He Ain't No Human Being

There’s no way of not taking sides in the social networking site war, is there? Facebook is killing MySpace, and so CT Indie now has a fan page here: CLICK. In terms of interaction, the fan page seems to work much better than MySpace. If you want your band, show, event, site, or even your MySpace page mentioned on there, then become a fan and post a link. The “Welcome!” section will soon be full of helpful links, too, so check it out.

Yeah, it’s fine if you don’t use these sites. One way or another I have done what I can to find tastings of tunes or links to any information I can dig up to share on the blog. I remember, though, reading somewhere on Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life a long rant about how lame it is for a band to have a MySpace page. I understand the principle behind not putting your music out there through these kinds of channels. But the internet has changed the game, changed it so much so that any old garbage recording can make its way online and be heard by anyone around the world, and in many cases even gain fans no matter how terrible. It’s a little weird. Anyway, even with MySpace limping along on its last leg, it’s tough to argue that it doesn’t help to have your music on there. If you don’t want that help because you’re too cool, too punk, too pissed off, too anti-consumer, too lazy, fine. Just remember that unless you are a purely a cappella act, then any gear you use, from guitars to drum sticks, all get into your hands via the evil capitalist system. Hey, I wish as much as the next guy that I could grow my own gear garden, maybe plant a Marshall seed in my backyard to sprout myself a nice new JCM 800 to piss my neighbors off with. I’m just saying, ask yourself if you’re subverting the system or shooting yourself in the foot before taking a stance against the internet. Keep in mind too that labels like Dischord that have soldiered on began in a different musical climate. Ever since counterculture was co-opted by the market, there's no escaping the fact that nowadays we're just a whole nation of rebels.

The better thing to do is all work together to get heard. That is the main motivation behind CT Indie, so even if you only release your music on cassettes and believe Rupert Murdoch is the devil, I say to hell with all that noise, get your music online. You’ll always be able to share your cassettes and complaints about the system at your shows.