronted, Biafra refused to compensate the band without a court order. Left with little choice, the band voted to cut Decay Music's ties with Alternative Tentacles and filed suit in October 1998 to have Biafra recognize majority vote and for back royalties. A jury ruled in favor of Decay Music after a three-week trial in May 2000, finding that "Alternative Tentacles Records engaged in fraudulent conduct" and that "Biafra breached his contractual and fiduciary obligations to plaintiff [DEAD KENNEDYS], even though the royalties were finally released to the band in January 2000." The jury also found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles were "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" in committing these acts. (1) Biafra's attempts to dissolve the partnership and gain sole custody over the Kennedy's music was also denied. (2) 1. http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/jello-biafra-gets-shot-down-by-dead-kennedys/ http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/jello-biafra-gets-shot-down... 2. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dead-kennedys-beat-jello-20030619 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dead-kennedys-beat-je...
    - adfm 11y ago
      Thanks for the reply. Agreed that both sides had issues. Ego can get you to do crazy stuff. Wonder if that $76k was worth it in the long run.
- walterstucco 11y ago
  WTF did I just read?
- ohIdunno 11y ago
  Eh, if it were Jello, I would have been incredulous simply because Jello going after any industry is probably to be expected, whether one might find that hypocritical or not. I'd have questioned if that was really news at all. Anyway, I tend to characterize the DK break up as an irreconcilable dispute, and neither side really seemed to be in good standing, or more in the right than the other. Jello's ego was hyper-inflated, but he was clearly a serious business man, as is demonstrated by the persistence of his label. He's highly intelligent, and his real mistake was probably hubris, at the end of the day. Meanwhile, the others were also intelligent to match, but probably might have compromised the nature of the band in the long run, simply by being reasonable people with a rational outlook. DK were more about shock value (albeit high-brow shock) than they seemed to understand. The breaking point that imploded the band was Jello's insistence that H.R. Giger's Penis Landscape must be used as an album insert, and its conflict with obscenity laws, and the classification of pornography. Greed played a role, but it was more about him over-riding the votes of the other band members, and him and his ego treating them as subordinates. It was many other things besides the money.
  - mistersquid 11y ago
    I was a late teenager who'd just discovered the DK in college and, being a sci-fi horror nerd, I was very aware of H. R. Giger, especially for his work in Ridley Scott's _Alien_. I ordered Giger's "Penis Landscape" through the mail order offer included with the DK's _Frankenchrist_ (I think that was the album), and had the poster sent to my childhood home where I knew I'd be for the summer. My very traditional Korean mother received the delivery and destroyed the poster before I even laid eyes. To this day, I am irritated and dissatisfied whenever I think about how awesome it would be to have that poster. Traditional Korean sexual mores 1, Punk rock gothic aesthetic sensibility 0.
- stewbrew 11y ago
  > Turns out "frontman" in the article is now guitarist East Bay Ray working with a pretty much reformed band According to the wikipedia page you linked to, only the singer (Biafra) was replaced. All other band members were active (with some interruptions) since 1981.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
BEEdwards 11y ago
For a long time punk rock industry vet his arguments sure sound a lot like my dad's. "Modern music is garbage and you kids today don't know anything." I don't know where this guy is, but I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that more music is being made now by more diverse groups of people with better technology than at any other time in history. I'm not saying garbage isn't being made and bought, but to ignore the actual musical revolution going on at the same time is just damned shortsighted. And ironically for an aging punk rocker the exact same thing people said about his music when he was still young.
- nailer 11y ago
  I dislike Kim Kardashian (who is mentioned in the article along with Bieber), but contrast her to previous sex symbols: rather than have someone else make money from her sexuality, she's created and distributed her own porn, made a bunch of money doing it, and used it to become a pop culture figure without any obvious talents asides from self promotion. I dislike Bieber too, but he was a Canadian kid with a giant guitar on YouTube who could really sing. The ability to become well known without agents / labels at the beginning of his career means now he has them he's probably taking more home than he would have if they'd been there as a distribution gateway like they were in the 90s.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
