When is someone going to properly chronicle this period, I often wondered. The period of punk I lived through, from the mid-90s through the 2000s, has gone largely undocumented in any substantial way, at least in book form. But as influential as these bands were, they were largely finished by the time I was born. Don't get me wrong, all of these bands are important to me. Maybe, at a good store, I’ll find some that cover underground 80s heroes like Black Flag and Minor Threat. They document the genre’s birth in the 70s-The Clash, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols. And whenever I do see histories that tackle punk, they usually focus on one thing. Lots of Dylan, lots of Beatles, lots of Nirvana.
Every time I find myself at a bookstore staring at the shelves of books about rock music, I am struck by how homogenous everything looks. "I wanted to know, what happens to the real people," says Ozzi.Nobody writes the books I want to read. The book uses the major label debuts of 11 bands to examine a music industry in flux, fans feeling betrayed, and bands just trying to navigate the machine. That's the question at the center of the new book Sellout: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore 1994 - 2007 from music writer Dan Ozzi. But if you were the kind of band that earned its cred giving the finger to corporate suits, how were you supposed to navigate shaking their hand for your shot at rock stardom? Immediately following the massive boom that was Nirvana, major labels began scouring local indie punk scenes looking for the next big thing. Not long after, Jawbreaker would sign a nearly million-dollar record deal with the label Geffen.Īnd they weren't the only ones. "The smart money stays on an independent, and actually gets richer. This, he said on stage, isn't an empty play to the crowd, but rather good business advice.
"It's actually scientifically proven you'll make more money on an independent label if you're a not-so-great punk band like us" Jawbreaker singer and guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach once told an audience in 1993.
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