On Durham and identity
betsy...@gmail.com
I'm a student at Duke and am writing a paper about the indie rock
scene in the Triangle, with a particular focus on Durham identity. I
was hoping I could maybe spark a little conversation or a little
interest to email back and forth about what it means to be a member of
the community, either as a fan, a band member, an info center,
whatever the case may be.
I'm interested in exploring what exactly it means to be a "Durham
band" since the proliferation of so many groups claiming this lately,
as well as what it means to be part of the Durham scene, and how (or
if) this differs from say, being part of the Raleigh scene or the
Chapel Hill scene (and being a Raleigh band or CH band). I wonder
what *you* think of when you think of Durham (and be completely
honest) or if you ever think of it at all. Why does Durham have tee
shirts and no other town does? What's the pride all about?
I'll keep an eye out and hope I get some replies.
Thanks
Betsy-Shane
grady
their members live in Durham. Root cause: for some folks, it's the most
affordable place to live, and for a lot of folks, it's the most
desireable place to live. I stopped counting a long time ago the number
of my friends who'd moved to Durham from the other points in the Triangle.
So if you're trendspotting, the trend started at least a half-dozen
years ago, and it's called "musicians like cheap housing."
As for the question about t-shirts, well, I guess you just haven't seen
the Carrboro t-shirts, or the OCSC t-shirts. Given the longstanding
basketball/rock connection in Chapel Hill, I'd say any UNC
basketball-related t-shirt would probably count for Chapel Hill.
Are you asking "why does Durham have such uncanny self-esteem-boosting
T-shirts?" Because the answer to that is pretty much "James & Michelle
Lee," and if you start asking "why James & Michelle Lee," I'm not sure
that there's an answer for that. Other than, getting back to point A,
musicians like cheap housing. Where else could they afford to operate
such a sprawling enterprise as 305 South?
There are other folks whose outsized level of involvement/boosterism
sort of singlehandedly makes Durham seem more "together" or "organized"
or "scene-like" [than it actually is]: Melissa Thomas at 307 Knox, and
certainly Chaz. Shannon Morrow moved back to Durham from Chicago (though
before she moved to Chicago, she was living in Carrboro, so there ya go)
& started the Scene of the Crime Rovers.
What do all *these* people have in common? Maybe that they like the idea
of being able to get something done more or less singlehandedly, or with
a small group of co-conspirators. Durham seems like a tabula rasa,
culture-wise, at least to youngish white-ish indie-rockers. Check out
that article in the Indy from a couple of weeks ago about the NCCU jazz
program & you'll see that Durham isn't really such a clean slate, but
when it comes to youth culture, all it takes is a fallow period of a
couple of years to wipe everything pretty clean.
Maybe another thing they have in common is the good old fashioned
punkrock ideal that community is a good thing, and that building
community is an end unto itself. Obviously there are some folks who have
slightly different ideas (i.e. the Troika folks who like to salt the
festival lineup with a few out-of-towners), but even they do what they
do by and large for the sake of the community, rather than out of some
quest for larger fame/fortune.
But then I think you'd have to go all the way to Charlotte to really
find anybody who was desperately seeking fame via indie-rock. Oh, well,
I guess there are those guys from Raleigh who bought a tour bus to live
in while they wait for their ship to come in, Airiel Down, but they're
an aberration even for Raleigh.
The thing about people who like the idea of a close-knit community, is
that they tend to seek out other people who also like that idea. Couple
that with real estate that's cheap enough for peeps to be able to afford
to open something like BCHQ . . .
I hope you don't have some thesis in mind regarding sharp distinctions
between the various towns, or anything like adversarial relationships
between the towns, the clubs, or the bands. Periodically people try to
advance some notion that there is some level of competition or
something, but if there is, it's isolated almost entirely to the annual
WXDU/WXYC kickball game. There may be the occasional crackpot who sees
things as a zero-sum game where somebody's gotta lose, but I would
strongly caution you against extrapolating from them to anything bigger.
Or before you do, talk to Chaz & ask him how many Raleigh bands have
played his store and/or Bull City HQ. Or talk to DJ Stevo at WKNC & ask
him how he feels about bands from Durham & Chapel Hill. That dude loves
*everybody* & he works his butt off to prove it.
Anyway. The more I think about it, the more I come back to point A:
cheap real estate makes for countercultural magic. This is not a new
concept.
Nor, for that matter, is the converse, which is that expensive real
estate can kill the countercultural magic. Just look at Raleigh. Goodbye
Kings, goodbye Bickett Gallery.
Ross
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
>
>
-- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
Jason M Sullivan
> Nor, for that matter, is the converse, which is that expensive real
> estate can kill the countercultural magic. Just look at Raleigh. Goodbye
> Kings, goodbye Bickett Gallery.
Which reminds me, does anyone know if Bickett's getting torn down, or
simply sold? Or is it for sale, without a buyer yet? How much?
I suppose I could ask Molly herself, but I never see her outside the
gallery.
--
//)) Jason M. SULLIVAN jsul...@nc.rr.com
|c-oo http://www.jason0x21.org
//\_- "That's not music, that's just sound!" - J. David Fries
Joel Peck
same everywhere.
Does Durham, arguably more "hardcore" in terms of its neighborhoods and
socio economics, provide an environment more apt to the "punk/hardcore"
aesthetic? Is there more visibility in terms of gender, sexual orientation,
and political leanings? Does Durham have a unique "More than Music" approach
in terms of hosting discourse, DIY workshops, political gatherings, et al?
It seems Durham is more DIY than Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Raleigh
combined. Thoughts?
On a side note: one of my favorite political hardcore bands, Born Against,
have a youtube clip from a Durham show in 1992 or so. I don't know the
circumstances for why they played there, but I can't picture them anywhere
else in the Triangle. Was anyone there?
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Nathaniel Florin
--- Joel Peck <joelp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On a side note: one of my favorite political
> hardcore bands, Born Against,
> have a youtube clip from a Durham show in 1992 or
> so. I don't know the
> circumstances for why they played there, but I can't
> picture them anywhere
> else in the Triangle. Was anyone there?
I was perplexed by this, but I did some digging and
found that, unfortunately, that Durham was Durham,
England. See #153:
http://www.sammcpheeters.com/music/ba-shows.htm
Frankly, in their lifetime, I couldn't imagine Born
Against playing anywhere in the Triangle. Maybe
Greensboro, and Winston-Salem is close enough, but
twice in Charlotte?
Nate
grady
hardcore, but in a lot of areas I think it's really like a giant
Carrboro with housing prices that are actually in line with the
vintage/condition of the houses. Mix of aging hippies & young familes.
Sure, Durham has some supremely poverty-stricken areas, and some streets
that are crime-ier than others, but I don't really know that many
musicians who're doing the urban pioneer thing in that sense.
But yes, maybe the "feel" of Durham as more "gritty" (that term comes up
a lot, from all sides) is appealing. Or maybe it's just that the
inexpensive housing, due to the vicissitudes of urban un/development, is
in closer proximity to interesting stuff, whether it be downtown, or the
Roxboro taqueria belt, or just interesting old architecture.
I certainly feel more "at home" in Durham (I should mention that I don't
live there, though I've done a radio show there for ~12 years, many of
my friends live there, and I'm likely moving there next year . . . I
currently live in Chatham County, which is a whole other discussion)
than in the other towns around. Chapel Hill/Carrboro seems too evenly
divided between rich people and college students; Raleigh feels more
like Charlotte every day, sadly. People in Durham feel more like people.
I guess I'd get back to what I said earlier, about it being kind of a
tabula rasa, but I'll phrase it differently: Durham feels kind of
"anything-goes," but in a positive sense. Not wild west like Deadwood
(although there's a running "cocksucker!" gag among certain Durham
bands), but like this sense of untapped possibility. I think in order
for that to pay off, there has to be a critical mass of people willing
to say "yes! thank you for trying whatever crazy experiment you're
trying!" and I would argue that this critical mass of freaks has only
recently (past 3-5 years) grown to the point that it has become clearly
visible to non-Durhamites.
So, say, 10 years ago, Jim Kellough could open his Modern Museum in a
basement off Foster Street, and have some amazing installation-art
shows, and get a steady stream of Durhamites stopping by, but that
stream might only add up to maybe 100 people seeing the show over the
course of a few weeks. He was cool with that, the artists were cool with
that. But (despite an Indy arts award), the ripples didn't necessarily
travel that far out into the Triangle (or even into Durham-at-large).
Contrast that with the crazy overflow crowds at the Rousse installations
last year.
So what is it about Durham that makes people so willing to come out for
the weird/interesting stuff? I kind of feel like it has been this slow
process of self-selection over the past dozen years, as layer upon layer
of adventurous people moved to Durham & it thus became slightly more
attractive to each additional layer.
