egregiously under-reported music scenes

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Inspired by Hank's paen to the Snakes.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Chicago noise-rock 89-9x - Bulb Records - The Scissor Girls - Math - Magnatroid - The Flying Luttenbachers - Xerobot - people (are still) putting on shows in their own homes or disused lofts or bookstores and they make a godawful unholy racket and rarely play their instruments "correctly." When I was there in 95 it seemed like they were suspicious of technical skill, and dismissed fellow rockers as disparate as Gastr Del Sol and the Sea and Cake as "boy bands". It seemed like the whole purpose was to blast out of themselves, to play wildly, to make intuitive noise with one another, like free jazz meeting hardcore. Sometimes it didn't really work, but the passion behind this scene was astonishing, and I've never read a word about it in any kind of national press.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I largely agree, although I don't think you can draw the distinction between here and post-rock the way you are, Tracer: Jim O'Rourke is only one of many musicians to have shared time between the two.

Also I'm duty-bound to report that you should have CHEER-ACCIDENT on that list. Go unto them and adore them, Tracer, unless the idea of prog-level instrumental skill ruins the whole thing for you. But as for Weasel Walter I can't say there's too much love flowing from here to there.

― Nitsuh, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

By the way, by "bookstores" do you mean Myopic and their improv nights? (Which by the time I moved to the neighborhood were less scree and more avant-acoustic / Fred Lonberg-Holm-ish?)

― Nitsuh, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Myopic's the one I was thinking of, yes, if that's the one with the live lizard in it. Scary fucker if you don't know it's there.

I didn't realize I was drawing a distinction between this Chicago scene and "post-rock" but now that you mention it maybe I am. Maybe I don't understand what post-rock is, which is VERY likely, but it seems like Tortoise and Mogwai and Sigur Ros and things like that, a kind of very deliberate and incremental approach to songwriting. The stuff I'm thinking of is thrashy and haphazard.

(p.s. Walter sent me a very hostile email after something I said on the Bobby Conn thread, and maybe I can expect one after he googles this, we'll see; but we kind of managed to understand each other eventually. I dunno. Anyway I will check out Cheer Accident for sure!)

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, one Cheer-Accident warning: research before buying, as some of the records are quite ridiculously different from one another.

Also: I completely understand the sonic distinction you're making with post-rock. I just meant that the scene, up-close, sort of bled over in ways you wouldn't expect, with various people making up the links from post-rock to avant-jazz and avant-jazz to even more avant- jazz, and from there on to a point where things got wild and spiky.

― Nitsuh, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

edmonton alberta canada. right now.

― fields of salmon, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You crazy noize boyz, you crazy! But you have prompted me to consider them Scissor Girls discs I've had sitting around...

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Happy hardcore! You could easily imagine that it never existed, even reading all the dance music mags. I think most of its top exponents are making hard house now, but I bet it's still being made in the dark corners, still with top tunes and big smiles and unspeakably terrible lyrics. I love it.

― Martin Skidmore, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You know, I don't find this particularly "egregious" but it does interest me that indie-pop (twee hahaha) gets no significant reportage whatsoever anywhere (except maybe Japan and maybe Spain now). It's essentially indie's indie, insofar as the whole thing maintains itself through its own mechanisms (i.e. indie-pop fans with websites, zines, or word of mouth directed solely to other indie-pop fans), with hardly anyone "outside" of it ever peeking in to take its temperature.

― Nitsuh, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

it's all crap... that's why it's "egregiously unreported"

― Phong Wiedermeier, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

that is an answer i hadn't thought of.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 22 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I would offer up the current Rhode Island scene, which (outside of Lightning Bolt) hasn't received much notice at all. (It's worth noting that two groups sprung from the loins of said scene, Les Savy Fav and Black Dice, are doing just fine in Brooklyn nowadays.) The kissing cousin of the Chicago scene Nitsuh & Tracer discuss above (and might I say I am quite jealous, you bastards, thank you), and not as "healthy" or diverse (from my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong), but interesting in its own right, and still chugging along. (There's the Thunder-esque Hive Archive, putting on shows every so often, as well as AS220 doing its thing, and a slew of bands, running the gamut from anti-math-rock math rock to hazy country drooling and all that hardcore metallic stuff.) If only for the entire Fort Thunder development debacle (a microcosm of the sorts of troubles experienced in San Fran & other developing urban areas), it's worthy of note.

