Issue date: 4/9/09 Section: Showcase

Deborah Harry is singing "The Tide is High," holding a Kleenex lyric sheet. It's 1979. She's shaky, despite Blondie's worldwide success with No. 1 smashes "Heart of Glass" and "Call Me." The film is grainy. The band is doing a funny little crab walk stuck somewhere in the middle of an orchestra warm-up. It could pass as a high school home movie. I don't think anyone is taking themselves seriously … so what's with the stage fright?

Through TV Party's run, wily host Glenn O'Brien was one of the New York guys to be seen with. For all intents and purposes, the way to be with O'Brien was on his show; and you know who was watching. The show was a vestigial limb of Warhol's Silver Factory. Blondie was working outside-in à la The Beatles.

The band was commercially successful, but wanted to secure a reputation as artistically significant. They got their foot in the door because of Chris Stein (Blondie's co-founder), who frequented TV Party. Thankfully, the show operated with an anything-goes philosophy. "The Tide is High" was a cover of a minor Jamaican single from over 10 years earlier, but an American pop group with a cutesy-pie take on a reggae song might not have worked much sooner (note: the arrangement played on TV Party was nothing like the studio version that would later top the charts). This new single was a change of direction compared to the duo of disco singles that came before.

Novelty itself became a building block for a fledgling genre. New wave was postmodern, and partly concerned cultural inclusiveness. The next year, the song was number one in the United States, Canada and Britain. Artists such as Paul Simon ("Graceland") and The B-52s ("Party Out of Bounds") followed suit, each making contributions to what is colloquially referred to as '80s music. Chances are you've heard of these artists not only because they wrote some great songs, but also because they were signed to major labels such as EMI and Warner Brothers.

The four major record labels, while they're willing to back such acts, take many steps to assure the artist profitability. Thus, majors don't usually start trends. The range of ideas they're willing to risk working with is limited. This ethic is sensible among profit-driven corporations. However, a privileged few artists were given breathing room. One of the best examples is Talking Heads, who were picked up by Sire, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The catchy "Psycho Killer" was their ticket to a major contract in 1977, but it was the aforementioned breathing room that allowed "I Zimbra" in 1979 and the LP Remain in Light in 1980. The latter recordings are marvelous examples of how worldly pop was capable of becoming.

Thus, there is a dialogic pattern of influence between the independently minded artist and record labels. Musicians need distribution, and record labels need clients and ideas; it's a symbiosis for better or worse. But instead of thinking about how a record label constricts its artists, think about the difference the relationship itself creates. You might find yourself discovering some evidence as to how money translates sonically.

Of course, the Internet is changing how the whole industry works, so the archetypal "constricted artist" is becoming less and less common. Exhale, elitists.


My Music Revue:
(They've cloned Stan Getz: AWESOME!) Ulver Nattens Madrigal - Have you ever had to fight off a pack of wolves from your livestock? Didn't think so! The producer here didn't have a gun, so he led them into the woods with amplifiers.

(Springsteen retiring: OK!) Tim Hecker "Sea of Pulses" - In a parallel universe, where Darren Aronofsky directed 2001: A Space Odyssey, he used Tim Hecker's LP An Imaginary Country for most of the score. "Sea of Pulses" was used during the final scene where the protagonist escapes reality only to discover a busted Atari cartridge, a hard drive full of pictures somebody took with the "pop art" setting of their MacBook webcam in a helicopter, and Moby's house.

(Lil' Wayne quitting pot: NO!) Wavves "No Hope Kids" - It's about as new as the G-protection Walkman, but you have to admit that thing once seemed totally invincible. It was the pinnacle of pissing off the old hall monitor. Sucks live.

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