Wish You Were Here: An Essential Guide to Your Favorite Music Scenes—from Punk to Indie and Everything in Between
Leslie Simon
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 006157371X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A snarky, fact-filled look at the people and places that made the indie/punk scene what it is today
The American underground music scene is exploding everywhere—not just in New York City and L.A. (although we've got those cities covered too!):
In Washington, D.C. . . . Ian MacKaye and Fugazi inspired the straightedge culture, which had kids everywhere drawing black X's on their hands in magic marker.
In Omaha, Nebraska . . . A young Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, started writing and performing gut-wrenching love songs at the tender age of thirteen.
On Long Island, New York . . . Taking Back Sunday and Brand New battled for emo supremacy and the fragile hearts of a million teenage girls.
From the coauthor of the cult-worthy Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture comes Wish You Were Here—a combination travel guide and tortured history covering everything from what constitutes proper rock critic etiquette in Minneapolis to why pop-punk bands in Chicago have so much suburban angst, to how freegans in the Bay Area can feed themselves on a budget that would make frugal Rachael Ray's face blush.
Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
Naked without a White Trash charm. THE SILVERLAKE LOUNGE (2906 SUNSET BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90026; HTTP://WWW.FOLDSILVERLAKE.COM) In many ways, the Silverlake Lounge feels like Spaceland’s little brother. It doesn’t get the same amount of respect as the Land and, astonishingly, it has even less space, but all sorts of local bands are bound to turn up here. In fact, Silversun Pickups named themselves after the liquor store that is located directly across the street (Silver- sun Liquor).
Will you avoid looking like a clumsy idiot, but you’ll also prevent suffering from any gruesome face lacerations. After all, why waste a perfectly good-looking comb-over on a cerebral contusion? 2. LOWER YOUR CENTER OF GRAVITY. Th e bigger you are, the harder you fall, so if you’re like Blake Sennett from Rilo Kiley, then there’s a good chance you barely meet the height requirement to ride the Big Ohhhh! at Nebraska’s Fun-Plex Amuse- ment Park. Th at said, all you basically have to do.
No Minneapolis rock scene without the city’s highly revered Twin/Tone Records. Th e label existed from 1977 to 1994 and was run by scenesters Peter Jesperson, Paul Stark, Charley Hallman, and Chris Osgood, whom many credit as being the fathers of the Minneapolis scene. During its seventeen-year ex- istence, Twin/Tone was responsible for picking up on then-unknown local talent like the Replacements, Babes in Toyland, the Jayhawks, and Soul Asylum, and putting out some of their fi rst.
Of Jay’s Longhorn Bar (14 S 5th St.), which was a punk Mecca back in the day. Often called the Mid- west’s CBGB—minus the gnarly bathrooms and the bar’s overwhelm- ing smell of urine—the space hosted local bands like Hüsker Dü and TH the Replacements, in addition to then up-and-coming acts like Talk- E TWI ing Heads and Naked Raygun. Jay’s changed hands and briefl y be- N CITI ES < 2 3 2 > came Zoogie’s Bar, * a half-punk, half-gay club, but it didn’t last and eventually closed. Th e.
The outsider, Smith had very few peers in L.A. whom he could relate to. In fact, one of the only bands he fre- quently played with was Beachwood Sparks, a bunch of former hard- core kids who decided to reinvent themselves as a psychedelic hippie band and who preferred to walk around barefoot. Smith also bonded with L.A. upstarts Rilo Kiley, which had just fi nished recording its third album at his studio at the time of his untimely death. (Th e band even off ered a tribute in the form of.