Do-It-Yourself Philosophy and Culture

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Permalink Reply by Celester on September 11, 2008 at 12:35pm

Execllent topic, Sean! This is going to be great.

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Permalink Reply by Jeb Banner on September 11, 2008 at 12:44pm

I think the core thing about DIY is the ability to problem solve and figure stuff out on your own. It's changed a lot with the web, now the access to so much information sorta redefines DIY. You have to be good at information gathering and organizing as well. It used to be knowledge was shared like pot, you had to know the right people to get it and people could be stingy with what they knew. Same with rare recordings like the Beach Boys "Smile" stuff. For me it was recording. When I met an established artist back in college or high school I would quiz them about their techniques, looking for clues. I still do that but back then it was super vital to improving. Now I can learn almost anything I want at any time. That doesn't change the fact that you don't "know" something until you do it, but there are some serious short cuts now that weren't there 10 years ago.

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Permalink Reply by PJ Christie on September 11, 2008 at 1:15pm

For me it started with a real boredom with the corporate world that was the main cultural influence with my world growing up in Castleton. Everything was so franchised, all the music I had grown up with was filtered through format radio and my dad's awesome record collection, but the mainstream was the only stream, this is in the middle of what I refer to now as "The Conservative Crunch".

For my friends and I, there was simply nobody doing the music we wanted to hear, the music that was in our heads, and playing places that were accessible to us except the people who were DIY. These people were my early heroes. Watching them, it was apparent that there was nothing impossible or wrong with what I wanted to do.

DIY to me means make your own rules and don't make excuses. We put on shows in garages and club houses and halls. We put out our own casettes, posted fliers. We found our own solutions to new problems and it was fun because I had a bunch of friends that felt the same way.

Each event was a victory and I guess it still is, so its always going to be a part of my life.

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Permalink Reply by steve schmidt on September 11, 2008 at 1:29pm

Ra Bob owns this thread. He was the first guy I ever met who didn't talk about things; he just did it. I think that there a ton of people in Muncie in the mid-80's who took his lead and just started creating their own shit. It was partly out of boredom (have you ever been to Muncie?) but I think once people saw it could be done, they just hopped on board. Ron was a huge guiding presence to quite a few of us though.

Mark Urschel was another classic Muncie DIY'er. Always taping shit, taking photos. It is partly due to his constant documentation of the scene that this site is the treasure trove it is.

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Permalink Reply by Jbarge on September 11, 2008 at 1:40pm

Bill Clinton was our first DIY president, by the way. Check into his high school band The Three Kings and you'll find he had recorded and released a 45 with them back in 1965 or 1966.

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Permalink Reply by Celester on September 11, 2008 at 1:41pm

PJ's post is awesome. And I think that story applies to DIY folks who aren't even into music, too: make a choice to take control of the means of production and don't dismiss small victories. Jeb's comment about problem-solving gets at something important too: when other people know how to do something, DIY folks want them to share. The home-sewing community has a slogan, "Each one, teach one." Without that philosophy, knowledge is kept in the hands of few, and eventually dies (or worse, gets used for EEEEEVIIILLLLLL! Mwahahahahaha!) So teaching/learning is a huge part of DIY in my opinion.

My family is/was all about DIY. If someone needed a new garage, we built it ourselves. My mom made all my clothes until I was 14 (let's not get started on how that might have scarred my psyche!). Everyone grew at least some of their food. I spent a lot of time in lumberyards and in my dad's workshop holding 2x4s in a miterbox. We developed our own photos, painted our own paintings, fixed our own cars, gave each other homemade presents, etc etc. And this was living in a major urban area, not a farm. It's the one thing about how I grew up that I think comes close to an ideal.

So DIY music (which my dad and uncle were into anyhow) was a very good fit. The big difference with DIY music though is that besides rejecting corporate products for something "homemade," it also re-sets the rules about what is "good" or has worth. I love the humility that doing it yourself can represent, because doing it yourself sometimes means that there will be flaws, mistakes, failures. So many people (myself included) can be paralyzed by fear of not being good enough, they never create. At its best, a DIY culture accepts flaws and supports trying to get something right, even if we don't always agree on what "right" is. And, often, it opens discussions about how we agree/disagree about what we do and how we do it, and how we judge it. Which, IMHO is a form of creativity, so rock on!

