good news on the music video front; some of the videos i've made will be hosted by http://www.c8.com! c8 is a great underground/hardcore-electronic resource & mailing list, with lots of info, audio, & more about lots of great underground artists. the first video to appear will be my video for "angina" from dissonance is bliss; it could appear as soon as tonight, with others to follow once i get them encoded to realmedia format. i'm even in the process of making a video for the group somatic responses (you've probably never heard of them, but in these circles they're a rather big name), also to appear at c8. the site is very flash-dependent & features quite an unusual interface, but once you figure it out it's not too hard.

it might seem ironic after my rant about tv last week that this week i'm excited about video projects, but really that's not true. in fact you could say that it's because i'm so fed up with tv that i'm getting into making my own video projects. & now, thanks to the possibilities of the internet, my videos will be out there where people can see them, as they are intended.

the process is quite cyclical & can be observed in all artforms. in essence this is a war between the individual & big business. business has only one goal: to become big business, & once big to become huge, then enormous, then all-encompassing. the way businesses try to do this is by assimilating the underground. naturally, the underground will have none of it, & the underground changes into something new. those who were once at the forefront of the underground refuse or are unable to change, grasp onto their sudden corporate sponsorship, & become sellouts. i remember back when nine inch nails was somewhat underground & innovative. sadly the underground moved on but trent reznor did not; now he's seen as the king of the electronic sellouts. sales of his newest release are atrocious, & within 5 years he'll probably be on "behind the music", telling of his fall from grace & his pathetic attempts at a comeback. soon enough the same will happen to all the korn bizcuit clones (no, actually it will be soon, but if it happened right now it would still not be soon enough in my bok!).

remember when mtv used to be cool back in the early '80s? music video was still a rather new artform. groups like devo & the talking heads were pioneers, striking out with their quirky, arty, juxtaposition of music & video. it was cool; it was exciting; it was art. but pretty soon the major labels realized what an amazing profit potential was inherent in this new artform. almost immediately mtv had gone from pioneering to the height of selloutery. now you're lucky if you can even watch a video in its entirety on mtv, & if you can it's almost certain there will be scrolling text at the bottom of the screen, "yo carson, play that new cristina aguilera video cuz its super dope mega fly yo yo yo, dat chick's got bomb-ass tits & shouts out to all my homiez at the gap!"

the movie industry is another perfect example. watch the oscars & chances are you will never have heard of 3-4 of the 5 best picture nominees. why? because the movies that get the big advertising dollars are the new stallone flicks, the new billion-dollar blockbusters, written by committee to include the largest, most innovative explosions & the dumbest, most hackneyed plots ever. meanwhile, in spite of the galaxies of money flooding the academy, the members of the academy are still at least trying to judge movies by artistic merit (they often fail; titanic is a case in point. but at least they try). most hollywood producers probably think artistic merit is a boyscout badge given out for learning how to use a paintbrush.

i'm sure you get the point that corporations will rape & pillage any scene where they see a potential profit. it isn't even limited to the art world; only a few years ago, standards organization were fighting to keep the internet free of such capitalist monkeyshines, & nowadays you can't even open a candy bar without seeing ads for the snickers bar online guide to chewing, where they'll try to swindle you into buying crap you never imagined could be related to candy: adult diapers "for when you weren't going anywhere awhile ago, but now you have & you're finished digesting", rehab programs "for when the hunger inside you gets a little too strong", tapeworm treatments "for when the hunger inside isn't your own", or copies of norman mailer's latest effort "because even the literatti need that snickers satisfaction".

now as it's inevitable that whatever scene you're in, the corporations will eventually jump on the bandwagon, crush the bandwagon under their weight, & then leave the scene stagnant & on the brink of death, you might be thinking that becoming a sellout would be a good way to make some cash. just find a scene that's still somewhat underground (& i don't mean punk or gangsta rap or any of those scenes that sold out 20 years ago), make some songs, & leap at the first corporate contract you see. sounds simple, right? sadly, it's all a lie.

the idea that your favorite stars are all millionaires is a myth, regardless what you like. the major label record contract is one of the biggest corporate clusterfucks in history. they'll come on strong & tell you how awesome you are, but they won't tell you just how much of the money you earn them will make it back to you. only the biggest stars, the ones who go multi-platinum, ever get rich off their art. only the schwarzeneggers, the madonnas, the tom hankses, the stephen kings, or the elton johns can find that kind of money & hang onto it. for every one of them there are thousands of artists bamboozled into prostituting their integrity only to find that they still can't put food on the table.

these are billion-dollar industries, & they don't stay that way by paying their artists a decent wage, oh no. the ones who are getting rich are the corporate executives, the people who try to pick & choose what is cool & feed it to you in a prebundled packet of pop-teen-angst-rap-rock. it's almost enough to make me feel for all the sellouts, polluting our airwaves with horrible derivative music, lookalike tv shows, awful half-star summer blockbusters, & all the rest... almost enough, but not quite.