Our Podcast Could Be Your Life
Everything is a remix.
There's a wonderful book I tell everyone in business to read even though it's not a business book.
Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad.
It chronicles the careers of several underground rock bands who, while finding little or no mainstream success, were hugely influential in establishing American alternative and indie rock, mostly through nearly constant touring and records released on small, regional independent record labels.
These bands, may or may not sound familiar to you depending on your musical taste.
Bad Brains. Black Flag. Circle Jerks. Dead Kennedys. Husker Du. Minutemen. Mission of Burma. 7 Seconds. Suicidal Tendencies.
These bands didn't just entertain. They unified other misfits and black sheeps to find one another. And prosper in a complete alternative economy and ecosystem outside the boundaries of the accepted mainstream. However, in revisionist musical history the timeline established by the corporate music journalists is that we went from a punk rock CBGB explosion with bands like the Ramones and Talking Heads in the 1970s straight to the rise of Nirvana in the early 1990s.
We left out the entire middle of the 1980s which is the best part. How subcultures can thrive in a conservative era way more than the mainstream culture everyone highlights. How they built a community in real time across the globe.
The best part? It rarely got mentioned in mainstream reporting.
Why this book and why do I mention it now?
It tells the stories of real human bands that led one of the last bigger waves of counterculture community that spread globally. The hardcore punk and alternative music scenes at a time when the corporate music machines were generating slop for the masses. Bubblegum pop. Hair metal. Candy R&B.
Sound familiar?
History doesn't repeat but it certainly rhymes.
Our Band Could Be Your Life narrates, down to the homemade posters and tour van repairs, how these bands gradually built up an audience large enough to make record labels and critics take notice.
So what does any of this have to do with the title of this particular post and podcasts?
Because podcasting is the next wave of community. The current crop of podcasts that are popular at the top of the "charts" only seems to tell the story of the top 1%. It's leaving out who truly is the new wave.
Podcasting grew out of the alternative specialty radio show format that was popular in the late 1990s/early 2000s. These were shows, basically blocks of time that were either one or two hours, buried late at night on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night that went "off format" from what that station usually programmed.
These were shows hosted by creators who loved the music or tackled a niche topic where listener participation was heavily emphasized. Eventually, these shows either went away, pushed off the air due to the endless need for "performance," or were swept up for national syndication.
The majority stayed true to the independent spirit. Keeping true to their core audience and not giving in or selling out.
We're seeing similar patterns and trends now emerging with this indie wave of media. For many of us, we would be fine if we had 200 listeners who loved what we had to share with the world. We know smaller communities thrive more than large, faceless ones. But the quantification of everything made that difficult. "What do you mean you only have 200 followers, listeners, downloads?" Like so much of our quantified life, we give too much weight to metrics that are meaningless. Quality gives in to popularity. We seem to want everything to be a prom king/queen contest instead of a rise in collective consciousness. We put more emphasis on the dumb and arrogant over the intelligent and the humble.
As social media becomes the equivalent of junk mail, podcasting is going in a new direction. Some of the best podcasters are now thinking beyond digital, packing up the van and taking their show "on the road" to broadcast in front of those small audiences. To build connection. To foster community. To show that they aren't part of the 1%. To follow in the footsteps established in Our Band Could Be Your Life.
Not everyone has to be a Joe Rogan or an Alex Cooper, a Scott Galloway or a Diary of a CEO. In a lot of ways, I feel sad for these big shows. They can't say the things they think they can. They're less free because they're restrained by their paid sponsors. And they would never touch a topic like this because it would never get enough "hearts" on a TikTok.
The independent podcaster is more important right now than ever before.
Why?
Because what they are doing is creating space for the next wave. They're leaving Ayn Rand individualism for a higher collective good. They are plowing down the manosphere and establishing a blueprint for humans to connect in real life in third spaces. They are looking for people to connect on depth and nuance and not 10 second attention highjacks. They are getting people to realize we have more in common than we have differences. They are allowing the next big Nirvana to rise to the spotlight.
Our podcast could be your life.
With a name on a t-shirt or a laptop sticker.
Traveling in a van to talk into a microphone and take your questions in a room in your town soon.
But it's not the creators that we will focus on as these indie shows grow. It's the other people in the room, the misfits, the black sheeps, that these shows will help to unite as participants, and not simply witnesses.
