PicoBlog

“Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The ground rules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns of environments elude easy perception. Anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly.”

 - Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is The Massage (1967)

“EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE” - The PriceMaster

I told myself that I wasn’t going to use this newsletter to relitigate the hardcore twitter discourse of days past but I do think that something that happened over the weekend is a good setup for a topic I want to write about. I saw a video of a bunch of kids dancing at a hardcore show in South Carolina, and someone called it some “hello my baby hello my honey hello my ragtime gal head ass two step,” which is insanely funny. That’s an all-timer of a joke. Incredibly funny. Hats off to that guy. 

The other response, for the most part, was positive. There will always be someone to say that your dancing sucks or that it was better back in their day. Most people had genuinely positive things to say about a scene full of young adults doing young adult activities. The moshing was a little polite, which called for some people to say “we need to gatekeep harder.” Hardcore Is Having A Moment, and at every Subculture Moment, there is always someone who wants to prove that they were there first. If there’s one purported credo that all of the online subculture dorks have, it’s “We need to gatekeep harder.” “Hardcore shouldn’t be accessible,” is another tenet of Online Subculture Tough Guy, who would have you believe that he is the baby on the cover of Born to Land Hard by Cold As Life and that his parents played Age Of Quarrel for him in the womb. He’d have you believe that hardcore MEANS something and that a band making listenable music or kids who don’t commit semi-consensual battery every weekend are the reason that Hardcore Is Having A Moment. 

But they’re not. Sure, there’s an energy behind the music right now that hasn’t been present in a long time, but that’s not why it’s getting big. It’s getting big because it’s profitable and there is a corporate interest in this music getting big. I’m not saying there’s one specific corporation funding hardcore (this would be cool and if I were a billionaire, I would love to be the invisible hand of hardcore), but think about where punk rock is. It’s not really present in any sort of discourse. Hardcore is punk rock. In the same way that punk rock was co-opted and industrialized, culminating in you signing up for the US Army at your local Vans Warped Tour stop, they will come for hardcore.

Much to my chagrin, as I sit here without a job and look at Products that I’d love to Experience one day, we live in a capitalist society that treats us like garbage and chews up everything we love only to spit it back in our face as a mush for the baby birds among us to eat. Scroll through your tiktok and see pop-punk covers of Disney songs. Your instagram is covered wall-to-wall with unfaithful reprints of your favorite band’s most iconic merch or, even worse, *shudder* referential joke shirts. “Isn’t it cool that this looks like a Minor Threat shirt but it’s about getting drunk at Applebees?” NO. IT ISN’T. Amazon’s vinyl graveyard is full of digital remasters pressed to vinyl. Your cultural identity was commodified, bought, and sold for pennies on the dollar that you invest. For the “Gatekeep Harder” Guy, the only thing you have is getting bought and sold back to you, and all you can say is, “We need to gatekeep harder.” From who will you gatekeep your culture? What gatekeeping can you even do at this point?

An old youtube video made the rounds a couple of months ago (and again this week, due to its 22nd anniversary) called The PriceMaster. The joke itself is pretty one-note. There’s a garage sale, full of the usual garage sale bric-a-brac, in Denton, TX. Tea kettles, dolls, porno, a machete, a microscope, etc. It’s normal except for the presence of The Pricemaster, an entity from another dimension who sets the prices on all of the items. What do you think you should pay for three gently used copies of Vixen Magazine? “MAKE ME AN OFFER,” The PriceMaster commands. I dunno, $5? After a moment of careful consideration, The PriceMaster has sent you a counteroffer: “FIVE... HUNDRED... THOUSAND DOLLARS.”

The PriceMaster is a performance art joke about commerce, ostensibly. The video opens with the above quote from Marshall McLuhan (I’m not smart, don’t think I brought that one out of the ether) and the most telling shot from the whole exposition is one US Dollar being sold for 50¢. 

The guys who put the show on said that they thought it would be funny to subject the type of people who really care about garage sales to something like this. The garage sale customer base in 2001 is likely similar to today’s garage sale customer base. It skews older, it is cutthroat, and they are looking for a deal. I’m sure it was similar in 2001, but in 2023, garage and estate sales are populated by people looking to flip your old possessions for their financial gain. What you sell for $7 may be worth $120 to the right buyer. Some of these flippers put actual care into their practice, some of them are there to make a buck and get out.

