A blogger named Bridget recently wrote a ham-fisted post entitled "The biggest little thing you've never heard (of)". Unfortunately it probably should have been titled "The Madison Music Scene Sucks Because There Aren't Enough Indie Rock Bands I Like". Don't people like Bridget ever get tired of whining about how their tastes in music aren't represented on every fucking street corner in Madison? You'd think that the Sword of Damocles was hanging over their heads so that, if they should dare to listen to non-indie rock, their lives would end in a skull-splitting crescendo. That there is not an industry catering to your every indie rock need doesn't mean that "there's really nothing super exciting going on in Madison music". What it means is you need to expand your tastes in music. And I just love her standards of quality. If Madison doesn't produce a Death Cab for Cutie, Ani DiFranco, Atmosphere or a Girl Talk, then the "scene" here must be as limp as a pre-Viagra pecker. That our fair city is unable to produce enough Death Cab for Cuties is surely a sign of its failure and some future Stu Levitan will point to this in a multi-volume set about the fall and decline of Madison. What is it about these bands/musicians that just screams artistic quality and should be the gold standard by which a "scene" is judged? Do folks in other cities castigate their hometowns because they too cannot produce the nearest generic equivalent of Death Cab for Cutie?
Townies can't create any Bridget-approved music because "they're too caught up in their drama filled worlds in between shifts at Whole Foods and Captel to make anything of real artistic value." Yeah, unless you dedicate yourself to your music and ditch that job, there's no way to fulfill Bridget's definition of artistic value. If only Muddy waters had quit his day job as a sharecropper – maybe then he'd have made some music that was really artistic and of lasting value. Wait, he did. Mr. Morganfield quit being a sharecropper and then got a job in a factory. If only he'd dedicated himself to his art in a manner consistent with Bridget's strict guidelines. Is that all creativity is these days? Whether or not you work a day job? That one is not starving does not render one incapable of relaying emotion and angst in music. The overly romantic notion that great music is only produced by suffering musicians who'd rather wallow in abject poverty than be forced to work should, by now, be known to be a fraud. I implore you, please stop perpetuating the starving artist myth.
If you ask the question as to why Madison is not constantly producing bands like Death Cab for Cutie, I can honestly say I don't know. Personally, I think it's a good thing. That Madison is not an assembly line for musical groups consisting of mostly white, mostly male hipsters that go on to some national recognition is not a bad thing. Just because Bob Boilen doesn't rhapsodize about any Madison bands on his radio show, doesn't mean that we're bereft of talent. While musicians leave town for larger cities like Chicago and New York, we as a city also underutilize some great folks. Jan Wheaton should have a reputation here like Koko Taylor does in Chicago. The city of Munich, Germany commissions Roscoe Mitchell to write music while most Madisonians have no idea who he is and probably couldn't care either. Hence he performs here – what? – once a year at the Isthmus Jazz Festival?
If you think Madison's indie rock scene blows, fine. Say so, if you will. But don't drag the whole scene down with it. We've got a kick-ass symphony orchestra and, against all known laws of art, this town of a mere 225,000 sports an opera company; I can bang my head to The Ottoman Empire on a Friday and spend the next evening down at Madison Center for Creative & Cultural Arts with Hanah Jon Taylor and others improvising jazz; against all odds we've got the Balkan lounge funk of the Reptile Palace Orchestra and the klezmer of Yid Vicious, the math rock of Arp of the Covenant and the Creole sounds of the Cajun Strangers, and the Latin jazz of the Tony Castañeda Latin Jazz Sextet is often heard coming from the Cardinal while Bruce Bolerud's polka strains are to be found down the street at the Essen Haus. How dare you say there's nothing super exciting happening musically here in Madison! How dare you insult all of these people and countless musos in this town who bust their humps playing for folks only to encounter the whining of indie rock fans who just can't make big enough gluttons of themselves at the Pitchfork-approved trough.
I will shout this from rooftops until my voice leaves me:
THE MADISON MUSIC SCENE IS NOT THE SOLE PROVINCE OF WHITE INDIE ROCKERS!
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