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There is no shortage of new music to be discovered on a daily basis, but that's not to say that all of it, or even a large percentage of it, is noteworthy. This sometimes makes the task of presenting exciting musical stuffs in a blog landscape slightly difficult, i.e. when long stretches pass with very little attention-grabbing new material crosses our paths. Which is why I was glad to have stumbled upon a somewhat recent post by fellow local blog Dumbing of America which expressed a similar sentiment. There Todd Cochran writes:
I don't think it is jadedness or burnout, either of which would have probably manifested themselves before the fourth year of this site's existence, but it isn't really any more comforting to think that maybe music does suck more than usual as of late, or at the very least the good stuff is making itself a little more difficult to locate.
Maybe this is a good thing in the way that outsider music is, in many cases, more fulfilling to listen to and does sort of lose some of its appeal when one walks in on their mothers humming an Ariel Pink tune whilst doing the dishes. Maybe it is better this way, for the really good musics to be reserved for people who actually give a crap to the extent that they'll actually dig for it or, hell, even go out to shows.
Local bands, after all, share a little of this outsider status with their popularity resting largely on the strength of word-of-mouth reviews and almost no radio plays or press write-ups (save for a handful of very poorly trafficked blog sites such as this one).
The moral? When you finally do find something good talk about it. Keep it alive by spreading the word, even if it is a band who didn't release a record in the last two weeks. And thanks to my buddy Joey for emailing me this year-old Zach Hill video which helped renew my excitement in music this morning when I realized that good things are still out there if you just know where to look.
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Where have we been? I’ll tell you where we’ve been: in a state of boredom. Virtually nothing in 2011 has moved us in the ways that the bands we’ve brought you in the past have. We could have easily regurgitated the latest Pitchfork-darling/ high-priced PR firm offers you tickets to Lolla in exchange for… crap. Instead we stuck to our principals and decided it would be better to bring you nothing, than to bring you crap.And I was beginning to think I was the only one who felt this way.
I don't think it is jadedness or burnout, either of which would have probably manifested themselves before the fourth year of this site's existence, but it isn't really any more comforting to think that maybe music does suck more than usual as of late, or at the very least the good stuff is making itself a little more difficult to locate.
Maybe this is a good thing in the way that outsider music is, in many cases, more fulfilling to listen to and does sort of lose some of its appeal when one walks in on their mothers humming an Ariel Pink tune whilst doing the dishes. Maybe it is better this way, for the really good musics to be reserved for people who actually give a crap to the extent that they'll actually dig for it or, hell, even go out to shows.
Local bands, after all, share a little of this outsider status with their popularity resting largely on the strength of word-of-mouth reviews and almost no radio plays or press write-ups (save for a handful of very poorly trafficked blog sites such as this one).
The moral? When you finally do find something good talk about it. Keep it alive by spreading the word, even if it is a band who didn't release a record in the last two weeks. And thanks to my buddy Joey for emailing me this year-old Zach Hill video which helped renew my excitement in music this morning when I realized that good things are still out there if you just know where to look.
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