RTP-area local music and culture

[John Iwaniszek <not AT hotmail.com>]

Allen, Richard wrote:

> 
> I think what distinguishes Lightning Bolt / brutal prog (which I imagine
> includes bands like the Locust) is the path the band members seem to
> have taken from 90s punk musical and social ideas -- at the point at
> which everything boiled back down to "fuck the man, let's live in a hole
> and do projects" -- to a particular ethic of musical and visual art that
> is all about vigorous, almost idea-free
> experimentation/practice/performance, based in questions like "What can
> these drums do? What can this bass do? What can I do with them?" 
> 
> I'm not a big Japanther fan, but the one time I saw them one of them
> screamed at the crowd, "I rode my bike for ten hours today, what the
> fuck did you do?" I guess if Minor Threat was the punk voice of
> Protestant self-improvement, today's "crazy rock" is the punk voice of
> post-ideological self-experimentation. Let's ride bikes for ten hours,
> build the biggest amplifier ever, play the fastest ever, play the
> slowest ever. "Let's build a car" -- which of course points back to the
> forefathers, acknowledged or not, of these bands -- Swell Maps, Pere
> Ubu, Half Japanese. 
> 
> And the reason this stands out is because every other band in, say, New
> York is doing what Woody described -- laboriously concocting a sound and
> look out of old sounds and looks. There are way, way too many ideas on
> display. Way too much (visual/musical/verbal/historical) talk, not
> enough ROCK. 
> 
> RA
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
> 
> 

Yeah!  fuck "music"!