Gosh, I’ve been in professional music for over 35 years. All that history has no present-day value, however, unless I make the effort keep it in perspective and learn from experience. When I think about my 90s approach and mindset, I realize I - rather WE, the community of underground musicians - cared far too much about being cool, or rather seeming cool. We cared a lot about looking cool to our audience, but we cared FAR more about looking cool to our peers or aspirational peers. We would walk away from easy money not to preserve our values, but because we were afraid people would think we were uncool. We would sign shitty record deals so that we could earn cache from our association with the label. We would avoid any audience interaction because we didn’t want to come off as too….enthusiastic? Grateful? It was deeply uncool to care about stuff like that.
For example, at the end of the initial run of The Lemonheads, I went on a year-long tour with the band to support the great but commercially disappointing album Car Button Cloth in 1996-7. Towards the end of the run our label, Atlantic Records, convinced us to take a new act as our first-of-three (before Ben Lee) opener. The act was Matchbox 20, clearly anointed for commercial success in the emerging mainstream market driven by “alternative rock” radio. While we were being left behind in the new rock gold rush, Atlantic was coming off a truly historic success with Hootie and the Blowfish and correctly believed they had another winner in MB20. They needed them on the road, and we were on tour.1
In our world, a band like Matchbox 20 wasn’t cool at all. They were sincere, ambitious, obviously influenced by other uncool bands…for God’s sake they were from Florida. They weren’t from punk rock and they had this professional approach that involved constant effort. Our credo was about minimal effort. Sometimes we sound checked, but often we blew it off. We regarded our fans as the most uncool people of all - debasing themselves by being all excited to see us. I don’t think we really connected the flatlining career with lack of effort - after all, as part of the first wave of U.S. underground rock to break through on MTV, we were entitled to it. Never mind that the too-cool-for-school music press used to call us Bubblegrunge and write us off as lightweight pop…we were the real deal and all these new bands were fucking trying too hard!
Matchbox 20 broke on that tour, and it was disorienting to see it happen little by little, up to the watershed moment in my adoptive home town of Birmingham where their song “Push” ruled the airwaves. They could have sold out the venue on their own, and a lot of their fans left before our set. Before that, however, I’d gradually changed my mind about the band. For one thing I really liked them as people. I grew to like seeing them every day and getting to know them. I still keep in touch with one band member. They weren’t really different from me, but they thought about what they did differently. They worked. Being on tour is work, but the hard part for us was the never-ending cycle of partying and recovering from partying. They copped to wanting to be successful, and they did everything in there to make it happen. They met every fan, posed for every picture. They went to every radio station and record store and got to know the people who championed their band. They got right to work in their short window to soundcheck (after we’d dicked around for several hours), and they delivered a tight, enthusiastic set every night that featured their radio singles. They wanted to be liked, and the result is….people liked them. Loved them. They made money. They blew the fuck up while we wondered why radio wouldn't play our song, after three album cycles with practically no station visits.
The Lemonheads ended shortly after that long and frustrating tour. MB20 planted a seed for me that has fully blossomed over the past 27 years - I only work with artists who are willing to work hard, to do what they can to elevate themselves, to build the nexus of business and fan relationships necessary to have a career. I work with cool artists who make cool music…who set goals and work hard. These things are not mutually exclusive. I don’t see it as careerist or uncool to try - I see it as necessary, and our own LACK of effort - to connect with fans, to build gatekeeper relationships, to work with label, publisher, and business team - absolutely contributed to the decline of the band. So much of that had to do with whatever our community of artists from that era felt was cool or uncool. We paid a steep price to feel cool.
Another example is licensing music for film, TV, and advertising - which has long been a huge economic driver and marketing coup for music projects. But in “indie” circles2 we had rules about that sort of thing. Who made the rules? I have no idea. There’s no manual, just a lot of jackass opinions. Everyone was terrified of being called a sellout. By who? Each other. Other bands. It would have been a total disaster to have anyone learn that any cool band licensed their music, except if it was for cool, underground movies everyone respected. J Mascis could compose the score for Gas Food Lodging and nobody would blink. But what if he licensed a Dinosaur, Jr. song to Beverly Hills 90210, the most popular show on television? That’d be a problem. It meant the band would make a lot of money and lots of people would hear their song. Super uncool. In 1995 Flaming Lips decided to push that envelope as far as they could by appearing on the show. That was a shocking act at the time because it was so radical to have any association whatsoever with proper mainstream entertainment.3Maybe they helped break the ice, who knows.
