Vice Vice baby

This article about Vice Records (or whatever it's called) really singes my sack.

Where to start? Well, there's the fact that these cunts can piss and moan in true snide hipster fashion about "indie yuppies" while simultaneously trumpeting their own indie status...even as they take gobs and gobs of money from major label Atlantic Records to make their venture work. Would these man-shaped twats have ever scored acts like The Streets or Bloc Party (the "it" band of today's indie yuppies: I know because I are one)without the financial security their major label teat-sucking allows? Maybe, but I highly fucking doubt it.

Don't get me wrong: if some major label sucker came along and wrote me a blank cheque to run my label, I'd be leading the fucking hossanahs. What I would not do is play coy about what that formidable backing means to the label and try to hide behind transparent declarations of how independent I am. Nor would I whine about the "indie establishment" on one hand while selling songs to "The OC" on the other. Hey fucko: that "indie-yuppie establishment" you're complaining about? They're your bread and butter (well, them and the largesse of Atlantic: I just can't stress that point enough). I certainly wouldn't claim the independent record store-shoppin', blog-readin', MP3-downloadin', gig-goin', record-buyin' public as my "people" if I was so disgusted by their "boring music" (that from the cat who put out the sonic tribute to the colour beige that was the Stills' record). If I was so disgusted, I wouldn't be signing pop acts, but instead going after the Deerhoofs, Animal Collectives and other unlistenable rubbish bands of the world.

Upon further reflection, the one thing that stands out is that the Vice guys are positively terrified at not being "it" anymore and so they're trying to fashion themselves as elitist indie record store clerk types, even as they put out music that real elitist are turning their noses up at. The fact is, there's lots of music out there that "shakes you up a bit" and makes you "uncomfortable" but there's only, like, 12 record shop dorks nationwide who listen to it (because it's shit and the only people who claim to like it are only doing so to be difficult. I call such people "shitheads". But I digress.) Fact is, it's pretty hard to make a business successful or build an empire with those guys as your core market. So consider this article a final testament; the death rattle of an aging hipster who's suddenly realized there's no money to be made in genuinely marginal art, but he's got payments to be make on that Golf. But he just can't let go of the smarmy, holier-than-thou posture that he spend so many years during and after college building up.
'cause then he'd be old.