Looking back, I feel fortunate that I worked at one of the labels that helped to define your punk rock dream, so I've seen the working model up close. It was all based on lean principles of business sustainability through continuous improvement. Turns out those years of record label and mail order catalog work were far better and cheaper education than the college I dropped out of so quickly. I have also applied those ideas and ethics into my own business practices and have been very successful even though I am as far removed from the music business as I could have ever imagined being in my life. The label? Still around and doing better than almost all of their peers.
As a result of my experience, I feel your dream can be made reality, but it is not easy. I am very discouraged by the explosion of platforms and how those platforms have created a monolith expression of culture that feels like a global constipation of ideas. I look forward to following you down the rabbit hole as you explore this punk rock dream as a counterweight to platforms as the default setting for the digital diaspora of expression and hopefully hack out a tangible road map for the rest of us.
The reason I say all this is because I never been more artistically creative than in the past year. But I no longer want to use platforms to share my expressions. I don't really have the time to figure out a new road map for disseminating ideas so my ideas remaining on the cutting room floor, which I am okay with because I am old. On the other hand, I'd rather not feel like I am being put out to pasture quite yet, either. Your newsletters have given me a new perspective that I very much appreciate and find them to be extremely valuable reference material, just like those old zines that used to come in the mail when I was a kid.
Thanks again for all the great thoughts, Sean! I forgot that you did some time at Alternative Tentacles. So cool. As for getting started with platform independence, I strongly recommend a blog as your gateway. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Here's a post of encouragement I wrote a couple of years ago → https://8sided.blog/making-the-case-for-blogging/
I still recommend WordPress though there are a few more alternatives now than there were at the time of that post. Just make sure it's a platform where you can easily export everything and that data will import elsewhere completely intact (which rules out Squarespace). Hit me up if you'd like any help. But — yes — I, and many others I bet, would absolutely read a Sean Yoder blog!
Thanks for your encouragement, Michael. I also read your latest installment 036 in great detail, at least the part about rethinking social media. I'll admit I am having a hard time reconciling the need to be out there anymore, even on a blog, with videos of ducklings emerging from a duck box. The world feels too vast and awesome and I am on the backside of life in terms of time commitments. That being said, I'd like to hit you up sometime when I have free minute about an idea I have and whether its half-baked or worthwhile. Probably the former and not the latter but I'd like to have a pro assessment before putting my foot in the proverbial bear trap.
As much as I'd love to have the street cred of working at Alt. Tentacles, I was at Bomp! The ones that started it all here in the States. Bomp! founder Greg Shaw first used punk rock in its modern sense in the April 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. He refers to a track by The Guess Who as "good, not too imaginative, punk rock and roll". I ran their mail order catalog during the mid 90s and met everyone you could ever possibly imagine at the warehouse in East LA. It was like a weird punk rock Love Boat in terms of which wacky guest star was going to show up at the offices any given week. Label and catalog are both still around and both are still making big money almost 50 yrs later, a testament to the genius of Suzy Shaw - one of the most dynamic and savvy women in the music business I have ever met. I learned pretty much everything I ever needed to know about running a successful business from her and saved a ton of money bypassing a fancy college education.
Funny! You wrote, "I worked at one of the labels that helped to define your punk rock dream" – and I thought that meant one of the labels I mentioned. And then I confused you with someone I knew who worked at Alternative Tentacles for a quick minute. But, yes — Bomp! is just as good!
I knew the "punk rock" term origin story w/ regards to The Guess Who and almost included it a few episodes back when I was writing about genres. However, Simon Reynolds credits Dave Marsh via Creem in this piece — https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/25/origins-of-music-genres-hip-hop — but he was second, apparently using the term not even a month after Shaw did. Something was apparently in the air.
Anyway — feel free to message me about your idea. I'd love to hear about it. You know how to find me. 👍
Jamming econo 'til we perish, right? Check out the Desolation Center doc if you haven't yet (it's streaming on Kanopy) — just watched it and there was a ton of Minutemen footage I'd never seen. And wish I had more pics of that wild North Louisiana band I was in — a sort of Cramps-meets-Butthole Surfers thing called Bloodshack. 🤘
So great!! I look forward to every issue!
Thanks, Kenn — it means so much to me that you're reading. I hope all is well!
Fantastic piece!
