TUBSTACK 1: THE SHAME FLUTE
the financial, sexual, moral and spiritual humiliation of the modern musician.
Welcome to Tubstack- a monthly newsletter from me: Owen Williams from The Tubs. I write a lot of prose when I’m not making music, so this will be a place for my non-fiction work. Each month, I’ll share a long-form essay about music, usually from a cultural or political standpoint rather than a straight music criticism one. I’ll also be incorporating some memoir-ish stuff about the suicide of my musician mother, and how that’s shaped my relationship with music, politics, morality etc. I feel there could be some more spite and snark in contemporary music writing and maybe I’d say I’m taking a ‘heterodox’ approach if I knew what that meant. I’ll also be including some unreleased Tubs music, and maybe some Tubs-style covers of my other bands’ songs for paid subscribers. Maybe even some fiction too.
1.
The Shame Flute was a torture device used to publicly humiliate annoying musicians in the Middle Ages. A heavy, unplayable iron flute would be shackled around the neck of the victim, his fingers clamped to the keys, and members of the public would turn up to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at him. I think of The Shame Flute whenever I encounter a sponsored Instagram story from an amateur gen-z musician. The algorithm knows I linger on them so I’ve gradually become inundated.
They’re usually re-uploaded Tiktoks that make use of the ‘POV’ trend. Here are the last four:
POV: you and your cute queer friends started a pop punk band as group therapy, now you’re about to play your first festival ☀️
POV: you’ve found your favourite new midwest emo vibes band and you’re literally one of their first fans???
POV: WAFFLE HOUSE 2AM * metal band plays in empty waffle house at 2am*
POV: you’re an indie artist, haven’t released music for more than 6 months- write a very emotional song about ur past- release it as a single and it hits 40k streams bc it’s added to 18 NEW MUSIC FRIDAY PLAYLISTS??! 🫢
They’re all a bit like this. They might invoke a sense of intimacy based on some shared identity trait (mental illness, queerness, a love of pop punk). You might be one of their first fans before they blow up. They might try to grab your attention with a viral stunt. Most of the time, per example 4, they’ll play a confidence trick using high production values and playlist stats to suggest they’re more established than they are.
I linger because these videos produce a weird mix of feelings in me: sadness, exhaustion, amusement, confusion. But mostly because, on some sad level, they make me feel superior. I’m 32 and don’t understand Tiktok. I neither have the authority nor knowledge to take the piss. But I do anyway because it eases my own humiliation: a humiliation I believe all musicians now experience in unprecedented and interesting ways. You might be a ‘pro’ or an ‘amateur’. A zoomergazer caught in a Tiktok marketing whirlwind. A Millennial hardcore punk haunted by a creeping sense of gracelessness and precarity. A once popular 90s alt-country songwriter failing to secure a housing deposit due to your chequered employment history. Whoever you are, if you’re playing music today you're being humiliated and humiliating yourself. Sometimes The Flute’s shackled for you, sometimes you shackle it yourself.
2.
These gen-z musicians I stalk occupy a sad mirror world where it’s normal to perform jester’s tricks and beg down the barrel of a camera like a hostage. A world where heightened feelings are prized and songs must be summarised by emotional ‘hooks’ but it’s impossible to tell if anything is felt.
In the past, a certain level of mystique was encouraged. Contact between musicians and audiences was mediated and rationed through shows and interviews with the press. And while there are zoomers who see the worth in this and forgo Tiktok, those who use it participate in a new self-surveillance culture. You must continuously hawk your wares and provide access to your home, inner life and past experiences. Not only this, but you have to do so with the forced, cloying familiarity of the sales rep. And while I’ll get onto the inherent sexual debasement of modern musicianship, it’s worth restating that there’s something inherently unattractive and un-mysterious about pitching via selfie camera. It’s a degrading situation endured by the successful and unsuccessful alike. Though, in this mirror world, that distinction has also become an anachronism.
Let’s say one of your tracks, probably unwittingly, becomes a sound on a Tiktok trend. It might rack up millions of streams but not necessarily lead to a label deal, national tour or any of the old markers of success. The excitement of going viral won’t fade, however, and with increasing desperation, you’ll accelerate your sales rep tactics. If you do find there’s demand for a tour, the crowds will remain nonplussed until you play your viral track. Maybe it goes really well and you’re snapped up by Universal (whose A&Rs have become TikTok meteorologists). After some buttering up, they’ll wipe your back catalogue, release ‘sped up’ and ‘slowed down’ versions of the track and drop you when you don’t repeat your fluke. I’ve seen all of these scenarios play out among younger friends/acquaintances. And, though I don’t know any popstars, it seems that even if it goes exceptionally well, you’ll still find your music suppressed if you don’t post enough relatable daily Tiktoks.