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Permalink Reply by Mark Urschel on September 11, 2008 at 10:17pm

Reading this thread is reminding me of my first band, The Grottos, which I formed with my sister, Danielle, and our friend Jeff. We really couldn’t play and we existed largely on spirit. Seeing what was happening with music in the early 1980’s and the punk scene that proceeded in the late 70’s gave us the notion that we could make music too because we wanted to. Mostly we recorded our own songs and made tapes of them for our friends. To me DIY meant anyone could play music and it wasn’t so much about learning how to play and record as it was just doing it. And it was defiantly not about technique or proficiency. It was about creativity and finding your own sound. We barely even had instruments. One of the best percussion sounds I recorded at the time was two Mountain Dew cases played with drum sticks that were recorded tape to tape about 8 times.

The DIY ethic really was what got the Muncie scene going. It started with bands playing basement parties. There were a few bands and a few people who were into recording their own music (Ra Bob, Dave Allen, John McCool…). The No Bar was totally DIY. Jon & Jeff’s DIY club. As the No Bar became established more locals & students saw that they could do it too and more bands formed. And they played at the No Bar. Jon released local bands music on his cassette label, Bob. Regional and National bands found a place to play and places to stay when in town. Muncie was really a place where DIY worked.

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Permalink Reply by suade99 on September 12, 2008 at 7:39am

Mark Urschel said:

"The DIY ethic really was what got the Muncie scene going. It started with bands playing basement parties. There were a few bands and a few people who were into recording their own music (Ra Bob, Dave Allen, John McCool…). The No Bar was totally DIY. Jon & Jeff’s DIY club. As the No Bar became established more locals & students saw that they could do it too and more bands formed. And they played at the No Bar. Jon released local bands music on his cassette label, Bob. Regional and National bands found a place to play and places to stay when in town. Muncie was really a place where DIY worked."

Too true Mark...

DIY back then had a lot to do with the people looking beyond the sandbox they were in... there was a lot of "sharing" of ideas and a lot of people doing many projects often with little or no resources. Kinko's (or the office copy machine) was the DIY PhotoShop of the day... Two crappy boom boxes was a DIY multitrack studio and Option magazine was a DIY internet resource... People made due with what was available...

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Permalink Reply by John P. Strohm on September 12, 2008 at 10:07am

I grew up sort of taking DIY for granted. By my early teen years in Bloomington, I'd already begun going to street dances that were put on by other kids, buying self-released records by local artists, and reading local 'zines. With the thriving DIY scene in Bloomington in the late 70s - early 80s, anything seemed possible.

My first DIY hero was Scott Colburn, my bandmate in Killing Children and the owner of Gravelvoice Records, a hardcore label. Scott learned most of what he knew from Paul Mahern, who at the time was my idol (still is for that matter in many ways), but I didn't know Paul personally at the time. I got it all second-hand from Scott, who is brilliant. I'm sure Paul got it all from some smart person as well.

By the end of my sophomore year in high school, my extended group of friends and I had established a thriving all-ages venue (Ricky's), and through Scott and others and from fanzines such as Maximum Rock n' Roll we'd learned about putting out and distributing records, booking out-of-town shows, booking local shows for touring bands, and making our own fanzines. It was a really exciting time (circa '83 - 85), and I give full credit to the local DIY people who came before my friends and me for paving the way - making anything seem within reach (e.g. Bob Gulcher, Mahern, Colburn, Marvin, Bill Levin, Eric White, Dale Lawrence, John Barge, etc. etc.).

Since that time, I've been an artist on major labels, with major publishers, booked by major booking agencies, managed by big management companies - and I've negotiated deals with those companies as a lawyer. I've had the opportunity to see it from both sides, and I know for certain that DIY is generally a better environment for creativity to thrive. Large, for profit companies - especially those with non-entertainment parent companies - can stifle creativity - while creativity thrives as artists collaborate within their communities without outside (i.e. corporate) influence.

