Despite the onslaught of the corporation, the independent and underground rock scene is becoming the strongest it has been in years. Despite the nauseating proliferation of major label-produced "alternative" music, the attempts at commercial, co-optation of every idea and venue of legitimate resistance, and the frenzied buying-up of indie bands and labels, there is still honest, critical rock out there. In fact, corporate interest is a sure sign of a strong scene.

The six major record labels in this country are desperate for "alternative" credibility, and they've all bought a Pearl Jam or a Paw and created several faux-indie labels to try to get it. But after all that, and amidst the continuing assault, bands and labels interested in real opposition have started up and stayed on: it is not, after all, too hard to scratch the surface of a faux-indie to find the major label hidden underneath, and Pearl Jam's utter irrelevance is obvious.

But what if it weren't so obvious? What if some corporate suck figured out a way to get into bed with an established, critical independent label without anyone finding him there? The major would have privileged access to a scene that abhors them, and would have an excellent strategic position from which to screw that scene before anyone could figure it out. This is exactly the position in which Time-Warner Communications Corporation sits right now, with Matador Records in their back pocket. It is a uniquely disgusting and insidious intrusion.

Ask any of the people who support independent music, who work against the commercialization of rock, about the deal, between the Atlantic Group (a Warner {WEA} company) and Matador Records. Better yet, ask Atlantic themselves. But there are no straight answers there. Asked if they own Matador, Atlantic starts with "not fully," and moves to "I can't explain things like that" before sending inquiries to Matador. At Matador, there is exactly one guy who can explain things: Gerard Cosloy. After wading through the sometimes apologetic, sometimes defensive explanation of his label's relationship with Atlantic, it comes out something like this:

When Matador became a successful. indie label, with Pavement and Superchunk making the majors salivate, they started to get buy-out offers from virtually every major label. After the dust settled, Atlantic won the deal, and as of January 1, 1993, Matador "signed" with Atlantic.

"Atlantic and WEA finance every single thing we ever do," according to Cosloy, "everything under the sun... they pay our rent, our salaries, our overhead, our debts, everything." This includes production, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of records. In return, Matador has to put out "a few" records each year with Atlantic; these are records carrying both the Matador and the Atlantic logos, but everything, production, marketing, distribution. etc., is done through the "WEA System:" it is an Atlantic record. Also, WEA/Atlantic profits from releases on Matador/Atlantic, and gets 50% of all profits on Matador's "independent" releases. "So if Chain Gang makes a profit," Cosloy confirms, "Atlantic gets half," even though Chain Gang is supposedly an independent Matador release.

So all the financing comes from WEA/Atlantic, and half the "indie" profits go back to WEA/Atlantic. If a band signed a similar deal with Atlantic, they would then be a major label band. But Matador is still considered an "independent label." That fact is very important to Atlantic. Indie credibility is exactly the commodity that they bought when they made a deal with Matador.

"Their 'alternative' roster sucked," says Cosloy, "which helped make us a good deal for them. They could have hired five more A&R guys at five times the cost (to them) of the Matador deal, and they'd get fewer bands. Matador is a good A&R source for them because we carry a certain weight in the scene, and they can use the association with us to help them get bands."

That "weight" is the credibility that Matador has built since they started in 1989, due in no small part to Cosloy's frequent and biting criticisms of major labels, their bands, and the indie labels that "go to bed with the majors." Apparently, the deal has worked for Atlantic. Atlantic has since bought other indie labels, including Mammoth, and has fattened up its "alternative" roster. And how has Matador and its bands fared?

Cosloy insists that he has tried to structure the deal so that "the bands will be protected and [Matador] will be protected." That means "total creative control" for Matador bands. "Bands have almost complete veto right over whether or not their records come out as part of the WEA system." Here lies the key to Matador's defense against the sell-out accusation: the bands can decide whether to be on Atlantic or on Matador, and if they chose to remain on Matador, presumably they retain creative control over their records. Cosloy may sincerely believe that he has struck a deal that works for the bands and for the scene: "The last thing we want to do is to weaken the indie scene. We will still distribute records on an indie label, we will still do ten or twelve independent projects a year, and the bands have a lot of input. Atlantic has invested in Matador, and that means we can get records out on time, pay the bands on time, and keep records in print. Yeah, we are in bed with them and I guess we're just trying to figure out who's on top right now."