The DDI and the American Tobacco people like to congratulate themselves
on all their hard work & all the money they've invested to accelerate
this process, but the attractiveness of Durham to the true "creative
class" (as vs. the faux creative class of advertising executives--sorry,
Kevin) began before DDI came on the scene, and I don't think it has
really been positively impacted (at least not directly) by all the new
development.
See also: the article in the Indy by Kate Dobbs Ariail a couple of
months ago, about Scientific Properties & the redevelopment of one of
the oldschool downtown Durham "creative class" buildings, leaving some
of the earlier generation of Durham pioneers kinda out in the cold.
(I read something disturbing the other day: is it true that one of the
Scientific Properties principals developed some mini mansions on the
site of the bulldozed Catalano House?)
As re: your other points, regarding gender/politics/etc . . . I dunno,
Internationalist & the Weaver Street Crowd are pretty hard to ignore
when you're in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, at least if you're a member of
their potential constituency, so I don't know that Durham has anything
over them in terms of visibility per se.
Which isn't to cast Durham as at all lacking in that area, although the
current crop of commie bookstores & collaboratives in Durham are mostly
mere pups compared to the 26-year-old Internationalist.
But that may be part of the point, if I can be allowed to come back &
belabor what has become my core idea one more time: Durham seems like
more of a fertile ground for DIY, maybe *because* there is the
perception that (a) it hasn't already been done [better] by a bunch of
rich assholes in tie-dye driving volvos who'd be more than happy to tell
you what a shitty job you're doing, and (b) there are people who will
come out & support what you're doing.
Note bene, however, that one of the oldest examples of left-wing DIY
cooperative whatever-ness in Durham, the Durham Food Co-op, is in the
midst of an awful internal struggle that has basically pitted one group
(the ones who want to run it like a business, in the sense of not being
horribly in debt, but also in the sense of a level of
efficiency/organization that really offends some people) against another
group of folks who still want to think of it as a co-op in all
connotations of the term, good and bad.
And some other group of people who just wanna argue, apparently,
although I will confess I've avoided it entirely after hearing the
horror stories of a friend who used to work there.
I'd be interested to hear from all the Durham musicians who were Durham
musicians back before all this attention began.
Ross
p.s. I can picture hardcore, of one kind or another, happening all over
the Triangle . . . I've certainly seen it in house shows & small clubs
in all three towns at one time or another. Now you've got me missing the
Fallout Shelter again.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
trekky records
DIY/hippie/indie/whatever culture in CH sometimes seems so stale, and,
as you said, most of the institutions are SO old, so established.
great, but not exciting. so, the fact that durham is cheap is half of
it, but i also think something like BCHQ might not take off in CH,
just because of that general feeling of "we probably already have
something like that, or at least something similar enough for me to
just go to that one". which is silly, cause we DON'T have something
like that, and i want it.
ALSO, WXYC has had TWO practices in preparation for the kickball game
and WXDU should be shaking in their boots. last years contentious
barely-a-victory by XDU will soon be forgotten.
-will
> ...
>
> read more »
betsy...@gmail.com
I guess beyond cheap housing (I've heard arguments that carrboro is
cheap enough, or comperably cheap and I don't really know the orange
county housing market) I wonder about the newer aspects of the "scene"
developed...I don't really know who was here before this new wave of
fairly young bands came in and commandeered the identity, but there
seems to be a gung ho "attitude" of Durham, sort of invested in
separationist politics, but more in the sense of there was no place
for us so we've made a place for ourselves. Whether or not that's
true is debatable (and in my work has been widely debated). When I
moved here in 2003, I was going to CH weekly because there was
"nothing to do" in Durham. Whether or not that was true, there was
nothing visible, barely any venues for music, and when I went out,
people seemed pretty down on Durham (the favorite joke being about
Welcome to Durham / getting shot / getting robbed) The other thing
I've thought about in regards to politics is the fact that Durham is
sort of the "poor" city....and the fact that people sort of bricolage
the poverty and the lovable loser mentality of the town, making their
own projects into the little engine that could...
Plus, Durham seems to have many more female movers and shakers, at
least visibly-- Mel thomas owns 307 Knox and does Troika, Michelle
Lee's Untidy Museum/Electric Blender are the real reason places like
ooh la latte and 305 south came to be, 3 of the 6 members of the board
of BCHQ are ladies...going back there was ladyslipper and Mr. lady.
Is this just coincidence? Is Durham as a town just woman friendlier?
I've made the argument that Durham is a "feminized" or "emasculated"
space because it has been robbed of its agency, lost its earning power
and is now basically being parceled off to the highest bidder.
I would argue, however, that the number of people willing to travel to
Durham for events is not nearly as high as people likely to go out to
Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Raleigh for events. As much as rent prices play
a role, you can't deny that Broad St cafe has gone under in many
incarnations, Joe & Jo's (arguably the birthplace of this new wave of
Durham collectives) went down, and without an intervention by the
DUU, The Coffeehouse would've folded too. Are people really coming
out to Durham? I never intended to say it was a "hot scene" but
people are trying to make something happen here and I wonder both how
it looks from the outside to musicians and listeners. I think the
sort of same 100 people phenomena is in full blast here, because it's
the same people at lots of the shows, with the exception maybe of Red
Collar shows.
I guess I have been getting a lot of nebulous responses about the
"spirit" of durham, like Ross's statement
"Chapel Hill/Carrboro seems too evenly
divided between rich people and college students; Raleigh feels more
like Charlotte every day, sadly. People in Durham feel more like
people. "
I suppose that I am trying to put my finger on why it is that people
in Durham feel more like people / the Durham "scene" is so much more
supportive than others / it's "fresher" / it's really DIY / it's so
weird/interesting for people now.
Thanks already for your responses, if you've got any reply to these
(or the questions posed by Joel, thanks man!) that'd be great too.
grady
agency in Durham than in Chapel Hill/Carrboro. I would hesitate to try
to strap your emasculation argument to it, but that's primarily because
I dropped out of grad school because I was tired of that level of
theoretical froo-fraw. If you're not tired of that, then I suppose
that's your call.
I would probably prefer to argue that it doesn't & shouldn't require, in
the 21st century, the economic "emasculation" of a city in order for
women to assume a cultural leadership role. I think I'd prefer to make
the argument in favor of role models & a support structure--Ladyslipper
supports one kind of wimmins music scene, giving Durham a national
reputation as women- and queer-friendly (which it is, and not due to
Ladyslipper per se), which in turn acts as a factor when Kaia & Tammy
Rae Carland decide to move to Durham & start Mr. Lady, though it should
be pointed out that I saw Kaia more at the Lizard & Snake, both in Team
Dresch & solo, before they moved here, than I saw her in Durham, *and*
that Tammy Rae wound up teaching at UNC, not Duke, BUT they chose to
live & run the label in Durham . . .
So is that cheap housing again, or my clean slate argument again, or is
it your argument that Durham somehow allows women to do what they want?
Because I'd strongly argue that the women you mention were gonna do what
they want no matter where they lived, and it didn't require some
artificially uneven playing field to make that happen. If they chose
Durham because rent was cheap, or because there's this wide-open feeling
about it, or because there were role models/predecessors such as
Ladyslipper & Mr. Lady, then I guess I'd want to argue that that just
makes them rational actors.
And so I suppose what I'm saying is that if that's part of your angle,
then a more interesting question might be: why are most of the venues in
Raleigh & Chapel Hill run by dudes? If Durham is only anomalous via its
non-fucked-up-ness, then is it anomalous at all?
I've been going to shows in Durham since I moved to the Triangle in
1992, and the funny thing about Durham is that while there are never
very *many* places to play, there's always somewhere to play. My vague
recollection goes kind of like this: Under The
Street->Coffeehouse->Captured Live->umm, Coffeehouse again->The
Basement->yes, Coffeehouse again->Ooh La Latte->Coffeehouse->305
South/Joe & Jo's->Coffeehouse->Chaz's->Broad Street->BCHQ->Coffeehouse,
if'n they start booking more than 1 show every 2 weeks.
Re: Coffeehouse "almost going under" and the Union bailout or whatever:
The Duke Coffeehouse is a member of the Duke University Union. Sometimes
it winds up with management that is more or less effective than other
times, and sometimes Union management or staff higher-ups gotta do some
nudging back onto the right track. This is sort of to be expected,
particularly for a student-run venue where the students have as much
leeway as they do there. I sorta feel like if they aren't sinking too
much money into booking shows that aren't gonna make it back, then they
aren't living up to their full potential, but maybe that's just me.
Oh, and since this can't be repeated enough times: Joe & Jo's closed/was
sold due to a big change in Joanne's personal life, not due to economic
hardship.
Trying to hit other points piecemeal: Carrboro living ain't cheap. If
one were so inclined, back before the last of them sold, one could buy a
1/4-acre vacant lot in Carrboro for around $130,000.
