[P1international]

If you have some kind of musical ethos, then it can be betrayed.

In today's musical climate different "ethos" are used in different genres to define an image. Genres come pre-packaged with a value system (complentary with clothing, art, friends, etc...) Hence we have the More-Punk-Than-Thou crowd and the More-Emo-Than-Thou crowd...all trying to provide some arbitrary morality to a group of people who otherwise have nothing. We have more sub-cultures now then we need, most of which have impossibly thin taste, and are only friends with those whose musical value system matches exactly.

In such a climate, you could hardly expect someone not to "betray" their original ethos, since their original ethos was a pile of arbitrart conventions, sprinkled with a liberal amount of teen angst. The music industry want's to be able to say "Oh, indie-folk...that's on aisle 9" because industry needs categories. They'll stuff an artist in a ridiculous pigeon hole and seal it up with the fear of being called a "Sell-out".

If I want to perform something truly original and different, I won't have a venue for it, because everybody's at their favorite red-dirt country bar (whatever the heck that is) or at their favorite neo-hardcore-dub-club (or whatever).

You can't sell out when there's no art only industry, and if anyone hasn't sold out we sure as heck haven't heard of them.