good on you, ben. now let’s put this unpleasantness behind us.

via

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/10/band_of_horses_11.html

Welcome to the conversation, a month later.

broseph might have a point about leaving the gay-rage, but selling merch isn’t the same as “selling out.” the idea of “artistic purity” isn’t soiled because your band sells T-shirts. every band sells merch; not every band sells out. to wit: selling merch often prevents bands from having to sell out. how do you think stretch made it through all those tours? chris mclane wasn’t shilling for pepsi, i can guarantee you that.
remember: keynes didn’t have much of a music scene to dissect in his days.

i agree with eric: there is no “theoretical” selling out. you do or you don’t. if you want to define selling out as selling a T-shirt on tour, be my guest, but i think that’s a little extreme. that said, i think we almost have to take signing on a major off the sell-out short-list. at least there, wilco’s flimsy argument of “oh, well, we just wanted more people to hear our songs” makes a lick of sense. can we fault a band such as modest mouse — who, let’s face it, would be making shitty records today even if they were still on K or Up! — wanted to bring their music to a larger audience? and they didn’t even have to do a car commercial to do it.

(yes, i know that modest mouse’s “gravity rides everything” was used in a mazda minivan commerical. yes, that makes them sellouts. no, that doesn’t make that argument any less valid.)

also, jesus totally wasn’t a sell out. remember that time he spent forty days and nights fasting in the desert, and the devil came and said, “dude, i’ll totally give you this almond joy if you’ll do a commercial with for apple?” and then jesus said, “no way, dude. selling out’s for lame-o’s?” and then he came back and had a totally bitchin’ feast with his bros? yeah, that’s totally in the bible.

forget the fact – at least for a moment – that both of you are abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous with the even more ridiculous assumption that a third-tier band (even back when punk mattered) like the lowly buttfucks, regardless of their severely overrated place in a “musical lexicon” that sold-out eons before “summerteeth,” is even remotely in the same league as someone like wilco.

i pity the fool(s) who actually think this sort of rubbish. you’re worse than the christians. at least they know that simon peter (wilco) is better than that overrated whore who wanted to jump jesus’s dick – mary magdalene – eventhough he was obviously a flaming fag (pete shelley)…what with spending all that time with 12 single dudes alone in the desert.

what are you gonna tell me next – that the melvins are better (i.e. more significant to an always subjective classical canon the very existence of which flies in the face of everything the idiom itself stands for) than the faces? small and/or regular-sized ones?

i can only assume you’re both still high from last friday night.

as for selling-out:

eric, how much does it cost me to buy DBETM’s “Control” on i-Tunes? hey-hey gave me a button for free, but what did you guys charge at the merch booth for it when art garage was still around?

pat, what does an alaska the tiger t-shirt go for on e-bay these days? it’s gotta be more than what i paid for it last time i saw you guys (after all, it’s a collector’s item now).

you make music because you have to…either that or you physically can’t jack -off more than 6 times in an hour so you need to find something else to do. this neo-romantic, nearly Platonic notion of artistic purity is at complete odds with everything this country and economic system holds sacred.

as soon as you turn a profit on whatever aesthetic artifact you’ve spent a few weeks recording with jay and steve over at the jam room then, guess what bitches, you’ve theoretically sold-out – at least according to Keynesian fiscalities.

granted you only sold a 7 inch single and a bumper sticker to that bitch that sometimes hangs out at the whig you secretly wanna have funky butt-lovin’ with next time the old ball ‘n’ chain goes out for groceries, but don’t tell me i’m playing semantic games here.

shouldn’t we be (somewhat) happy that the music supervisors at all the places are actually selecting moderately decent music to use in their adverts? it might be a product of the indie-is-now-mainstream phenomenon, but who gives a fuck in the end.

bottom line, if either of you were approached by someone from corporate conglomerate X and offered what these bands are getting, you’d be completely irresponsible (and more ridiculous than the buzzcocks vs. wilco thing) to refuse. if you won’t sell-out…you gay. period.

i didn’t get past “mung blue mung.”

i think, ultimately, why the buzzcocks shilling for subaru — and thanks for jogging my memory on that — is more offensive to me is that the buzzcocks are, like eric said, much more valuable to the grander musical lexicon. granted, i like dad-rock as much as the next dad (wait, what?), but the idea that wilco would schlep corporate cock always seemed … well, inevitable to me. most especially when mung blue mung sky blue sky came out.

but ah, here’s the rub: wilco’s basically licensed its entire album. question: is that somehow worse than licensing a single song?

sub-question: logan, what the penis is wolfbagging?

(and, logan, for what it’s worth, i think we’re all with you on your stance on modern “punk.”)

logan, explain yourself.

My advice is not to forget Hootie and the Blowfish, buddy. You aren’t shit yet. If you lose cred this early, there’s now way back.

and let’s be fair — everyone would hate “our country” even if it weren’t in a chevy ad.