I don't think people in Durham care about whether people from other
towns go to shows there. Certainly recent iterations of Coffeehouse
management have done a fairly ass-poor job of promoting shows outside of
a small chunk of East Campus/9th Street. Before Joe & Jo's closed it was
a constant struggle for me to get word about shows there more than a day
or so in advance. James & Michelle are also pretty slack in this regard.
If you can put your finger on some inherent Durham thing that makes this
true, then go for it. I've always wondered.
If you want to talk about the reasons why people might drive from Durham
to Chapel Hill or Raleigh to see a show, then I think they're probably
twofold:
1) people in Durham really like their friends' bands, and are willing to
drive to see them play.
2) Frank Heath pretty much has right of first refusal to a huge
percentage of touring shows that people might want to see, and he puts
them in the Cradle first, [lately] Local 506 second, and various other
venues (none in Durham, but the occasional seated show at the Carolina)
third.
It's a safe bet that for the foreseeable future, peeps won't be driving
to Raleigh to see shows nearly as often.
I guess what I'm saying in this regard is that people may be driving
from Durham to Chapel Hill more than vice-versa, but it's because
they're going to see their friends' bands, or to see out-of-town bands.
The secret here is that the average Chapel Hill band, by itself, doesn't
draw all that well in Chapel Hill *or* in Durham. Chapel Hill's music
venues are not, by and large, being maintained as viable businesses due
to the strength of the local music scene. They're making money on
touring bands, or on non-rock events.
So people from Durham can feel bad, if they want to, if they throw a big
show of all local bands & nobody from Chapel Hill shows up. But if they
threw the same show in Chapel Hill, not that many more people would show
up either.
And as for Raleigh, well, nobody drives I-40 at night, in either direction.
You talk about the same-100-people phenomenon; cut that number to 30 and
you've described the average Chapel Hill locals-only show.
You are completely correct that a lot of Durham bands are [justifiably]
proud of being from Durham. I think that as much as anything, it's sort
of a historical echo from the time when Chapel Hill was nationally known
as the indie-rock capital of the world [for about five minutes]. Bands
from Durham who tried to leave the city limits had to decide whether &
how often they wanted to have the conversation that began with "we're
from Durham," veered into NC geography, and ended with "fuckit, we're
from Chapel Hill."
Like I may have said before, I'd hesitate before reading too much into
that. There is certainly an "underdog" spirit, to the extent that such a
spirit is (a) fun, (b) kinda ironic, and (c) constructive. With the
exception of a couple of possible sour-grapes-ers, I'd say that in my
experience, the vast majority of Durham bands say it with pride, but
without a lot of negative baggage. It's underdoggy because it's *fun* to
be underdoggy, not traumatic.
Getting to your core question, of why Durham feels more supportive, or
whatever else: read the article in the Indy about Kings. Talk to DJ
Stevo at WKNC. You can't really make an argument about the music
community in Durham being more supportive than the community in Raleigh.
Is it a little weird that there isn't more overlap between the two?
Maybe, but then again maybe not. 25-30 minutes is a long time to spend
in the car at 1:00 a.m.
As for Chapel Hill, well, I think we've written a book on a.m.c-h over
the past few years about "the kids" and whether or not they're going to
shows more or less than they used to, and etc. I think Will makes a good
point when he talks about the weight of history in Chapel Hill being a
hard thing to struggle against. Durham, despite being a far more
historic city in toto, doesn't really keep its rocknroll artifacts
around in plain sight.
I suppose I'd suggest that the people who'd be most interesting to talk
to are those people who were living in/near Chapel Hill in the 90s who
have since moved to Durham, particularly those (Anne Gomez!) who have
been in bands in both Durham and Chapel Hill since the late 80s.
And I suppose I would also suggest that there is something inherently a
lot more fun/exciting about DIY than there is about calling up Glenn
Boothe 18 times to try to get a show at Local 506, then shlepping all
your gear over there & playing a show to a roomful of people who spend
all the time standing in the back talking, regardless of whether you're
from Durham or from Chapel Hill. So if the only kinds of shows in Durham
are DIY shows, more or less, then yeah, I guess people are going to be
more excited.
So I suppose what I'm finally getting at is that I think Durham is sort
of benefitting from this long slow aggregation (that I spoke of in my
other email) of culture-minded people, some of whom moved there from out
of town & were full of energy & excitement about starting something new,
and some of whom moved there from Chapel Hill or Raleigh because they
were tired of renting crappy houses & going to smoky late-night shows &
were ready to settle down a little. And when those two groups collided
with the other X-factors we've talked about (cheap real estate being one
of them), what you wound up with was a lot of fun, slack pick-up bands
who were as likely to play a mid-evening show at Joe & Jo's because (a)
they could get to bed before 3:00 a.m. and (b) they could drag their
friends out & they'd be able to eat & drink & talk in relative comfort.
And since so many of these people were great musicians who'd been in
bands for years, even their slack pick-up bands (like, say, America's
Next Top Models) were hella fun.
I think Durham would be a lot more boring & a lot less vibrant if there
were actual rockclubs there, with smoking, and late start times, and
actual business people worried about making rent solely on the basis of
rock music & beer, and all the things that I hate about rockclubs. I
hope that we learn at some point that Durham has evolved *beyond* that,
rather than being at some early-evolutionary stage *before* that.
If there were *true* barriers in the way of Durham indie rock--if the
cops were cracking skulls outside of shows, a la LA in the early 80s, or
if they were busting every single house show with a huge show of force,
a la Greenville NC circa right-about-fucking-now--then would everybody
in Durham be as breathlessly excited as they are right now? Probably
not. Would they pull together to make something happen anyway? That's a
good question. Durham? Bendy?
Jason M Sullivan
> And as for Raleigh, well, nobody drives I-40 at night, in either direction.
Not only do I do this, I bring a posse. See you folks at Antibalas, if'n I
don't get in a car wreck on the way to the show again.
> I think Durham would be a lot more boring & a lot less vibrant if there
> were actual rockclubs there, with smoking, and late start times, and
> actual business people worried about making rent solely on the basis of
> rock music & beer, and all the things that I hate about rockclubs. I
> hope that we learn at some point that Durham has evolved *beyond* that,
> rather than being at some early-evolutionary stage *before* that.
This has got to be my favorite part of the entire discussion. Right here.
Anyone who runs (or who has inclinations to run) a performance space should
tape this to their head, printed backwards, so they can read it in the
mirror every morning. If the doors open at 8:30 don't make me wait two
hours in a place with a lot of smoke and no seating before a single note is
played.
run...@gmail.com
mainly housing costs. I don't know a single person that lives in
Chapel Hill anymore (despite living there for 6 years), and just a few
in Carrboro. Most have moved to Pittsboro & Durham. They don't want
just cheap housing, they want housing with character, with all those
walkability points you read about (including to proximity to bars and
music venues). That can't be had in many places outside of Durham. I
use this list to find out what's going on in the Triangle, to
determine if its enough of a draw for me to travel the 45 minutes down
the interstate. If I got to Durham, I can also bundle my trip with
restaurants & bookstores & now Chaz's & visits to friends' places. The
restaurants I want to go to in Chapel Hill don't enable as casual of a
drop in visit (especially now that Burrito Bunker closed). It may
seem petty, but transportation issues are also a big deal. I can get
to the venues in Durham easier, avoid traffic, and have a better
chance at available parking. I don't have to worry if its a game day
(I just know I might have to put up with some Duke students on a game
day, but that's more of a personal issue).
My big hesitancy to over credit the women's issue in Durham comes at
worrying that you would count out the contributions of women in the
rest of the area, though it might be in different forms than just
running a rock club. It seems like a lot of triangle writing about
music in the 90s seemed to be done by women, local label staffing, and
then there's OCSC that supports local musicians in an alternative way
as well.
However the biggest reason I broke out of lurkerdom to join this
conversation is to say that if that rumor about the Catalano property
is true I'm going to cry. Here's a capture from October on Google
Maps http://flickr.com/photos/ihavegotthestyle/272989292/. Google
Maps still shows the same satellite shot today
http://www.google.com/maps?q=1467+Ridge+Rd,+Raleigh,+North+Carolina+27607,+USA&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=35.808304,-78.687285&spn=0.001962,0.003648&t=k&om=1.
I guess if I had to guess what a developer would have put there,
that's what I would have guessed, but I wish they could have been more
creative. Durham! Let that be a lesson to you! Don't be like
Raleigh!
Elizabeth
Lisa Bachelder
lb
> On 2007-04-05, grady <gr...@ibiblio.org> wrote:
>
>> And as for Raleigh, well, nobody drives I-40 at night, in either direction.
