First off state your name and occupation.
I am Jeff Rosenstock. I wash dishes at Transmetropolitan Pizza, and I am also a freelance graphic designer (mediafrenzydesign.net). On my better days I take care of a bunch of instruments and singings in a band called Bomb the Music Industry! When I can, I run a donation based record label called Quote Unquote Records where all the music is free and payment is only suggested.
How long have you been involved in the music industry?
I don't think I've ever been a part of the music industry... maybe for a few days here and there when I would send ASOB CDs out to record labels. That's about it though. I've done my best to be involved with music outside of the industry for about twelve years now.
When you got started in this industry did you ever think you would reach the point of entrepreneur, songwriter, and to some legend?
I work really hard on the songs that I write, booking tours, helping out friends in bands, graphic design and all of that other stuff and I always have. There was a point right before I started Bomb the Music Industry! when I tried to stay away from music and I ended up writing a bunch of songs and I guess I realized then that music is going to be something I'm always doing in my life. And I don't mean owning a hugely successful record label some day or being a higher up at MTV or something, those aren't goals of mine. I'm always gonna be here trying to write better songs, and I never expected anyone to like them but I'm glad a bunch people do. As far as entrepeneurship goes, that kind of stuff isn't intentional, I just do things that I think would make sense or that would help out bands that I like. I really have no clue what I'm doing. My life is too boring, normal and full of mistakes to use the word "legend."
Could you talk of some of the hardships of being an independent artist trying to reach an audience without CD sales? How about some of the upsides?
The only downside to what I do is that you can't reach an audience that doesn't have the internet pretty much. Also you've gotta rely on word of mouth for it to keep growing, because you can't just build a career on a few sites posting news on your band. The upsides far outweigh them though... there are almost no boundaries in people getting to hear the music, put it on a CD or MP3 player and listen to it all the time, show it to their friends, make mixes and what have you. A large part of the success Bomb the Music Industry! had right out of the gate was due to the fact that before we played a show we had an album available for free with lyrics so people could get into the music really easily if they wanted to. It also makes all the finances a lot less worrysome; our expenses are more minimal because we do shirts and music the way we do, so a lot of the times the little money we make from the door coupled with a handful of people being very generous and donating gets us gas to the next show, a couple extra bucks for food and pays back the cost of spraypaint and CD-Rs. So it works in THAT sense for now. Not having a tangible record bums me out a little because I like buying that stuff for the artwork, liner notes, better quality and all that but when the goal is just to get the songs to anyone who wants to hear it, putting them up for free is a no brainer.
Jeff Bombing the so-called Music Industry
Towards the very end of ASOB, I was starting to take over writing songs entirely, record them Bomb the Music Industry! style and go from there with everyone else. The songs that I had written on the last ASOB record were so old to us by the time that record finally got out, I mean we'd been playing those songs on tours for years. I was always excited for the chance to record one-off songs for the discography and compilations and things like that, but I guess in the span of four years we wrote maybe fifteen or twenty songs. A bunch of the songs for the first Bomb the Music Industry! record were supposed to be the next ASOB songs, but we couldn't start working on them until that album was out and that took so long. So basically, when ASOB took a break and I tried to stop playing music, I started working a LOT more songs in my head that were just held back from the ASOB days and eventually Ibecame quite a bit comfortable with writing songs, recording ideas and all that. So it's a lot of fun and very relieving, even if I do get ahead of myself with all the booking, recording, releasing, graphic art and record label shit.
The name Bomb the Music Industry! is quite the powerful name, when you chose it did you feel like you where making a statement, and if so did you follow through with those intentions?
I was watching a lot of Style Wars when I named the band and I liked the idea of "bombing" as a positive thing, especially considering what a dirty word "bomb" is in the world these days. I guess I always like to have something that will push some people away from it immediately upon hearing the name, even though that doesn't seem very smart. When it started, it meant to me kind of putting my little tag on this huge behemoth, maybe trying to make something more creative out of it. Since naming the band, I've kinda decided that I'd rather just try and create my own thing outside of it but I still like having a band name that people can give us shit about when we sign to Epitaph.
Being a huge fan of your music I must ask a question for myself. I am very drawn to your music due to the raw and real lyrics, you make the listener feel exactly what you are going through. Be it a contradiction or what feels like just madness you write like a human thinks and it is very impressive. My question is what was the inspiration for the closing rant on the song "Side Projects are Never Successful" about corporate rock?
