#local scenes

[headlesshorsemanxiii]

"Misty Winter In The Valley." - c.2011.

[idontknowwhyimhere102]

Trying to find local gigs is fucking imposible. Most of them are just soft indie bands and all of the venues are 21+ since they all serve alcohol for some fucking reason.

Engage with your local scene my fucking ass try being a minor who can't stay out past 6 pm without 200 pesos to spare.

[aeolianblues]

Editing a live session for tomorrow morning right now, I'm having a very strange, helpless, ephemeral feeling. How do I describe it. I'm editing these songs together that are really good: good exploration of sentiments, chord choices and choruses that really underline and capture nostalgia, carefree youth, whatnot; all these wonderful songs that I'd love to tell you all about, shout from the rooftops and tell you all to listen to.

I can't. I can't tell you to listen to them. I can't link a public Spotify or Bandcamp or YouTube. You can't share in these experiences, as much as I want you to. They don't exist.

It's surreal to me. I'm walking around with the demos no one else will hear, the EPs that aren't yet released, the songs that haven't been recorded yet because the bands in question are so young in their careers that they haven't considered studio time yet. The beautiful songs that no one will hear because the band will scrap them on deciding they have better songs and won't waste their studio time on something they aren't 100% happy with, no matter that five people out there like it. The songs that will change before they make it onto the record. The songs no one will hear because one member graduated and the band fell apart. All these little, local things that will have a profound effect on me for a week, for a year, but will only exist in my own cultural worldview.

I suppose what I'm trying to say, a little ashamedly, is that it's so different being in a music scene from the creative standpoint rather than a consumptive one. Where things are in your hands. Where things will exist for posterity if your friends decide they want to make a proper recording. Where things are so DIY that I can't send you a YouTube or Spotify link to add to your Faves playlist. Where things are so DIY that I've got to get a band in for a radio session, record and mix them myself if I want to hear their work again.

And regardless, I'm a bit sad and frustrated that no one else might get the chance to know these bands, to share these cultural touchpoints with me, because a band may not last long enough for anyone outside a uni scene, a city, a province, to know about them.

The ephemerality strikes me. DIY, so good, yet so lonely! I suppose I could at some point just get into old school uploading mp3s, though I do also give myself away on the internet with how niche some of these things are.... I wish I could show you all my cool local bands without falling into the ridiculed trope of 'local band you've never and will never hear of' person. Just let me enthuse over a golden era of local music I seem to have walked myself into.

[luncheon-aspic]

Oy vey. I had a surprise encounter with a Trump supporter this evening on my way back from dinner. I stopped at the Indian restaurant that I had intended on going to (but which was being moved out of) to say happy new year to the guy who used to run it and then another guy got out of a truck and asked me who I was etc and said that the restaurant would be re-reopening by property owner next month. (He ran the restaurant when I first moved here a few years ago.) When he found out I was American, he said he was a Trump supporter because apparently he's the only person who can stand up to China. Like, I understand where he's coming from as an Indian (and that a lot of Hindu nationalists share his view) but as I basically said, Trump would sell his own mother to Satan for one corn chip. If it was suddenly more profitable to say that India literally belongs to China and always has, he'd do it with no qualms whatsoever.

He also offered me a job, but I already decided that I'm only going to do stuff that I'm super overqualified for if the pay reflects that (or it's for underserved people or whatever)... And it doesn't. (And it's low enough that showing my actual CV would just make it clear that they're looking for someone else.)

Anyway, I know that the property owner is an officer in a national Hindu/NRI association with Certain Political Sympathies, but we know better than to talk about politics beyond the local. (And that we even disagree about issues in historiography and literary interpretation, but we can see where the other is coming from.)(To be 100% honest, I keep him in my good graces because he might be a good research contact for future projects, since the transmission/reception of Indian culture is my actual field.)

[fleurmach]

pharmakon interview (2015) Great Interview with Margaret Chardiet AKA "Pharmakon” in Santiago, Chile, September 02, 2015, for her South American Tour "Sacred Bones". Watch from 02:55.

[thebocesman]

I feel like I enjoy playing shows more than anything because I want to feel how alive everyone around me is. It makes up for me feeling the same way more often than not.

But how do I know how they feel if nobody comes?

This is why I'm leaving the scene after my last scheduled show in July. Nobody wants to play with me, nobody wants to come hear me, nobody wants to show me that they're alive.

I bet there will be a handful of people saying how they don't want me to go. These will be the same people who never showed up to my shows unless they were playing with me. Who didn't care to listen to me. Who never told their friends about me.

I hate this feeling.

[thebocesman]

It's always nice to be told "Oh yeah, I'll come see you play sometime." No you won't. You tell me that to make me feel better. I'd rather you just say you have no desire to spend less than 10 dollars to come support me in living out a dream of mine. Not realizing that every time you could come out and didn't you're having people not wanting to book me. Maybe I should just stop trying, not even promoters seem to care anymore.