I had the best existential crisis at the Deerhoof show

A few thoughts on Deerhoof's recent show in Indianapolis.

A few weeks ago, my colleague Paul Goodenough (his given, magical name) asked me a simple question, “Are you going to the Deerhoof show at Healer on Friday?”

“What?” I responded, in confusion. The knowledge the Bay Area bastion of experimental art rock was playing Indianapolis’ weirdest music venue and art space had somehow slipped beneath my radar. I had never seen Deerhoof perform, but I contributed animation to one of their music videos once.

My life has strange parallels to Goodenough’s. As I shared in the welcome post to this newsletter, I spent the better part of 2016 managing Joyful Noise Recordings’ record store and music venue, then located in the Murphy Arts Center in Indy’s Fountain Square neighborhood. It was a fraught, unsustainable endeavor I look back on with fondness.

Joyful Noise released an LP in 2010 named Blue Sky Raging Sun by a Chicago band called Berry. Goodenough was their drummer. I still have the copy I swiped while working at the label’s headquarters, one of several I scored to supplement my nominal, hourly income running the venue and record store.

These days, I work in communications at IU Health Foundation. Goodenough, a chaplain at IU Health, works at the Foundation once a week to fulfill a grant he secured to implement sustainability efforts. Through water cooler conversations about shared interests, we discovered our mutual connections. Like I said, strange parallels.

Goodenough still plays drums. Indy residents may have seen his band Light Study open the Record Store Day show at Luna Music. Light Study released a self-titled record in April that’s worth your time and ears.

Shortly after Paul’s question, I purchased a ticket to the Deerhoof show. That Friday, I showed up at a reimagined strip mall on Raymond Street on the southeast side of Indy with little expectations. I’m no aficionado of Deerhoof’s catalog. I generally like what friends who are fans play for me, but it’s not a band I find myself called to put on the turntable after my four year-old goes to bed.

From what I know of Deerhoof’s music, it’s frenetic and challenging, driven by drummer Greg Saunier and lead singer Satomi Matsuzaki. The fact they were playing Indy at all seemed noteworthy, let alone an unassuming abandoned strip mall packed wall-to-wall with art installations defying logic and good taste. I hadn’t attended a show at Healer since before the pandemic.

Moments after I walked into the venue, I was warmly greeted by an old friend named Derek Johnson. He’s an incredible guitarist and composer who still operates a studio on the third floor of the Murphy Building above the former Joyful Noise space. Classically trained, you can often find Johnson playing guitar or bass with regional orchestras like Louisville and the Evansville Philharmonic. He has also performed with more contemporary ensembles like Bang on a Can. During my time holding down the record store, he was the noisy guy upstairs teaching himself to play drums as a creative release, physical exercise, and mental challenge. It made me quite happy while catching up before Deerhoof took the stage when he said he still drums on occasion.

After we hugged, Johnson smiled and said, “I knew this show was going to bring people out of the woodwork.” He was right. The audience was a patchwork of people I’ve been catching shows with for more than 15 years. It felt like a Weirdo Reunion.

When I worked at Joyful Noise, I told the label’s founder, Karl Hofstetter, I unlocked what I believed to be its identity: divisiveness. Every act on the label’s roster is either your favorite musician in the world or an artist you actively hate. Very few Joyful Noise artists live anywhere in between. Hofstetter doesn’t sign provocateurs. He’s just disinterested in any sort of safe, complacent middle.

Deerhoof began its set, and it was immediately obvious every member of the band is virtuosic on their instrument. They all rip all the time – an unrelenting, aural assault. Though Matsuzaki sings, Saunier was the only band member to address the crowd between songs. His stage banter is funny and dry. The 56 year-old talked about recently regrowing out his hair and feeling like he’s finally hit his teenage years.

Sarcastically, he said after Derhoof had spent so many years achieving top 40 hits and appealing to the masses, he finally feels free to do whatever he wants to creatively. The irony lies in the fact that Deerhoof is devoid of hits. They’ve spent more than 30 years doing whatever its members want without exception. They’ve always been your favorite artist’s artist.

A week after the show at Healer Deerhoof announced it would pull its music from Spotify in response to the streaming platform’s founder, Daniel Ek’s $700 million investment in an AI military start-up. Am I surprised a billionaire tech bro sees AI military software as the next frontier? No, I’m not. Does ethical streaming exist? That’s a larger conversation worthy of another debate. I won’t put forth an answer here. The only thing less surprising than Ek’s investment, is Deerhoof’s swift rebuke of it.

On Instagram, Deerhoof shared the following explanation for the band’s departure from the streaming giant:

“We’re taking Deerhoof off Spotify.

Daniel Ek uses $700 million of his Spotify fortune to become of AI battle tech company” was not a headline we enjoyed reading this week. We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.

We are privileged that it was a pretty easy decision for us. Spotify only pays a pittance anyway, and we earn a lot more from touring. But we also understand that other artists and labels do rely on Spotify for a bigger chunk of their income, and don’t judge those who can’t make the same move in the short term.

AI battle tech is clearly emerging as the hot new big ticket item for the super-rich. It’s increasingly clear that the military and police exist primarily as the security detail for the billionaire class. The more of the killing you can get computers to do, the better your bottom line.

Computerized targeting, computerized extermination, computerized destabilization for profit, successfully tested on the people of Gaza since last year, also finally solves the perennial inconvenience to war-makers – It takes human compassion and morality out of the equation.

Spotify is flushing itself down the toilet. Eventually artists will want to leave this already widely hated data-mining scam masquerading as a “music company.” It’s creepy for users and crappy for artists. Music-making lasts forever, but this or that digital get-rich scheme is sure to become obsolete.

One of the claims often made about Spotify is that it theoretically makes one’s music discoverable by anyone who signs up, no matter how remote they may be from the self-proclaimed centers of happiness. But just because someone is far from Western gatekeepers does not mean they lack culture, or need to hear our band. Deerhoof is a small mom and pop operation, and know when enough is enough. We aren’t capitalists, and don’t wish to take over the world. Especially if the price of “discoverability” is letting oligarchs fill the globe with computerized weaponry, we’re going to pass on the supposed benefits.

The big picture is this: Our politico-economic system increasingly presents humanity with a hideous fait accompli: Buy from me, vote for me, consume my media, use my service. Yes, it means mass deportation, mass detainment, and mass extermination of those deemed unprofitable by a handful of rich white people living in enclaves protected by AI weaponry. But if you don’t, you cannot have a job. We think this dilemma is coming to a head soon, and we predict that most people aren’t going to take the billionaires’ side.

We aren’t sure exactly how soon the takedowns can happen, but it will be as soon as possible. We want to thank our various labels for their support on this tricky decision. The grunt work of pulling content off Spotify is something they’re now tasked with, and they are sharing the financial hit. We know we are asking them to make a sacrifice, and it means a lot to us.”

Deerhoof’s show at Healer was the best live music experience I’ve had in a long time – pure art for art’s sake from start to finish. It was exactly the type of beautiful, communal artistic experience I found myself starved for during the height of the pandemic. It was great to share it with so many people I’ve loved for the last decade-and-a-half, alongside a lot of other Deerhoof nerds I’ve never met. Thanks, Healer. Thanks, Joyful Noise. Thanks, Deerhoof. Thanks, Indy.