H

Can you tell us how Wastedrockers started?

D

Wastedrockers started in 2003 as a Xeroxed fanzine. At first, it was only a fad project in my early college years in Bandung. Before that, I already made a hardcore/punk/metal fanzine called “Sersan Zine” which stands for serius tapi santai (serious but relaxed) back in high school from the year 2000 to 2002. After that, I began to write as Wastedrockers. I want it to cover more indie-rock/alternative underground music for this project, Not because of boredom or certain trends, I basically just dig music, all kinds of it. In 2005, I recruited Gembira Putra Agam to help me on this fanzine. Unfortunately, due to the post-college circumstances in the 2008, the print edition was discontinued, with me and Gembi moving back to Jakarta, this was when we finally decided to translate Wastedrockers to webzine format, and it has continued until now.

H

As a zine maker, what do you think about the advancement of fanzine in the nation?

D

From what I’ve heard, the first fanzine in the country was made in the 80s, it was an LGBT fanzine. The first music fanzine was metal, coming from Bandung and Jakarta in the mid-90s, one of them was “Brainwashed” (an underground fanzine made by Wendi Putranto, the editor of Rolling Stone Indonesia). Metal fanzines came first and then followed by hardcore/punk fanzines. Most of the Xeroxed fanzine went vacuum in the 2008, some of them turn into a pdf-based zine and most of them became webzine as well. One particular fanzine that I still remember until now is one titled “Beyond the Barbed Wire” a thick political hardcore punk zine from 2007. I read personal zines too, but sadly those personal zines often fail to show consistency in their releases. But again, it is not an easy task to be consistent with this kind of project.

H

As you’ve said, consistency is rare to find in the fanzine culture, most of them are just a come and gone kind of thing, as the writer of a fanzine that survived for almost 12 years, what do you think could be the key to keep a fanzine alive and to be a consistent one?

D

It is better not to blame those short-lived fanzines, it is completely normal to get bored and it is a personal right to write and not to write a fanzine. Sometimes I get bored with Wastedrockers as well, and I am also facing trouble balance work, daily life and doing fanzine in my early year’s working in an office, but eventually, for the one with passion, they will be able to harmonize it all. The main point of keeping alive this passion-project is to outsmart your own time management, after all, if you are really passionate with it, you’ll always find a way to it.

H

Do you have any special references that made you want to start your own fanzine?

D

The one that made me want to make my own zine is local lefty political fanzines published by Harder Records Bandung in the late 90’s, they used to publish a lot of good fanzines back then, some of them also incorporate music writings on their pages.

H

Being in the middle of the Indonesian independent music scene for many years, what do you see in its development from time to time?

D

In the early 2000s, most of the bands were still figuring out the transition between analog and digital, the internet was still an exclusive material at that time. Nearly all the bands that existed released their material on cassette until 2005. In that era, most of the independent bands were still using the mailing list to promote their self. After 2005, people started to utilize the internet as a tool to boost their band names with sites like Myspace. In 2008, those bands started to abandon Myspace to relocate their domain on Facebook. And after that, many new online music services arised with sites like Reverbnation, Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Now, people started to talk about the return of analog in the music scene. Some said that cassette and vinyl returns as a romantic to an era, but I believe that it will continue to exist. It’s all natural, and the exact same thing happens globally.

What’s interesting now is criticizing the presence of netlabels in the music industry. They got really popular in the 2006 to 2010, but we haven’t heard from them ever since. I still hope that they could be more consistent until now, because with the current trend of digital music, they could’ve become the universal music portal. I still see that the “netlabel” format will last in the future. Though there are many skeptical views that think that the idea of netlabel is no longer relevant with how people are now able to upload and share their own album on the internet by themselves, I still thinks that bands need labels, even in this era. Labels have what bands don’t, they could provide networks, contacts, and curation, all the important elements for the musician’s career. I see international netlabels moving their catalog to bandcamp with its simplicity, rather than upload it on archive.org.

Though we are now living in the middle of the physical release trend, I still believe that the future is in digital music. To me, I see the existence of physical releases in the digital age as a new form of gimmick.

