FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved
Music
by Mary-Lynn McEwenThe The
MacEwan Hall
Thursday, September 28"Through their short sighted arrogance and greed, the major label media conglomerates are sowing the seeds for their own destruction."
The promo. The pomp. The push. The putrid. This is not that. No, this is the end of that soft, sick parade. Matt Johnson, mastermind behind early ’80s intellect-pop darlings The The, is sick of the slick, tired of the way the radio’s wired, down on the brainwashing of increasingly docile consumers through the magic mirror of commercial radio. If the graphic on his Web site (www.thethe.com) in which stacking dolls swallow each other in a piranha-like frenzy – starting with parent company Vivendi, on through Seagram, Universal and down to his band – is symbolism at its most direct and finest, then his treatise over the phone is equally direct, but with a decently refreshing dose of British wit.
Because, Mr. Johnson, we acquiesce. We’re all slack-jawed co-conspirators in the war crime which is the rape of pure music. From journalists to record reps, we’re increasingly eunuchs, drugged out on the parade of free CDs, blithely glassy-eyed over tickets to our personal shot of bliss, swallowing our bile because every week we listen to stacks of CDs, write about some with faint praise just to guarantee that we stay on the list for our bliss. Hell, it pays the bills. It puts drugs in the syringe of our sick addiction to music. Real music. Oh, yeah, and as with drugs, we devour the best while the shit trickles down to the kids who don’t know the difference.
"The million-dollar question for all artists associated with this bloated company, and this is where it gets interesting, is this: Is this really sheer incompetence or is this wilful neglect?"
Matt Johnson’s a hero for asking, even if his severed nose is barely nourishment enough to feed his spited face. After wild receptions in Montreal, Boston, and his new hometown, New York, on a tour that began last November, the British star of new wave’s long ago broken surf has released NakedSelf, his first album since 1995’s oddball Hank Williams tribute album Hanky Panky. The tracks are a maestro’s mix of disturbing and graceful, and have been shunned by radio even though critics are foaming at the mouth.
"It been a bit of a state of war with (Universal)," explains Johnson. "This is a bigger problem that many groups are facing, the homogenization of culture. It’s forcing many people into the margins. You have a situation in America now where most of the radio stations are concentrated into the hands of just a few companies. Therefore, the companies have an association with the advertising industry, and to get the necessary advertising revenue they have to promise to serve up a certain type of audience the advertisers want. They have to promise to sell Gap jeans or Starbucks coffee, whatever it is they’re advertising. Therefore it limits the range of music played, which is a shame, because it has an impact on the culture of any country when you’ve got this very narrow band of films or music or journalism that’s permissible. It’s economic censorship, really.
"There’s a tremendous amount of interesting music, fantastic stuff, but you just can’t hear it because it doesn’t fit into a very strict formula. Things have always been kind of like this but the last five years, it’s become unworkable."
Yeah, it could be just sour grapes from a former somebody over not diving into a slice of fresh American pie, but coming from a man who never sold his intellect for his music – from his self-promoted beginnings in 1979 through the influential Soul Mining (1983) and the chart friendly Infected in 1986 – it isn’t.
While defending branches of his record company in places like Denmark and Canada – slightly removed from the censorship of the U.S. label he’s signed with – Johnson acknowledges the fact that his Internet campaign is likely suicidal. Calling it aggressive, the slow-working Johnson, whose transition to fatherhood five years ago slowed down his already laid-back songwriting pace, is nonetheless excited about taking a stand against the Big Brother of The Industry. He compares the next wave of music with the birth of punk, where artists recorded and promoted their own visions outside the smothering umbrella of big business.
"Many people feel the same way, but their voices are largely unheard because of the advertising, which is incredibly aggressive. We’re bombarded, and it’s like a white noise in the background which has grown to such a level and such a pitch that I’m sure it’s a cause of many people’s disquiet."
Enemies can make for strange bedfellows, so that Johnson, who has often spoken out against musical piracy fostered by the Internet, has begun to offer one song each week from his radio-neglected new album. The person who was once brethren to the punkers has been contacted by the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. regarding anti-trust laws and the personal effect of the conglomerates.
"I loathe censorship even more than piracy and increasing numbers of artists are now becoming victims of censorship through apathy and neglect"
As Johnson reasons: "I just really love making music, writing songs and communicating, and you go through tough times and it reminds you of why you’re doing it."
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