Atlantic, the argument goes, is unwittingly supporting the indie scene by financing Matador's independent releases. The Matador deal is a "weird experiment," says Cosloy, "we'd like to be the exception to the rule—a major label deal that doesn't screw the bands or contribute to the homogenization of honest music... but there is very little reason to believe that this deal will come off without a hitch, and in fact it hasn't."

It hasn't indeed. "We've made some big business mistakes... we were very naive about what it took to make major label records. A lot of the worst-case scenarios that people told us about, records being lost in the WEA system and lost in the Atlantic family, and how you could end up spending $20.00 in promotion costs for each record you sold, all those things ended up being true." The first casualty was Moonshake, whose record on Matador/Atlantic bombed; any record unlikely to sell big quickly loses the support of the "WEA System." The Fall was also dropped; their next record will be "independently" released by Matador. Atlantic is quite content, however, to profit from Liz Phair and Pavement, both of whom thought that they were on an independent label.

With independent Matador projects, "the profit margin is so small that Atlantic will let us do whatever we want with it," says Cosloy. And if the profit margin becomes big? Liz Phair's next project will be on Matador/Atlantic. Once a Matador "indie" band is profitable, Atlantic, the company that pays for everything that band does, is in a great position to force them to sign.

A strange thing has happened along the way to Gerard Cosloy's criticisms of the music industry. The difference between Matador and Atlantic is largely "just sort of a cultural. thing... I mean we are coming from a very different place on the map. The way we make records compared with the way they make records, ummm, the way we deal with bands, I mean, they aren't used to dealing with bands without managers and lawyers, they're not used to that kind of stuff. We're, you know, just like regular people, and they are emersed in the rock-biz culture, you know, our culture is... I don't know."

Huh? The culture of major labels is exactly business culture, where music is product and content depends on profitability. And Cosloy used to know this, but now he says the difference between independent and major record labels "is not a superficial difference, but whether we admit it or not. we are selling a product too. you know? We keep on reminding ourselves that the bands that we deal with are people, not property. but we are still selling shit, like Campbells soup on a shelf. I've spent years pointing fingers at people, but right now I try to sweat the big stuff, right now I try to worry about things like arguing whether we are going to put a record out through WEA/Atlantic. Hopefully, as time goes on, the Atlantic people will learn more about us and more about our bands and it won't seem so awkward and goofy."

In fact, it doesn't seem "awkward and goofy;" it seems corrupt and slimy. Cosloy has said. "we support and believe in the idea that people should stop being consumers and they should start making their own stuff, making tapes for their friends because the whole thing is so fucking caught up in commerce, the whole issue of buying and selling. The music is a product on a shelf and the whole thing is completely fucked up." And: "People want to support something that is successful, financially successful, commercially successful, but people have to get away from that mentality, because that's what fucks the whole thing up." What he means by "the whole thing" is the independent, underground rock scene. Fucking it up means corporatizing, homogenizing, commercializing the honest artists and music out there. True underground music does not and cannot support the corporations that they exist to resist.

Matador has, as Cosloy says "dealt the indie scene a low blow in the crotch." Every independent band wooed by Matador puts itself at Atlantic's mercy. It is easy to see why the Matador label is worth Atlantic's money: by promoting the idea that Matador is still independent and by co-opting that credibility and parlaying it into more control over the rock that is produced in this country, WEA/Atlantic has positioned itself a step closer to complete control over and oppression of the oppositional stance of legitimately underground rock.

But Gerard Cosloy says it best: "There are legitimate reasons not to buy records on major record labels. I mean, what do major labels spend their money on? What is their history? Their history is one of raping indie labels, destroying the indie scene just when it is getting strong."

The Matador/Atlantic deal isn't so unique after all: an indie label willingly got into bed with a major, knowing that majors have a history of rape.

Matador is fucked.