About a week or so ago, I got into a gentleman’s disagreement about rock ‘n’ roll and its relevancy historically and today on the new Substack Notes feature. Notes is, for lack of a better comparison, Twitter for writers and readers. Instead of digging down in a trench and resorting to name calling and shaming, I offered the other party an interview. Below is that interview with said party. Shaggy Snodgrass is a passionate rock ‘n’ roll musician and enthusiast from Ohio. I hope you enjoy or brief conversation, which took place via email.
On to the interrogation!
First, tell us a bit about yourself. Who the hell are ya? How did you get into music and how has it impacted your life, big or small?
I'm "Shaggy" Snodgrass. I've been an electric bass player in Cleveland, OH for nearly 40 years since 1985. I've played in rock, blues, heavy metal, folk and jazz bands as well as community theater orchestras and experimental ensembles. I have three working bands now:The Rick Ray Band, which is now mixing album #37 for fall release with a working title of "The Gremlins Are Listening "
Bessemer Saints, @realBSaints on Twitter, @bessemersaints on IG and FB. We’re now recording album #2 for late fall / winter release, title to come.
Salt Sinclair, an indie rock project with my wife Leila on drums, working towards recording a second EP, (first one titled "Shake", from 2018).
My opinions are based on 45 years of following music culture intensely, at both the local and international level.On Substack Notes, we conversed briefly about rock 'n' roll and its history and relevance today. Do you think that rock has waned in relevancy in the past twenty years or so? If so, why? If not, what keeps the genre afloat?
To answer this is to make a distinction between "top-down" culture and "bottom-up", because they diverge fairly widely.
In "top-down" culture, modern rock music is on the defensive from multiple fronts: the modern "big" music industry choosing hip-hop as its primary focus, due to its link-a-bility with branding and marketing machines and its ease of travel through viral-capable social media platforms renders them disinterested in other forms of music that cannot be blended with hip-hop easily - and the "Nostalgia Industrial Complex", who fosters a weird form of hostility towards any rock music that's new. This is because it wants all the space allotted to rock music for its legacy products that capitalize on "Golden Days" nostalgia for billions of dollars every year. Anything that may distract their middle-age and older, richer customer base from their memories is seen as an annoyance at best, and a threat at worst.
That's "top-down" but from the bottom up I've seen a major renaissance in small live music venues, a plethora of "internet radio" stations and blogs, and an ever-larger sector of independent "record labels" and promotion companies growing up in the last 10-15 years that. In an ad-hoc, shoestring fashion, these hold modern rock's place in the larger culture of music and prevent its further diminishment. These would not exist if there were no demand for them. Though they took many losses from the Year of Exile (2020-21), they have rebounded almost fully and refilled the holes in their ranks the pandemic left.
The same goes for bands. When Bessemer Saints went out for shows in mid-2021 we were kept very busy by what few other bands there were but that pressure has eased off as more bands have returned to the scene in 2022. My contacts in other cities report similar growth, from Erie, PA to Okinawa. There is considerably less large-media coverage than there used to be, and almost no radio; but sectors like the "college radio" scene (which we're lucky to have in abundance in Cleveland) haven't abandoned their curiosity and commitment to new music. As corporate structures in the music world get larger and more remote, they begin to shed their "relevance" beyond the most basic level (granted by their size and $$$); and their audiences become more attainable to these smaller bottom-up scenes.
Today's rock music is in better shape qualitatively than ever to engage those audiences, if we can only dispel those prejudices that the “Nostalgia Industrial Complex“ is responsible for inculcating. If we play our cards right, our best days are still ahead.You mentioned nostalgia as a potential negative force in the music business. Can you go more into that as a concept? Ted Gioia has written on the topic and I think that people, for most, are unaware of the phenomenon.
The Nostalgia Industrial Complex saw its birth in about 1985-6, with the unexpected popularity of the movie The Big Chill. Its soundtrack was a mix of Motown classics that resonated hugely with a public of slightly older, more middle-class people who found less and less of themselves in the post-new wave and pop-metal of the time, and the larger music industry took note.
The next big step was in 1987. When the then-flourishing MTV featured a theme of the "20th Anniversary of the Summer of Love", which brought all manner of late-1960s rock music back into rotation again. This led to a format change on dozens of formerly "rock" radio stations across the US that intentionally turned away from new rock music to what they called "classic rock"; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, they pounded it into cars, and workplaces; supported by a deluge of advertising revenue. Because advertisers loved the access to the upper end of the "money demographic” (those aged 25 to 49) it gave them. The advertising profits were so huge they exerted a gravitational pull on modern rock stations in the same markets, who began to dip into that "classic rock" repertoire to siphon off a few of those dollars. Or they got bought by new investors, who made money off other "classic rock" stations and forced them to severely cut back modern rock to make room for the money-making "classics."
The major labels noticed the rise in revenues too. They exerted their influence upon MTV to increase "classic" content in their rotation, which was the true make-or-break standard in the business. The labels loved it, they were able to mint money off content they'd paid for decades ago, and didn't have to spend another penny on. And steadily the Nostalgia Industrial Complex grew, until the Communications Act of 1996, which took off the last of the reins against massive mergers in the radio and TV industry. The immense power it gave the conglomerates that sprang from that the Nostalgia Industrial Complex maximized their influence on and control of. They had no intention of making room for anything they didn't own outright.