****************************************************************
Shayne
unmistakably true, but it isn't the whole reason. Cheap rent is why
this scene is growing in Durham as opposed to Chapel Hill, but it is
not the only ingredient necessary to start a good scene (I mean, rent
is pretty cheap in Greensboro too, right?). I think in a large part
that the rise of the Durham scene is due to a number of dedicated
individuals actively trying to foster a scene here. I could be wrong,
but I think that one of the differences between the music scene in
Durham and, say, Chapel Hill is that when a musician in Durham goes
through the cost/benefit decision of any given action, they take into
account not only what is good for their band but what is good for the
music scene itself. I'm not saying that everyone in Durham thinks
this way, but enough people do to make a difference. In Chapel Hill
the music scene is so firmly established that most people never think
about what they need to do to improve/grow that scene (I know I didn't
when I lived there), but in Durham the scene is so young that there
are a lot of people who are invested in coaxing it along and helping
it mature. For example, the shows at BCHQ are free to attend. This
is in part because we don't want to exclude those who can't afford to
pay and because we don't want to be all business-like about it (the
hippie motivation), but it is also because free shows foster a music
scene. The bands that play here know that they're not going home with
a ton of money and we know that we're going to have to scramble a bit
to cover rent, but it's ok because we all really care about seeing
this community take off. And of course, that leads back to Ross's
point about cheap rent enabling artistic expression. There are also a
lot of community minded people in bands who are willing to help each
other out as much as they can. In Chapel Hill it sometimes feels like
it's every band for themselves (with notable exceptions), but I've
seen bands help each other out in Durham more times than I can count.
Beloved Binge goes on the radio and talks more about their friends'
bands and the Durham scene than their own music.
I think you were right to say that Joe and Jo's was the unofficial
home/birthplace of what is happening in Durham. It was another
example where free shows (and cheap beer/wonderful staff/outside
seating) built a steady crowd of musicians and music fans who were
there every night. The energy that was evident at Joe and Jo's is a
part of why people became so involved in turning this into a scene.
It is a self perpetuating thing. You feel the energy and it energizes
you to contribute. In that sense, a lot of what is going on in Durham
might be coincidental; a lot of small ventures and decisions that all
come along at just the right time to fuel the next one (Joe and Jo's,
Chaz's, Troika, 305 South, 307 Knox, etc, plus all of the bands that
have sprung up around them). I think you are wrong though to include
Joe and Jo's in the list of places that have folded in Durham. Joe
and Jo's didn't go under, it got sold. I've never looked at their
expense reports, but I got the impression that they were a very
profitable venture up until the night that the doors closed.
Another factor that has fueled the growth of Durham has been the
proximity of already established music scenes in Raleigh and Chapel
Hill. Without those pools to feed from, there would not be enough
variety and energy to keep this community on its feet. The
neighboring towns have also allowed a number of bands to grow and be
ready to call themselves "Durham bands" before there was a scene in
place, so that when the clubs started opening, there were big hometown
acts ready to go. It seems like there were a lot of situations and
people who had to be in the right place at the right time for all of
this to come together. A mixture of cheap rent and dedicated people
in a place where there was not an already entrenched counter-culture
has created what is here now. A lot of the shows are attended by the
same core group of people, but that group continues to grow and more
and more townies and students have been showing up (Troika, the
Antifolk Fest, that Red Collar show at Broad Street). That was
something that we've been talking about for a while: how to get more
than just the musicians interested in what is going on here. My hope
has been that if the musicians continue to support each other, then
eventually it will catch on and everyone else will get involved too.
It's starting to look like that exact thing is happening.
- Shayne
ps - I meant no disrespect to Greensboro at the beginning of this
post. I think Greensboro is a rad place and there are some lovely
people out there who are working really hard to grow the music scene
in that city as well.
On Apr 4, 11:30 pm, "betsysh...@gmail.com" <betsysh...@gmail.com>
wrote:
grady
that timeline of Durham venues. Hmm, let's see, was that pre-Basement or
post-Basement? Somewhere in that neighborhood, anyway. People *still*
bitch to me occasionally about feeling obligated to buy a Ringside
membership in order to support the
next-great-hope-for-live-music-in-Durham, and then a few months later
the shows at Ringside slowing to a trickle.
But I say: (a) it filled the niche at exactly the time that the niche
needed to be filled, and (b) that membership is still good, y'all:
haven't you gotten your money's worth by now?
grady wrote:
> I've been going to shows in Durham since I moved to the Triangle in
> 1992, and the funny thing about Durham is that while there are never
> very *many* places to play, there's always somewhere to play. My vague
> recollection goes kind of like this: Under The
> Street->Coffeehouse->Captured Live->umm, Coffeehouse again->The
> Basement->yes, Coffeehouse again->Ooh La Latte->Coffeehouse->305
> South/Joe & Jo's->Coffeehouse->Chaz's->Broad Street->BCHQ->Coffeehouse,
> if'n they start booking more than 1 show every 2 weeks.
Erich
any who DURHAM scene yah!
- Shayne
-- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
..
Check out The New Demos from, A Remote Luxury!
grady
> I think in a large part
> that the rise of the Durham scene is due to a number of dedicated
> individuals actively trying to foster a scene here. I could be wrong,
> but I think that one of the differences between the music scene in
> Durham and, say, Chapel Hill is that when a musician in Durham goes
> through the cost/benefit decision of any given action, they take into
> account not only what is good for their band but what is good for the
> music scene itself. I'm not saying that everyone in Durham thinks
> this way, but enough people do to make a difference. In Chapel Hill
> the music scene is so firmly established that most people never think
> about what they need to do to improve/grow that scene (I know I didn't
> when I lived there), but in Durham the scene is so young that there
> are a lot of people who are invested in coaxing it along and helping
> it mature.
Yes!
And the flipside of this is that the Durham community rewards that urge
to do more, because the results/feedback are immediate & largely positive.
> In Chapel Hill it sometimes feels like
> it's every band for themselves (with notable exceptions), but I've
> seen bands help each other out in Durham more times than I can count.
I dunno, I think people in bands in Chapel Hill go see each other play;
not as much as Durhamites do, but I guess the phrase "every band for
themselves" has a negative/competitive connotation. I'd probably want to
say instead "Chapel Hill bands are full of drunks & stoners who can't
really get it together enough to pay attention to other people." But
that would be mean, so I won't say it, I'll just keep thinking it to myself.
Chris Rossi
makes it situated better economically, than say, Greensboro. The
confluence of tech industry and several major universities in the area
means more and better day jobs for smarter and more creative people and
more people with money to burn in an arts scene. While the entire
Triangle enjoys this aspect, Durham happens to have the cheapest housing
costs of the cities that can easily take advantage of the Triangle
economic and cultural climate, so it's a natural place for a budding
arts scene. Don't worry, though, a thriving arts scene is just the
first step in the gentrification that will eventually price the arts
scene back out of existence. Enjoy it while you can, and be glad the
process seems to be progressing at a fairly slow pace for the moment.
Once Grady moves in, we'll have another 5 years at best. ;)
chris
Shayne wrote:
Duncan Murrell
The word itself, "scene," is starting to make me queasy.
d
> I could be wrong,
> but I think that one of the differences between the music scene in
> Durham and, say, Chapel Hill is that when a musician in Durham goes
> through the cost/benefit decision of any given action, they take into
> account not only what is good for their band but what is good for the
> music scene itself.
-- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
grady
to cut our commute down to 15 minutes from the current 40, plus, as
Shayne said, walkability to interesting stuff is pretty key.
We feel like we're kind of priced out of suitable spaces in Chapel Hill,
plus the food in Durham is better, and, as I've said, so many of my
friends live in Durham. (now if only Durham had a Sandwhich or a Driade,
I'd never even look back . . . )
But I'll freely admit that we're a couple of DINKs who work IT jobs &
can thus afford housing in a price range above that which yr average
indie-rocker can. I look at the American Tobacco Phase XXX plans, and
the soon-to-be-revealed Greenfire Plan For Downtown (ain't it creepy
that, since they bought up all of downtown, they now get to "reveal" the
future of Downtown Durham sometime this spring?), and yeah, I wonder how
long affordability can hold out.
Although if you compare the projected growth rates of Raleigh/Wake
County (from 700,000 to 1.4 million over the next 25 years) and Durham
County (something on the order of 250,000->350,000), and the amount of
land/housing stock in Durham, I'd still argue that Durham is in a better
position to retain a greater percentage of these positive factors than
the other corners of the Triangle are.
But yeah, we'll see. Pls accept my apologies in advance for my own
contribution to the gentrification of downtown. Oh yeah, and nobody
better put in a fucking noisy late-night rockclub on my block, or I'll
be callin' the cops every night. Fuckin' punks!
xo
Ross
Chris Rossi wrote:
> While the entire
> Triangle enjoys this aspect, Durham happens to have the cheapest housing
> costs of the cities that can easily take advantage of the Triangle
> economic and cultural climate, so it's a natural place for a budding
> arts scene. Don't worry, though, a thriving arts scene is just the
> first step in the gentrification that will eventually price the arts
> scene back out of existence. Enjoy it while you can, and be glad the
> process seems to be progressing at a fairly slow pace for the moment.
