Maintenance and Destruction of an East-Side Los Angeles Indie Rock Scene

If capitalism creates other forms of value that accompany it, there remain still other forms of value that can exist apart from it. This chapter is based on an ethnographic study of the independent (indie) rock scene in the east-side Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. There is very little money generated from music circulating in this scene, and musicians, indie label owners, and others attach symbolic values to certain amounts of money, which are viewed in terms of what they can help musicians purchase, such as gas for a band's van. People in the scene also produce and exchange value in a number of ways that aren't capitalist, from generalized reciprocity to several forms of patronage.