In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C H A P T E R S E V E N The Inscription of Identity in theMusicBusiness Very few musicians in Austin can support themselves through their musical work. Most have other employment, a dayjob, that makes additional demands on their time and energy, diverting some of both from their musical work. A particularly strong tension results from these demands , adding to the pressures to "make it" in the music business. The monotony and low pay of most day jobs signify the lack of intrinsic rewards found in the modernized workplace. By contrast, the apparent freedom of the life of the musician—the ability to set one's hours and to follow spontaneously one's desires in the search for pleasurable meaning, as well as the immediate rewards experienced in successful performance—looms as a Utopian image of the way life and work might be structured. As rock'n'roll musicians in Austin develop their music in the pursuit of this Utopian image, they make their way through a local system of music-making. They find that they must become able to project their identity beyond the confines of the immediate scene. Gatekeepers in the system—influential fans, critics, booking agents—will more actively promote the band's performances once the band has successfully translated their projected identity into a set of musical signs that can be understood apart from the local performancecontext. A band's first tour is an important step toward developing this ability,but, even more importantly, they have to make successful recordings. Although these musicians have been initiallyfocused on the projection of an identity in performance that their fans can re-cognize and return, they soon find that, in order to obtain the more prestigious and well-paying bookings, the favorable write-up in the local paper, or the combination of gossip and streettalk known as a "buzz,," they need to inscribe their projected identity on tape. This process of electronic abstraction demands that D I S S O N A N T I D E N T I T I E S / l6z theV discipline the pure desires of their adolescent Imaginary to fit with the commercial, technological, and ideological structures of the recording industry. Chasing after their Utopian vision of meaningful work, their concept of the end goal of their practice shifts from being able to "not have to work" to being able to "make a living in the music business." This shift, experienced by every successful musician in town, requires multiple dialectical syntheses with a Symbolic enforced by the technologies of late capitalism. The Day Job: To Not Have to Work The day jobs that support Austin musicians are often the sorts of part-time or temporary jobs held by college students. Like most college towns, Austin has a wide variety of local businesses that both cater to student consumers and prefer to hire the relatively cheap labor of parttime student workers. These workers are believed to share the tastes and the values—the consumption culture—of the intended market, and they keep payroll costs down. Most of the student workers either leave town or change jobs annually.Therefore, they do not acquire much seniority , and their wages stay low. The most significant savings for the employer, however, derive from the fact that these employees work less than full time. Part-time student workers receive reduced benefits, and the total wage package becomes much smaller.Many restaurants, book and record stores, and clothing and food stores in Austin take advantage of this pool of cheap labor. In return, employers allow a greater flexibility in scheduling and dress and demand a slightly lower level of attentive performancefrom their student workers. It isexpected that the students' main concerns lie elsewhere—ostensibly, with their studies— and that the exigencies of exams or papers might require a temporary work absence that other student employees could cover.1 Over the past twenty years, this labor market exchange of low pay and few benefits for flexible schedules and minimal performance demands has moved beyond the pool of student workers to include groups of nonstudents who have similar outside interests and requirements. The large group of artists, dancers, and musicians in Austin has tapped into this system, and businesses that cater to this nontraditional population have begun to adopt similar hiring practices and employment policies.2 Discarding the term "hip," this population is becoming known as the "alternative community" that supports and is supported by "alternative businesses."3 One...

Share