Failure, too, has become opaque, which is more depressing. There will always be some account, probably with an ulterior motive, stoking the faint hope your music might be genuinely connecting with someone. And so, again, you’ll accelerate your self-intrusive marketing tactics because you’ve been denied the essential mercy of failing and moving on. One strangely meta TikTok trend I noticed recently summed up all of this. It involves zoomers filming phonecalls or posting screenshots of their rejections from major label A & Rs, always with the caption:
"This is why the music industry is broken 💔"
The label rejection, whether spoken or typed, is always phrased exactly the same:
Sorry mate we love the music but we can't sign anything with under 50k tiktok or Instagram followers.
Do all of these A & Rs use the same rejection template? Or are these musicians fabricating their own rejections and paying to have them sponsored to gain more followers? Who knows. But the weirdest bit is: these pages often actually do have over 50k followers.
3.
I’m pretty sure most millennial musicians don’t use Tiktok- though the ones who do are obviously the most wretched of all. The millennial musician’s humiliation is more rooted in a sense of immaturity and irresponsibility. Ageing in music has never been easy. And, in some ways, it’s actually less of an issue these days. An also-ageing indie fanbase, and the atomisation of streaming culture, means older musicians can carve out their own audiences, scenes, and touring circuits. But while your age might be less of an issue inside the industry, it’s now more of one outside it. In the real world, you might want kids, and find you can’t afford childcare because show fees haven’t risen with the cost of inflation, and your recorded music’s been gradually devalued. As your responsibilities increase, you’ll find it harder and harder to justify your pursuit. Yet if you’re doing fairly well, you’re probably also being encouraged by strangers on the internet to carry on. It’s one thing to give up your dreams when no one cares, another when you’re being reviewed everywhere, dmed by fans, beckoned by promoters to Oslo or wherever. Many of us live this double life. I was recently forced into an un-arranged overdraft because I’d taken a week off my service industry day job to play a festival in Melbourne’s town hall. We were put up in a fancy hotel, and, sipping on some complimentary sparkling wine, I frantically tried to pick up extra cover shifts for the following week before I was hit with extra charges from the bank. Thankfully, I’m middle class enough to be able to partake in the rarified humiliation ritual of asking my dad for twenty quid.
But let’s say you’re a millennial unencumbered by responsibility. Maybe you’re single, uninterested in starting a family or earning money. Good start. But you still probably want to get your end away. The issue is: being a musician ceased to be interesting decades ago, and now, if anything, it’s a dating red flag. Being a millennial guy who plays in a band will signal to most prospects that you’re a penniless man-child. Cue the ‘men who play acoustic guitar’ memes. You’re seen as a ‘rock band’ version of the growing cohort of millennials who, as the writer Amber A’Lee Frost puts it: “read young adult fiction, watch YA movies and TV, are dutiful completists of every all-ages franchise they’re sold, from Pixar to Marvel. They need a nap, and a treat, and time to scroll through a million instructional “adulting” videos that teach them how to poach an egg or fold their clothes.”
Even owning a guitar runs the risk of being sexually humiliating: just look at the art world dominatrixes who make a point of zeroing in on the acoustics sitting in the corners of their subs’ bedrooms. I was dating for a bit when I hit 30, and having to explain what ‘jangle pop’ means always signalled a low point. Though liking guitar music - the love that dare not speak its name - obviously didn't help. And while it’s obviously more embarrassing for men, I think it goes for anyone introducing themselves as a musician or artist today. Performing live, especially, will risk sexual repulsion even if you’re good. Maybe especially if you’re good.
Kate Nash recently announced she was going to ‘sell pictures of her bum on Onlyfans’ as part of a ‘campaign’ called Butts 4 Tour Buses. (Buses?) Some online commentators labelled this ‘sad’ which started a back and forth about whether Nash was humiliating herself. I don’t think she is, apart from maybe the Carry On vibe, use of ‘bum’ etc. What’s really humiliating is the fact she’s a musician. More specifically: that she’s Kate Nash and it’s 2024 and there are cracks in the foundations of our cultural reality, and though she knows she should let go, she can’t.
4.
Spotify’s recent ‘Loud & Clear’ report argued that musician’s who don’t earn a living from their streaming model are akin to the “hundreds of millions of people who self-identify as footballers”. The report caused some controversy, considering Spotify has moved the goalposts. This felt particularly galling for the ‘squeezed middle’ of relatively popular musicians whose earning potential has been decimated by their very model. Who, like myself, have chased a mirage. These are the most cucked musicians, because to be cucked you have to be married. You have to have some claim, however violated, on the object of your desire. What’s worse is we all obviously have Spotify subscriptions ourselves. Have you ever seen someone lick their own boot? It’s humiliating.
There was a backlash but, more interestingly, a backlash-to-the-backlash. Browse Reddit and you’ll find comments along the lines of: “I’m sick of musicians feeling entitled to make money from their music. If they’re actually good, they’ll make money. There are too many musicians anyway.” I read some similar comments re: Kate Nash’s bum. And though I support any attempt to redistribute profits towards musicians, some masochistic part of me feels like these people are right. We don’t really need any more musicians. No one’s breaking new ground. Everyone agrees that music, like most culture, is trapped in a timewarp.
