Los rockeros (subterráneos) no viven a todo tren

Pondré tres ejemplos: Asahito Nanjo de High Rise-Mainliner y muchísimos grupos más, Oliver Ackermann de A place to bury strangers y Sonic Boom de Spacemen 3 y sus proyectos personales.

Empezando por el último porque de él solo tengo el "testimonio" de un músico que giró con Sonic Boom hace unos años. El tipo me contó que el tal Sonic Boom (nombre real Peter Kember) malvivía de los escasos conciertos que le salían, explotando su fama pasada y que era bastante dejado y poco profesional, por lo que muchos promotores no le llamaban una segunda vez.

Oliver Ackermann, guitarrista-cantante de A place to bury strangers, fabricante de los pedales Death by audio y hasta hace mes y medio, promotor de conciertos en el local del mismo nombre. Él y sus colegas han tenido que dejar el local (una antigua nave industrial) donde trabajaban, ensayaban y hacían conciertos debido a que Vice media (Vice mierda!) se ha hecho con varios edificios en la zona a golpe de talón. Irónico que el grupo de comunicación de referencia para "jóvenes modernos fans de la cultura", haya echado a algunos de los mejores creadores de esa cultura (han sido varios locales-salas underground los afectados). Podeis ver fotos y ampliar información aquí:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/nyregion/the-last-rites-for-death-by-audio.html?_r=0#
y en otros muchos sitios, por ejemplo la web gothamist.com
A lo que iba, un rockero underground aunque su grupo funcione razonablemente bien, tenga una marca de pedales exclusiva que vende bien, se las ve para llegar a fin de mes y vive de forma digamos humilde. Estoy seguro que muchos que se dicen los más rockeros de su pueblo, no aceptarían vivir tan "espartanamente":

dormitorio de Oliver y su novia

Tercer ejemplo: Nanjo Asahito de los fantásticos High Rise, Mainliner y cientos de proyectos más que sacaban las discográficas PSF y La Musica records, muy activas de finales de los 80 hasta finales de los 90. Hace dos o tres días me leí una entrevista kilométrica realizada en 1996 por el fanzine Opprobium y disponible aquí:
http://www.squealermusic.com/reviews/nanjointerview.html
La entrevista es casi una tesina...gran trabajo. El autor es Alan Cummings, un estudioso de la cultura japonesa que ha vivido y trabajado allí muchos años. Es un gran conocedor de la escena "sicodélica casi esotérica" del país. Encontré un foro especializado en La Musica records donde dejó este comentario:

"I used to live about a five minute bike ride away from Nanjo in Tokyo. I remember he had an utterly insane one-room apartment just piled to the ceiling with records, videos and equipment. there was a two foot gap between the top of the pile and the ceiling and this was where he slept...

I know that some people had 'issues' with him in the past, but I took my payment for the translations in tapes and CDs and never had any problems with the guy."

el tema completo con una recopilación del catalogo de La Musica records:

http://noise.as/index.php?topic=111.0

Resumen: Nanjo sacaba varios discos al mes, tenía varios grupos funcionando a la vez, tocando lo más que podía y era (es) una figura de culto. Pero vivía en un pequeño apartamento petao de discos y cosas (era también su almacen) y dormía en un espacio de apenas 61 centímetros entre el techo y la pila de cosas. 

Deconstrucción de la composición_Asahito Nanjo

"how does High Rise come up with new tracks? Do you write stuff down, do you just jam at rehearsals until you come up with something, is there a concept for each track?
We don't have specific tunes. No High Rise track has ever been written or composed.

But there are certain things that you've played again and again. If those aren't tunes, what are they - concepts?
"Concept" is as close as you can get in words, I suppose. Everybody adds something to it. We don't devote any time to writing new stuff. We start off from deconstruction, though there are things that in the end become like normal songs. But the process that we take in getting there is completely different to everyone else. Our process is totally different from the punk conception of specific chords and riffs. We sort of start off from the position that we don't want to do this but there's no way around it. It's hard to explain in words. Basically we don't even put in one minute coming up with new songs. Not that we're lazy or sloppy - we have a different conception of what a song is. But we've got to express ourselves in that format. We pay no attention at all to writing songs. It's very hard to explain - if we wanted to write songs then we could write something amazing. What we do isn't composition; it's the wreckage of composition, if you like.

Are there things which are close to songs, and things which are further away?
That's up to the listener to decide. It's not an accidental process though - that would be Musica Transonic. Basically from the start, High Rise has no intention of writing a song. It's a paradox in a way. We don't want to write tunes but we want to exist as a band. And bands have certain things that they do - that's the burden we have to bear. It can't be helped if someone listens to High Rise and hears it as ultra-composed three-chord punk rock. What the band is trying to do is something different to that. High Rise don't play compositions, but we have to bear that burden of expectation because we are a band.

What about the tracks that have lyrics?
The lyrics are the same as the concept for the first album that we talked about earlier - they're just various bits of English junky slang strung together. They just say that if you want to take drugs, you're going to have to be prepared to die."
http://www.squealermusic.com/reviews/nanjointerview.html