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- Roonerelli 11y ago
  absolutely. He says the musical spectrum runs from Johnny Rotten to Sid Vicious. Two members of the same band. That's an incrediably blinkered view point
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    No, he was talking about just punk; the full quote was "On one end you have Johnny Rotten, where he’s smart and sarcastic and aware, and on the other end you have Sid Vicious, a heroin-shooting ignorant person."
timrpeterson 11y ago
People in the 1950-60s said The Beatles and Bob Dylan were trash. It's called change, get used to it. Pretty confident Kim Kardashian will be considered an icon some day in the same sense as Marilyn Monroe, Madonna or whoever else was considered crap during their peak by the old guard. Heck, Donald Trump shows she might even be President if she wants to.
- michael_h 11y ago
  Considered an icon...of what?
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    Moloch, I assume.
- sbmassey 11y ago
  There was a lot of deservedly forgotten popular music from back then too, though. There is every chance that Kardashian will fall into that category.
- earleybird 11y ago
  Showbiz Kids[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJXQatf9c0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJXQatf9c0
  - mturmon 11y ago
    "Show business kids making movies of themselves, you know they don't give a fuck about any body else."
- bhickey 11y ago
  > will be considered an icon some day I wager she'll be remembered more in the way people look back upon Vanilla Ice or NKOTB.
circuit_breaker 11y ago
Needs more Jello
- chadpaulson 11y ago
  There's always room for Jello.
- TillE 11y ago
  Jello is still out there, writing new music (some of it very good) and touring with a new band, with all the anger and energy he's always had. The current "Dead Kennedys" are playing songs from the 80s that they mostly didn't write, and generally being apolitical.
brandonmenc 11y ago
> increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for independent bands to exist at all, he said Uh, no. These old-timers still think a healthy "independent" music scene is one where an infinitesimally small number of garage bands get lucky and land distribution deals with indie labels, and maybe make a couple bucks. What we have now is real music independence - being able to DIY record your band and instantly distribute the sound to the entire planet, for free. You can also DIY record and distribute professional music videos, communicate with your fans in real-time, and take payments from anyone in the world. What a time to be making (and listening to) music! The only people complaining about this are the guys who ran small labels in the 80s and 90s - they're just bitter that they're no longer needed, and that major labels still exist.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> "being able to DIY record your band and instantly distribute the sound to the entire planet, for free. You can also DIY record and distribute professional music videos, communicate with your fans in real-time, and take payments from anyone in the world." Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in. Once you get enough people listening to your music you can get to support someone on a tour and you should grow organically from there but that first hurdle is impossible for most people to get over, regardless of how good their music is.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    > Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in. No, that's where curation comes in. Labels are just curators. That role has been taken over by Tumblr, Facebook, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc. I've discovered orders of magnitude more bands just by rabbit-holing on Tumblr than I ever did reading an Alternative Tentacles catalog.
    - k-mcgrady 11y ago
      Labels are also marketers. You can pass the curation role off to other people (bloggers for example) but they need to have a way to discover the music in the first place and that is usually pushed to them by labels.
rdiddly 11y ago
If he's gonna compare "now" with "back then," and the artists he picks from "now" are Bieber & Kardashian - two of the most vapid and heavily promoted mainstream household names, available by glancing at the nearest tabloid headline - then he needs to pick similarly vapid, heavily promoted, mainstream household names from back then. And there were plenty. Doesn't he remember?
8ig8 11y ago
Some argue that the Sex Pistols were a _boy band_ orchestrated by Malcolm McLaren... > Reliably or not, Mr. McLaren explained his strategy for packaging and selling the band in the 1980 film “The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/arts/music/09mclaren.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/arts/music/09mclaren.html?...
peterashford 11y ago
Having grown up in the 80's I think the article is BS. The net has allowed a thousand flowers to bloom. The recording industry isn't gone but you can do an end run around it these days. When I was a kid you got the crap pop du-jour and that was all. These days you have zillions of avenues to new music.

