Music’s Housing Market & the Hipster Depression
“If Svenonious was right and indie rock flourished during a real estate boom, will indie rock die during a bust? I’ve spent the last several months pondering this vitally important question, and it occurs to me that we’re likely to see something subtly different.” -Reihan Salam
I’m not sure it’s a vitally important question, but it’s definitely an interesting one. I’m not interested in limiting the real estate market’s influence over popular culture and its subsidiaries to just indie rock, though. Independent music was once the abstract sounds of Television, Modern Lovers, Debbie Harry and before that, the hippy folk movement of the ’60s — as Americans spread out into tidy suburbia, more bizarre, angsty and experimental music began bubbling to the surface. People like Arthur Russell moved from Iowa to San Fransisco and played cello on street corners. The ’70s might have been dominated by dance music and drugs, but the underground was festering with incredible sounds, and not just from white people affected by housing booms and busts. There’s not a better decade for soul and street music in America. The ’80s bred a more precise sort of angst with the birth of a more organized punk rock, particularly in DC. You see where this is going. If real estate affects the music culture and the size of the outfits participating in it, I’d rather talk about big picture underground that a simplistic and (in this day and age) almost meaningless sub-genre called “indie rock.”
All that being said, I’d love to see a study relating subculture music (particularly ensemble size/instruments played) to the corresponding time period’s economic stability and housing market status. I’ve always believed that good times breed more mindless crap in mainstream culture and more challenging stuff beneath the surface, but if we’re talking about the very number of people participating, that added variable makes for a very interesting graph. Let’s leave meaning and quality out of it, let’s just talk about who’s doing it.
Salam’s use of Austin as an indicator might be misleading. Visiting Austin during SXSW and making generalizations about the state of indie rock based on what you see here is foolish, though there is a certain amount of gravity in the observations. Yes, there are musicians coming out of cracks in the sidewalk here, but not all of them are aiming for fiscal stability courtesy of rock’n'roll. Common sense seems to indicate that as times get tougher, more folks who might have dabbled previously would opt out of the game — touring isn’t cheap, after all. Salam seems hopeful that “… the orchestral pop of Beirut will take advantage of newly-inexpensive real estate,” citing the Dirty Projectors’ lineup swell and the Harlem Shakes’ confidence in the quintet as examples. There’s too many variables here to connect the dots between those groups and a current housing market shakeup, though. Dirty Projectors have been playing with various versions of a lineup for ten years, and the Harlem Shakes have been around since the dawn of the ’00s … hardly the SXSW breakout bands that are searching for the elusive SX catapult. Both groups have a solid fan base already and Dirty Projectors in particular will continue to do what they do regardless of an A&R rep or booking agent’s opinion about a mid-March set in an Austin dive.
That, to me, was the primary shakeup at SXSW this year. There were fewer startup bands with abbreviated resumes and more bands that have been playing, recording and touring for years making an impact this year. Bands like Young Widows, Akron/Family, Dirty Projectors, Richard Swift, Department of Eagles, M Ward and even folks like J Mascis, PJ Harvey, Superdrag (!) and Kanye West courted the festival’s attendees, indicating a resurgence in things we’ve already established as having a future being successful. It struck me as a really difficult year to be one of the bands that SX has come to be known for – a no-name group opening for bands of slightly higher stature. This was a year where the bands that are just starting out might not have been able to make the trip to Austin to play for free for a week, leaving the openings for (in indie scale) more known acts. Salam is right, though: it was easier than ever to go see whatever you wanted to see, harder to find the ‘buzz’ in the crowd, and more so than ever, an excuse for the business end of the burgeoning independent music scene to trade thoughts on what was happening.
There weren’t as many free drinks. This is my indicator of a profitable youth culture on the skids.