These days, since I work on the business side advising and repping aritsts and labels, DIY informs everything I do. I'm not doctrinaire about it - companies are often necessary, often beneficial - and many companies are run with essentially a DIY ethic (example: Secretly Canadian). But these days DIY is a different thing - presenting more opportunities than ever. It used to be that big companies were necessary to reach a wide audience - because they controlled the distribution of physical product. Now all that's changed; an artist can be truly DIY and reach a large audience. Hopefully the new paradigm that's emerging will present new opportunities for artists to stay DIY - rather than big companies re-gaining control of the gates. I don't know how this will play out, but it will be interesting.

I respect people such as Jello, Ian MacKay, Calvin Johnson who are doctrinaire or political about DIY - I think that's fantastic. DIY wouldn't be what it is without that influence, that's obvious. But in practical terms, I look at situations in terms of what is good for the artist. For some artists it makes sense to be 100% DIY - both in terms of control and making money. For others, it may make sense to work with large companies, depending on the goals, etc. But I do know that without that balance, without those DIY opportunities, it would be a different landcape, and we wouldn't have as much great art. It's so important that kids coming up know that they can have fun and make music in a serious, meaningful way without signing away their rights. I'm sure to a kid with a guitar and big dreams, things still seem possible - and that's what really matters.

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Permalink Reply by PJ Christie on September 12, 2008 at 11:04am

I meant to report this in the John Strohm life story, but seeing the Blake Babies at Modern Times was a key enlightening moment for my own private DIY. I'd seen plenty of punk, thrash, and folk music played at what the human level, people right in front of you with no lights or pretension. But the Blake Babies played pure pop - meaning it sounded like it could be mainstream but all their look and attitude was right out of an ethic I was very familiar with.

The other thing I wanted to mention before is that the advice and encouragement of my DIY heroes, which are in line with John's above even though I was about 5 years later, was really key for me to keep doing it.

So all your mature MFT ers and yr DIY, don't forget to add your positive encouragement to the younger set, not only by trying to set a good example for ethical and creative activity, but use your words to show them you care and believe in them.

I'm gonna come out and say it, give it up for Tufty Clough everybody! Paul, Dale, Marvin, Bill, they get a lot of credit on this site, but Tufty did as much for me personally by just being a kick ass bass player that I could walk right up to, lay out my problem of the moment, and he gave it to me the way he sees it.

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Permalink Reply by John Scot Sheets on September 12, 2008 at 12:36pm

I agree 100% with all the previous posts!

I would like to mention The Residents, they recorded their own music in a home studio, owned their own record company and achieved a modest level of sucess a few years ahead of the arists mentioned. They sure did inspire me!!

Speaking of a few years ahead of the curve. Everybody has seen the movie Coal Miners Daughter, where Loretta Lynn drives around with a box of homemade records visiting radio stations. I think that is pretty DIY.

Even farther back, Harry Partch was so DIY that he invented a new system of music. He had to make his own instruments and find people who would learn to play them. He recorded at home and sold his records mailorder. This was in the 30s 40s 50s & 60s. He did this for a long time.

There was a thread on IMN a few years back about this same subject where Noiseman brought up the Partch DIY connection, he also listed some other DIY artists that are not rock oriented, but I can't remeber any cause my memory is shot.

This is a great topic.

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Permalink Reply by suade99 on September 12, 2008 at 3:03pm

This generation has more DIY "pre-built" into than I could have imagined 25 years ago... the laptops, cell phones and pda's that have the ability to record audio/video... the design and display options of the internet... social networking that allows for almost instant posting/feedback with a worldwide audience... being able to communicate with the click of a mouse...

And yet: it still comes down to the person, group or scene to define what makes it DIY and what makes something "valuable" or "significant." I've been a huge proponent of letting everyone, especially the young artist, know that (self) managing the rights to the original creation is your MOST valuable asset... never sign away anything without being 100% sure of what's going on...

I agree with Mr. J. Strohm esq. when he typed: "It's so important that kids coming up know that they can have fun and make music in a serious, meaningful way without signing away their rights."

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