DECONOMICS RECORDS

At last, I arrive at the point where I can close my provisional thoughts on CD submission regimes, rituals of music submission to fields if music circulation, such as “college radio”, and emerging fields of online radio. The purpose of this discussion has not been to mark the sides of good and evil and so reproduce some nargle of a dispute over and over and over and over again until the Orwellian boot has hit us in the face just one too many times. It has been to very basically sketch some thoughts on college radio as a politically charged and emancipatoraly potential domain of musical circulation and production. It has also been to place a focus on practices which block flows, and so obstruct potential musicological emancipations and moves. And, in doing this it has not been to render the makers and users of these elaborate music machines powerless in relation to the organizational terms of “the system”, but to emphazise the extent to which people are powerful in relation to it.

In the end, college radio will do what it will, as will I and others. It will either remain relevant as a system of circulating “new music” or it will not–although in any case it may retain the myth or the history of the myth. In the end, I learn as a system I do not “need” it just as it does not, in a strict sense “need” me. If ecocentric models punish my musical text for the mere contingency of its body–its format, there are communities to be had, made, invented, built, contested which work without blockages and rooms with bars and locks, and so comes Deconomics Records to haunt the mossy beds of corporate trust. For our purposes, 8 rings of power and 1,000 years is more than enough.

All right. The long wind is now let out to breeze through these topographies with speed so I can soon get on to the more interesting business in later blogs of what I like. The relevance and explanation is behind in the introduction and the rather long part 2 of CD fetishism. Fetishism? The term fetishism demonstrates a lingering Marxian affinity which cannot be left without qualification.

I prefer for these occasions of making and the politics of making to maintain an affinity with the radical feminists. Making it is not so different from reading it, writing it, meaning it; our differential identities are organic, technological, textual, mythic—cyborgs. [1]

When it comes to the consequences of loving musical life, having affinities for kinds of it, it is not to say we should not love our affinities, but love also the distinctions which mark where our affinities lie. And love can be expressed in so many ways, including but not limited to punches, lies, and hugs. All of us who hear or feel the vibrations of music, or “see” its presence in dances, videos (sometimes muted), radios…one smells music too sometimes. So the conditions of love; the terrains of synesthasia.

And so, at last, let me mark at least one page of Marx it is worthy to mark, a fine indexed concept—fetishism—in some musty dusty thick academic book for cooks and geeks alike. For Marx, commodity fetishism is when

"…the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own" (Marx, Capital v. 1 p. 165).

Now, some sentences before this passage on commodity fetishism, Marx discusses the passage of light to the eye which becomes the biological vector of how "we" see; a constitution of the body which permits what poststructuralists and others these days call a "gaze", a gaze which "objectifies its object" [2], scientific, juridical, normalizing, psychologizing, anthropological, saintly, etc., etc. A look—way of looking—that touches as it makes…

I love making music, and so I come to care about how, as part of my constitutive and constituted body, music as part of my body is made.

CD as the finished product. I am not an ideologue. If you feel the CD system serves your body. Fine. You are no sinner in my book for listening to, buying, reviewing, loving, playing, making and releasing a CD. And if you “DIY”, all the more respect, because that is great but pressing work. CD as a symbolic gesture or even a tactical move in political struggle, I understand it. Believe me, I can think of way worse ways and less effective politics than cutting a vinyl, or pressing a CD. And publicity makes sense for the identity committed to the enterprise, whether that enterprise be celebrity pop or something like the goth diaspora, or even Good. So, what concerns me in this instance is not so much "the CD" or "celebrity" as such, but when these come to be insufficiently hardened barriers to conditions of publication.

The problem with college radio stations which predicate broadcasting policy by virtue of the "finish" of the embodied CD, is that this too casually, imho, closes potent circuits of musical power and forgets to remember the paradoxical rejoinder, just how finished is finished?

