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ch-scene - Re: Ch-scene Digest, Vol 14, Issue 20

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Subject: RTP-area local music and culture

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  • From: bendy <bendy AT duke.edu>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Ch-scene Digest, Vol 14, Issue 20
  • Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 17:18:02 -0500

I want to bite on this one, but my thoughts are really disorganized, and I've thrown out a few attempts already. But to add to the discussion:

- Glenn dropping the cover for various local shows is good. And it's symptomatic of something larger that's going on with the business of music right now. My own band made far more money from pass-the-hat gigs than anything with a cover charge.

- it's funny, if you follow music criticism (now there is a pathetic hobby) how "rockism" is becoming this actual controversy. Here's Tom Zippleman in Dusted: (http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/325)

<quote>
Arguments against rockism follow a common pattern: charge that rock critics have built up a phony definition of authenticity – writing your own songs, playing your own instruments, spending several painful years in obscurity – charge that such a definition deprives us of an ability to appreciate new forms of music and/or is impossibly stodgy and dour, perhaps illustrating the point with a celebrated canonical figure who fails to fit the rockist template (e.g. Johnny Cash, who occasionally played standards). Then conclude that critics slamming Justin Timberlake or N.E.R.D. are just uppity bluenoses clinging to a long-obsolete highbrow/lowbrow distinction in popular culture. Only through this kind of inversion does a defense of some of the most crassly packaged music available – backed by millions of dollars in corporate marketing and promotions, several television networks, radio conglomerates, and the publishers at Conde Nast and the New York Times – become the work of a hip rebel out to foil the snobs.
</quote>

...and this is a list full of rockists, for sure. While I've fretted that "rock" might be passe, I get a look some fresh-faced bunch of shitheads like the Coachwhips or Something About Vampires and Sluts, and I know everything is okay. They play the same damn riffs everyone has played for 50 years now, but somehow make it sound scuzzy and sexy and new.

So I don't think the worry should be Franz Ferdinand selling out the Cradle. FF is just the 2004 model of the Verve, who were the 1997 model of School of Fish or whatever. I remember my 18 year old self getting into it with a 30 year old friend who was arguing that upstarts like the Smiths and Sonic Youth didn't fit his mold of underground rock (which was, if I recall correctly, The Germs and The Violent Femmes.) Like grady concludes, most of that audience isn't really looking for new music anyways. They probably found out about it while reading mom's People Magazine.

- I do think we're on the cusp of something really different than the last 50 years though, and I think it's mostly economic, not a style or demographic thing. And it's here my thought get most disorganized. The audience for gut-level music has remained pretty constant, or grown, given that we can find out about a good Swedish or Japanese band fairly quickly, without that band ever coming to the States. Or in the case of the A-Frames, even making it to our coast. But still, it feels like a winnowing. The whole "This Band Could Be Your Life" circuit is probably dissolving. The rise of guitar-drum duos might have something to do with economic change. I know I've looked on with envy at the super-stealthy mobility of des_ark, and how they don't even need a sound check. I wonder if simplifying touring had anything to do with M. Swingle moving from Trailer Bride to the Moaners?

- Local rock does great when we make it an event. Blackstrap should have made every gig our *last* gig. Or Niku should organize everything. Getting more incoherent: vaudeville and cabaret. If you're music is downloadable for free (and if it isn't you are dumb), you better make that live show stand out.

bendy

grady wrote:
Your theories are fairly on-base, but you forgot Playstation/XBox and/or BitTorrent and/or whatever else it is that keeps some segment of kids glued to the TV/WWW. I just don't think "music" in general is as high on the list of hobbies/loves/fave recreational activities as it once was.





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