> Once Grady moves in, we'll have another 5 years at best. ;)
>
> chris
bendy
definitely feel more at home here than I did in my ~3 years in CH. I
grew up outside Nashua, NH, Dad worked in Worcester MA, then I lived in
Pittsburgh, and my wife is from a Kentucky steel mill town. So burnt-out
brick downtowns surrounded by mini-malls are probably my natural habitat.
Once a downtown enters the nothing-but-wig-shops-and-law-offices state
it's pretty hard to crawl out of it, no matter how many galleries open.
Jo & Joe's, in retrospect, seems like it was the inevitable catalyst to
making the music scene gel in Durham- viable both as a lunch business
and a night spot, and it lasted long enough to have a "feel" as a music
spot. Not exactly sure what I mean by that. But I never got that from
the Basement or Ringside's stints as live venues.
Musically, I think drawing distinctions between the three points of the
Triangle is always a strain. Maybe outsiders will eventually focus on
Durham as the center of music from our region, but it's more similar to
the way NYC bands are from *Brooklyn* these days. It's not like a bunch
of native Brooklynites suddenly decided they really liked the Gang of
Four. We always identified Blackstrap a Durham band, but there was never
a time when all the members were living there.
- bendy
grady wrote:
> Umm, I think so many groups are self-identifying as Durham bands because
> their members live in Durham. Root cause: for some folks, it's the most
> affordable place to live, and for a lot of folks, it's the most
> desireable place to live. I stopped counting a long time ago the number
> of my friends who'd moved to Durham from the other points in the Triangle.
>
grady
I don't really think Shayne was talking about artistic decisions,
although it is interesting how he's managed to incorporate singing saw &
trombone into his otherwise pretty much acoustic pop-punk band . . .
throwing a bone to the homies, eh?
I spent the first X years trying to defend the word "scene" as being
what you make of it, or at least being no worse than any other word, but
at some point it seemed better & more natural to use the word
"community," so c'mon, let's use it instead, until Duncan vomits & moves
to New Orleans, where it's literally every band for themselves.
grady
first stab at tracking down the answer, anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalano_House
"JBar, a partnership of Andrew Rothschild(a Durham, NC commercial
property developer and owner of Scientific Properties) and Jonathan
Bluestone(a Raleigh, NC homebuilder and owner of Bluestone Builders),
have since built three large houses on the property."
Ross
run...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> However the biggest reason I broke out of lurkerdom to join this
> conversation is to say that if that rumor about the Catalano property
> is true I'm going to cry. Here's a capture from October on Google
> Maps http://flickr.com/photos/ihavegotthestyle/272989292/. Google
> Maps still shows the same satellite shot today
> http://www.google.com/maps?q=1467+Ridge+Rd,+Raleigh,+North+Carolina+27607,+USA&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=35.808304,-78.687285&spn=0.001962,0.003648&t=k&om=1.
> I guess if I had to guess what a developer would have put there,
> that's what I would have guessed, but I wish they could have been more
> creative. Durham! Let that be a lesson to you! Don't be like
> Raleigh!
>
> Elizabeth
James Hepler
in terms of bringing people out to Durham to see
shows. I find a fundamental fault with the notion
that more people should come to shows in Durham when
those very Durham bands are playing shows in, say
Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh within weeks of each
other. Seems more like a band that draws big but
seldom plays the Triangle would have to choose Durham
over Chapel Hill or Raleigh. The question becomes,
how do you get THEM to choose Durham?
That's assuming one wants Durham to move beyond a
handful of venues that serve Durham almost
exclusively.
--- "betsy...@gmail.com" <betsy...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors
> alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives.
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grady
1) secretly arrange it so that the Cradle & 506 are both already booked
on the night when they want to come to town
2) get the Coffeehouse to agree to pay a guarantee that no other club
could afford to match
I'm not even really joking about either of those, nor am I joking when I
say that Frank Heath has right of first refusal for the vast majority of
midlevel touring acts. It's a known fact, and you can ask any clubowner
who has tried to compete in that space.
But this leads to your second point. I would argue, from my admittedly
somewhat skewed perspective, that anything that fuels a vibrant local
music scene is a good thing, and that a vibrant local music scene should
in fact be the end goal. In some towns, venues pay the bills with big
sellout out of town shows, and then contribute to the health of the
scene by hosting local shows that don't necessarily turn a profit.
Sometimes all they want is to break even on such shows, since that keeps
the bartender employed, and helps a little towards the rent, which is
the same amount whether you have 4 shows a month or 24 shows a month.
In other towns, the venues who wind up supporting local music are
restaurants, or pubs, or co-op spaces, or laundromats, or record stores,
or anyplace where having live music a few nights a week can help to
augment the income from other sources, attract more people to the core
business, or just generally make life a little more interesting.
I grew up in a town where it was much more the latter than the former,
and I've always been partial to the latter. I'm one of those socialist
goofs who believes that expecting an arts scene to be profitable on its
own kinda takes some of the fun out of it.
See also this column in this week's Indy:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A62757
Setting aside the fact that it's easier to make rent when you're doing
more than just selling beer & music for 5 hours a night, think about how
many different constituencies overlap & rub up against each other when
the rock music happens in a restaurant, or a store, or wherever else. In
a bike co-op, for example.
I guess this is a roundabout way of not getting around to arguing that
people should worry first about making music for themselves & for their
neighbors, and if folks from outta town want to make the trek over, then
that's nice, but it can't be relied upon nor worried about.
We crack wise sometimes about bands and their tours of the Triangle (Hem
of His Garment are in the middle of one of those right now), but isn't
that sort of the best of all possible worlds? You get the exotic
experience of traveling to another city to play in front of a crowd of
strangers who just stare at you, but you still get to go home & sleep in
your own bed.
James Hepler wrote:
> Seems more like a band that draws big but
> seldom plays the Triangle would have to choose Durham
> over Chapel Hill or Raleigh. The question becomes,
> how do you get THEM to choose Durham?
>
> That's assuming one wants Durham to move beyond a
> handful of venues that serve Durham almost
> exclusively.
Duncan Murrell
City of Durham : 201, 726 population, 1,976.4 people per square mile.
Town of Chapel Hill: 48,715 population, 2,466 people per square mile.
Free Republic of Carrboro: 16,782 population, 3,753.7 people per
square mile.
Durham: Median income, household: $41,160; median income, family:
$51,162; median income, men: $35,202; median income, women: $30,359;
per capita income, city: $22,526. 15% of population below poverty
line.
Chapel Hill: Median income, household: $39,140; median income,
family: $88, 200; median income, men: $50, 258; median income,
women: $32, 917; per capita income, town: $24,133; 21.6% of
population below poverty line.
Carrboro: Median income, household: $33,527; median income,
family: $47,330; median income, men: $30,099; median income,
women: $31,090; per capita income, town: $21,429; 19% of population
below poverty line.
What's remarkable isn't that Durham has a burgeoning and supportive
musical culture, but that we're talking about such a thing being
remarkable in a city of 201,000 people.
d
Duncan Murrell
makes the distinction clear later in the message.
Still, during all of my years of listening to y'all talk about
building a musical and artistic community in various forms and in
various towns, it's occasionally occurred to me that it takes an
awful lot of energy and brainspace that might otherwise be spent
writing and practicing, and that viable artistic scenes seem to more
often arise around obsessives and cranks who make great art, who
tend to be jealous of their time, and who would have no problem
discovering influences and inspiration if they found themselves
living at the bottom of a well. I suppose I'm proposing a chicken or
egg problem with no answer; I just happen to follow the cranks and
hermits more closely than the ebb and flow of the scene.
d
grady
really *really* crappy music scenes. I think we forget how remarkable
the music culture in the Triangle in general, and in Chapel
Hill/Carrboro in particular, is, in comparison with other cities around
the country.
What does Chapel Hill have that makes it special? It's a tiny college
town that *isn't* out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. In larger cities
like Raleigh (or Durham, for that matter, given the comparative size of
Duke vs UNC or NCSU), the influence of the student population on the
overall culture is diluted.
But most small college towns are just that, small towns, whose only
reason for being is the college. Lot of transition, hard to keep
anything worthwhile going for a long time. Chapel Hill has that mix of
lots of students, plus jobs (in the Triangle as a whole) for the
students once they graduate.
Only for the past few years, a lot of those settling-down graduates have
gradually been drifting away from Chapel Hill, towards Chatham, or
Durham. There's a fun poll for us to conduct: Hey, Durham musicians,
where did you go to college?
