“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” - Jay Z
“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” - Andy Warhol
“The end of the spectacle brings with it the collapse of reality into hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another reproductive medium such as advertising or photography.” - Jean Baudrillard
Photo: Pete Debarros
There comes a time in the life of every artist, unlucky enough to be living in 2024, when having finished a work of whatever, they're left staring down the barrel of a panoptic content marketing machine.
Many slap happy artists will wield that weapon until they shoot themselves with it. Others will ignore it. But a chosen few will simply toss it in a holster, light a cigarette, and go out into the day unbothered.
Among that last group is Intac, a Somerville band, or in their words, “a family business,” that wears the pressures and practices of marketing on their sleeves.
The band’s Instagram page is a collection of business-forward content. Memes declare “Silence band; a business is talking,” and a reel series called Money Talks! features lead singer Bill Restivo and cousin Lucas Restivo discussing savings and the logistics of selling music with strangers on the street.
Bill started the band as a way to deal with his discomfort around doing business as an artist. “The deeper my love got for art, the more uncomfortable I was with advertising it,” he said.
But advertising felt unavoidable for sharing the music. “Some art might get around because it's just undeniable, but that hasn’t been my experience," Restivo said, adding "maybe we just need to get better,” with a smirk. “But Intac has made me more comfortable sharing my music," he said.
Speaking with the cousins, it became clear that the issue might not be with advertising itself, but the sleight of hand artists pull when failing to acknowledge where art stops and marketing begins.
“It felt more honest to advertise what we were making: live performances, merchandise, music as a business… our hope is that we can make money so that we don’t have to work other jobs we hate,” Bill said.
It might come across as clever satire, but the band is adamant it’s an appeal to honesty: an acknowledgement that successful artists must sell and advertise their product.
“Every commercial you see is lying to you in some capacity,” Lucas said. Lucas is the DJ/MC of the band. “They’ll say, we’re going to make your life easier, do whatever the service provides, but ultimately what they want is your money. That’s different from art. We wouldn’t call [the Intac concept] satirical or dishonest. We like your business, we like your attention, we like your money. We make that clear so that we can tell you all these stories that have a more spiritual value," he said.
There’s a lot of Andy Warhol within that logic and on that note, a fair amount of Velvet Underground in Intac’s music. (“Money” sounds like a more jaded “Sweet Jane”).
“Lou [Reed] is definitely an influence for us,” Lucas said.
“Jonathan Richman, too!” Bill added. What likens the two is "a reverence for what is at the bottom of a good song. It's not about being technically impressive. It’s this feeling that is true," Bill said.
It’s that kind of admiration for no-frills songwriting that landed the band an opening spot for Juan Wauters at The Rockwell in Davis Square on August 9.
“We love Juan, it was such an honor,” Lucas said. The band discovered Wauters when living in L.A. and caught his performance at the Lilypad in Cambridge shortly after moving to Massachusetts. “His fingerprints are definitely on us,” he added.
Restivo considers Wauters’ writing style within the tradition of Richman and Reed. “He’s an example of a dude who, more than you could say is good or bad, presents as a single-pointed unique thing. It’s such a special thing to unlock.”
And while Bill's simple songwriting forms the backbone for the band’s music, Intac is not production-shy. The band appeared with a full seven-piece lineup for The Rockwell night, complete with background singers and Lucas dressed in a green morph-suite, rocking a computer monitor over his head, and playing samples between songs that ranged from Intac corporate messaging to DJ air horns. It didn’t take long for Intac to win over the crowd. By the third song, everyone was out of their theater seats and dancing on the Rockwell’s floor.
The band is busy working on new music. A new single “Do You Wanna Be The Man?” drops September 12 along with a new line of Intac apparel. That Saturday, September 14, the band will play Lincoln Park in Somerville as part of the Somerville Underground Pop Arts Performance Showcase.
You can find Intac on Bandcamp and support them for more than 3 cents a listen on someone's shitty streaming platform.
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