The Death of the Scene

Awesome story here on The Drive-By Truckers and how they're essentially completely ignored by the Indie Rock Cognoscenti.

I've spent years proclaiming this band the best American rock outfit and, while it's clear that thousands of rabid fans agree with me, it's nice to see someone articulate it so well and convincingly.

I must confess to not having really sunk my teeth into the band's new album Go-Go Boots, but I've watched a few of the video vignettes that they've created to help promote it, and they're a fantastic glimpse into the inner workings, history and general awesomeness of this uniquely American crew.

And they've got me lamenting the fact that regional scenes -- groups of artists and the sounds they create as defined by their geographical surroundings and proximate peers -- are largely a thing of the past.

Ultimately I blame the internet. Yeah, seriously. Because (no) thanks to the internet, some kid in the farthest reaches of God Knows Where can be exposed to every musical trend that's occurring in the world. And that is both awesome and horrible. It's awesome because The Kid can be exposed to all kinds of music. And it's horrible because The Kid can be exposed to all kinds of music. That is, instead of creating his own sounds and songs with limited outside influence, where he's forced to mostly figure it out for himself and create something original, he can just mimic something he sees on YouTube or MTV.com or Pitchfork. Meanwhile, thousands of kids are doing the same thing. The result: homogeneity. Everyone sounding (and wearing and saying) the same. Nobody doing anything that's truly unique or out there.

Yes, there are plenty of instances where exposure to outside musical forces resulted in a new, exciting composite. Keith Richards discovering Chuck Berry, The Clash discovering Jamaican rock steady, M.I.A. blending bleeding edge production techniques with Sri Lankan folk music, Vampire Weekend using African Highlife guitar techniques. In the case of the latter, were they exposed to it in their Columbia dorm rooms via the internet? Quite possibly. Was that a good thing? Absolutely. But these instances are unique in that 1) these artists were fundamentally more talented most of their peers and 2) they took something new and melded it with something else that was their own to create an exciting amalgam. Unfortunately, most artists are not sophisticated enough to do this; they simply internalize what they see and hear and regurgitate the exact same thing.

Of course, this issue of the influence of outside forces on the artist's creativity has existed since the first time someone painted something in a cave however many millennia ago. Someone else saw it and it affected them and their art. But we've never seen it on the totally pervasive, inescapable level that it exists now. There's influence, and there's total saturation.

I'm old enough to remember when different parts of the country sounded, well, different. There actually was a Seattle sound at one point. Ditto for LA, Minneapolis, Athens, NYC, Memphis, San Diego, Gainesville - the list goes on. You could often predict a band's sound by their ZIP code. Not so much anymore, and I miss that. "Why??" someone might ask. "Exposure to new types of music makes things more interesting, more...21st century." But is it better? I'm tired of people talking about how the globalization of music is unequivocally a good thing. Certainly some aspects of it are, but there's also a price to pay, most importantly the loss of truly homegrown music, whether it comes from Senegal or Detroit. Don't forget, regional and homegrown scenes have historically been romanticized and fetishized by listeners (Japanese kids in love with rockabilly; American kids dressing like mods) every bit as much as "global" sounds. Do we really want a world in which everyone sounds like everyone?

I think this helps explain my love for Drive-By Truckers. Because in addition to writing incredible songs, they sound like their surroundings. They're not ashamed of where they come from, nor do they try to hide it or water it down or homogenize it. Instead they embrace it and cultivate it and indeed revel in it. (Another shining example of this that I was recently reminded of is The Libertines, the short-lived and utterly kick-ass unit of Carl Barat and arch fuckup Pete Doherty. These guys celebrated their Englishness and their thoroughly soused way of life in the same way as Blur and Oasis, but on a much more debased, shambolic and sinister level. You could just tell they were drunk English kids happy to be drunk and English, and it made their awesome songs even more awesome.)

I could -- and very well may, some day -- write a book on why the Internet has not always been great for music. (And yes, I completely grasp the irony of saying that as the CEO of a company that would not exist without music on the internet. I clearly have some reconciling to do.) High up the list of reasons will be its deleterious effect on regional scenes as I and thousands of other music fans knew them.

I'll probably be listening to Drive-By Truckers as I write it.