Getting back to what Rossi said, I think what will be more interesting
even than watching the arts scene in Durham as Durham gentrifies, is
watching the arts scene in Chapel Hill as it struggles with its own
gentrification issues. Go check out this thread on orangepolitics.org
about Culture Shock: http://orangepolitics.org/2007/01/culture-shock/
(I don't mean Duncan, who posted a half-dozen times to that thread; I
mean the rest of y'all)
Ross
grady
Seriously, though, it takes both. Put it this way: introverts *and*
extroverts. For every Shayne O'Neill, Durham still has a Dan Melchior:
http://www.myspace.com/dasmenace
Talk about a crank at the bottom of a well . . .
Duncan Murrell wrote:
> it's occasionally occurred to me that it takes an
> awful lot of energy and brainspace that might otherwise be spent
> writing and practicing, and that viable artistic scenes seem to more
> often arise around obsessives and cranks who make great art, who
> tend to be jealous of their time, and who would have no problem
> discovering influences and inspiration if they found themselves
> living at the bottom of a well. I suppose I'm proposing a chicken or
> egg problem with no answer; I just happen to follow the cranks and
> hermits more closely than the ebb and flow of the scene.
>
> d
Bo Williams
town that *isn't* out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. "
But in another way it *is* in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, which
plays a huge role. It's one of the artistic meccas of the Southeast.
For instance, a large factor in the shittiness of Boston's music scene
is the proximity to NYC, which is a much bigger and more attractive
magnet for the musically-inclined. The Triangle acts as the magnet
instead of being subject to a more dominant (if less proximate) arts
scene.
Bo
bcr...@gmail.com
wxdu, this conversation has been fascinating. i moved here almost 3
years ago with plans to spend every weekend in chapel hill/carrboro
but soon found myself wanting to stay in durham. while i often have
to take a bit of a hands-off stance with the coffeehouse, i try very
hard to support the scene. one of my goals when i first asked about
"reviving" the coffeehouse was to make people as willing to come to
durham for a show as they would be to go to chapel hill. and ross is
right, sometimes we have to get lucky and beat the 506 or Cradle to
the punch or even slimier (although good for the bands) pay them
higher guarantees. often we have no choice about the higher
guarantees, because bookers see us as "college" shows (read: easy,
guaranteed money) and not a regular booking venue. I'm glad that
there are enough good bands out there, that i don't have to feel
competitive with the Chapel Hill venues. I don't think we could
anyway, because that scene is already so established, but we'll keep
trying to make the coffeehouse fun and try to carve out our little
niche. In relate news we had student elections and i'm happy to
report we have an excited new student booker with really good musical
taste working on next fall's schedule. long live the durham scene,
its cheap houses, and affordable beer (and byob spaces).
Duncan Murrell
d
but I _did_ think you'd pick up on the population density differences
-- Chapel Hill and Carrboro are smaller but more dense than Durham.
Carrboro is the most dense, and has been for at least the last seven
years. At the same time, Carrboro has enjoyed a renaissance. It's not
a direct relationship, decisions of the town have made a difference,
but some of those decisions were made easier because Carrboro is
dense and still centered on its downtown. Whether this means f***-all
to musicians, I don't know. But it sounded nice. Wow, what a nice day
out!
ansmi...@yahoo.com
because discussions of "scene" on this list (and anywhere for that
matter often) devolve into insanity and I have never posted anything
but show notices for my own bands (speaking of which, one is in the
midst of a kick ass Triangle tour (can't wait to see everyone from
Raleigh at Volume 11 Tavern for The Hem of His Garment tonight, but
seriously you should go see pulsoptional tomorrow. It is in Durham
after all).
I have spent way too much time in the past thinking about the concept
of music scenes and finally decided to do something with it so my
Folklore thesis is actually about scenes in the Triangle, centered on
ethnographic research, done primarily at Nightlight.
While I have been saying I was doing this for a couple years, this
winter and spring I have actually been doing interviews, and now am
trying to write after work and actually finish this shit, but it is
aggravating and difficult and I would rather put on a bear hat or just
sit and play a D chord really really fucking loud for 2 hours or even
play scales on my french horn than try and write some cultural
analysis about stuff that is almost impossible to theorize in a way
that doesn't collapse under a miniscule amount of scrutiny and really,
an MA in Folkore? Don't get me wrong, I have worked in
"folklore" (professionally even, and if you want to know what the hell
that means you got to ask and avoid the fact that I am also a shitty
line cook and library cubicle wage slaver) for a few years now but try
and tell that to your girlfriend's parents and see what kind of faces
they make...shit tell it to your own parents and snap a picture
Anyhow, I am attaching a bit of my proposal which explains some of the
ideas I have come up with about the Triangle and scenes in general.
Basically a scene can't be a scene unless it is constantly changing,
it is a core characteristic of the cultural phenomenon, but this
variability is resisted by individual participants who attempt to
locate boundaries for a scene and themselves, articulated through a
variety of behaviors but powerfully through personal narrative,
particularly about memories of the past, all of this works toward
processes of identity construction, and blah, blah, blah.
My ideas are surely indebted to the work of Mr. Butch Lazorchak, whose
paper on the CH-Scene from teh 90's I first read off of this list. I
also draw from a paper by Nicole Bogas who talks a lot about the Sony
Free! days and certainly the interviews kindly given by my
consultants, and also surely discussions on this list. This is an
incomplete old copy that didn't get editted because I am not at my
computer but the ideas get accross I think, and please keep in mind
this is written for my professors who really have no idea what I am
talking about when I mention any of this music or activity. Also the
final proposal includes all of my consultants, and although some read
this list, I didn't ask them if I could make them public here yet.
Any comments or critique are appreciated, should be done with actual
thesis in late May. I actually kind of like it when people hate my
work and I loved the critique of that Loveless thesis link that got
posted a while back.
Nothing like academic types trying to look at rock scenes to piss
people off, so say what you will, but maybe it contributes a bit to
the discussion, though not about Durham specifically, about scenes in
the Triangle. The word doesn't have to be negative all the time,
although back in Austin, one of the primary insults of new bands I
seemed to always hear was "they suck, they are just a bunch of fucking
scenesters."
again criticism is greatly appreciated,
apologies for the shitload of text
Project History:
On a cold Friday night, the last of February 2003, excusing myself
from the convivial setting of the Folklore graduate student Happy
Hour, I fully intended to make the long trek, first by foot, then on
bicycle, then in truck, to the dark and molded rented rooms in the
woods down Dairyland Rd. that I called home. My second semester in
the Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill progressing nicely, I remained in awe of living outside of Texas
and I was mostly pleased with life as a graduate student, appreciative
of the intellectual challenges of my coursework and developing
relationships with new friends, colleagues, and professors. Instead
of heading home, however, I remembered an email on the listserv of
WXYC, the UNC student run radio station, about opening night at a new
local performance space called Nightlight, co-owned and operated by
Isaac Trogden, a former WXYC station manager and his friend Lauren
Ford.
And so I decided to forego a more sensible early retirement that
evening in favor of attending the show at the new club. Before
entering the venue, from outside the door, I heard someone wrenching
chords from an electric guitar and another someone pounding rhythmic
thunder on a drum kit, I felt this place, this space, was special. I
watched three bands, drank some beer from a free keg, spoke only to
one person who wondered why I carried such a large bag, thanked the
doorman (who was the owner Isaac), and finally made the long (and now
very late) trip home, blissfully unaware that the little hidden, used
book/record store/café cum music venue tucked away off Rosemary St.
would become a focal point of future research and personal creative
activities as a musician.
>From experience as a radio DJ, audio engineer, fan, performer, and
promoter of music in my former home of Austin, Texas, I was aware of
the "Chapel Hill Scene" as fertile ground for producing and
maintaining excellent and exciting music. Since relocating I had
attended many performances in the Triangle and in Greensboro featuring
a stylistic variety of music, including rock of many subgenres,
experimental, country, old time, jazz, and classical. My regular
activities involved reading the local newspapers, listening to the
college radio stations WXYC and WXDU, examining fliers displayed
around town advertising future and past performances, and observing
not only performing bands but also their audiences at different
venues. These activities served both as a form of entertainment and
also as an education about the variety of cultural offerings in my
local community.
Over time I constructed a mental map of Triangle music, a complex
three-dimensional family tree of a local music histories. I knew
where and when I could find noise, jazz, indie rock, bluegrass,
country, or hip-hop, local music or touring bands, as well as the
names and some faces of local musicians and which genres of music they
performed. I also listened to enough local music, old and new, and
read enough local music media to coherently discuss bands, styles,
happenings, and history, but until that late night in February, I had
yet to discover the kind of locally produced and supported music
community or scene that I associate with musical experimentation and
the excessive expressivity of rock performance practices, and that I
particularly enjoy. Nightlight became not only a space where I could
"locate" a community that supported the kinds of music and expressive
culture I value, but also an environment that fostered the kind of
social interaction that I longed for.
