As you can see from the cover story this week, blog culture has undoubtedly changed the face of the North Texas music community. The sheer amount of blogs here in the metroplex is evidence that some feel their favorite artists are not being represented. But nowadays, bands who would have never had a voice are being plucked from obscurity, thanks to the blogosphere.
For this week's conversation about blog culture, we brought in two respected area bloggers. Chris Mosley, formerly of We Shot JR, currently covers music for D Magazine's Front Row, and Jaime-Paul Falcon, formerly of Day Bow Bow, now writes at Dentoneer.
These guys gave their thoughts on how the area's need for more music coverage created a need for blogs like their own and Gorilla Vs. Bear, which have served as a template for many blogs over the last five years. We also discussed the ever-evolving state of music journalism, how it has affected artists, and how the artists have reacted to it.
Hit the jump to read the whole thing.
DH: Hey guys. First of all, thanks for being a part of the conversation.
Let's start things off by simply asking, how have you seen blog culture
change or affect the North Texas music community?
CM: Thanks for having me. The short answer is that it that has changed
behavior here the way it has in many other parts of the world; the
difference being that distribution of information was maybe more
consolidated locally than in other cultural hubs.
Leading up to the 2000s it's important to remember that the '90s were
bookended by both of Dallas' other papers shutting down; The Dallas
Times Herald in 1991 and The Met in 2000. So the millennium begins
with less choice regarding criticism and information. There was a lull
until about 2005 or so. I believe those events were what led to the blog
activity in North Texas to be especially active; many felt they had
been without a voice for quite some time. All of a sudden it was
possible for more inaccessible and less obvious art to share the
spotlight with safer choices. Papers started having to behave more like
blogs and always acknowledge what blogs showcased and discussed. People
who were traditionally unlikely to send demos to editors were now being
plucked out of obscurity. That changed things immensely and still
continues to have an impact.
JPF: Print media dying was one reason for blogs to take off, and the way
technology took off was another reason. The advent of open source
blogging technology, like Wordpress, gave people the opportunity to share
their thoughts in a cohesive manner. No longer were you stuck using
some form of "journal" to share things with friends, you could sit there
for a few hours and create a viable page that people outside of your
friends could visit pretty easily. Add in Google buying Blogger and
re-vamping it as a Blogspot and we were off to the races.
I find it interesting that less than two years later you started to see
blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear & You Ain't No Picasso popping up.
People saw what those sites were able to do and they wondered to
themselves why they couldn't do the same. All of a sudden those who had
been marginalized by having no outlet looked at the playbook in front of
them and created something of their own and with that you had access to
those people. Like Chris said, the ease of getting a hold of bloggers
made it pretty easy to get your music in front of someone's "ears," and
that's how we started to see acts that we'd normally see ignored by
someone like The Dallas Morning News being discovered.
DH: So, basically, what you guys are getting at, is that because of the
way print media has yielded to blogs, one of the outcomes is that it's
easier for obscure artists to get discovered. It would seem then, that
those artists would be given a bigger stage and audience, and in turn,
some of the bigger, more commercial acts would start to be marginalized
on some scale. That being said, in the North Texas music community, are
you guys seeing obscure, art-focused artists surface and gain a
following more so than they would have according to the old model? And
if so, what examples come to mind?
CM: Without contradicting my earlier point, there is a danger in giving
blogs and traditional media outlets too much credit here. I guess I'd
shy away from using the word "discovered." Some bands and artists really
have no idea what to do with even a small amount of attention and they
really seem to despise it. Underground artistic activity existed long
before the current system and always will; I think it's natural for the
artist to feel as if he or she doesn't need the system or to at least be
highly suspicious of being misrepresented. The way the information is
distributed changed the type of coverage; the blog phenomenon was closer
to '80s zine culture in many ways, though that crowd might be loathe to
admit such a thing. So whereas older music articles in print would be
something akin to covering a Pop Olympics, where the "best" band gets to
the top, now things were presented in a way that was much less linear.
So with all of that in mind, I don't think anyone was marginalized.
There was just room for a wider variety of acts and venues in arts
coverage all of a sudden.
The way I always tried to approach things was that everything was
completely level if you were to look at a map of the metroplex. My
thought was that a house show in Denton was just as valid as a big
business show in Grand Prairie or House Of Blues. I felt it would be
best to treat these disparate events with equal respect. Ultimately that
was a decent decision, since when I look back through the archives
there are many examples of bands playing Mable Peabody's or The 8th
Continent that ended up actually playing House of Blues or larger venues
in general. That's a pretty old story in "The Business," but the point
is that I don't think the papers always caught those bands until it was a
little late. There are some really good examples, but I think one of my
favorites is Best Fwends, because that is a band that bet their entire
future on just being completely annoying. And they ended up at House Of
Blues and doing Bacardi commercials; meanwhile other artists that were
still trying to gain traction through traditional avenues were probably
wondering how that possibly happened. I find that hilarious.
