Jim Reid says he couldn't imagine the band's 1985 debut album, "Psychocandy," remaining popular 30 years later; "Sneakerheadz" is a documentary about obsessive sneaker collectors; writer Steven Johnson says the digital age has not brought on the expected apocalypse for the creative class.
What apocalypse? Author Steven Johnson says the creative class is surviving the digital revolution
The predicament of artists in the digital age: It’s a conversation we keep coming back to on this show. With the proliferation of online piracy, streaming, and plummeting album and DVD sales, how are creative types supposed to make a living? Some of them might have a dismal outlook on the matter, but not Steven Johnson.
He’s the author of the book “How We Got to Now,” which looks at innovations that made the modern world. The book was turned into a PBS series that was just nominated for an Emmy.
The New York Times Magazine’s Aug. 23 cover story is Johnson’s expansive look at the health of the creative economy: “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t.” Johnson pored over data from as far back as 1999 to see how the creative economy is really doing in the digital age.
He examined Labor Department and U.S. Census numbers to get a more granular view of how people working in the big four creative industries of music, television, movies and books are faring. He discovered that, over the past 15 years, the creative class has actually grown somewhat, along with their income.
The spreadsheet-weary author Steven Johnson spoke with The Frame’s Oscar Garza.
Interview Highlights
You write that in order to understand our mounting fears of what was predicted to be a creative apocalypse, we have to go back to an intellectual milestone from Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica. Why is that?
Rock 'n’ roll and heavy metal drummers tend to not be associated with intellectual milestones. But there’s this wonderful moment in 2000 when Ulrich testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he was there to testify against Napster. Metallica somewhat famously became Napster’s great antagonist [and] sued them for pirating their music. So he delivers this testimony and the testimony becomes kind of an archetype of an argument that becomes increasingly common after that point. Which is to say: If music becomes more or less free because of online piracy and because of digital network technology, then artists — starting with musicians but then presumably going on to other forms of creative works — are not going to be able to earn a living. And as a society we’re going to suffer. Yeah we’re going to get all this free music, but as a society we’re going to run out of new music because no one is going to be able to make a living making art.
You went through mountains of data on how the creative class is doing and you essentially conclude that this creative apocalypse that Ulrich and others warned of has simply failed to come. How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Well, what I tried to do, which is very unusual for a magazine article, is to write a piece that is entirely free of anecdotes. There are a lot of anecdotal stories about bands that are struggling or a filmmaker who couldn’t get his film made. Individually those stories are unsettling. But I went through a lot of different data points to sort of triangulate as best I could, including these obscure Department of Labor statistics. What actually came out it is, in a funny way, despite all of these changes and despite all the turmoil, the number of people who describe themselves as professional creators has been remarkably stable. It’s grown a little bit relative to the overall job market and population, and overall their income seems to be growing at a nice pace again, exceeding that of the general population... I’m not making a utopian argument here at all, I’m just saying that the floor falling out of the creative economy — that fear — has certainly not happened.
You don’t just cover the creators in the music world, for example, you also look at how filmmakers and TV makers are doing. Do you think that the rise of television is making it better for filmmakers and TV content makers to really make what they want? And how is that affecting the economy?
The kind of high art of television has never been better. That creates work for writers, that creates work for musicians, that creates work for actors and directors and so on. The health of that part of the sector is great and I think that’s a pretty easy argument.
Is there too much television being made? Is there a TV bubble?
One could make the argument that some of these industries actually haven’t had their Napster moment or haven’t had a full reckoning with the technology that’s coming — for instance, cord cutting with television. It may be that the true revolution in TV truly comes when people fully get rid of the idea of a schedule and the idea of having 300 channels. But the interesting thing about television though, [is] if you look back 30 or 40 years ago, most people in America didn’t pay for any part of television. They bought their TV and then they got it over the air and there were ads and the whole thing was free. And now the whole TV business has shifted in the other direction. So now people are paying their cable providers who are paying the networks. And they're specifically subscribing to HBO or their buying things on Apple TV or subscribing to Netflix — they’re paying for a lot of their television. So, actually, TV has gone in the exact opposite direction as music has. And maybe that won’t last, but so far that’s been the story.
'Sneakerheadz': Going to extremes to get the freshest kicks
While some people might be waiting to see Kanye West at FYF Fest this weekend, others will be lining up in front of shoe stores all over the country for a different Kanye event — the release of the black Yeezy Boost 350s, the newest collaboration between Adidas and Kanye.
And it’s those fanatics, and the world of obsessive shoe collectors, who are the subject of “Sneakerheadz,” a new documentary that explores all aspects of sneaker culture. The doc covers its origins in rap music, its rise in the worlds of sports and fashion and the extreme — and sometimes violent — lengths people go to get the freshest kicks.
When Friendly joined us on the Frame, we asked him about the impact of the Internet on sneaker collecting, the thin line between collecting and hoarding, and the darker sides of sneaker culture that he explores in "Sneakerheadz."
Interview Highlights:
Broadly speaking, how has the Internet changed sneaker collecting?
It's a massive change — there's pre-Internet, and then there's post-Internet. We have many of these old-schoolers in the movie who would literally take a train from New York to Boston to try to get a pair of Converse that had a Boston Celtics logo on them.
As Frank the Butcher says in the movie, it was a contact sport — the only way you found out what was out there was by going to these little stores and rummaging through the basement, and that was part of the hunt. Then the Internet comes along and you can type in "Air Jordan 3" on eBay and a thousand entries will come up.