What are the many ways unfinished finished things can be? Or is finished intended to convey the mythic ritual of polish? I prefer the way of the tao on this matter. A song is not finished. It is set free, or "abandoned" if one wants to be a little more "western" with the metaphor. But the abandoned metaphor is just as bad as the metaphor of finish. Both maintain a propertarian claim to the text which forgets a song, so long as it survives, mutates as it moves from device to device, room to car, speaker to heart, heart to voice.

One way to set music further free, make it a sweeter freedom, in addition to the mailing of hard media for those who want to play that game, some genius can devise an email client for music departments at radio stations that would automatically direct incoming emailed music submissions into folders by date, and rank the folders in reverse chronology so the oldest submissions remain at the top until reviewed at which point the mp3s are downloaded and added to the library/playlist or they are ignored and the email is chucked or saved—on to the next.

If we go with F.M. Einheit (or was it N.U. Unruh?), anyway one of those guys from Einsturzende Neubauten, and entertain the notion one only needs to hear 3-10 seconds of most songs to get from them most of the cultural information contained within. Now, if auditioning songs meant opening email, and clicking on the link to stream the song (and not an mp3 attachment or a mandate to go to the web page), then auditioning email submissions this way even only an hour a day would see at least 500+ songs auditioned a week—if they wanted.

What gets junked gets tagged by a database, what gets added to the library or rotation get tagged into databases and these results could be auto-emailed to people who sign-up to the mailing list. No more need to field as many calls from labels and bands about whether or not you guys reviewed the album yet–just more time to BS, enjoy music, station life, reading…

If stations wanted to move through the list slower, linger over fine new tunes from other sources, delve into their library, or stop on what’s “hot” for a beat—those options would still be there…only now augmented with an additional powerful circuit of musical power to tap when desired. A station still maintains whatever brand and/or local commitments it has assumed for its work, while at the same time honors a commitment to the movement of music and sometimes “finding” new music to like and so "making music news".

Sure, there would be a perpetual backlog. But there are those anyways as it is. At least this way every submission could, eventually, so long as the system operated and people employed it as described (but of course people thankfully would not), be heard. And there would not have to be reinvented these lame fantasies of a kind of product as finalization; that because I hold it in my hand the fantasy of an authoritative musical body is more real.

[1] See Donna Haraway, esp. part 3, "Differential Politics for Inappropriate/d Others" in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, a contemporary classic of socialist feminism, poststructuralism, late marxism, and widely read in continental anthropology, science and technology studies, and among the postmodern waves.

[2] Bourdieu, Pierre (1978). A "generative structuralist", Bourdieu is pulled into poststructuralist discussions with some regularity vis-à-vis his concepts of habitus (our socially contingent second natures) and embodiment (how our dispositions and our bodies are both written and performed in variously antagonistic cultural games and games of economic, cultural, symbolic, and social values).

In my previous post I began with a general discussion of CD fetishism and how it is articulated into regimes of submission for the broadcast (circulation and publicity) of audio recordings in the field of college radio. Here I wish to begin to elaborate that discussion by going into further detail on the different configurations, modes, means and rationales of CD fetishism that I encountered during my survey. However, before I delve into typologies I would like to present a more abstracted discussion on engaging ‘the popular’.

It would be a misrepresentation to suggest that college radio has somehow availed of an ideological allegiance on the “side” of the CD production model as the hegemonic audio format for legitimating a given maker of a popular kind of music. While an ‘ideological’ investment may pertain in some rarity of cases, the advent of CD fetishism in the field of college radio, as I will point out, is less a formal will to the universalization of a given audio format and, in the main, a number of historical contingencies which enabled college radio to come into being.

On “the Popular”

Before moving to discuss in later posts a typology of college radio stations in relation to CD fetishism and their submission regimes, I wish to clarify my position in relation to this loaded concept of ‘popular’. I do not use the term popular in a disparaging way, as has been the case with far too long a lineage of social theorists (See radical theorists like Pierre Bourdieu, the Frankfurt School, as well as liberal theorists like Robert Putnam). Current discourses on the Left have worked well to build upon and move past the all-encompassing tendrils of “ideology” with its inescapable claws and elitist conceptual markers of ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural forms (See Tony Bennett, Janice Radway, and even the contested and contestable Slavoj Zizek for radical and radical feminist perspectives, or the work of Henry Jenkins or Liesbet van Zoonen for a liberal take).