Approaching the end of my coursework, I considered how much of my
attempts at folklore research, unsurprisingly, fit comfortably into
disciplinary canon: foodways (specifically barbecue), Mexican corridos
(narcocorridos), country music (alt.country), folk revivalists
(Patrick Skye), African American sacred music (shout bands), and hip-
hop culture (Straight from the Crate hip-hop radio). While
enlightening, I felt my work maintained the dichotomy between folk vs.
popular culture, antiquated vs. contemporary, ethnic vs. white, low
vs. high art, rural vs. urban, a model that, as a folklorist, I knew
was a construct of Western hegemonic discourse and that I naively
hoped to somehow reveal. At the same time, critical analyses of rock
music by and rock culture produced by scholars of other humanities
based disciplines, I felt that research on these forms of contemporary
expressive culture lacked the engaged interaction with and in
communities, a cornerstone of quality folklore research. I wondered
how to apply the tools of folklore and a commitment to collaborative
ethnography to the protean music culture in the Triangle and
specifically to the Nightlight.
This project is a culmination of three years of active participation
in Nightlight culture: as a researcher, song collector, audience
member, performer, volunteer, supporter, and as a friend. I have
collected recordings from 35 different performances, attended
countless other shows, performed sixteen times with four different
bands, three of which had our first performance at Nightlight. I have
helped with sound, donated a microphone, collected money at the door,
promoted shows on WXYC radio where I am a DJ, collected oral histories
from thirteen consultants ranging in age from 21 to 42 who represent a
variety of roles in the community. Individuals often play more than
one and the level of activity certainly varies over time. Two
consultants no longer live in North Carolina. My consultants are fans
and casual audience members, employees and owners past and present, a
music journalist, radio Djs, university students and wage earners,
veteran musicians and neophyte performers, and some of them are also
colleagues, collaborators and, importantly, friends. My social
relationships with consultants and personal activity at Nightlight
might raise concerns about my ability to objectively perform critical
ethnographic research, however, it is precisely the depth of my
relationships and artistic investment that allow a closeness to the
material and the perspective to begin to make sense of something as
unstable as a music scene.
By actively engaging the Nightlight communities, the diversity and
multiplicity of expressive culture and complex networks of relations
through which music scenes are articulated are revealed. Committed to
reading culture in context and not people as text, folklore can offer
much to the understanding of contemporary musical styles and culture
on a level not typically dealt with in musicology, cultural studies,
anthropology, or related disciplines while drawing on the collective
knowledge of their valuable perspectives at the same time. I will
attempt such an interdisciplinary approach in this thesis as well as
including the voices and ideas of my consultants, hopefully crafting a
document that presents Nightlight and participants in the music scenes
with clarity and respect.
Introduction:
It is easy to miss the pedestrian alleyway located (hidden?) within
the small strip of four businesses-a bar, currently Fuse (but it has
had many names over the years), an office for a construction company,
the offices of Mama Dip's Restaurant, and Tienda Don Jose, a store
catering to Chapel Hill's small but growing Latino population. The
squat, cinderblock one story assemblage, looks thrown together on the
south side of the street and is surrounded by just as disparate
properties: a university parking lot to the east, an African American
church to the west, across the street to the north are Mama Dips, a
Chapel Hill dining institution, and brand new, three-story, million
dollar condominiums. The condominiums tower over all other
architecture, especially the houses of Chapel Hill's quickly
gentrifying and transmogrfying historically African American
neighborhood, Northside, that border its structure. The block is
almost a microcosm of Chapel Hill-institutions catering to the mostly
white university population interacting with the long oppressed
African American neighborhood, with an addition of the newer immigrant
Latino population. The observant may notice bicycles chained to "No
Parking" and speed limit signs, as well as Xeroxed fliers stapled to
the telephone pole with names like Cantwell Gomez & Jordan, Boner
Machine, BubbleGum Shitface, DJ Mothers Brothers, Planecrash, American
Band, and Haunted House. Looking up, a small painted sign hangs over
the empty doorframe of the alleyway reading "Skylight Exchange" above
and "Nightlight" below, complete with pink lightning bolts.
Walking down that dimly lit alley away from this scene of Chapel
Hill's burgeoning metropolitan progress, over plywood planks laid on
the concrete to bridge large puddles from a recent rain, the sky over
head, between narrow concrete walls painted red with bits of black
scrawled graffiti, stealing voyeuristic glimpses of the lone line-cook
through the windows of the commercial kitchen at Fuse, into a
lingering cloud of cigarette smoke from people standing outside the
entrance, can indeed be a disorienting experience. Passing through
the wooden door and into the space itself maintains confusion for the
space's purpose is not immediately apparent. Books and records are
stacked everywhere, a small stage is in the corner, and a lunch
counter and booths occupy the center space.
The room is not small, accommodating a bar with at least 10 stools
down the left side where patrons can order from a menu of eclectic
sandwiches and coffee during the day and selected beers at night.
Ninety degrees to the right are two rows of used music for sale,
primarily a wide selection of vinyl LPs sorted first by genre and then
alphabetically. The bins hold a few thousand records and many more
sit in boxes beneath the record bins. The three walls not occupied by
the bar/kitchen are comprised of bookshelves of full of used books;
thousands of books that contribute nicely to the dampening of
reflected sounds. Booths and tables occupy the open center space and
farthest from the door, in front of a wall of books, is a 5-foot-by-8-
foot carpeted stage. Two large, grey PA speakers flank the stage, and
to the right is a broken down upright piano, trapped by a tangled web
of speaker/monitor/microphone/power cables and assorted sound
reinforcement equipment. The ceiling feels low at 10 feet, there are
no windows, but natural light enters through the six skylights that
give the space its daytime name. Between 9 and 10 pm, the space
undergoes a transformation into Nightlight. Booths and tables are
pushed away to line the walls, opening a large, empty space in front
of the small stage, or they are simply turned around to face the
stage. Beer coolers are unlocked, a separate cash register is set up,
lights are dimmed, and the music increases in volume.
Looking around, the performers, audience, and employees are mostly
white, university educated, members of Chapel Hill bohemia, and while
most are in their twenties, ages vary from teenagers-Nightlight is one
of few all-ages venues in Chapel Hill-to people in their forties.
Performances occur about four nights per week and represent a variety
of genres, but well more than half of the performances each month
feature an array of non-traditional rock music, including a mixture of
noise music, improvisational music, avant-garde and underground rock
music of obscure genres performed with a huge range technical
abilities. Much music heard and performed at Nightlight eschews
traditional rock song structure; songs are loose, timbres are harsh,
rhythm is free to wander, volumes range from ear splitting to
virtually silent. While the classic rock ensemble instrumentation of
drums, electric guitar, and bass, and vocals is still ubiquitous,
connecting the venue to a history of locally produced rock scenes,
performers are very likely to include or to make music entirely with a
variety of electronics, sound generators, effects pedals, mixing
boards, contact microphones, synthesizers, computers, homemade
instruments, improvised percussion, violins, saxophones, samplers, the
human body, pieces of metal, and the voice; literally anything anyone
thinks of. Local artists usually comprise about half of the
performances and most nights they attempt to combine touring bands
with local to maximize the potential for an audience. Every Sunday is
an open-mic, and about two dance parties hosted by local DJs are
hosted each month.
Nightlight officially opened as a business February 28, 2003 with
"Chapel Hill's finest freaky punk rock," [Trogden] represented by the
angular post-punk des_ark, Cantwell Gomez & Jordan, and Coldsides. On
that night, a particular grouping of musicians and fans within the
Chapel Hill music scene reclaimed the physical space at 405 1/2 W.
Rosemary St., adding another institution to the local rock
infrastructure that provided a place for active participation in the
musical practices and social relations related to the production and
consumption of music culture in Chapel Hill. RE-claimed because,
while the majority of the clientele is unaware, the space has a multi-
decade history of use as a performance venue: housing the original
location of the now nationally known Cat's Cradle, a venue in the mid
1980s called Rhythm Alley, hosting occasional shows in the 1990s
organized by local participants in the underground music scene under
arrangement with the owners of its next and current incarnation as
Skylight Exchange, as well as jam sessions, open mics, poetry
readings, theatrical performances, and film and video screenings
[Bogas]. Also RE-claimed because Nightlight as an entity operates
within the space already occupied by a separate business entity, the
aforementioned Skylight Exchange, that was and is a combination of
used book/record store and café/deli. The space Nightlight inhabits
occupies a special niche in Chapel Hill music, not only physically as
one of many venues dedicated to live music performance, but also
idealistically as a community of self-proclaimed and mostly self-
sustaining artists, musicians, fans, and sympathizers.
