 by MEREDETH BARZEN
 “Yeah, I really like to do music, but there’s no way I could make 100 pounds of crap.” This privileged peek into the mind of Craig Minowa (of rave-worthy local band Cloud Cult) was revealed in a phone interview on a miserably hot summer day that just reeked of global warming. It also happens to be the discord that drove the musician to create Earthology Records, one of the first eco-friendly record labels in the country. Earthology and Cloud Cult represent rock ’n’ roll with a green guitar pick; music with an environmental conscience. Normally, “environmentalist music” would imply a vast catalogue of environmentalist pamphlets set to pre-recorded waterfall noises. These albums of dubious musical quality would sit comfortably in the back bins at Target, while the water nymphs and baby pandas that inevitably adorn their inserts would glance optimistically at every hippie walking by. But here’s the twist: Earthology churns out records that are both environmentally and musically sound: Cloud Cult’s music is solid, complex, listenable, challenging and dense, in addition to a host of other positive adjectives. In short, it sells.
Musicians are an idealistic people. This comes as no surprise, considering the
fact that their job essentially consists of looking at life and making qualitative
statements about it, both verbally and nonverbally. So, naturally, when they
come across something that piques their interest—say, a love, a life,
or a cause, perhaps—they’re probably going to sing or play songs
about it. Ever since Woody Guthrie picked up a guitar and cloaked socialist
propaganda in an adorable little patriotic song (take a look at the oft-neglected
fifth and sixth verses of “This Land is Your Land”—evidently,
Guthrie was not a fan of the New Deal), musicians have been using their work
as a means to educate the masses. You know the drill: a musician picks a pet
cause and takes one of two options. They either tell people about it until they’re
blue in the face—taking the form of singing about it, talking about it
or writing it on their hand (ahem ahem Chris Martin). Or, they sing about normal
things like love and dancing and teen angst at a smelly outdoor concert where
they donate some or all of the proceeds (does that figure include the $4 bottles
of water?) to the cause. Of course, raising awareness about a problem or money
to fund a potential solution are both necessary and gallant gestures. But, as
they say, the proof is in the pudding.
 Earthology
Records runs on pudding. The record label has taken environmentalism one step
further by focusing not on the music, but on the packaging. The entire CD replication
process, from beginning to end, hurts the environment, mainly because of the
use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in the production of both the CDs themselves
and the jewel cases in which they reside. PVC, says Minowa, is “the most
toxic plastic on the planet,” and will soon be banned in many countries.
The conflict between Minowa’s environmental conscience and the reality
of the music industry first presented itself when the time came to release his
first album, Cloud Cult’s Who Killed Puck? “It just became
really overtly obvious that I would have to figure out how to do it myself if
I wanted to actually feel comfortable creating that many albums,” Minowa
says in a reflective tone. Initially, it seemed like an either/or situation;
either he wrote and produced the music he loved and distributed it on toxic
substances, or he relegated music to a hobby and slept well at night. It seemed
Minowa wasn’t willing to accept either of those options. So in true DIY
fashion, he created Earthology Records.
But how would his product sell, given the massive stigma that exists toward
environmental music?
“I think that environmental music and environmental musicians have been
sort of pigeonholed over time in the sense that when people think of an ‘environmental
musician,’ they think of the hippie jam bands or sort of a folk musician”
says Minowa.
“The vast majority of people, I think, assume that it’s not going
to be all that great to listen to … It’s not a whole lot different
from how people view Christian music, for example, where it’s music with
a really blatant message.”
 Indeed,
it seems that many people don’t trust music with such a teleological tone
to it. An audience wants music to exist on its own rather than be a vehicle
for something else; they want their art to be existential rather than functional.
Let’s call a spade a spade: when music and art are used to make a message
more palatable and effective, it’s usually just called propaganda. And
propaganda is so not rock ’n’ roll.
Minowa has another theory on why polemical music often fails: the tendency toward
hypocrisy.
“It kind of surprises me how many ‘environmental message products’
there are out there that are produced on such horrible materials, you know?
I mean, I’ll run into environmental T-shirts that are printed on standard
Hanes conventional cotton. And cotton is the most pesticide-intensive crop,”
says Minowa. “And so I think that’s part of how people got turned
off by this whole ‘preaching from the soapbox’ thing, too, because
we’ve all seen it too many times where when that person gets off of the
soapbox, they’re just like us, and have their own flaws.” Environmental
message T-shirts printed on conventional cotton, Scott Stapp of Creed getting
arrested for public intoxication; is there any sincerity left in the world?
So, once again, how does Minowa sell this music? His solution is deceptively
simple: stay away from explicit references within the music itself. Cloud Cult’s
records, while complementary to Minowa’s environmental message, are not
the medium through which the message is spread. That task is left to Earthology
Records and Minowa himself. Just as many of Christian rock’s most popular
music comes from “Christians in a band” rather than “Christian
bands,” Cloud Cult succeeds because it is good music from “environmentalists
in a band” rather than an “environmental band.”
Which is not to imply that Minowa made a strategic decision to separate his
message from his music. For him, it was more of an evolution of priorities:
“I didn’t feel like it was necessary for me to explicitly preach
that message [environmentalism], but that it was better to focus my intentions
on really living it and building our business model on it.” That business
was Earthology, and its business model is constantly progressing toward a point
where its CD replication process will become a mainstream, cost-competitive
option for musicians. Minowa looks forward to a point where cost is no longer
an issue, and musicians can choose an eco-friendly option for ethical reasons
rather than dismissing it for financial ones.
So stop talking about it and do something. The environment has too many fairweather
friends as it is. ||
So what can Joe or Jane Music Fan do to help the cause? Because PVC—the
material used in the production of jewel cases—is so toxic, Earthology
recycles old jewel cases instead of producing its own. The ethically minded
can send their surplus cases to the record label, which will shine them up and
use them again, or they can go to www.earthology.net
for more information. Jewel cases that are in good condition (not cracked, scratched,
or written on,) should be mailed to:
Goodwill
Att: John Pozniac
Earthology Used CD Cases Dept.
700 Garfield Avenue
Duluth, MN 55802
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