RTP-area local music and culture

[bendy <bendy AT duke.edu>]

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.