H

So you think that musician should embrace digital music? Because I also found some labels that limit their service only on physical releases only…

D

I don’t wanna be a hardliner on this matter. It is completely fine to have labels that provide digital albums and the one that serves the one who collect physical release, it all complements each other. Every format has its own strength and weaknesses.

H

Talking about the hardliners in the music scene, what you think about the importance of independency for the independent musician, and what do you think about the term “sell-out”?

D

It’s hard to answer this question really. But I believe that it’s a personal decision. I don’t want to be the “police” in the music scene. If you want to be “sell out” go ahead, and if you want to be underground to the bone it’s the band’s decision. It’s up to the personnel in the band and I think that every person have their right to pick their side. And that’s it. I don’t want to comment more on this tricky question (laugh).

H

Besides infrastructural problem, what do you think the weakest part of our independent music scene? And do you have any critique for the scene?

D

I think that most of the musicians are still not aware of the importance of promotion. Most of them still think that they already promote their music by posting their music on social media. Forgetting the essence of music media as an important part of this promotion activity. Even independent bands need to make their press-kit and then send them to music media so that they could get a proper coverage of what they’ve been doing. They still do not understand the precise way to promote their music. Sometimes it is difficult to Google new bands, a pretty ironic situation in the era of internet.

And this goes for the label too. There are already an adequate number of labels in the country, but most of them still fail to understand the basic concept of promotion. Some labels get their records out and sold out without anyone noticing, and once again it’s because they do not understand the proper way to promote themselves. There is also a problem in the distribution, as a record label owner myself, I’ve been dealing with the bad and ugly of this underground distribution. Some of them are simply just a rip-offs. There are always be a good one though.

I have a lot of experiences with musician sending songs to Wastedrockers’ email without any information about the artist whatsoever. If the song is good, I’m willing to search for the info myself and post it on the web, but if the song is not that good, then the demo will end up in the mail. Just like the story of major label, they receive so many demos from bands, and they only listen to the ones with comes with a unique packaging. If bands/musician do not have any ideas about promotion, they should have hired a publicist to do that for them. I think most people here still don’t understand the real value of publicist, this profession already played a big part in the music industry internationally. For starters, bands could recruit one of their friends who have the connection to music media, and are able to summarize the story of the band and their songs properly.

H

What do you think about the quality of music writing in the nation?

D

I think it’s getting better. There are more young writers on the field and it’s good. These young writers should have the support of the seniors, and the seniors should also respect them. And vice versa. These days, young writers mock the seniors because they are old fashioned, and the senior taunt the youngsters for being a smart-ass and inexperienced, it’s not a good atmosphere. We should respect each other.

H

What is the reason for Wastedrockers to enter the business with Wastedrockers Recording and Wastedrockers Store?

D

We started Wastedrockers recording when I was searching for a record label for my music project, Ledakan Urbanisasi split album, after some moments we decided to release the music our selves. Starting from there, Wastedrockers Recording aim to help new bands that have good material to have them released. This label envisions to sign underrated bands that has great material and then help them to expose their works to the public. We open to any kind of music, but we intend to focus more on those underrated ones.

The background story of Wastedrockers store is quite bitter actually. We started the label in 2012 and with that, we entered the business by dealing with production, distribution, and other stuffs. On our distribution we dealt with a lot of unprofessional stores. Looking at that, we wanted to make a proper and professional store so that we could distribute the records better. Even if our store is not that big and deluxe, we want to give our best to our customers, and this goes digitally as well. And of course, this store is our way to earning some more money (laugh).

H

Any future plans for Wastedrockers and your personal project?

D

I’m preparing the next digital release for Ledakan Urbanisasi in the upcoming month, Serigala Jahanam is also going for a split album this year and I’m planning to have a showcase gig for my bands. For Wastedrockers, we’re looking forward to doing our long delayed .com domain. We’ve been paying the domain for years actually (laugh), when we finally get to try the website last time, it has bugs on the website and we have to delay it all over again. We can’t push the developer to fix the problem because it’s a pro bono project, we quite aware that we don’t have the right to be over demanding (laugh).