Cultural "bandwidth", of course, is a zero-sum game; space devoted to one thing is space another can't have. For a while (1987-1995), the younger generation had to invent its own small "parallel industry" to compensate for the one they were locked out of. But once the majors were huge they bought up and suffocated large parts of it. The corporatization of the "alternative rock" scene is a grim tale worth telling. By 2002, the only "alternative" left to the Big Industry was online in the toddling Napster and Limewire et al., and you saw what happened to those.
The significance of this was that never before had the past been used so aggressively to displace the present; and occupy so much of the cultural "bandwidth" the present used to live on. The cultural primacy that the music industry had worked so hard and spent so much to build, it was using to "eat its young" and the effects were devastating for young artists coming up. All the way down the ladder of the business nobody wanted anything but the drug of "remember when.” If you were a small original band there was almost nowhere you could play. Club owners and patrons wanted nothing but "classic rock" and if you departed from that even once they were instantly displeased.
Oddly enough, the music the Nostalgia Industrial Complex came to prize in the 2010s, the Alice In Chains / Soundgarden / Pearl Jam "Seattle sound", you couldn't get arrested playing in 1994. Nobody wanted it. Or you, if you played it. It blighted the careers of many young musicians who only wanted to do as their heroes did, but had no place to do it.
One additional ugliness that must be addressed is that throughout the 2010s, nostalgia became a weapon. It became a tool to stoke intergenerational animus, to promote reactionary politics. This occurred particularly online, when the 55+ generation began heavily using social media in large numbers; and reactionary propagandists would regularly appeal to their nostalgic impulses to imply that things were wrong with the young or the present; and reactionary movements could "fix" those things, by returning society to a selectively remembered, semi-mythical past age. I mention this because the Nostalgia Industrial Complex, perhaps unwittingly, prepared the ground for this weaponization and it has turned the struggle between past and present into a deeply hostile battleground. We still hear it today, outright hatred for the present strained through worship of the past, and it never fails to shock and perplex me.A lot has been said and written about the music industry and its changes, for better or worse, in the internet and streaming age. Do you think a future where artists are empowered and compensated properly is possible or have things shifted too far in favor of the powers that be (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)? If you were to recommend the average person do anything for the music and musicians they love, what would it be?
The streaming era is largely an economic problem and it’s difficult if not impossible to see the scales tilting back in favor of artists' power or control of it. It's worth mentioning that the few huge major labels that are left (Sony, UMG, etc.) hold large stakes in the streaming platforms and have their rights prioritized within them. The Nostalgia Industrial Complex within the major labels and conglomerates like LiveNation will continue to occupy much ground, and will defend it with unfathomable amounts of money while they can. If you're gonna build anything, you'll have to do it elsewhere.
One thing that slips everyone's minds, including the Nostalgia Industrial Complex’s is appallingly simple: the bands of previous eras, the Greats, were not the whole of the music culture. They weren't even half of it. The great cultures of earlier eras were a function of all the people who were around them, whose presence and engagement provided the energy that the larger music media only later picked up on. Athens, GA, 1979-1984. Chapel Hill, NC, 1986-90. NYC, 1975-1981. Seattle, 1988-94. San Francisco, 1965-1974. All these legendary "scenes" were created by people like us, on our level, without power in the music industry, who liked being together and hanging out seeing their local bands play and party down. They put on shows, they made tapes, they drew flyers with ever-more elaborate art styles, they wrote 'zines and blogs, they dressed wild, they brought their energy to the party and turned it into synergy and raised those experiences into the stuff of legends and books still read today.
Music culture exists before music business does, and way before the music "industry" chooses to validate it or not. Anyone can be part of the culture, it only takes the will to go out and find what / who you like. Participate joyfully in their doings and talk about it after. Whatever talents you have, bring. If you don't feel you have any, try things. Maybe you'll find one. If you don't find one, your presence is still always valuable. Stop being fed by the machine. Go out and see. Netflix will still be there when you get home or nurse your hangover in the morning after. Stop letting "local band" be a dirty word. Go see a few. If you don't like those, go see a few others. Somehow someone's work will find a way to you.You'll never be "just a number" with a small band; every friend we have, we treasure. The false parasocial relationship that A&R teams spend money and time trying to fabricate (or succeed, like Taylor Swift's team does), has nothing on the real importance every friend has to a small band. It's not about your wallet, it's about your face. We wanna see it as often as we can.
Finally, let's hear it. Give me one artist people need to listen to today. Give me one album people need to listen to today. Give me one song people need to listen to today! They can all be related or from various artists / genres. Very curious to hear your recommendations!
Fair enough, sir.
My pick of the massive amount of new stuff I'm into is a band from New York called Moon Tooth. Their recent albums Crux and Phototroph have a ton of muscle, and an unexpected amount of "hooks" that'll knock you into the stratosphere. I'll try and link this, it's a song of theirs on YouTube called "Nympheaceae". Incredible guitar work by Nick Lee and the singing by John Carbone hits beautifully in unexpected ways. Check them out!
That’s all, folks!
Best,
Rob