66 points by rottyguy 11y ago

More people that don't understand that the music industry business model has changed. Not only this but the competitive environment in which the industry operates has also changed (ie music is not as valuable in the eyes of the average listener due to things like video games taking that attention space). Plenty of great music is coming out at the moment, from exactly the type of indie labels they lament not existing anymore. It's just the successful contemporary indie labels have appropriate business models to deal with the current environment. The days of making millions selling plastic boxes are over. Time to move on.

ilamont 11y ago

When the HN headline mentioned "DK frontman" and "goes after the modern music industry" I was kind of incredulous because the original singer Jello Biafra had a reputation of taking advantage of his fellow bandmates through the Alternative Tentacles record label he controlled (which released all of the DK records). I admired Biafra's caustic lyrics which nailed so many things that are wrong with our government and society (then and now) but it seemed a bit hypocritical for him to take the moral high ground on the ills of the music industry. Turns out "frontman" in the article is now guitarist East Bay Ray working with a pretty much reformed band. No mention of Jello or the other 70s/80s members, but you can get an idea of the convoluted history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys

dang 11y ago
Ok, we replaced 'frontman' with 'guitarist' in the title above.
adfm 11y ago
Explain the hypocrisy, please. I'd seriously like to understand that. Last I heard, he tried to keep from having good his music from being used in a TV commercial. And the impression I get from this article, not only were the rest of the band pissed he wouldn't sell out, they were torqued that he was supporting smaller "no name" acts, which is kind of what YC does, in a way, right? http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Dead-Kennedys-legal-feud-3240445.php http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Dead-Kennedys-legal-feud-32...
- ilamont 11y ago
  In 1997, an employee at Alternative Tentacles Records discovered that DEAD KENNEDYS had been underpaid $76,000 in royalties over a 10-year period. Biafra did not tell his fellow band mates about the underpayment but instead attempted to use the band's own royalties as a bargaining chip to get the others to sign to his label in perpetuity worldwide. Later, a whistle blower at the label informed the band that these were actually royalties owed to them and when confronted, Biafra refused to compensate the band without a court order. Left with little choice, the band voted to cut Decay Music's ties with Alternative Tentacles and filed suit in October 1998 to have Biafra recognize majority vote and for back royalties. A jury ruled in favor of Decay Music after a three-week trial in May 2000, finding that "Alternative Tentacles Records engaged in fraudulent conduct" and that "Biafra breached his contractual and fiduciary obligations to plaintiff [DEAD KENNEDYS], even though the royalties were finally released to the band in January 2000." The jury also found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles were "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" in committing these acts. (1) Biafra's attempts to dissolve the partnership and gain sole custody over the Kennedy's music was also denied. (2) 1. http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/jello-biafra-gets-shot-down-by-dead-kennedys/ http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/jello-biafra-gets-shot-down... 2. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dead-kennedys-beat-jello-20030619 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dead-kennedys-beat-je...
  - adfm 11y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Agreed that both sides had issues. Ego can get you to do crazy stuff. Wonder if that $76k was worth it in the long run.
walterstucco 11y ago
WTF did I just read?
ohIdunno 11y ago
Eh, if it were Jello, I would have been incredulous simply because Jello going after any industry is probably to be expected, whether one might find that hypocritical or not. I'd have questioned if that was really news at all. Anyway, I tend to characterize the DK break up as an irreconcilable dispute, and neither side really seemed to be in good standing, or more in the right than the other. Jello's ego was hyper-inflated, but he was clearly a serious business man, as is demonstrated by the persistence of his label. He's highly intelligent, and his real mistake was probably hubris, at the end of the day. Meanwhile, the others were also intelligent to match, but probably might have compromised the nature of the band in the long run, simply by being reasonable people with a rational outlook. DK were more about shock value (albeit high-brow shock) than they seemed to understand. The breaking point that imploded the band was Jello's insistence that H.R. Giger's Penis Landscape must be used as an album insert, and its conflict with obscenity laws, and the classification of pornography. Greed played a role, but it was more about him over-riding the votes of the other band members, and him and his ego treating them as subordinates. It was many other things besides the money.
- mistersquid 11y ago
  I was a late teenager who'd just discovered the DK in college and, being a sci-fi horror nerd, I was very aware of H. R. Giger, especially for his work in Ridley Scott's _Alien_. I ordered Giger's "Penis Landscape" through the mail order offer included with the DK's _Frankenchrist_ (I think that was the album), and had the poster sent to my childhood home where I knew I'd be for the summer. My very traditional Korean mother received the delivery and destroyed the poster before I even laid eyes. To this day, I am irritated and dissatisfied whenever I think about how awesome it would be to have that poster. Traditional Korean sexual mores 1, Punk rock gothic aesthetic sensibility 0.
stewbrew 11y ago
> Turns out "frontman" in the article is now guitarist East Bay Ray working with a pretty much reformed band According to the wikipedia page you linked to, only the singer (Biafra) was replaced. All other band members were active (with some interruptions) since 1981.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

BEEdwards 11y ago

For a long time punk rock industry vet his arguments sure sound a lot like my dad's. "Modern music is garbage and you kids today don't know anything." I don't know where this guy is, but I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that more music is being made now by more diverse groups of people with better technology than at any other time in history. I'm not saying garbage isn't being made and bought, but to ignore the actual musical revolution going on at the same time is just damned shortsighted. And ironically for an aging punk rocker the exact same thing people said about his music when he was still young.

