RTP-area local music and culture

[grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>]

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