I remember just after Blake Babies broke up, we had a song on the popular TV drama Party of Five. That was in 1994, Juliana Hatfield’s commercial peak. The song was Out There, a co-write, so I got a nice check from the placement. I enjoyed seeing the show with our music, and I certainly appreciated the money. But here’s the weird thing - I was nervous people would notice and give us shit about it. I mean, the show had lots of cool music! Why was I so worried about something that should have been a feather in our cap?
Things changed in the 2000s, though the code didn’t disappear entirely. I remember when an early law client of mine, of Montreal, got pushback from the blogosphere for licensing a song to Outback Steak House, leader Kevin Barnes wrote a compelling essay arguing that following the rules of punk and indie made it impossible to make a living. If his fans wanted him to be able to create full-time, he argued, then he needed to pursue commercial opportunities to underwrite his art. It’s a compelling argument, and that sort of pushback really changed how musicians think about licensing and brand engagement.
These days developing/aspiring musicians don’t have the luxury to sit back and feel entitled. The competitive landscape is intense, and anyone hustling for an audience pretty much has to be active on social media, cracking the algorithm’s codes so that their music is heard. It’s a thankless and often humiliating hustle, but it’s what we have to work with. Back in the fabled 80s and 90s, we could get on a label and leave it to the promotion team to get us on college and non-commercial radio, which actually moved the needle. The Lemonheads got on MTV in 1987, we sent them a VHS tape and they played it several times on their alternative showcase 120 Minutes. That happened and we were able to go on tour! In a lot of ways, it was pretty easy.
I grew up in a culture that ridiculed ambition and effort. We were obviously a bunch of insecure kids (like any generation of kids), but we armored ourselves with our cool kid credentials. We got in our own way in ways that seem obvious now. Every band is Matchbox 20 now, rushing to the merch table after the show, prioritizing meet & greets and Instagram Live chats. It’s nuanced, however, because the music still has to be as cool as ever. Cool music still carries the day. The difference, I suppose, is that the people who make the music are no longer expected to maintain an aloof distance at all times. The big winners are the artists who make unimpeachably cool music, but are willing to be uncool long enough to actually connect with their fans.
I don’t know but I assume we were compensated for bringing them on the dates. We generally took our friends - we had Ben Lee on those dates, and earlier in the tour we took out Fountains of Wayne, Imperial Teen, and You Am I. All our favorite bands, all our friends. That’s the privilege of a successful band, but by then we were losing ground.
PS we didn’t call it indie then.
Quick sidebar on Beverly Hills 90210. Some time around 1992, at the height of the show’s popularity, I was out doing something and when I returned home later that evening, I was alarmed to see that I had over 40 messages on my answering machine. On a normal night I’d have 2 or 3. I assumed something terrible had happened, but no. It was a bunch of random ass people calling to tell me that my band’s poster had been in a character’s dorm room, and that a major scene played out in front of the poster. Probably my biggest pop culture moment to date.
“They copped to wanting to be successful, and they did everything in there to make it happen. They met every fan, posed for every picture. They went to every radio station and record store and got to know the people who championed their band.” - that hits the nail on the head.
The person I learned that lesson from was Huey Lewis - I made the display posters, flyers, etc. for a club in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Huey Lewis came through 3 times before he broke big.
Every time he was in town, he spent his entire day before sound check being nice to everybody who had anything to do with the music business. And he wasn’t a dick about it - he was just…. Nice. Stop by WPLR just to say hi (not even necessarily to do a radio appearance); stop by Rhymes AND Cutlers record stores and buy an album or two; then over to our club TO BRING EVERYBODY WHO WORKED THERE DURING THE DAY A COFFEE. Including the janitor, John Massarro.
You think that went unnoticed?
I didn’t give a fuck about Huey Lewis’ music, but, boy, I was happy when he started to succeed. And I bet every other person he had come in contact with in New Haven felt just as I did and did whatever extra little thing they could do to help that record happen.
And I am absolutely sure he had done that in every city in the USA.
When I became a manager that was a lesson I tried to instill in our artists.
Oh, Gary Smith and I used to LOVE to argue this very point. He was disdainful (in his very Gary way) of the folkie world for being too accessible to its fans.