Micropreneurship is Punk Rock

Back in the 1970s, in the darkest days of mass media, we were all still presumed to be industrial age workers looking for life-long jobs. After a tough day at the office or factory, we might come home and watch TV or listen to music by privileged, aging, post-hippie rock bands still selling us dreams of sex, drugs, rock and roll and liberation -- provided to us by the music companies. As a young musician (vocalist) in a small town, the idea that you could get together and write and perform original music was simply unthinkable. One of my talented friends became a clone of Todd Rundgren and played nothing but Todd music, occasionally performing in a Rundgren/Utopia clone band. Another friend played nothing but Frank Zappa. That kid was so talented on the guitar that he couldn’t find anybody else to play with. Another friend of mine became Keith Richard (you can just imagine), and he played that shit better than Ron Woods does! That suited my vocal style (Mick-like) so we learned every song in the catalogue, but performed only once.

I wrote lots of song lyrics myself but nobody in Binghamton, New York could even imagine starting an original band. Neither, no doubt, could anyone imagine making an independent film or video that anyone would actually see, etc.

If you weren’t there, it’s hard to get across the complete lack of a sense of confidence and power that those of us with a creative streak had in those days. You had to go out and make it really big or you had to give up. You could go out and become a monstrously popular band worthy of a recording contract or move to Hollywood and navigate the TV and film industries. Most likely, you decided that the creative life – where your voice would be heard – was beyond reach, and you accepted your silencing with bitter resignation.

What changed that wasn’t the Internet. What changed it was a bunch of frantic young weirdos with spiky hair and anarchy on their minds. Starting in around 1977, a Do It Yourself (DIY) ethic appeared around punk rock (the music style had been going on in NYC since about 1974). Slowly but surely, young people everywhere got the idea that they could pick up the cheapest tools available to them, learn to play a few chords, start a band, start a small independent music label, start a music club, start a punk “zine”, make punk clothes, ad infinitum.

When I returned to Binghamton New York for a visit in the mid-1980s, all of those friends had been in bands that played original music. They’d made their own records. The “Keith Richards” guy had gotten into making small films and had wound up hanging out with Jack Nicholson in LA. Nobody really made much money, but everybody got a sense of self and a sense of agency in the world. In the context of contemporary culture, THIS is where the “long tail” started.

Of course, one can’t go back and rerun history to see what would have happened if punk rock hadn’t risen up from some strange place in the American and British psyche. But the generations after punk never had any doubts that if they had something to express, there was a way to go out and express it. They new that they didn’t have to be media consumers only. They could be creators (or prosumers.) It is my contention that the entire distributed, participatory internet culture with its YouTubers and bloggers ad infinitum would have gone through a very long slow birth if the new generations hadn’t grown up just assuming that they could “Do It Yourself.” The early adopters would have been far fewer – the ramp up would have been much slower. It’s even conceivable that a more corporate vision of the internet – internet as shopping mall – might have become dominant.

Today, as we decentralize and distribute everything, including jobs and business, we are all punk rockers.