Tynan's Anger

At 3 p.m last Tuesday, I had no idea who the Auctioneers were, but I was trying to finalize my plans for the evening. I then got an email from a rep at Shore Fire Media, who had told me that he had just signed the Auctioneers today. He directed me to two songs on their MySpace page, which I dug, and then said that drinks were on him at their Mercury Lounge show tonight. Out of many emails I get like this daily, it was ultimately three factors--new band with two good songs, free drinks, and tonight--that got me to the show.

Sure enough, I was there with a friend at 10 p.m., and though I've seen shows with Jon Spencer and the XX at the Mercury Lounge in the past, the Auctioneers set was the most packed I've ever seen the already tiny venue for an opening band. The only difference was the music, which, as my friend Pat said within the first two songs, sounded like a Counting Crows cover band. I did not disagree.

Nonetheless, by the end of the set, I heard the two songs I liked, one ("Young Man's Blues") I still liked by the end of the night. A more impressionable young scab might have stayed loyal to the Auctioneers for much longer, mainly to save the cred they had with the Auctioneers until it was embarrassing (no doubt the Counting Crows were a small local band who only 6 people saw at some point). Nor did I have anything against the Shore Fire rep who sent me the email and paid for my beer; he had done his job exceptionally well, in the same O.J. Simpson's defense team had done their jobs well.

When I spoke to the rep after I got my beer back, he said that the band had already had finished an EP (later confirmed over emai), and that they'd spend the next 6 months shopping to a label while touring. That way they'd keep contol over the actual artistc product, a noble goal indeed. The only problems were a) the ambiguous group of people referred to as "they," and b) the artistic product itself.

In reality, this kind of story is pretty commonplace now; Shore Fire Media is basically one big publicity firm with a handful of A & R functions for new bands, founded in 1990. Their clients, who include Norah Jones, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Wynston Marsalis, won 9 Grammys on Sunday, and were nominated for 28. Shore Fire happens to be particularly good at what they do; their strategy to get me to the Auctioneers show on Tuesday night was a textbook example of an effective email marketing campaign. (Don't get me wrong, I love music and beer in any form, even if it sucks, and especially when it's free.)

My main concern is what exactly Shore Fire's rep meant when he said they had just signed the Auctioneers today. Even though no major label was involved, my hunch is that the contract was negotiated in the same way major labels use to negotiate contracts; Shore Fire has a lot of industry veterans on board, and I wouldn't be surprised if the contract resembles the kind that Steve Albini infamously blew the whistle on in his 1993 article, "The Problem With Music". I also know that, for all intensive purposes, the Auctioneers should treat this day with the same enthusiasm bands use to receive when handed major label contracts in the '90s, no matter how dangerous that excitement may be. The gleam in the band's eyes when performing on signing day was certainly the same.

I don't mean to pick on Shore Fire or the Auctioneers in any significant way, but this particular exchange is crucial because of the particulars of the situation. Overall, Shore Fire clients are much more commercially successful and Grammy-winning than clients of similar companies who engage in identical tactics. Some of those other companies, however aim less for commercial success than critical plaudits for many bands, a good review on Pitchfork can be more valuable than a major label deal once a marketing firm is on board. The marketing tactics are the same independent of anything related to art. In many cases, critics will give well-marketed bands plaudits that are not independent of art, but based on the marketing campaigns that are. Most critics that do this are probably unaware that they are doing so.

It's important to note that in all these cases, the success rate of rock stardom is significantly lower than 100%, and always has been. If the Auctioneers are successful, I wish them all the best, and glad I was able to see them last week.

But it's these kind of confounded online scenarios that are often responsible for a band's success, and these scenarios never get covered by editorial media--the arm of the media world that still claims to be charged with defending artistic integrity, not good marketing.

I've seen a real failure on this front of late, and the development is understandable. Why should a bitter, impoverished group of music journalists avoid a free drink for passing plaudits? After all, it's just music, surely there are bigger injustices to call out, even in the music world. The Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger is a lot more evil and destructive to good music than a successfully deceptive marketing campaign by an independent marketing group for an independent band, right?

My problem is, I'm not sure; I'm not sure if the butterfly of a clever little marketing deception doesn't lead to a massively deceptive music conglomerate tsunami. And this is what this new feature, named in honor of the song "Collagen Rock", by Mclusky, aims to find out:

Labels: auctioneers, Grammy Award, marketing, music industry, myspace, one of those bands got paid, pop music, shore fire