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Rock and Roll music today encompasses an almost infinite number of scenes and audiences, constantly subdividing and merging in a blur of mitosis and meiosis. The Indie Rock scene is a post collegiate variation incorporating rehabbed punk ethics and post punk aesthetics. As entertainers indie rockers long for attention, but as D.I.Y. autonomists they proclaim independence from the machinations of the culture industry. It is this inherent contradiction which the title of DragKing's new album refers to.

DragKing has been doing its own thing at the periphery of Chicago's rock scenes for the past eight years. Their last widely attended live performance was at the 12 hour Destroy All Music Festival which was organized by the band two years ago at the Ruiz Belvis Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago. That event lured performers from Portland, Oregon(Blowhole), Cardiff, Wales(FoeToe), and many points in between, to present experiments in abstract sound. Since then the band has performed only once, at an art opening in the South side neighborhood of Woodlawn with ambient drone rockers, Grimble Grumble. At both performances DragKing employed an ultra diverse palette(toy instruments, tools, samplers, turntables, tape loops, guitars, drums, etc.) to tell their resistance to power and human redemption. DragKing remains one of a tiny number of bands(The Ex, The Mekons, Fugazi, Negativland) which combine social awareness and commitment with a gourmet's appreciation of both popular and avant guarde music. Their music incorporates both a love of melody, harmony, and rhythms and a love of sounds in their own right. They honestly express both their own emotions and their solidarity with struggles for social justice. There are other bands stretching the vocabulary of Rock music. And there are other bands who are politically committed. Butthere are precious few who do both. As Cyndi Elliot kindly put it in Puncture magazine, "DragKing are an ambitious, ultra original band who succeed on many counts".

The material presented on "Indie Authenticity Crisis"(DragKing's second full length release) is the band's strongest to date. The CD offers both unrestructured field recordings("June 16th" is both a moment in time and a portrait of the contemporary city consuming itself.), and tight compositions("Autostumbler" is a Don Caballero style math rocker whose structure which unravels as the narrator unravels: "I cut out my eyes so that I might see"). And if there is a commonalty, it is that every moment on the CD demands to be listened to. Some are starkly beautiful("Are You a Woman?", "Skathole", "Tampertina"), some are rockin'("A Personal Attack", "Autostumbler"), but each defies the listener's expectations. Each is uncomforting. The promised hook never quite materializes, the groove is always stilted, just enough to frustrate any attempts at easy listening. Taken as a whole, the album is a powerfulstory about the difficulty of making music which is both relevant to society and innovative, now in 1998, after everything, which, of course, is what DragKing has done.

Some commentary from Sluggo....

The working title for the new Dragking CD is "Indie Authenticity Crisis". The new CD comments on the current situation in the independent post-punk scene where monetary success (and/or critical acclaim) is both the implicit goal and the signifier of a surrender of legitimacy. The "crisis" is one where the respect of peers is dependent on the one hand on "staying true to the scene" and passing up lucrative opportunities, while on the other hand those who do "make it big" and hence are no longer so dependent on the respect of their peers(or perhaps they are simply adjusting to a new peer group?) often garner a more significant form of respect. As Indie Rock is co-opted by the big money vultures, the process of "selling out", becomes the process of buying in. As bands like the Royal Trux begin to appear in Calvin Klein commercials(see below) the line between the hipster drop-out and the celebrity model is smudged. The music of the Royal Trux was originally the antithesis of capitalist success(see "Spike Cyclone" or the Twin Infinities Lp). Now they churn out insipid blues rock, but they own their own land. Destroy All Music!

and now a word from A.P. Harris......

Sluggo, I like that you've done all this commentary. One thing you didn't mention about the "working title" is the fact that I formulated it in my deep belief that Indie Rock is in a state of Crisis in the sense that it has inherent contradictions. You do point this out, though, in your own way. For me the contradiction is between (a) Indie _Rockers_ are actually entertainers, therefore they want attention, air play, renumeration, and, basically, audience. As such they are subject to the insidious workings of the "Culture Industry" with it's manifold and well-documented evils. (b) On the other hand, _Indie_ Rockers proclaim independence from the Culture Industry. This is where authenticity comes in. For an Indie rocker, authenticity is (partly) measured by her or his autonomy from the culture industry.

If there's a didactic reason for the name, I'm try to point out to Indie rockers or fans that this crisis does exist, and that they will be stuck in a state of contradiction unless they take over the "means of production" of culture itself. Indie rock's attitude is to carve out a niche for itself and perch there happily forever. But this is contradictory, because the form of expression is fundamentally situated in the Culture Industry. Hence, Indie Rock is stuck as a sort of farm system for the Culture Industry. The biggest deniers of this situation are actually the indie labels more than the bands, I think.

By no means should I be taken as saying Indie Rock is bad, it has to change, or should go away. Not at all. Most creative music is not coming out of the big 3 labels, just like the fact that creative movies are not coming out of hollywood. Hell, look at the theater industry, where you have a slew of starved "indie" theaters, and then on the other hand, Broadway puts on a musical version of "Big". The same situation is happening everywhere.

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