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Your Band Blows
Williamsburg: Your Bands Blow
In the information age, it’s relatively easy to nationalize an act if you get enough people talking about you, positively or negatively. It's an interesting phenomenon when it happens to a band, but it’s even more fascinating when it happens to a geographic region - the ability to push bands into mainstream consciousness not on their own merits, but just because they're from a certain place.
It’s not always the case that buzz about a scene is bad or misused. But when a hype machine gets moving and there’s little or no substance behind the majority of the bands coming out of that area, it’s a pretty disgusting sight to behold. Unfortunately for you and I, there is currently a “cultural happening” taking place in a quickly gentrifying warehouse district in Brooklyn called Williamsburg that is exposing the world to some egregious music. Some apparently groundbreaking things are happening there due to the dense population of musicians and artists who gravitated to the spot for its low rents and reputation for collectives of creative people. But through my eyes, the majority of the "groundbreaking" things coming out of the ‘Burg are just pomp and hyperbolic flatulence, and are only breaking ground on a buried megaton of shit.
There have been a few bands that evolved in the area that have made it big; MGMT is a good example. And until recently, the area was one of the only places within spitting distance of Manhattan that you could get a studio apartment for less than two grand. But the majority of what's coming out of the area’s music scene now is really terrible. It’s easy to see why groups like Dreamburger or Alexcalibur aren’t doing much. One is an all-girl electro-noise band with an upside down cross and a cheeseburger for a logo, and the other is a huge buff guy that straps bicycle wheels to his back and does interpretive dance while singing songs about relying on “the rock.” And there are bands like Bunny Rabbit + Black Cracker, a gender bending duo that makes some of the most boring ambient music ever created (and that's saying something), and has the most heinous Myspace page that I've ever seen. It's really disturbing; I recommend checking it out if you’re into retinal masochism.
The bands I've just mentioned are bad, and hopefully won’t see the light of day past a blog post here and there, but there are some that for no good reason are HUGELY popular.
I recently saw one of the successful ‘Burg bands play to a packed house. I won’t name names (we recently covered them and the interview was very interesting), but know that the lead singer is a huge fat hairy guy who gets naked and makes out with random people in the audience. Fair enough? The show was mildly entertaining because of the wookie flopping around onstage and tongue-kissing unwilling guys and girls in the front row, but the music was like something from a tone-deaf punk band of 10-year-olds. I can appreciate a spectacle - Gil Mantera's Party Dream are an amazing live act that make their mediocre music enjoyable due to their ridiculous costumes - but the band I was watching was seriously overcompensating for a lack of musical talent. It was like that skinny five-foot-three redneck down the road that drives a truck the size of an earthmover - you know he's not packing much heat downstairs (or upstairs for that matter) if he needs to present himself in that way. After the show I asked several people about what they'd just seen. They were very enthusiastic about the creepiness, but I couldn’t even get them to comment on the music. It was almost as if they were tuned out.
This is just one particularly bad example. There are so many it's impossible for me to go into every shitty band from Williamsburg. The majority seem to be groups more into creating a display of how edgy they are than making palatable songs. Last I checked, the word music was the first part of musician. If you don’t get that part down first, you're nothing but an overblown performance artist. I fucking hate performance artists. Unfortunately for Williamsburg and us, however, the shit-ton of people living there are currently having mind-meld sessions and taking their ridiculous concepts to newer, stranger and more sonically revolting heights, all in the name of being cool or becoming famous. With acts like these coming out of a so-called hot music scene, I fear for our future. Not just because things like song structure or audience connection or just plain sanity are going out the window, but also because we as music consumers will be further pressured to accept this crap as good. And as far as I'm concerned, we don’t need any more people telling us that the ludicrous sounds they've made in their basement with a homemade banjo and an overinflated ego are art. We already have Pitchfork.
It’s not always the case that buzz about a scene is bad or misused. But when a hype machine gets moving and there’s little or no substance behind the majority of the bands coming out of that area, it’s a pretty disgusting sight to behold. Unfortunately for you and I, there is currently a “cultural happening” taking place in a quickly gentrifying warehouse district in Brooklyn called Williamsburg that is exposing the world to some egregious music. Some apparently groundbreaking things are happening there due to the dense population of musicians and artists who gravitated to the spot for its low rents and reputation for collectives of creative people. But through my eyes, the majority of the "groundbreaking" things coming out of the ‘Burg are just pomp and hyperbolic flatulence, and are only breaking ground on a buried megaton of shit.
There have been a few bands that evolved in the area that have made it big; MGMT is a good example. And until recently, the area was one of the only places within spitting distance of Manhattan that you could get a studio apartment for less than two grand. But the majority of what's coming out of the area’s music scene now is really terrible. It’s easy to see why groups like Dreamburger or Alexcalibur aren’t doing much. One is an all-girl electro-noise band with an upside down cross and a cheeseburger for a logo, and the other is a huge buff guy that straps bicycle wheels to his back and does interpretive dance while singing songs about relying on “the rock.” And there are bands like Bunny Rabbit + Black Cracker, a gender bending duo that makes some of the most boring ambient music ever created (and that's saying something), and has the most heinous Myspace page that I've ever seen. It's really disturbing; I recommend checking it out if you’re into retinal masochism.
The bands I've just mentioned are bad, and hopefully won’t see the light of day past a blog post here and there, but there are some that for no good reason are HUGELY popular.
I recently saw one of the successful ‘Burg bands play to a packed house. I won’t name names (we recently covered them and the interview was very interesting), but know that the lead singer is a huge fat hairy guy who gets naked and makes out with random people in the audience. Fair enough? The show was mildly entertaining because of the wookie flopping around onstage and tongue-kissing unwilling guys and girls in the front row, but the music was like something from a tone-deaf punk band of 10-year-olds. I can appreciate a spectacle - Gil Mantera's Party Dream are an amazing live act that make their mediocre music enjoyable due to their ridiculous costumes - but the band I was watching was seriously overcompensating for a lack of musical talent. It was like that skinny five-foot-three redneck down the road that drives a truck the size of an earthmover - you know he's not packing much heat downstairs (or upstairs for that matter) if he needs to present himself in that way. After the show I asked several people about what they'd just seen. They were very enthusiastic about the creepiness, but I couldn’t even get them to comment on the music. It was almost as if they were tuned out.
This is just one particularly bad example. There are so many it's impossible for me to go into every shitty band from Williamsburg. The majority seem to be groups more into creating a display of how edgy they are than making palatable songs. Last I checked, the word music was the first part of musician. If you don’t get that part down first, you're nothing but an overblown performance artist. I fucking hate performance artists. Unfortunately for Williamsburg and us, however, the shit-ton of people living there are currently having mind-meld sessions and taking their ridiculous concepts to newer, stranger and more sonically revolting heights, all in the name of being cool or becoming famous. With acts like these coming out of a so-called hot music scene, I fear for our future. Not just because things like song structure or audience connection or just plain sanity are going out the window, but also because we as music consumers will be further pressured to accept this crap as good. And as far as I'm concerned, we don’t need any more people telling us that the ludicrous sounds they've made in their basement with a homemade banjo and an overinflated ego are art. We already have Pitchfork.
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