A little known, but nonetheless true fact related to the trans-national anti-comics campaign circa 1920s-1950s, but the various Communist, Socialist, and Social Democratic parties sided with radical, progressive, and conservative liberals of the period to wage a censorship campaign (See the anthology on the international dimensions of the anti-comics campaign edited by Lent, J. 1999). This actually placed organizers of the Left on the ground, the left’s ‘organic intellectuals’, in a culturally awkward situation.

Responsible for mediating the links between the ‘party line’ and its constituent working class ‘mass’ in places like the newsletter, party meetings, union organizing, and on the work floor, organizers of ‘the Left’ sought to actively discourage the reading of comics and encourage the civilizing process of learning to appreciate the gratifications of ‘high’ cultural productions. Party membership collapsed in short order and workers walked out of the revolutionary doors, and many for good to go and enjoin their political allegiance to one of the various capitalist political organizations or, whether for better or worse, to no political organization at all.

On the one hand, the liberal discourse disparaged comics and the reading of them in the terms of social control, and by extension eugenics, linking the product and practice to crime and illiteracy, immigration and feeblemindedness. For ‘the Left’, on the other hand (or rather in addition), the comic book was considered party to capitalism’s imperialist epistemology and a vehicle for the imperialist capitalism’s ideological conquest of worker allegiance.

For these modern radicals the popular graphic text was naught but a tool for making the worker perceive their own subservience as the legitimate and natural order of things. In both cases, ‘the popular’ was evicted from political and revolutionary—hegemonic—discourse and with it a key constituent of hegemonic struggle came to be alienated from a radical left discourse which, as I have written about elsewhere, was in fact very much present in the comics discourse, albeit in a pseudo-populist form. The virtues of radical class struggle and smart identity politics is an apparent theme even and especially in the first issues of that American superpower par excellence, ‘Superman’ (See the 1937 Action Comics 1).

Ironically, the ‘right’ feared comic books for the threat they posed to the liberal, capitalist, and democratic world order, while the ‘left’ feared them for their supposed dampening of revolutionary will, their complication of the uniform identity of the ‘revolutionary worker’, and for their role in conserving the liberal capitalist hegemony over the (un)democratic world. Whereas the first temptation is to ask, ‘well which is it’, I think the more fruitful position is that classic piece of intellectual blackmail, ‘neither and both’. It seems the more efficacious strategy for emmancipatory actors and discourse is to engage popular culture, and not be so haughty as to remain ignorant and fail to engage popular genres as texts, production regimes, and circulations of readership all with emmancipatory potentials.

Of course, this is not a novel proposition. It is a point well developed not only in ‘left’ philosophical discourse, but also in many of the discourses of social research to emerge after Barthes, Foucault, radical feminism, and the 1980s (re)turn to a Gramscian reading of Marx. However, despite these discussions, not only do many academic discourses continue to partake in formalist discussions of the relation of popular culture and levels of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘civic engagement’ or ‘degrees of deliberative democracy’, but on the ground most radical activist organizations continue with positions which stigmatize, to varying degrees, the content, and often the form of popular cultural productions.

Organic Intellectuals and College Radio as “the Musical Progressive”

Now to turn the discussion back to college radio, the position of college radio, or at least its position in myth as a kind of ‘progressive’ and/or ‘counter-hegemonic’ force in the field of musical production. Regardless whether or not this reputation is an earned one, it must be said that the reputation is linked to at least one distinguishing trend of most college radio—the relative freedoms of student DJs and station Directors as organic intellectuals of radio broadcasting. An ‘organic intellectual’ is a Gramscian term for a doer in some field of social or community relations, a person who deploys, directs, uses, manages some technology, position, or relation—these are technicians, managers, and so on.

