Can Bands Still Exist Without the Internet?

One of the best punk bands today has zero Internet presence. Deliberately. No website, no Facebook, no Twitter. They are virtually un-Likeable.

I can’t even say who it is because I feel like I belong to some punk rock fight club and the first rule is that I’m not allowed to talk about Punk Rock Fight Club, so I’ll just say that they are a crustpunk band from Memphis and they are a pretty huge name in their genre for their works in other notable crustpunk bands whose names I also can’t say. They are like the Voldemort of punk and I respect that. Like Voldemort, they are dark and also ridiculously heavy and chaotic. Sometimes, I put them on, close my eyes, and pretend I’m in some dystopian future where the world is crumbling around me and I’m a soldier in a rebel army, fighting alongside the demons of Hades, and I’m all, “Lock and load, motherfuckers! Let’s do this thing!” They are my favorite, I love them.

While they’re obviously not the only punk band to support an Internet lockout, I’d argue that they are the biggest. The fact that they don’t have any online presence is actually not much of a problem. I’m genuinely glad that they don’t have an Instagram account where they can only sully their mystique by posting photos of what they ate for breakfast, which—in my mind—is a hearty meal of motor oil and broken glass. The only time it’s inconvenient for me as a fan is when I want to find info on their tour dates, because I like to catch them every time they come to town. Occasionally, I’ll get an e-mail newsletter from local venues and concert promoters announcing shows with their name on it, and I get a wicked show-boner until I remember that there is also a heavy metal Bee Gees cover band of the same name and it’s most likely them.

But despite not having an online vehicle for announcing their upcoming tours, I’ve still managed to see this band half a dozen times in the last few years, and every time, they’ve played to a full house, so apparently, the Zero Internet Tolerance policy of theirs still works in today’s share-the-shit-out-of-what-your-band’s-cat-slept-on-today climate. This is partly due to the fact that much like those nude selfies you sent your ex, everything eventually ends up on the Internet. While the band doesn’t personally maintain any social network presence, other people will do it for them. Fans have taken it upon themselves to create profiles for them on Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, iHeartRadio, and whatever these things are: Deezer, simfy, MOG, and Jelli. And while I’ve never met the band personally (I walked past their singer once on my way to the bathroom and mumbled, “What’s up?” and he furrowed his brow at me and I pretended like I was talking to someone behind him), from what I know of them, they’d probably hate being associated with something called Jelli.

What’s weird, though, is that all four of their full-length albums are available on Spotify. Personally, this doesn’t affect me because, as a supernerd, I own them all on vinyl (no download codes included), which I meticulously catalog alphabetically and then chronologically. The band also sells cassettes at shows, but I won’t go that far. (I said I was a nerd, not a nostalgic loser who still rocks a Walkman.) But it’s strange that their albums are on Spotify because it means that, at some point, seemingly someone in their camp signed off on breaking their anti-digital persona. It’s super confusing to be listening to their songs about societal collapse and have them interrupted to hear Spotify trying to sell me a Zipcar membership. It’s like seeing Ian Mackaye do a Budweiser commercial.

We’ve wandered into a weird territory of Zipcars and Budweiser commercials, so let’s get back to the original question: can bands still exist without the Internet? I guess the answer to this is: yes. Fucking obviously yes. What a stupid question. Why would you even read this article? You don’t need a Twitter account to play music. You only need three chords, and some bands barely have that. After all, Discharge and Dag Nasty and Fear never had websites, and they did pretty fucking okay without them. In fact, in many ways, the Internet is killing punk rock worse than summer festivals or reunion tours. The Internet could explode tomorrow and music would probably be so much better off for it. No more obnoxious requests to like friends’ band on Facebook, no more lame songs about Twitter wars, no more 10,000-word album reviews on Pitchfork.

At the same time, though, it’s 2013 and the stigma that many uppity punks attached to the Internet in its early days has pretty much worn off, so no one is gonna fault you for promoting your band online. Just don’t be that person that goes overboard and makes a Facebook page and a logo for your new band before you’ve even had a single practice. Chances are, your band is gonna fizzle out and all that’s left will be a very a sad Facebook page with 22 likes and a comment that says, “cant wait to hear u guyz :).”

There’s got to be a happy medium here between being curmudgeonly off-the-grid-punx and chronic Internet over-sharers. Maybe just set up a simple website where you can log in three times a year, post your tour dates, and leave it at that. Because without it, unless you're at the top of your game and put out music that is voraciously supported by an underground network of cultish supernerds like me, you’ll likely end up playing to no one. And that would be a tragedy.

Dan Ozzi runs Jaded Punk. He cannot exist without the Internet. That's why he has a Twitter - @danozzi

Previously - Kristen Stewart Has a New Black Flag Tattoo and it Depresses the Hell Out of Me