Office Culture

I caught up with a friend a few months ago, who works for tripple j. It's fantastic for her as she has landed a dream job and achieved what is truly most important in life which is waking up everyday excited about the day ahead.
I was overly harsh as triple j the icon of my youth parted ways in a manner upsetting to me suffice to say I have a lot of questions about the office culture of triple j and management staff that I couldn't resist questioning and was even worse at resisting the temptation to be judgemental and harsh.
But it's worth noting that even like the most conservative banking operation on Collins St melbourne triple j it seems has a culture as strong and uniform within it.
I find this interesting because to me it suggests that bright colours of many varieties can conceal a monoculture and a monoculture is how a company or organisation or political party can lose touch with the public.
One can look at the evolution of the Simpsons as an example of this regular cycle - simpsons was innovative when it came out, my parents wouldn't let me watch it. Nobody (in the west at least) had concieved of a cartoon for adults at all, dealing with adult themes and using sophisticated humour was an innovator. There were a few shortlived contenders in the early years against the Simpsons which grew to be a heavyweight in the entertainment industry.
But alas it became institutionalised and for it's original audiance when shows like South Park and to a lesser extent family guy came along it got left in the dust. Simpsons is now mainstream and one of the most wholesome comedy shows in the west beloved by Christians even used to educate young people about Christianity. In the decade of it's first years the simppsons went from controversial to Cosby.
Much like the good old stoner Bill Cosby himself.
In this regard if indeed jjj have formed a monoculture it would be particulalry upsetting as it has an undue monopoly as a government sponsored national youth radio station.
Furthermore with the rise of jmag and jtv triple j has become the conglomerate, the government now having one organisation representing its views on Radio, Television and Print. Which is neither unique nor unusual as the ABC itself has done the same for years. Yet talkback influential though it is and certainly proven again and again effective in helping create rightwing monocultures the world over isn't an organisation dedicated to propagating youth culture, the new, the cool and the trendy- namely alternative.
Which in the early 90's & late 80's if you look at it was still dominated by the California Bay Area and interspersed with British modern pop and techno outfits like the prodigy. I don't know enough about the international music market and what drove such a diverse range of groups - (At the time Alternative could mean Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, Primus, Fun Lovin Criminals, The Eels, Ash, Oasis etc. with some subcategories such as Techno like the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers and Grunge which more or less was Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Sound Garden, themselves three bands with little in common) and this era has become the one I stagnantly retain my expertise in. I used to know not only who's who in the music world but who knew who and what side projects they were in together and whose sister who had dated.
But then came New Metal and the vast alternative genre shrank a little with the rise of Korn and Limp Bizkit to lead into eventually down the track Emo which I don't understand at all.
Suffice to say kids will always find new upcoming bands the cool ones and as a process of aging people seem to get stuck on the bands they liked as teenagers. However morley did seem to write this about the Emo kids (well more about myspace):

Ugh. So I'm on Facebook now. I don't even know why. I hate myself so much for it. But my fucking moron friends kept hassling me and hassling me until I caved in and set up an account. God you people have no appreciation of how well I treat you. Anyway I don't want to talk about it too much because I feel like by being on Facebook I'm really just using myspace with a different colour scheme. And I swore I would never get on myspace. Not unless I released an emo single and want to market it to wussy whiny teenage kids with reverse mullets who are just going to pirate it anyway.

I can't wait until we have our own 'Understanding over 50's show' in 25 years time. Suffice to say there seem to be decades to be a teenager in that are better than other decades and without knowing the scientific reasons why they were - the 90's and the 60's. I haven't researched much on the '30's so my every thirty years isn't the soundest theory.
Furthermore I noticed circa Marylin Manson Mechainical Animals we were already having 80's revivals in the 90's.
I'm going to hit enter a couple of times now because I'm back onto my broken record track







Anyway the point is Triple J is large, it's a huge player in the music industry and 'the hottest 100' has become a prize worth lots of shiney dollars though the organisation itself may claim not to be in it for the money. The fact is that getting that top spot provides enough incentive for a record company to try and claim top honours.
Furthermore for young aspiring Australian bands getting airtime on jjj is a must. Thanks to the internet almost anyone can apply - which is good. Thanks to the market monopoly triple j has, the people who decide which ones the public eventually get to hear are relatively few. Not I assume that any programming manager at SYN will ever tell you it's not a thankless task and www.somethingawful.com's popular segment 'your band sucks' doesn't turf up a fair few bands that do truly suck. But again the danger presented is one of monoculture.
Similar to the Liberal party as it's power has increased has forced us to digest less and less appealing policy.
In fact the one major overhaul triple j underwent was driven by said government getting sick of the percieved bias triple j was 'pushing' leading to 30 minutes of current affairs programming and the awful under 18's night.
Before that there was the introduction of the net 50 aswell which was where the dj's sounded like commercial station dj's and I more or less stopped listening to it.
Which is to say one cannot doubt on looking at triple j that they aren't a business like NAB or BHP or Telstra because their dj's have trendy haircuts, were casual clothes and sponsor music festivals and talk to rock stars from overseas.
Yet my friend at jtv told me when she got to melbourne she felt self conscious about being dressed up in beads and bangles and 'alternative clothes' not in any way shameful about it or feeling their integrity has been compromised, but by the same token I'm probably worse off in that I hate wearing suits, so I don't I just wear hondarised polo shirts to work and If i bought some monogrammed shorts I'd wear those too.
But simply that they are self conscious of a corporate culture. Bangles are no more ridiculous and non functional than neck ties the most obscure but easily recognised symbol of the businessman (and alternative rock chick Avril Lavigne) which is the traditional dress of croatia worn by men to signify they were married similar to the wedding band in the west.
A corporate culture is simply whatever culture a corporation happens to have and that it's members feel obliged to mimic (whether they enjoy the style or not) to fit in.
I imagine a young person who wore french cuffed business shirts in the jjj offices and Zegna suits would feel as out of place as someone with forearm tattoos and purple hair would feel in most corporate companies, although this is changing.
What I expect though is that the international alternative music scene has more oligopolies than monopolies like triple j holds over the Aria awards.
Fact is if you want to make it in Australia a few people at triple j have to say 'I like you' whereas under britains new chart system a few million different people have to download your track from the internet (as they have recognised sales of singles as being diminishingly representative of actual tastes and preferences) now Britain land of pop has a music industry I don't understand where in the 90's the choices were Pop or Techno and produced relatively few bands that could play instruments.
But the big step forward is the internet is instantly global, and furthermore you don't need to have large government resources backing you to broadcast. No doubt jjj's podcasting will be more popular than overnight starters as they have a large invested brand name. But why get your hip hop from jjj's hip hop show when you could get it from a station on the east or west coast of the US?
Why get your Indie Rock from jjj when you could get it from K-rock. I realise if each genre ends up dominated by single radio stations and there's only 7 of them in the world then that is bad for discovering all the diverse acts in the world.
From a global perspective sure, but if that's what's been happening anyway except filtered through the tastes and preferences of jjj's programming manager, a station now with such a tradition of newness I doubt they'd tolerate music being discovered by another Australian station and having to promote that.
I even read Richard Kingsmill's justification for having Kanye West feature so predominantly in their hottest 100 and Bernard Fanning taking out top honours as 'We new they were going to be great albums we were playing them first' Kanye West yes, Bernard Fanning no.
So if the alternative music scene continues to have the same dj's on the same radio station (with dj's moving directly from jjj to vega fm) for another ten years my hopethesis will be it will form a monoculture and be undercut by a new up and comer.
Admittedly every major city has truly excellent community radio stations to chose from generally.
And there's always shitty myspace music failing that.