Columnist Scott Dickensheets: CHEAT’EM protest a little heavy on hyperbole

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, May 12, 1998 | 9:03 a.m.

THANK GOD I'm too old to be hip. Keeping one's bona fides in working order requires too much energy. Is R.E.M. too popular to enjoy in public? What if you find techno boring? Still into "South Park"? You and everyone else, loser.

But even if I was 18 again, with a pierced eyebrow and enough cutting edge to shave monkeys, I'd still avoid the author of the CHEAT'M manifesto.

CHEAT'M is a concert of local bands in response to the Emerging Artists and Talent in Music (EAT'M) Conference, the much-hyped talent show covered in detail elsewhere on this page. Because it represents the music industry, EAT'M is, of course, evil, a Borg-like force bent on assimilating any independent organism it finds.

Resistance isn't futile, however, according to the Laser Vida Arts Collective, the group of 20-something culturistas behind CHEAT'M (2-10 p.m. Sunday at Engima Garden Cafe). The performance is meant to showcase everything about local culture ignored by EAT'M.

So far so good, except it comes with some unfine print: the CHEAT'M manifesto, a dense, mytho-cryptic fax-rant that underlines much of what I find wearying about alterna-culture. Beginning with mindlessly excessive hyperbole: The music business? "Soul-draining demons." Artists? "Shaman warriors" channeling preternatural forces: "Thunder calls to us from distant valleys," the author writes. "Voices scream inside our bowels." And that corporate machine, man, what an agenda! "If you have talent, THEY will exploit it. If it is unexploitable, they will destroy you." (And if you have no talent, THEY will turn you into the Spice Girls.) "DEATH TO THE MACHINE," it concludes.

Well, my bowels are certainly screaming. Which is too bad, because I've liked the gumption of Laser Vida's previous projects. And hey, I'm all for tweaking the squares and artistic integrity -- stick it to The Man! But is hypocrisy really best countered with pretentious blather?

The manifesto vibrates with another favorite alt.culture trope, namely that the farther you are from the mainstream, the better you must be. "The INDUSTRY is just that: greasy gears churning out noise pollution," the manifesto shrieks. Well, fine -- I'm throwing out my R.E.M. CDs tomorrow.

At some point, though, an artist might want to make a living at his work, which generally means engaging The Machine. So what if EAT'M is an exploitative meat market -- the bands know that. As with Playboy models, you can't take advantage of the willing. Laser spokesman Joe Cartino (not the tract's author) says Laser Vida doesn't really condemn such artists; perhaps I missed the ambiguity in "DEATH TO THE MACHINE." What the manifesto ignores is that by desiring an audience at all -- whether for your badly written screed or your music -- you're automatically opting into the producer-consumer dynamic.

Face it: These days, there's no outsider stance that can't be co-opted and marketed by The Machine; counterculture is easily converted to counter culture. The best alternative I can see is to attempt a smart, principled existence within the mainstream. It can be done -- a good issue of Esquire or GQ has more worthwhile writing than a bushel of 'zines.

I applaud CHEAT'M the event -- stick it to The Man once for me -- but when it comes to CHEAT'M the manifesto and its attitudes, man, you should hear my bowels.