And thus these subject-positions of college radio must be considered as constitutive and constituting of fields which partake in the hegemonic struggles over regimes of culture, practice, language, production, work, etc. This is the relevance of what most stations call their “submission policy” or “submission guidelines” which apply to all record labels or musicians who wish to add their musical speech to a particular (trans)local or virtual circuit of popular culture. So long as radio broadcasting remains a viable or priority circuit of publication for musical speech, and so long as these nodes in the flows of a cultural circulatory maintain a “CD only” policy, the field of musical production will fall short of its present emmancipatory potential as a field of and for free and fearless speech.

Vested Devices: the accidental fetishism of the technophobic and the techno-poor

Despite college radio stations’ near unanimous mandate and reliance on CD (or sometimes “at least” CDR) airplay submissions, this mandate is stated or persists and performs in a variety of manners. To problematize an essentializing tendency on my part in the very form of the term “CD fetishism”, I have considered college stations, for now, in relation to four broad types of CD fetishism: Techno-poor/Technophobic, Proprietary, Mythological, Audiophiliac, and Efficiency Waste. I will for now discuss the first type, saving the other three for following posts.

The thing with typologies, of course, is that as interpretive artifice they always fail to ‘capture’ and define adequately all types so that, in the end, there is always not only mis-categorization, but a category devoted to ‘that which does not fit’—an ever present and, perhaps, ‘spectral’ remainder of the ordering of perception and interpretation. That said, these types I identify are contingent articulations of a mode of identification, and as hermeneutic tools contain (ir)reducibly particular relations within networks of living forces and all their open-ended potentiality, specific history and context, and idiosyncratic manner.

I contain roughly three categories of college stations in what I call “technophobic and techno-poor” college stations.

First, this category contains those many college radio stations which, despite the advent of the so-called “information economy” have not taken the time, have not acquired the resources, or perhaps lack the knowledge or support from their university to establish even a basic web presence.

It is also intended to denote those stations who, although they have at some point, or perhaps recently, established a web presence, the website itself lacks updates, useful information, or basic functionality for fans or music professionals so that even finding a playlist or the station’s submission policy requires sending an email to an overburdened music director who, in my experience, will probably not respond.

Finally, this category denotes stations who have established at least a moderately functional web presence, but who demand submissions on CD only (or maybe vinyl) because they ‘lack the necessary tools to broadcast digital files such as mp3’.

Whether or not this lack of technology, resources for technology, or technological know-how constitutes a form of CD fetishism is questionable, or at least not readily demonstrated. It seems, rather, a more or less structurated outcome of a number of factors. First, many contemporary college radio stations were establishing their selves at a time (1980s-1990s) when the CD format attained hegemony over musical consumption so that to establish a station meant, beyond all the broadcast apparatuses, obtaining and using the proprietary play device we conventionally call a CD player. Thus, spare resources were invested in particular means of broadcast.

Second, most college radio stations are not places of long-term employment. Students circulate in and out of the station and its management/administrative positions from one semester or school year to the next. Not only does this make long-term planning difficult, but it makes the level of techno-skill present at the station unpredictable and, I suspect, the morale for committing to long-term projects lower than what one finds in ‘the professional world’.

As an organization staffed by college students, those who do possess techno-skill may only possess a pre-professional level while those who possess a professional level of techno-skill may well have little time or interest in pro bono work for their college radio station which, they well know, will probably not be “their” station upon graduation. In other words, those possessed of skill needed to open a given college radio station to the online world may well be devoting the extra-curricular use of that skill, understandably, to money making opportunities for things like tuition, books, food, and an actual career.

Third, and this is applicable to all stations not just the techno-poor and technophobes, there is no shortage of music on CD and/or CDR sent by record labels able to float the publicity costs just as there is no shortage of student DJs coming in with their own CDs and CDRs to play (or run through the Music Director). In other words, this is a situation where an organization can afford to be anachronistic and continue (for now) to play by the ‘old rules’.