As you get more involved in shooting and more knowledgeable about the sneaker world, how did that influence the documentary that you were making? Did you end up making the movie you thought you were going to make?
I was very open to letting events influence and shape the movie, but I think that in the end I got the movie I wanted to make, which was really about the characters within the subculture. I was not passing judgment, I was not trying to make a larger point, but I was trying to say, "This subculture exists, it's populated by incredibly eccentric, passionate characters, and it connects the worlds of hip-hop, fashion, sport, and history."
The documentary's pretty light-hearted, but it takes a turn for the very serious about three-fourths of the way through, when you look at a couple things: people being trampled when new shoes are released, and then you show the cover of an issue of Sports Illustrated with the headline, "Your Sneakers or Your Life."
One of the things that I didn't really know about when I came to this subject was just how intense and violent the world can get. I know that we felt obligated to cover this, and initially we talked to a number of sneaker companies about coming aboard as a sponsor, and none of them would get involved because they knew we were going to touch on this.
I think it's really truly tragic, and the release pattern for these shoes is what leads to the violence. If you're not really familiar with this world, they'll sometimes release 1,000 pairs of shoes across the country, and they'll sell out in one second. So people know they can try to pick up a pair of shoes for $200 and re-sell them the same day for as much as $1,000, and that's what drives the frenzy.
You say you went into this film a little agnostic, but when you start thinking about and seeing the violence that these release patterns cause, do you start changing your mind about whether or not the shoe companies are in some way complicit?
Yeah, that's a central issue in the movie, and we save it for the back end, as you point out, because once you get to that point in the documentary, you can't go back to the frivolous thing of, Oh, look at all these cool kicks and how beautifully they're lit.
I just don't believe that there should be live releases anymore, and I think everything should be done digitally and you should have to go online and purchase your kicks. It's the live releases that cause the problems, and the reason that the companies love them is that they are loss-leaders — they help sell the rest of the line.
Fighting, reuniting and 'Psychocandy': The Jesus and Mary Chain at 30
The Jesus and Mary Chain broke onto the scene in 1985 with the landmark album “Psychocandy.” The British group’s brand of post-punk noise-pop attracted a devoted and sometimes aggressive fan base. To make matters more difficult, there was the brittle relationship between bandmates — and brothers — Jim and William Reid.
Tensions caused the band to break up in 1999, but they reunited in 2007 and have been performing on-and-off since then. The band has recently been on tour, performing the album “Psychocandy” in its entirety.
When Jim Reid, the lead singer of the Jesus and Mary Chain, joined us at the Frame studios, we asked him about the thrill of playing songs that are 30 years old, how Coachella coaxed the band out of retirement in 2007 and just what it is about British brothers in bands that always leads to conflicts.
Interview Highlights:
"Psychocandy" was the band's first album. When it was released in 1985, could you imagine that it would have this kind of longevity?
[laughs] I certainly didn't know whether I'd be around 30 years later, never mind anybody's interest in the album. But I suppose we were quietly confident — we were aware that "Psychocandy" would have some kind of impact. We were listening to a lot of garage music from the U.S. in the '60s, like stuff by the 13th Floor Elevators, and we had kind of hoped that our music would do that to bands maybe 10 or 15 years down the road. But 30 years?
What kind of experience is it for you, to revisit the album every night you perform? What kind of thrill do you still get from performing that record?
It's pretty much the same process. I mean, at the moment, I'm not drinking, so that's a bit weird. [laughs] It's different, but it is more or less the same. Playing a show in 2015 is remarkably similar to playing a show in 1985 — there's a crowd out there, you go out and you make as loud a racket as you possibly can, and hopefully you have a bit of fun.
The band split up in 1998 and reunited in 2007. What led to the reunion?
I suppose we had kind of missed going on tour, everything about the band, really. [laughs] And we tried solo careers that failed dismally. When we broke up, I couldn't have imagined being in the Mary Chain again, but you know the cliche: time heals all wounds. It does, and after a while you start to think, Well, what was that all about again? I don't even remember what we were fighting about.
For a long time, I had assumed that William wouldn't want to do it, he had assumed that I wouldn't, and it was only because Coachella were so persistent, year after year, that I had a conversation with William like, "Should we do it?" And he said, "I thought you wouldn't want to do it." "Yeah, I'll do it."
I wanted to ask about your brother. You've had an edgy relationship, not unlike Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis or Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks. Is there something about British brothers in bands?
I think it's any siblings in a band. I mean, a band is a weird environment to spend a lot of time in. If you go to school with your best friend and you start a band and then you fight a lot, you break up. But, even if the band breaks up, you're still stuck with your brother, no matter what.
And you have the most brutal rows with your brother that you wouldn't have otherwise — two guys in a band together might scream at each other, but there's a line you don't cross. With your brother, there's no holds barred. We've yelled things at each other that makes the rest of the band cringe, like, "Ooh, you can't say that."
What's a successful tour for you? What makes a tour a good tour?
That nobody dies.
Yeah, that's a good start.
To be honest, it sounds horrible to say, but I just want to entertain people.
What's so horrible about that?
When people think of the Mary Chain, we're supposed to be miserable characters who dress in black leather trousers, as you can see I'm wearing right now. But at the end of the day, I want people to have a good time at Mary Chain shows. That's what it's all about, so if we do a tour and people seem to like it, then that's fine by me.