I’m not sure if the customers care about it being funny. They’re not in on the joke and some people seem downright upset that they’re unable to make a deal with The PriceMaster. If we think about someone being “in on the joke” or “out of the loop,” the customers are on the outside and The PriceMaster is on the inside. The customer scoffs at the idea that a tea kettle is worth $700,000, but The PriceMaster doesn’t budge. The Pricemaster may know that’s a ridiculous price, but he will not bend. He will not fold to the buyer’s demands. The price is the price. “Everything is for sale.”

When The PriceMaster says that everything is for sale, this isn’t just a comment about the event, but life as a whole. While writing this, I started thinking about the time I went to Riot Fest in 2012 and the first night was Pegboy opening for Neon Trees and The Offspring. Pegboy stuck out like a sore thumb and they knew it. If you paid for a three day pass, you got tickets to this show, too, and I’m guessing Pegboy was on the bill to get grumpy oldheads in the door. I remember the singer saying, “Welcome to Riot Fest. I’ve got a great idea: Let’s commodify punk rock!” and then rolled his eyes as hard as he possibly could before they played “Strong Reaction.” I think he knew what he was doing by being a part of this show, but he was still cynical of the idea that a big production could retain its punk rock roots.

If we are to gatekeep, we must gatekeep from the people who are buying in on hardcore. We cannot gatekeep from active participants. When I say “active participants,” I mean artists, regular showgoers, show bookers, journos, etc. People who are involved with the creation, preservation, and propagation of the art. At worst, it serves to make something more insular and keep it obscured from people who might provide genuine insight, are able to innovate, or have the means to make any culture better. At best, it extends the timeline of the “cool” factor of a subculture by a couple of years before it inevitably nosedives due to lack of innovation and insight from the people who are already in it.

When discourse around gatekeeping started as a product of intersectional feminism’s popularity on tumblr, it was about making sure there are women and people of color in the scene and that their art is as celebrated and represented as much as anyone else’s. Calling out people for gatekeeping was shaming them into making the scene a better and more livable place for people on the outer edges. The discourse was generated by people who wanted and could absolutely use representation in guitar-based music subculture. I would love to say that gatekeeping in this regard was eradicated, but it wasn’t. It’s definitely less of a problem but it’s nowhere near over. Anyway, if you’re reading this, you likely agree that diversity is a strength of any scene and that outside opinions are valuable when solicited. Research shows that in business, outsiders with less experience are better leaders and innovators because they’re less set in their ways and the traditional thought patterns that go into said business. 

“But Jay,” I hear your pipsqueaked voice cry out behind taped glasses, snapped by a brute on the schoolyard, “That’s BUSINESS and we’re talking about PUNK ROCK.” My friend, if you do not believe that subculture is a business in 2023, then I have a bridge for sale that I think would really benefit with your ownership. Subculture is a business and much of my cool Alpha Chad Art Critic readership is already familiar with this, but because I’ve created an extremely nerdy strawman to bully, I will leave no nose unflicked.

Much like the PriceMaster video, there are two sides to the business of subculture: Inside and Outside. Insiders see subculture as a way of life and the success is measured by its health. Outsiders see subculture as an option for investment and its success is measured by its popularity. If you’re on the outside, you believe any art’s value is created through its ability to be repackaged for mass consumption. Guitar-based subculture music is a proposition and its success has been proven by Fall Out Boy, Green Day, MCR, the list goes on and on. None of these bands were formed explicitly to market to insiders, they’re all for outsiders to spend money on, but it’s not to make lifelong insiders or anything like that. To an outsider, whatever you do with art after point of purchase is none of their business.

If you’re inside, your objective is to keep the business of subculture running. Gatekeeping and infighting doesn’t serve this objective, but what does serve this objective is learning from The PriceMaster. The beauty of The PriceMaster is that the possessions are effectively priceless. They’re all for sale, but the offer won’t be met. Money means nothing. Without even telling the story, The PriceMaster has let the audience know that there’s a deeper connection with all of the objects. If I’m reading too much into that idea and he doesn’t have a connection with them but chooses to spite a buyer for no other reason than saying it can’t be purchased, then that’s even more punk rock, more hardcore.

Value your knowledge of the scene. Price your experience in art higher than any outsider could pay. Don’t accept any offer that would take those things away from you. They’re yours. Retain ownership. Book a locals-only show in a warehouse. Make a free zine. Put your music out for free on bandcamp. The point isn’t to make the art inaccessible or to keep new people out, it’s to make big money productions look less genuine. Yes, everything is for sale, but not everything can be bought. Thank you for shopping here. Your business is appreciated.

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