Looking back, I feel fortunate that I worked at one of the labels that helped to define your punk rock dream, so I've seen the working model up close. It was all based on lean principles of business sustainability through continuous improvement. Turns out those years of record label and mail order catalog work were far better and cheaper education than the college I dropped out of so quickly. I have also applied those ideas and ethics into my own business practices and have been very successful even though I am as far removed from the music business as I could have ever imagined being in my life. The label? Still around and doing better than almost all of their peers.
As a result of my experience, I feel your dream can be made reality, but it is not easy. I am very discouraged by the explosion of platforms and how those platforms have created a monolith expression of culture that feels like a global constipation of ideas. I look forward to following you down the rabbit hole as you explore this punk rock dream as a counterweight to platforms as the default setting for the digital diaspora of expression and hopefully hack out a tangible road map for the rest of us.
The reason I say all this is because I never been more artistically creative than in the past year. But I no longer want to use platforms to share my expressions. I don't really have the time to figure out a new road map for disseminating ideas so my ideas remaining on the cutting room floor, which I am okay with because I am old. On the other hand, I'd rather not feel like I am being put out to pasture quite yet, either. Your newsletters have given me a new perspective that I very much appreciate and find them to be extremely valuable reference material, just like those old zines that used to come in the mail when I was a kid.
Thanks again for all the great thoughts, Sean! I forgot that you did some time at Alternative Tentacles. So cool. As for getting started with platform independence, I strongly recommend a blog as your gateway. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Here's a post of encouragement I wrote a couple of years ago → https://8sided.blog/making-the-case-for-blogging/
I still recommend WordPress though there are a few more alternatives now than there were at the time of that post. Just make sure it's a platform where you can easily export everything and that data will import elsewhere completely intact (which rules out Squarespace). Hit me up if you'd like any help. But — yes — I, and many others I bet, would absolutely read a Sean Yoder blog!
Thanks for your encouragement, Michael. I also read your latest installment 036 in great detail, at least the part about rethinking social media. I'll admit I am having a hard time reconciling the need to be out there anymore, even on a blog, with videos of ducklings emerging from a duck box. The world feels too vast and awesome and I am on the backside of life in terms of time commitments. That being said, I'd like to hit you up sometime when I have free minute about an idea I have and whether its half-baked or worthwhile. Probably the former and not the latter but I'd like to have a pro assessment before putting my foot in the proverbial bear trap.
As much as I'd love to have the street cred of working at Alt. Tentacles, I was at Bomp! The ones that started it all here in the States. Bomp! founder Greg Shaw first used punk rock in its modern sense in the April 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. He refers to a track by The Guess Who as "good, not too imaginative, punk rock and roll". I ran their mail order catalog during the mid 90s and met everyone you could ever possibly imagine at the warehouse in East LA. It was like a weird punk rock Love Boat in terms of which wacky guest star was going to show up at the offices any given week. Label and catalog are both still around and both are still making big money almost 50 yrs later, a testament to the genius of Suzy Shaw - one of the most dynamic and savvy women in the music business I have ever met. I learned pretty much everything I ever needed to know about running a successful business from her and saved a ton of money bypassing a fancy college education.
Funny! You wrote, "I worked at one of the labels that helped to define your punk rock dream" – and I thought that meant one of the labels I mentioned. And then I confused you with someone I knew who worked at Alternative Tentacles for a quick minute. But, yes — Bomp! is just as good!
I knew the "punk rock" term origin story w/ regards to The Guess Who and almost included it a few episodes back when I was writing about genres. However, Simon Reynolds credits Dave Marsh via Creem in this piece — https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/25/origins-of-music-genres-hip-hop — but he was second, apparently using the term not even a month after Shaw did. Something was apparently in the air.
Anyway — feel free to message me about your idea. I'd love to hear about it. You know how to find me. 👍
Great read!! Thanks!! The Minutemen were amazing & inspiring--we've been DIYing it ever since!! PS: (Great band picture!!)
Jamming econo 'til we perish, right? Check out the Desolation Center doc if you haven't yet (it's streaming on Kanopy) — just watched it and there was a ton of Minutemen footage I'd never seen. And wish I had more pics of that wild North Louisiana band I was in — a sort of Cramps-meets-Butthole Surfers thing called Bloodshack. 🤘
I did see it!! It was great! Those shows were just a year or so "before my time!" I do remember Bruce Licher's letter-press artwork around.