HBO’s rockumentary The Promise: The Making of The Darkness at the Edge of Town aired last night and I caught the second half of it. I hope to make time to see the whole documentary, and to write about it here, but I was struck at the narrative about an album that flows through the film.
These days, my students rarely own albums. As has been the case for nearly 15 years, college students download (legally or otherwise) singles. Early on, there was push-back from Radiohead and others about the decontextualization of an album that iTunes’ 99 cent downloads wrought. Combined with a flurry of concept records in the early 2000s (from The Flaming Lips, Bruce Springsteen, The Fiery Furnaces), it seemed like indie artists would resist the sovereignty of the single. But that seems like a long time ago.
The films story of the artistic struggle of producing a record – as a whole – is a compelling argument for the notion of an album. While vinyl sales are strong among young people, I fear that the core viewing audience for the film are the same folks who subscribed to Tracks. Nevertheless, Bruce and the band’s negotiations, struggles, aspirations, and tensions are on full display, speaking not only to the poetics of cultural production, but also providing historical roots for discussions of thumbing ones’ nose at industry trends.
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