PONDERED: Why your scene doesn’t matter
Posted by Mat | Filed under Music
It’s 1996. Nine Inch Nails is in constant rotation and take up half of the t-shirt wall at your local Warehouse Music. Down the isle is the the Escape from L.A. soundtrack, that featuring Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, and effin’ Ministry - talk about bang/smash/book for your buck.
Skinny Puppy and Front 242 were on MTV (midnight on a Sunday, but still they were on). The music you love has a pedigree dating back to Throbbing Gristle in the 70s. Your musical forefathers have mucho music cred, and the newest crop is rebellious and yet relevant.
Take in the sites and smells – this is the last time anyone else in the world will care about Industrial music.
We can file the numbers off and protect that names of the innocent in this scenario. It’s ‘97 and you like Ska. ‘04 and cardigan styled Emo. Two ill-spent months in ‘89 with baggy….
ad. infinitum
The truth of the matter is that while the music, your music, continues to spawn merch, tour, and inspire new bands, they don’t matter. They’re not the black sheep of the musical sub-genre family, they’re the fish head eating mutant that lives in the attic.
Why the pariah status?
Back in the early 90’s, a music critic referred to the London Shoegaze Scene as “the scene that celebrates itself,” and subsequently, the rest of the critics stopped caring. Despite birthing some musical landmarks, the Shoegaze scene got kneecapped, and went from being a sound to a scene.
The criticism was totally valid. When a sound is codified and becomes a sub-genre, the rules are set – attire, attitude, and others are standardized. With the rules set, the old fans become die-hards or drop out and the new fans come in already knowing the rules. Most importantly, with the look, the sound, and the crowd predefined, the artist stop creating and begin producing for the fan base.
Bands in the _________ scene make _________ music for _________ fans.
And this is why your scene doesn’t matter, at least outside of your scene.
Tags: baggy, emo, industrial, mainstream, pondered, scene, ska, Slowdive, sucks
4 Responses to “PONDERED: Why your scene doesn’t matter”
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Aaron Says:
February 19th, 2010 at 5:23 pmOh my scene matters.
It matters til I yell cut and print.
Wait…oh we’re talking music!?
Yeah…what do I know? I listen to hip hop.
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Eric Says:
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:08 pmSo, should people boycott NME and Melody Maker? I was just looking up this very info on ol’ Wikipedia about shoegaze, and also answering some criticisms of Eurogoths about the fact that Americans are too factionalist about their goth music and music in general (incorrect, since NME and Melody Maker are British, and the music they were talking about, doom/death/gothic metal, really flourished and was defined in Europe for the most part).
This scene definition is also why music that transcends scene (NIN being the notable example for industrial) leads to hatred among die-hards in that scene and a lot of retroactive renaming (”NIN was industrial ROCK, not industrial. Coldwave isn’t industrial. Depeche was synthpop”), etc.
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TheHobo Says:
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:48 pmFrankly, I’ve always found the creation of a scene of any kind based on music suspect. Or film, or whatever device you want to blame… It’s a bunch of people who latch on to something as *finally* representing who and what they are, but in reality, they re-create the music, film, whatever, into their own image, project all this stuff on to it that may or may not be there. And, like you said, the scene then feeds itself, the fans creating the genre that the artists then more often than not exclusively serve (or be declared sell outs).
Most of the time, the initial point was feeling like an outcast and finding a place to belong, a way to be an individual and still be a part of something bigger than yourself. But then it ends up that the scene defines you, and you are no longer an individual but a product of your one-time tastes, taken as far as they would go. Growth and evolution become the enemy, since the artist evolving their tastes makes them disloyal to the scene, and any scenester also evolving as an individual is seen somehow as betraying the scene they once cared so much about. And any new additions aren’t as good as the old and the scene never was as good as it once was…
Ten years later, the same people do the same things, listen to the same music, watch the same movies, wear the same clothes, and still deny they ever conformed.
Doesn’t matter the scene…the pattern is the same. “Belonging” can sometimes be a stifling experience, regardless of the thing you belong to. Just because it isn’t mainstream, doesn’t mean you’re not a conformist…
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PONDERED: Taxonomy and manifesto; identity in digital media | View From the 101 Says:
March 15th, 2010 at 2:59 pm[...] In the modern era, apparently this notion of manifesto has been perverted. The artists who strive to make something new work actively to defy definition and to create solely to create. The artists that say, “THIS is what we’re about: how why sound and why we do it” are usually just attaching themselves to an established sub-genre – a phenomenon that can lead to a sound becoming a scene. [...]