Some even argue that pursuing music is actually immoral in itself. The careers-advice NGO 80,000 Hours makes the case that becoming an artist, rather than say, developing proteins to help create new tuberculosis medicines, is essentially a selfish act, especially in an age of creative over-saturation. You wear the Shame Flute not just because you’re annoying but because you’re bad. And, to make things worse, a lot of millennials spent the last decade being very morally literal, and now get a little sheepish if you bring up some of their youthful political declarations. Some have carried on with that stuff. In my ‘research’ for this essay, I noticed a few once-popular millennial bands being roasted on Tiktok, Katy Perry style, for their ‘cringe’ new songs about feminist/queer empowerment. A lot of these bands, in their attempt to fill a humiliating emptiness with moral purpose, have ended up humiliating themselves further. One bright spot is that a lot of this political energy has been directed towards the more specific and vital support for the BDS movement and pro-Palestinian fundraising. Those musicians who haven’t bothered contributing to any of this, but spent the last decade grandstanding on social media, have their own spiritual humiliation to deal with.
5.
I grew up surrounded by musicians. My mum was a folk singer, and, in the 2000s, my parents were very integrated in Cardiff’s indie world. They played something of a parental role in the scene. I’d often come home from school and find some members of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci playing in the dining room, or be kept awake by mum singing folk songs with Alistair Roberts. They ran a night at Chapter Arts Centre, where they’d put on touring alt country bands, so I’d often find someone like Victoria Williams or a member of The Jayhawks asleep on a futon in the living room while I was getting ready for school. I took little interest at the time. But it’s now obvious how much of this atmosphere I absorbed by osmosis, how I took certain ideas of what it is to be a working musician as read. A lot of them seemed broke and dysfunctional, but it nonetheless appeared to be a lifestyle.
I’m probably seeing that world through rose-tinted glasses now. But in the aftermath of my mum’s suicide, music became very important. Alasdair Roberts recorded a song and emailed it to my dad, and we listened to it, hunkered down in our grief bunker. At her funeral, her old bandmates sang a version of Sonic Youth’s Cotton Crown they used to perform. We all travelled to London for a memorial gig organised by my dad, and everyone played her songs in various combinations. Music suddenly took on one of its old social functions as a means of communal grief.
So I feel an extra sadness when I hear news of one of these gen-xers falling on hard times, being punished for continuing to pursue what was once feasible, even profitable, in the 90s. That NGO might say it’s their fault for recklessly continuing to follow their passion. But how easy is it, really, to shift careers in your fifties or sixties? How do you, amidst a housing crisis, convince a landlord to choose you as a tenant, when in their eyes, you’re essentially a vagrant? My dad recently started a gofundme for a friend in this position: the musician and writer Anthony Reynolds. Anthony was my mum’s bandmate and co-songwriter on her final album, played in 90s indie band Jack, collaborated with Vashti Bunyan, and has authored several well-received books about The Walker Brothers, Jeff Buckley Leonard Cohen. He’s now homeless. To quote the gofundme page:
The UK housing crisis and the stigma of being a 50 something self-employed musician/writer has made finding a new flat difficult. He has been on the council waiting list for accommodation for years, but even homeless, the most they've been able to offer him is a possible bed in a notoriously violent and drug-ridden homeless hostel….He has no savings. The dominance of music streaming and its notoriously pitiful royalty rate has shrunk any earnings from music publishing to a negligible amount.
You hear similar stories. My mind goes to another fundraising page: this time for the folk legend Dick Gaughan, who, after having had ‘what might have been a stroke’, was forced to rely on donations while he rested. Two dire examples. But I often find, in my conversations with gen-x musicians, some version of this. I remember one 90s indie rock hero of mine, drunkenly asking me “what’s happened? why don’t I have any money?” like he’d just woken up from a coma.
6.
I don’t have an optimistic note to end this essay on. The only thing that springs to mind is a quote from the popstar SZA. It’s hard to feel sorry for one of the biggest recording artists in the world, but she recently spoke interestingly with Rolling Stone about the public ridicule she’s faced. She talked candidly of her desire to quit music, to disappear from view, and of the humiliation the public and her label have put her through. Explaining why she ultimately carried on, she said:
“Ideas have more power than identity. Most of my creativity is based on ideas. Those have nothing to do with me. They are just things I see in my head and my heart which I have to get off my chest. And I believe in that damn near more than I believe in myself.”
This doesn’t offer any hope for the situation to improve, but it at least reminds us why we endure these multiplying humiliations. It’s the urge to be a conduit for ideas- ideas hopefully more dignified and sublime than ourselves.
Though if they’re bad ideas, you have little hope and you’ll still be wearing The Shame Flute when you’re in hell for selling pictures of your bum.
Great piece