While it is clear from my last post that I find myself waging a kind of battle against CD fetishism, it is important to make clear that CD fetishists are not intellectual or professional “villains”. They are people deploying tactics in given situations to realize personal and organizational strategies which, in most cases, are understandable. While I would prefer that more college radio stations make information on and access to their broadcasting platform available more broadly, I also understand the situation many college radio stations and their volunteer workers find their selves.

This then begs the questions of strategy. What does the discussion of this type of ‘CD fetishist’ imply for the publication strategies for labels like Deconomics Records? And, by extension, as more labels like Deconomics Records come into being how might (college) radio not only adapt itself to the democratization of publication regimes for (popular) music, but how might its nodes of power move from a reactionary or conservatory position to become more radically and pro-actively enjoined to the emancipation of musical production from its capitalist tropes of profit and cultural aristocracy?

These are questions I will close with, for now, but will return to in a few weeks time after I’ve brought my discussion of college radio and CD fetishism to a coda.

CD fetishism is a term I use broadly. It is intended to denote relations of musical production where a musical recording embodied on a piece of compact disc technology is taken for granted as the most legitimate body for the circulation of recorded music. It is, in truth, little different from other/previous forms of audiophilia which cannot simply enjoy the production and circulation of music, but can only entertain the enjoyment of musical productions in specific formats or under specific listening conditions construed as those of some purity - vinyl, “hi-fi”, “lo-fi”, surround sound, stereo, mono, etc.

CD fetishism can take various forms, happen in a number of places, and is (re)produced by virtue of many kinds of social relations of musical production which demand the artist make and submit CDs - radio stations, the music press, record stores, labels, artists, connoisseurs, casual listeners. Any system establishing or necessitating regimes of submission of music for “consideration, “review”, or “purchase” runs risk of (re)producing the CD as a fetish object, the mark of ‘true musical artistry, professionalism, or craftsmanship’ instead of what it really is - but one of music’s many vehicles.

Of course, this is not a new observation. David Byrne, among many others, has said something similar. Only Mr. Byrne’s discourse points less at the problem of CDs as a fetish object and more on the anachronism that is becoming the ‘major label’ and ‘indie label’ models of musical mass-production and putting out. More artists, he says, are faced with more choices as to how they wish to shape their regimes of musical publication and so model the trajectory of their career. [1] If the future is bright, why do I cite CD fetishism [continuing to be] a problem?

While more bands and/or small labels may be positioned effectively to pursue DIY modes of musical production, many fields for the circulation of musical publications are still largely clinging to, if not the mass production model, then at least an anachronistic form of the putting out model which mandates, ‘music not embodied in a CD will not be listened to, reviewed, circulated, and broadcast because, since it is not on a CD, it must not be worth listening to.’ This becomes problematic for a number of reasons.

Music embodied in a resource intensive format like CD practically necessitates musical production for the propertarian purposes of a body for ownership and prostitution. Beyond this, however, CD fetishism erects nothing less than reactionary barriers to the freedoms of language and speech so that, despite any best intentions, its practitioners partake in the reproduction of the very capitalist models of musical production as well as its cultural aristocracies - a parasitic and exploitative regime which no shortage of artists and fans have claimed at least nominally to be against.

One field clinging most firmly to this fetishism of the compact disc is the self-congratulatory and inchoate system of college radio. Having now surveyed the several hundred of North American college radio stations twice over, once four years ago as publicist for the now defunct Isochromatic Records and now here today for the very much alive and emmancipatory Deconomics Records, it seems different stations provide differing justifications for entertaining and reproducing the idea that ‘only bands which go through the effort of producing a finished product’ deserve, or are to be legitimately entertained as “artist” to the public.’

In my next post I will continue this discussion and sketch in more detail how CD fetishism plays out differentially in regimes of submission for college radio. I will discuss the differing justifications to see specifically how their logic and operation does disservice to the production and circulation of musical texts as “free speech”. In a later post, I will detail how the regimes of musical submission which co-generate CD-fetishism are being carried over into the much lauded but under-utilized field of so-called online radio.

1. See David Byrne’s recent article in Wired “Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists - and Megastars” http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=1