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ch-scene - Re: Stuff to do, Week of September 23, 2004

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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Stuff to do, Week of September 23, 2004
  • Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 11:00:25 -0400

bendy(a)lostpla[dot]net wrote:

Fashion Design pointed out the other night, as they encouraged their audience to vote for their good fortune as a nominated band, a certain amount of ballot box stuffing is part of any vote like this. I suppose the Indy was trying to avoid that at the nomination level. But five or six nominees per catagory would have been more interesting.

See, I'm thinking that if you're gonna run an Inherently Flawed Free Weekly Music Awards (tm) -- and believe me, it's not a new concept, and anytime a free weekly runs one, there is the inevitable article in the paper about how they struggled with ballot box stuffing -- you have to assume there's going to be stuffing & just resolve to deal with it. I don't think that limiting the nominations is necessarily the right answer, particularly if that also results in a skewed and too-limited list of nominees.

Especially since nobody would care, particularly, if the nomination phase weren't exactly mathematical, as long as it were more open than closed. Kirk talks in the article about how the final voting is going to be weighted, with the original nominators' votes getting more weight, so the whole thing is more or less rigged anyway. Why should a handful of insiders get to stuff the ballot box but the rest of us don't?

If you're not going to count everybody equally anyway, why not open up the nominations & let people stuff away, with the clearly-stated caveat that the nominees won't be decided mathematically & thus stuffing won't help. At least the nominating panel might get exposed to some local bands whom they otherwise might apparently be oblivious of.

& having 5 or 6 nominees per category vs 3 or 4 wouldn't substantially affect the stuff-factor of the final vote, I wouldn't think, especially if you went out of your way to *not* nominate any band who had obviously stuffed during the nomination process, and stated your intention to do so upfront.

Anyway. I guess I don't understand what they think they gained from having a closed nomination process, other than not having to deal with the minor inconvenience of finding out whether nominated bands they haven't heard of are (a) real bands and (b) worth a shit.

This really shows that their nomination scheme broke down, though. Seems like nominating board didn't put much thought into their entries. One gets the sense that even if some horrible tragedy wiped the members of 'Chunk from the face of the earth, they'd have still been nominated.

It's hard to discuss this without coming off like a jealous younger sibling, although I'm helped somewhat by (a) being old as dirt and (b) not ever having been in a band. Plus I think I'm fairly on-record as being a huge Superchunk fan. But I think that even they would agree that they've been awarded/rewarded enough already, particularly by the Indy (during my tenure, at least, we certainly did ;-)) and that it's kinda silly to nominate them during a period when they're more-or-less dormant, particularly if there are only four slots available.

But then I suppose the correct answer is to quit yapping about this whole thing & just say this: there is a reason why there haven't been many attempts to do stuff like this around here. It's wonderful to give exposure to local music, but the best way to do that is to give consistent exposure to local music, by writing about it (if your tool is a newspaper) or by helping it get played on the radio, or by discussing it online, or by going to shows more frequently.

I suppose there are some towns/regions where a Contest is the kind of excitement the locals crave, and is thus the best way to get exposure to the local music scene. I really don't think that's true of this region. For one thing, there are too many really good bands, and to single out a few of them as being somehow better than the rest seems even more arbitrary here than it would in other places. It just smells funny.

For another thing, one of the many factors that has allowed this music scene to flourish for so long has been a remarkable level of cooperation & non-competition. I've lived here for so long that I've kinda forgotten what it's like out in the rest of the world, but I vaguely remember things like public sniping, and tearing down each others' flyers, and telling their fans to leave after they play, and just general nastiness.

And while it may occasionally bubble up here, by-and-large the bands around here are astoundingly willing to praise one another in person and in print; to play shows with each other (and get offstage in a timely fashion if they're opening, and hype the other bands on the bill); and to generally support each other.

The Indy's coverage of local music has increased appreciably (in quantity, at least) over the past year or so, and I for one am quite thankful for that. At this point I guess I'd just rather that they'd gone the route of sponsoring showcases and devoting the space in the paper to more local coverage, rather than filling it up with big flawed ballots that don't really represent the depth & breadth of the scene, nor its cooperative nature.

Ross




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