That song pretty much is what it is. I had a bad day in traffic court, sat in a hot hot hot car for hours and hours with a scratched CD-R of the Arcade Fire that barely played and nothing else, so it got to the point where I was just thinking about the stuff I think about; what it would take to make honest music, trying to exist non-commercially in a very commercial culture, how long I've been staring at a Verizon billboard that says "America's #1 service" when my Verizon cell phone sucks shit, trying to work outside of the system but in a way that I would be able to do for the rest of my life, etc. Then when I got to work, I sat in the air conditioning upstairs for a few minutes, punched in and walked down the street to get a Subway sandwich and a coke and just thought to myself "haha, i am sooooo a part of this no matter how much i don't want to be." That's when I stopped thinking about "fuck the system" and started thinking about "well, let me try and make the things I can control nice."
Could you please give me your current opinion of the music industry today?
It's kinda great? I don't see MTV-type bands as much of anything anymore except for celebrity... which is weird but whatever. Also, there are too many bands with makeup but when I was a kid it was too many bands with blue hair so I guess you gotta get into the subculture through some watered down version of it as a youngin' so I can't be too bummed out about that. Other than that, it seems like independent music is doing fucking awesome. I mean, it sucks if you wanna see these bands, but the Shins, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse and that whole scene... they're playing in huge huge rooms and selling them out. You can go to YouTube and see/share the new Thermals video or the new Big D video or the new Tom Waits video any time you like. Bands are doing better based on word of mouth because they're good, not because of video-based marketing. A few years ago, it seemed like you were supposed to wait for your knight in shining armor to come along and help you out with tours and recording and stuff. Now that record labels are falling, it's kind of like "be your own fucking knight." Which is awesome for me, because it means I can make music in a way that I'm comfortable with and not eat THAT much shit.
Do you ever see yourself selling your music to the iTunes store, or does that just seem silly because you give the music away? Do you see the iPod going the way of the walkman?
I was considering doing that just to see how dumb people would be, but obviously it makes no sense for our records to be available for money digitally when they're available for free digitally. I mean, we're not even on a lot of those torrent sites because there's no point. I think that MP3 players will eventually become dated technologies because that's what happens. I have no idea what's next though, I hope it's something that sounds good though.
Has any major label frowned upon what you are doing? Do you ever feel like an outsider in the music industry due to your new form of business.
It's a really good shit filter for who you associate yourself with. I've lost touch with bands because they think that this is some stupid bullshit and after all the talks we had when I was in ASOB it seems like I'm just throwing away everything. But then there are bands like Mustard Plug who are open minded and seem to get that this is a real thing too, it's just different than theirs. To be able to go to England with the Ska is Dead tour was amazing. To be able to get a free trip to see my family on Christmas by touring with Catch 22 was great. To be able to do tours with bands like We Versus the Shark, O Pioneers, The Matt Kurz One, The Rick Johnson Rock and Roll Machine, The Fad and Chotto Ghetto has been awesome - none of them sound the same but we all seem to believe our souls not our wallets. I guess I'm an outsider to some music industry, but it's nothing I want any part of. Fashionista bands who only screw each other over to get their faces on MTV - I feel like they have as much in common with how I feel about music as a dentist does, maybe even less because I bet that a dentist would probably go home and listen to music and enjoy it whereas bands like that just try to copy haircuts and mic swings.
Give me your opinion on the internet's help with music.
It's giving people access to music that is no longer provided to them by mainstream channels. I mean, I'm just a kid with a microphone and a computer who holds down some pretty shitty jobs. But at least 10,000 people heard the last Bomb the Music Industry! record because it's available online for free. THAT'S FUCKING CRAZY. When you're in a small band selling CD's, selling a box of a thousand seems like the hardest task ever. So ostensibly, because of the internet I've been all over America, to England and Ireland, met some really awesome people and have had a handful of people think I'm some important guy. And at the end of the day or the tour or the show, I go home and go to bed and go to work the next day. If the internet can make people who are honest as lucky as it has made me, and steal money from the small-hearted whores who try to rid music of all it's fun, charm, mystique and energy only to replace it with marketing messages, then the internet is gonna save rock and roll. Which is ironic because it's totally for nerds.
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