Chapter 4
Eight hours later I was on a flight to Reno, listening to Siberian Meat Grinder’s “Hail to the Tsar” on my headphones. I’d been getting into all this Russian music lately – punk-influenced metal and hip-hop mostly, but also some older Russian goth stuff.
I appreciated tech, in my own way.
Back in my previous incarnation as an angry young street punk, one of the main obsessions most of the punks had was hatred for the music industry. The punk ethic was DIY: start your own record label or your own distributor, stay away from the industry or be labelled a sell-out. Important bands, bands everybody loved, were cut off and abandoned by the punk underground if they signed major label record deals. Maximum Rock n Roll even ran an anti-major-label extra feature right after Kurt Cobain
