A Gathering of the Tribes
 
I have a lot of friends that are into "jam" bands, and a lot of them seem to dislike this term “jam” as much as emo kids hate the term “emo” (and that’s a lot). I find this funny, because punk rockers love to identify themselves as punk rockers. Don’t believe me? Listen to an interview with Tim Armstrong and Lars Friedrickson of Rancid, and count how many times they say "I’m a fucking punk rocker." Metalheads are the same way – everything gets related back to metal. Shitty bands will try to convince anyone that they are a punk band, or a metal band, or a real (as in “keeping-it-real”) hip-hop group (yeah, Limp Bizkit, I’m looking at you), but for some reason, no post-rock band in the world will own up to being post-rock, no matter how many ‘cello players they bring on tour with them.
 
You hear a lot about “labeling” music. Some people hate it, and their rallying cry is always somewhere along the lines of: "They’re trying to put restrictions on the music. If they say we’re an electronic band, does that mean we can’t put a guitar in the record?" And of course the answer to that is no, put whatever the hell you want on your record, but they do have a point. Nobody (well, not “nobody,” but we’ll get to them in a second) wants to limit what a musician can do, but these genre designations can create expectations that can stifle an artist. No more or less than a whole lot of other things, but it can still happen. And that is why when an artist who is losing his or her edge, especially commercially, introduces a "new sound," it usually doesn’t work. Look at the new pop styling of Liz Phair, the electronic aspirations of R.E.M., or the new disco-influenced Jewel to see how well breaking out of the expected genre works, both artistically and financially.
 
So then -- labeling bad. Maybe, but maybe not. After all, it seems only natural for us to categorize. We would all agree that Hank Williams Sr. doesn’t sound like Anthrax, who don’t sound like Al Green, who sounds nothing like the Dubliners, who aren’t at all like Prokofiev, who was certainly nothing like Ludacris. Obviously there will be labels; what matters is how far you take them, and this is largely a matter of personal experience. For instance, my wife does not like heavy metal, and to her, it all sounds the same. I, on the other hand, grew up on heavy metal, and still have many of my old metal CDs, as well a some newer ones. Anyway, being the music geeks that we are, we like to quiz each other on records from our own collections, to see if the other can name the artist. In one round of our game, I played her "Fade to Black" by Metallica. Now, I’m thinking this is an easy one. Everyone’s gotta know that song – it’s gotta be the most recognizable pre-Black Album Metallica song. Renee, however, hearing the indistinguishable heavy metal, starts blindly guessing bands she knows I have in my collection.
 
"Iron Maiden?… Tool?… Queensryche?… Faith No More?"
 
It blew my mind that, first off, she didn’t know the song. Second, that she could confuse Metallica for these other bands. But then it occurred to me that to her it’s all heavy metal – not N.W.O.B.H.M., not thrash, not prog-metal, not whatever the hell Faith No More is. It’s just loud angry music that she doesn’t know (or care) about. The labels that I take for granted are the details of the picture that she does not care to see.
 
I can imagine what the readers are saying now, about halfway through the column: "What’s the point? Last month he told us that sometimes records are trying to convey some sort of idea, and this month he’s breaking news that there are different types of music. What next, he’ll tell us that if you learn the words to a song, you can sing along even if you’re not in the band?" Well, the point is this: labeling different types of music, no matter how specifically, is important. It is often a convenient way of finding out about new bands ("Oh, you like older punk? Check out Ted Leo..."), and it is a way to convey your musical taste to others ("I’m really into rockabilly lately..."). But labels can also be divisive, and I believe maliciously so. Remember when I said earlier that no one would want to limit music? Well, I sort of fudged that – the people that make money from it do. The labeling isn’t their goal – their goal is selling a lot of records, because that’s what they do for a living. They are accountants and marketers and human resource managers and sales reps and all the other shitty jobs that people have to feed their families and pay their bills and maybe have a little left over to buy records, except that they sell records. Of course there are also the cartoonish Tommy Motollo types (he’s so devilish...) that live in mansions and light cigars off hundred dollar bills and all that crap, but those aren’t real people, so fuck them anyway. The thing is, all those people want is to sell us as many records as they can, so they’ll try to tie a bunch of different bands to one popular one and cram it down our throats until we get sick of it and move on to something else. And why shouldn’t they? Most of us keep eating it up with a big fucking grin on our faces. But there are people to whom music is more than a passing entertainment. There are those of us who need music, who connect with something outside of ourselves through it. Music stays with us, it gives us energy when we need it, and takes our pain when we need it to do that, too. It is not a commodity to us, but something that we use to actually live our own ordinary, small, but ultimately important lives. And they are ruining it, because the money is louder than we are.
 
And that brings me back to my friends that like jam bands. I don’t particularly like jam bands, but I like my friends. And that’s what we all have to do. I don’t know how we’re gonna change the music industry. Hell, maybe in a free market society Tom Waits is just not going to be popular, and he’s doing just fine not being popular, it seems to me. But how many more artists that really matter are going to be able to break through? That depends, in my estimation, on how much we help each other out. There needs to be a sense of community between all the people that really love music. Go to shows, turn your friends on to new bands, support independent record stores, radio stations, and concert venues, and just keep talking about it, no matter what "label" you fall under.

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Anthony Eldridge is rapidly becoming one of the best reasons to read the footnote, aside from our bizarre essays about cattle farming. Drop by his blog and get further insights into his mind.