decadence and depravity

Waigeou Spotted Cuscus (Spilocuscus papuensis), family Phalengeridae, order Diprotodontia, endemic to Waigeou Island, Raja Ampat, New Guinea

Way brothers (Revenge era) for @starboystation !

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i've touched on this previously but to elaborate: i don't think people use "selling out" in the same way i do. even in my young punk days where you could sell out just by speaking to a local band that played to like 5 more people than you did, i thought it was fucking bullshit. the way i see it, "selling out" is about integrity, not money.

now! this is where there's a crossover. in many cases, getting signed (to a record label, a publisher, whatever) often means having to adapt and let go of some of your autonomy as a creator. you essentially have a boss, and this boss is a business, and the business wants to make money. it wants to keep whatever it is about your art that's going to sell, and that attracted it in the first place, but it also wants to make you widely appealing and doesn't want to alienate too many potential buyers. so naturally there's varying levels of compromise, and yeah, some people do end up doing something completely different just to appease and get the most money they can. that is selling out.

but this isn't necessarily the case. i think if you set out to do something, and you find the means to do it, and then you continue to do that thing -- or even start doing the thing you set out to do in the first place -- that's not selling out.

say i'm in a band and my dream is to do a my chemical romance-style sold-out arena tour with a full production based around my awesome rock opera album. i'm not going to be able to do that playing local clubs. so me and my bad get good, we put out good stuff, we make sure we're proud of it and that it's still in line with our ethos as artists -- but the end goal remains that big production we've been planning for ages. we eventually get good enough that a big record company with lots of money signs us, and as soon as they're like ok, what would you like to do with your massive budget, we're like. huge fuck-off arena tour promoting this crazy cool album we've always wanted to make. and the record company agrees and funds us. it's a means to an end, and now we're doing precisely what we always wanted to do, that we've always stated we wanted to do. but some of our fans will be looking at us and thinking UGH, as soon as they get that label money they're making this big budget album and selling out arenas. they won't be looking at the art, or our plans for the art all along.