Watch this space for a forthcoming series on indie music labels, which will feature interviews with local music personalities and do a little bit of digging into what it takes to market and manufacture music at the grassroots level. As part of preparation and general info gathering, I chatted recently with JJ Gonson, founder-owner of the “itinerant” music venue Once.
The local booker operated an indie label called Undercover, based in Portland, Oregon, back in the ’90s. It was the heyday of exporting grunge acts, but Undercover’s biggest claim to fame might be recording and mixing credits on Elliot Smith’s seminal “Either/Or,” which showcased a softer side to alternative music at the time.
It was a release by singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur on Undercover that caught my attention, though. Arthur’s “Vacancy” came out in 1999 as a collaboration between Undercover and Peter Gabriel’s label Real World. At the time Arthur was signed to Virgin Records and had already released one album with Real World, his debut LP “Big City Secrets” (1997).
But the debut LP must not have made enough of a splash, and maybe the major label was just worried that Arthur hadn’t grinded long enough, so they sent him down to double-A baseball to work on his fundamentals. That’s where Undercover came in – a bona fide indie label where the would-be star could release a record outside of the spotlight, build a grassroots following and maybe trick enough music critics who hadn’t done their research that they had discovered the Next Big Thing.
You can still find Joseph Arthur’s “Vacancy” floating around on Discogs. The original CDs with the Undercover imprint can be had for less than $10. The 2022 vinyl reissue, which became a Real World exclusive, retails for nine times the cost of the original. What price won’t people pay for vinyl?
Hit this
Friday: Driff Fest (Lilypad, Cambridge)
It’s often said, by unnamed sources, that four bands make a bill and five bands make a festival. Driff Fest advertises two bands and three duos, so that’s close enough. The evening of improvised jazz in Inman Square is the fruit of a long-running musical collaboration between Pandelis Karayorgis and Jorrit Dijkstra, who jointly founded Driff Records about 12 years ago. The pair are jazz musicians, and they’ve used their label to champion a brand of “transatlantic improvised music” that heavily features themselves. In fact, one or both of the label owners play on all 26 of the Driff releases. Plenty of guests along the way too, including guitarist Eric Hofbauer, bassist Nate McBride, drummer Eric Rosenthal and so many more jigsawing into live sets in new and unexpected ways.
Saturday: J Mascis, Pink Mountaintops (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
(Update on Nov. 21, 2024: This show has been moved to Feb. 8, The Sinclair says.) There’s still time to vote young upstart J Mascis “Rock Artist of the Year” in the Boston Music Awards. Don’t wait! Seriously though, the alt-rock guitar god keeps finding new ways to shred the heavens by just being himself. A real Western Mass mensch with novelty cap, signature flowing tresses and an “on again, off again” relationship with Lou Barlow. Currently, he’s “on again,” touring here and there with the reformed Dinosaur Jr. But after years reveling in the solo wilderness, he just can’t quit being the spotlight attraction. Catch him headlining in front of a phalanx of Marshall stacks at a relatively intimate Sinclair gig. L.A.-based psych rockers Pink Mountaintops will warm up your eardrums.
Sunday: Dogma (Sonia, Cambridge)
There are about 20 million bands named “Dogma,” so you probably wouldn’t have a clue which one was playing Sonia on Sunday, unless you’re already on their mailing list or reading this blurb. That’s right, let me do your digging. There was no band link on the event page. The big break in the case came when I enlarged the tour poster at the ticketing page and deciphered the grainy URL at the bottom, which brought me to Dogma’s website. Turns out they’re a five-member, all-female (I think?) metal band that dresses up like goth nuns. The video for their single “Made Her Mine” features hot licks, wild drumming and nun-on-nun seduction scenes with a lot of scissoring. I mean, a lot.
Live: Odie Leigh at The Sinclair
Rootsy pop rocker Odie Leigh rolled through The Sinclair last week for a night of music that spun the dial between cozy campfire sing-alongs and arena-ready bombast with ease.
The musician, originally out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and now calling Detroit home, crafts a well-traveled sound. You can hear strains of blues, soul, rock and folk work their way through the speakers on her latest LP “Carrier Pigeon.” Its tracks featured prominently on the setlist. (Charlotte Rose Benjamin opened.)
But what the young, adoring and largely female fans in the crowd heard most of all Nov. 10 were their own hopes, dreams and anxieties set to song and fed back to them by a pop avatar they recognized as authentic.
Leigh first stumbled into the spotlight in 2020 on the wings of a viral TikTok post. She’s representative of a generation of musicians who got their first “big break” on social media. Which sounds crazy to grown-ass adults, but it’s hard to imagine breaking into the music industry any other way at the moment. You think Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg are going to vote you into a record contract on The Voice?
Social media is a hellscape, but it’s our hellscape. And it can provide a conduit connecting artist and fan that communicates stirrings of the soul with a surprising clarity. If you have the right eyes and ears. And the fans at The Sinclair had just the right eyes and ears for the job, singing from memory the chorus of “Either Way” from Odie Leigh.
Do you want to know me
like I want to know you?
Do you want to kiss me
like I want to kiss you?
The fans in attendance didn’t fall in love with her through the radio, a local concert or even a streaming platform. Most of them probably discovered Odie Leigh the Online Personality first, recognized a kindred spirit and found their way to her music after.
That’s the real nut of pop music, though, isn’t it? An unholy marriage of art and persona, fed through the mass media meat grinder, fraught with parasocial hobgoblins and commodified pathologies.
Hey, whatever fills a room. It doesn’t matter how you got here, we’re just glad that you made it.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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