JPF: I wouldn't say there are bands tailoring themselves to fit blog
niches, but I wouldn't discount that blogs and press are definitely on
their minds. You see a lot of blogs and bands attach themselves to this
idea of genre specific music effort to be apart from the pack. This
leads to what at times feels like symbiotic relationship as bands keep
getting written about by the same blog over and over. DayBowBow was
guilty of this.
You would hope that because of the sheer number of blogs we have in the
area there would be more diversity and that there would be avenues for a
broader coverage but it doesn't always feel that way. There are
drawbacks to having so many voices out there, one of which is the
borderline insane way you see local entities jump over themselves to
cover some bands; we're anointing the best new thing in the area pretty
much every month. Look at a band like Soviet, they're a solid group who
seem to be oblivious to their own hype, but in a two-week period they were
reviewed or featured on pretty much every site in the region. Now while
that was great for them you started to notice how every review was
pretty much repeating the same thing, just in a different order. With so
many voices in the choir you start to worry about the coverage being
too diluted.
DH: Interesting that you mentioned "the sheer number of blogs we have in
the area," Jaime. We do have a high density of blogs here, which can be
redundant when it comes to local coverage. I feel like bands are
starting to react to that problem, though. Like you mentioned, Soviet
had two weeks of strong coverage from a lot of voices, and then they
disappeared. But Good Records has announced that, with their relaunch,
they're moving to singles format so that their artists can stay in the
news constantly, rather than once a year when a new record comes out.
I'm seeing a lot of bands do this too. Air Review, for example, is
releasing a song a month, rather than the traditional full-length model.
If more bands adopt this mindset, it seems like it will encourage their
music to evolve faster. What do you guys think?
CM: It can be redundant, but it doesn't have to be. Too many writers let
themselves get pressured into covering things for the sake of doing so,
and that's not helpful to the publication, the artists, or the writers
themselves. There's a tendency to let people steer the conversation
based on little more than profile; sometimes you're the one steering and
it's great, but it can be frustrating if you aren't. I'm sure everyone
has experienced both sides of this to some degree.
Another way to fight redundancy is to try as much as possible to
disregard the non-music associations of what you're covering; never mind
their booking company, never mind what the one-sheet is feeding you,
and never mind people who have business interests trying to direct your
coverage. This happens all the time and it's one of the worst nuisances
in covering local music.
Finally, the return to the singles model of disseminating music is
really just about the most anachronistic method we've seen in decades
and decades. If you consider that wax cylinders and 78's were singles,
it's an extremely retro idea. A better example perhaps is just before
the "Album Era" that began in the '60s and of course, rap, disco, and punk helped foster a singles-happy climate as well. So it's hard for me
to think of it as anything new. I don't necessarily agree that the band
or artist will make strides any more quickly, but it's probably best
that they don't feel compelled to make an entire record if they don't
have the inspiration necessary to sustain such an endeavor. Now that the
CD is quickly approaching its final days, we're left with warehouses of
rotting full-lengths that were only made to fit the business model of a
given time. A single is easier to consume quickly; however, is everyone
up to the task of taking a more sensational and attention-grabbing
NME-styled approach to keep up with everything? Maybe that's why there
has been so much succinct junk journalism lately.
JPF: I would point out that the blueprint for running a local blog was
laid out by Mr. Mosley's We Shot Jr, a site that was very vocal in their
support for acts many people had yet to discover. The always
entertaining "it list" and "weekenders" shined a light on pretty much
everything worthwhile going on in the area. The disregard for the PR and booking companies that flood our inboxes certainly drew more fans
to the site as we felt that we were getting someone's actual thoughts,
not just the regurgitated thoughts of some PR flack. It was, at least
for me when I first moved back to the area, kind of a bible for those of
us wanting to discover new things and learn about our region.
This doesn't totally touch on the singles thing, but I've always found
Bishop Allen's 2006 EP project fascinating. You had a band who was
afraid of going through a sophomore album slump decide to halt the
recording of their album in favor of releasing a four-song EP every month
for an entire year. That's no small order. I believe that at times art
is born from necessity and by putting themselves behind the eight ball
like that Bishop Allen forced themselves to deliver to the best of their
ability and they manged to cull a lot of their second album from those
songs.
I don't believe the album will die. We'll always get musicians with
these grand ideas of what an album should be and they'll continue
churning out double discs despite the public's move to the single rich
formats that are readily available at the moment. In fact it's very
interesting that there's almost as much writing out there from last week
discussing the technology one of those formats, Spotify, as there is
discussing what you can actually do with it. We have access to a
(mostly) free service that puts 16 million-plus songs at our fingertips and
much of what was written was about how it was ad-heavy and hard to get,
not about how we now could easily share each other's music libraries. It
feels as if it's more fun to complain these days than to highlight.
Does anyone else find it encouraging that Carles, the king of all
blogging parody has proven himself to be a top notch writer over at
Grantland? Here's a guy who freely parodied everything that's wrong with
blogging (the gotcha headlines, the "wave" culture and the none
breaking breaking news) through Hipster Runoff, writing these
increasingly thought-provoking pieces on a site that I freely admit I
was shocked to see him on. I think that it shows the writing aspect of
blogging can still shine through.