nailer 11y ago
I dislike Kim Kardashian (who is mentioned in the article along with Bieber), but contrast her to previous sex symbols: rather than have someone else make money from her sexuality, she's created and distributed her own porn, made a bunch of money doing it, and used it to become a pop culture figure without any obvious talents asides from self promotion. I dislike Bieber too, but he was a Canadian kid with a giant guitar on YouTube who could really sing. The ability to become well known without agents / labels at the beginning of his career means now he has them he's probably taking more home than he would have if they'd been there as a distribution gateway like they were in the 90s.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Roonerelli 11y ago
absolutely. He says the musical spectrum runs from Johnny Rotten to Sid Vicious. Two members of the same band. That's an incrediably blinkered view point
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  No, he was talking about just punk; the full quote was "On one end you have Johnny Rotten, where he’s smart and sarcastic and aware, and on the other end you have Sid Vicious, a heroin-shooting ignorant person."

timrpeterson 11y ago

People in the 1950-60s said The Beatles and Bob Dylan were trash. It's called change, get used to it. Pretty confident Kim Kardashian will be considered an icon some day in the same sense as Marilyn Monroe, Madonna or whoever else was considered crap during their peak by the old guard. Heck, Donald Trump shows she might even be President if she wants to.

michael_h 11y ago
Considered an icon...of what?
- dllthomas 11y ago
  Moloch, I assume.
sbmassey 11y ago
There was a lot of deservedly forgotten popular music from back then too, though. There is every chance that Kardashian will fall into that category.
earleybird 11y ago
Showbiz Kids[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJXQatf9c0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJXQatf9c0
- mturmon 11y ago
  "Show business kids making movies of themselves, you know they don't give a fuck about any body else."
bhickey 11y ago
> will be considered an icon some day I wager she'll be remembered more in the way people look back upon Vanilla Ice or NKOTB.

circuit_breaker 11y ago

Needs more Jello

chadpaulson 11y ago
There's always room for Jello.
TillE 11y ago
Jello is still out there, writing new music (some of it very good) and touring with a new band, with all the anger and energy he's always had. The current "Dead Kennedys" are playing songs from the 80s that they mostly didn't write, and generally being apolitical.

brandonmenc 11y ago

> increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for independent bands to exist at all, he said Uh, no. These old-timers still think a healthy "independent" music scene is one where an infinitesimally small number of garage bands get lucky and land distribution deals with indie labels, and maybe make a couple bucks. What we have now is real music independence - being able to DIY record your band and instantly distribute the sound to the entire planet, for free. You can also DIY record and distribute professional music videos, communicate with your fans in real-time, and take payments from anyone in the world. What a time to be making (and listening to) music! The only people complaining about this are the guys who ran small labels in the 80s and 90s - they're just bitter that they're no longer needed, and that major labels still exist.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
>> "being able to DIY record your band and instantly distribute the sound to the entire planet, for free. You can also DIY record and distribute professional music videos, communicate with your fans in real-time, and take payments from anyone in the world." Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in. Once you get enough people listening to your music you can get to support someone on a tour and you should grow organically from there but that first hurdle is impossible for most people to get over, regardless of how good their music is.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > Not of that matters unless you can get people to discover your music. That's where labels come in. No, that's where curation comes in. Labels are just curators. That role has been taken over by Tumblr, Facebook, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc. I've discovered orders of magnitude more bands just by rabbit-holing on Tumblr than I ever did reading an Alternative Tentacles catalog.
  - k-mcgrady 11y ago
    Labels are also marketers. You can pass the curation role off to other people (bloggers for example) but they need to have a way to discover the music in the first place and that is usually pushed to them by labels.

rdiddly 11y ago

If he's gonna compare "now" with "back then," and the artists he picks from "now" are Bieber & Kardashian - two of the most vapid and heavily promoted mainstream household names, available by glancing at the nearest tabloid headline - then he needs to pick similarly vapid, heavily promoted, mainstream household names from back then. And there were plenty. Doesn't he remember?

8ig8 11y ago

Some argue that the Sex Pistols were a _boy band_ orchestrated by Malcolm McLaren... > Reliably or not, Mr. McLaren explained his strategy for packaging and selling the band in the 1980 film “The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/arts/music/09mclaren.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/arts/music/09mclaren.html?...

peterashford 11y ago

Having grown up in the 80's I think the article is BS. The net has allowed a thousand flowers to bloom. The recording industry isn't gone but you can do an end run around it these days. When I was a kid you got the crap pop du-jour and that was all. These days you have zillions of avenues to new music.