I'm not the most knowledgable on this topic, but picking up any of the compilations available from Load Records gives you a good understanding of what was (and still sorta is). And, of course.

This might be the 97th time I've mentioned Fort Thunder on ILM.

― Daver, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Where, exactly, is (or isn't) this "egregious undereporting" happening? I mean, which periodicals/papers should be sending their intrepid corespondents to report on such monumental musical happenings as those in Chicago?

― Phong Wiedermeier, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Scenes tend to suck (like the inbred mountain folk they are). Over- reported scenes suck even more as the participants ego's have all been inflated by notions of accepted coolness.

― Alex in SF, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

where you live also has something to do with perceptions of a particular scene's popularity, though, right? i mean, i don't live very far from providence, so the whole bulb records/etc scene seems like it's very well known. but i knew if i lived in a different part of the country i'd probably know nothing about it. and i think it might be dependent on what major media outlets are available around where the scene is, and around providence/boston i would argue that the mainstream & "alternative" media is pretty abysmal overall...less in tune with what's going on locally than, say, the music press in NYC is. maybe part of the reason why everyone always hears about, say, new york garage rock instead of providence noise is because new york has got this huge, aggressive media scene where that sort of info can be transmitted rapidly and effectively. also lots of people outside of new york read, say, "the village voice" or whatever, whereas i doubt anyone outside boston reads "the boston phoenix" (and why should they...the phoenix suXor).

i guess people look to certain cities, expecting them (and generally, rightly so) to be constantly on the vanguard -- new york city, chicago, whatever. i mean, they pay more attention to the trends/styles arising out of those places. sometimes i think smaller towns like providence get pushed by the wayside.

― geeta, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'it's all crap... that's why it's "egregiously unreported"'

So it's a case of the 'media' knows best, is it? The fact is there's a lot of music, a lot of it great, that, as far as the 'media' is concerned, doesn't exist!

(yes,and I am aware that 95% of all music is crap but they can't even get the 5% right)

― Julio Desouza, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

well obv. you don't need "the media" to establish or publicize a band or a scene, but it really can help. and if most of your local media suXor, then getting widespread recognition can be even harder.

― geeta, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, I'm not saying "the Media" has to sanction anything before it has credibility. But they are PROFIT-MOTIVATED, no matter how "subversive" they try to appear. They realize that "scenes" come and go, bands morph and disintegrate overnight, and audiences in this day and age (apart from a small cluster of diehards) are incredibly fickle and discard most bands or musical trends before the ink has even dried on the by-line announcing their "Arrival." Everything has to make money to survive. That's a sad fact, but an inescapable one.

― Phong Wiedermeier, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(OT to anti-scene arguments) & who actually would claim to belong to part of a scene etc? A sort of lazy shorthand restrictive straitjacket that can often suffocate bands which actively hate each other (hurrah for small towns) & are aiming for entirely different ends; and some reporter from another part of the country/world comes and lumps everything together. e.g. "The Dunedin Sound", not that I'm bitter . . . of course, it's great for posthumous salvation, but still. & as said above, it can lead to gigantic ego inflation. e.g. Martin Phillips.

― Ess Kay, Saturday, 23 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bhangra.

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 24 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bhangra-house, to be more specific. The new york axis.

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 24 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The early nineties UK bhangra/techno scene is laden with goodness, I have to say -- I only have a smattering of stuff, but it's great.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 24 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

im particularly fond of philadelphia [but not because i live here]. i think in a way, its almost invisible to people there as well despite the fact that everyone seems to be involved in everyone elses business. we've got a little of everything; marah to the aim of conrad [my vote for the most explosive live band in philly right now], the roots to flowchart and everything else in between. we're also generally passed over for DC or NYC, hence plenty of time to let our seeds sprout...

― maria tessa sciarirno, Sunday, 24 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tell us more, Maria! I want to know about Philly.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 25 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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