Image killed the should-be rock star
After many months of interviewing bands and almost four months of seeing “new” bands play in London at various venues, I have come to the conclusion that the music scene, as I once knew it, is dead.
I had this feeling in my gut that music wasn't the main idea behind forming a band anymore, but I kept telling myself that it wasn't true and there was no way that these bands and musicians, as they call themselves, had lost their focus on what music is really supposed to mean. However, the gut feeling became a horrible reality last week when I attended a six-band show in the small town of Tillsonburg.
It was 6 p.m. when my friend Nathan and I showed up at the venue to set up the sound equipment and get everything ready for what I thought would be a good show. The bands were all filing in with their instruments and setting up a few tables for their merchandise. All of this seemed very normal to begin a show, but things just got worse from there. The venue only filled to about 40 or so people, which is actually pretty good for a small town, but looking at these kids was the terrible part because I felt like I was attending a fashion show, rather than a small concert.
All these little bastards must have each spent at least an hour on their hair alone, and I can't imagine how long it took for them to put their cute little outfits together. Ok, so I might be just a dick for thinking like this but hang on a second, I haven't even gotten to the best part.
The first two bands, Shores of Normandy and Elias, were very good and probably the most impressive bands there and I give them great amounts of credit for that because they opened the show.
The third band was not impressive by any means and should have been herded off the stage with bottles and rotten fruit, but that was only wishful thinking on my part.
The fourth band, and the subject of this observation piece, was a local band called Foxfight. Now I've known the guys in Foxfight for about a year-and-a-half now when they were all in previous bands and actually seemed to care about the music. I watched these guys play what seemed like the same song over and over again because the only thing they needed to do was viscously beat on their guitars and hit that open D chord. It was like watching a metal for dummies video or something like that. These guys must have figured that as long as they sound exactly like Between the Buried and Me or Norma Jean, scream their heads off and play the same heavy break downs then they would sound great. Well in a way they were right because the majority of the crowd seemed to be music illiterate because they were eating it all up and wanting more.
It was at this point that I noticed the mosh-pits of my day had all but dissolved into a small group of kids pretty much beating the shit out of each other by pushing each other into tables, performing flying drop kicks to each others mid-sections and running at full speed into the innocent on lookers. I used to get my kicks out of drinking and doing as many drugs as I could get my hands on and then joining the rest of the swaying crowd waiting for that perfect break down. Now all I could do was sit back and wonder when musicians forgot how to play their instruments and cared more about how they looked as the fans in the crowd looked on completely oblivious to what was going on around them, except that the pain in their back from that jump kick they received is a good thing.
Maybe I don't understand, or maybe I'm just getting old and things are changing, but I've asked several people from the music scene about what they think and they all seem to agree with me as well. So it pretty much looks like the “underground” image has become marketable and somewhere along the line we all sold out.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
I had this feeling in my gut that music wasn't the main idea behind forming a band anymore, but I kept telling myself that it wasn't true and there was no way that these bands and musicians, as they call themselves, had lost their focus on what music is really supposed to mean. However, the gut feeling became a horrible reality last week when I attended a six-band show in the small town of Tillsonburg.
It was 6 p.m. when my friend Nathan and I showed up at the venue to set up the sound equipment and get everything ready for what I thought would be a good show. The bands were all filing in with their instruments and setting up a few tables for their merchandise. All of this seemed very normal to begin a show, but things just got worse from there. The venue only filled to about 40 or so people, which is actually pretty good for a small town, but looking at these kids was the terrible part because I felt like I was attending a fashion show, rather than a small concert.
All these little bastards must have each spent at least an hour on their hair alone, and I can't imagine how long it took for them to put their cute little outfits together. Ok, so I might be just a dick for thinking like this but hang on a second, I haven't even gotten to the best part.
The first two bands, Shores of Normandy and Elias, were very good and probably the most impressive bands there and I give them great amounts of credit for that because they opened the show.
The third band was not impressive by any means and should have been herded off the stage with bottles and rotten fruit, but that was only wishful thinking on my part.
The fourth band, and the subject of this observation piece, was a local band called Foxfight. Now I've known the guys in Foxfight for about a year-and-a-half now when they were all in previous bands and actually seemed to care about the music. I watched these guys play what seemed like the same song over and over again because the only thing they needed to do was viscously beat on their guitars and hit that open D chord. It was like watching a metal for dummies video or something like that. These guys must have figured that as long as they sound exactly like Between the Buried and Me or Norma Jean, scream their heads off and play the same heavy break downs then they would sound great. Well in a way they were right because the majority of the crowd seemed to be music illiterate because they were eating it all up and wanting more.
It was at this point that I noticed the mosh-pits of my day had all but dissolved into a small group of kids pretty much beating the shit out of each other by pushing each other into tables, performing flying drop kicks to each others mid-sections and running at full speed into the innocent on lookers. I used to get my kicks out of drinking and doing as many drugs as I could get my hands on and then joining the rest of the swaying crowd waiting for that perfect break down. Now all I could do was sit back and wonder when musicians forgot how to play their instruments and cared more about how they looked as the fans in the crowd looked on completely oblivious to what was going on around them, except that the pain in their back from that jump kick they received is a good thing.
Maybe I don't understand, or maybe I'm just getting old and things are changing, but I've asked several people from the music scene about what they think and they all seem to agree with me as well. So it pretty much looks like the “underground” image has become marketable and somewhere along the line we all sold out.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