Rather than frame the investigation of Nightlight according to the
physical space and exclusively to the musical performances and
interactions inside that space, a more useful approach utilizes the
concept of music "scenes" to explore activity at Nightlight. A
musical "scene" is "that cultural space in which a range of musical
practices coexist, interacting with each other within a variety of
processes of differentiation, and according to widely varying
trajectories of change and cross-fertilization," [Straw 494]. Scenes
are in a constant state of redefinition according to the contexts in
which their forms of communication are articulated. The circulation
of cultural commodities like music is often "organized" as a
lifecycle, during which their value varies in relationship to the
cultural terrain [Straw 494, Kruse, Azerrad, Frith]. In scenes,
certain styles, individuals, institutions, undergo significant shifts
in perceived value relative to the passing of time and the ongoing
transformation of social and cultural relations within and between
music communities. Historically, the "Triangle," comprised of three
cities, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, North Carolina, has been
internationally recognized for developing and maintaining active and
influential music scenes: from the piedmont blues of Blind Boy Fuller
and the Durham tobacco warehouses, the folk revival of the Hollow Rock
String Band and the Red Clay Ramblers, and the melodic power-pop of
the dB's, to the 1990s "indie" rock of Superchunk, Polvo, and Archers
of Loaf, only to name a few examples.
As a center of politics, industry, and higher education, the Triangle
constantly shifts demographically, and the music produced reflects
these shifts over time; aesthetic value of sound and performance is
negotiated, certain bands and styles are considered more popular at
different times, individuals come and go and vary levels of
participation, some practices are co-opted into the mainstream, old
practices are rearticulated, and new practices emerge. This thesis
attempts to describe scenes of current music practice in the Triangle
through ethnographic research involving a very small portion of this
population, centered at present around the institution/club
Nightlight.
Scenes are not consistent in character over time, but fluctuate
according to the particular cultural activities and the context of
those activities. Indeed, in Chapel Hill alone, one may discuss the
art scene, the music scene, the Chapel Hill scene, the indie rock
scene, the hip-hop scene, the electronic/dance music scene, the noise
scene, the frat-rock scene, and on and on ad infinitum, historicizing
any of these in past, present, or future. According to Will Straw,
"Scene designates particular clusters of social and cultural activity
without specifying the nature of the boundaries which circumscribe
them." [Straw 2005, 412] With such and elusive and seemingly
indefinable frame, using the concept of scene as a theoretical base
for analysis appears imprudent, however, scenes provide a more
accurate model of the constant variability of cultural production.
Under scrutiny, scenes may elude distinct, recognizable boundaries,
but individuals involved in the production of scenes are constantly
drawing and re-drawing these boundaries (although often
unintentionally) through the performance of their own identities.
These boundaries are articulated through the personal narratives of
individual participants and dependent on the desires and goals of the
individual at the time of the event or of the narrative; they may not
be the same.
Limiting the focus of this paper to activity in one location,
Nightlight, offers an opportunity to examine the variety and fluid
nature of scenes as they emerge and change over time according to the
context and social interaction of the participants and also how spaces
and practices are directly linked with the history of cultural forms.
Nightlight demonstrates the importance of local spaces to musical
activity; spaces where properties of local music practice are
performed and, through this process, identities are constructed. At
the same time, concentrating on activity at Nightlight, activity
dependent on the participation of individuals from geographic
locations outside the Triangle, also demonstrates the significance of
interlocal relationships and the influence of global musical culture
to "local" scene production [Straw 499].
Regional "scenes" and local "sounds" have decreased in significance in
recent popular culture. While a regional sound was an important point
of reference in discussions of independent music of the 1980s and
1990s, distance from localities of mainstream music production being
an important point of differentiation, alternative and independent
structures of production and consumption, so vital to the definition
and maintenance of independent rock music, have been institutionalized
to the extent that they are now part of the dominant music culture
against which they continue to identify themselves in opposition to
[Fred]. These networks, of record labels, distributors, media,
venues, and individuals, allow for the greater availability of "non-
mainstream" music for specialized audiences geographically distanced
from its production, increasing the interlocal interaction of music
scenes and social relationships between participants, and reducing the
importance of connection to a particular local music history as a
source of identification [Straw]. College radio stations, so
important to local rock music [Kruse, Lazorchak] can now be heard
anywhere in the world over the internet, and musician websites and
free access, commercial sites like Myspace.com make music of countless
performers-professional, amateur, living, dead and imaginary--
available to anyone with a computer.
This process does not mean that the story of "local" rock stopped in
the year 2000, musicalized experience still produces differential
identities, and local scenes are still the cultural space where these
identities are negotiated, but within a larger scene, there are
countless smaller scenes, constructed around associations with genre,
location, personal relationships, and relation to the larger
international music culture [Shank]. Kruse and Shank use the concept
of "scene" to describe larger, regional, social and economic networks
of musical practice, including a wide variety of individuals, bands,
clubs, record stores, and media outlets in Athens, Georgia and
Champaign, Illinois, and Austin, Texas respectively, providing
valuable histories of local rock scenes in the 1980s and 1990s.
Rather than reconstruct a history of Chapel Hill during that same
period, I believe their research and concepts are can be applied to a
contemporary miniature or "micro-scenes" like those at Nightlight as
effectively as it follows trajectories currently organized around
noise, experimental music, local art, community support, and a
international network of individuals committed to similar
trajectories.
So strongly has Nightlight become associated with these non-
traditional rock apparatuses, Nightlight is described in local media
as,
Chapel Hill's noise bastion ...:
The post-meridian extension of the Skylight Exchange, a by-day used
book and record store and cafe, Nightlight has been hosting noiseniks
for three years now, serving as a Petri dish for the development of a
thriving regional noise circuit and a hitching post for artists
touring the country. [Currin, 31 May 2006]
A local music website run by long-time local music activist and fan,
Ross Grady,
described a performance on his weekly calendar with the following:
Sunday, August 8
Zom Zoms [http://www.tubezomzoms.com], Yip Yip
[http://www.yip-yip.com]
Nightlight, Chapel Hill
Two bands of fukked-up fried-out freaks in weird costumes with
keyboards & noisemakers and high-concepts and I swear to god I dunno
how Nightlight got onto this circuit in the first place but I have to
say: you can live here for years, and see all kinds of bands, both
local & out-of-town, and after a while you start to think we've got
all the bases covered. Well: we're not even close. There is weird shit
out there in the bowels of America that's 40 zillion times weirder
than the weirdest the Triangle has to offer (and yes, that includes
last night's show at Nightlight), and the only joint in town that even
comes close to opening a window into that world is Nightlight. Attend,
if you can handle the dismay at learning what you've been missing.
[Grady, Ross from Stuff to Do on trianglerock.com]
Representing what I identify as an "underground" scene in Chapel Hill,
practices at Nightlight inform two directions of research to the way
scenes work in contemporary local music practice, both referenced in
the above description. First, underground scenes, like those
articulated through and around Nightlight, are increasingly dependent
on interlocal relationships outside the particular town or region of
their origin, and second, at the same time, music practice in
underground scenes is still largely dependent on links to local,
regional musical heritage and processes of traditionalization.
Thesis Structure
This thesis will include three substantial chapters, outlined below,
as well as an introduction and conclusion. I will draw heavily from
the interviews with my consultants as well as a few more conducted by
a graduate of UNC, Nicole Bogas. I will also use archival research
including articles from local newspapers as well as independently
produced media and zines for their descriptions of local music and
musicians. My field notes and audio recordings, as well as
photographs by myself and photographer Galen Williams and video shot
by Michael Nutt and Travis Marriott, will help me to provide thick
description of the environment and the events in rich detail in an
attempt to contextualize the information for readers unfamiliar with
the music and the culture of local rock scenes. Finally, with a goal
toward collaboration with my consultants and the larger Nightlight
community in the final written document, the owners have agreed to
post a copy of the thesis as written by me on the Nighlight listserv,
inviting any interested party to insert their words and perspectives
into the paper. Comments will then be edited for format and framed
into the thesis to create a multi-vocal, dialogic representation of
this community.
Indie vs. Underground
To better explain this designation, I should explain my choice of the
descriptive "underground" rather than "independent" (as chosen by
Kruse), "alternative," or even simply "rock and roll" as used by
Shank. While many of these terms are used interchangeably in media
and in conversation, demonstrating their malleable meanings always
under construction by various agents with diverse objectives [Hibbett
58], I believe "underground" is most representative of the musical
practices at Nightlight and institutions like it.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, "alternative" became the term used to
describe the "terrain of musical activity" that resulted from local
infrastructures for a variety of musical activities developed in and
through punk scenes [Straw 496]. "Alternative," however, and even
more generally "Rock'n'roll," both have been used extensively in
mainstream popular music production, distribution, and consumption and
as a result have cultural associations according to which
"independent" and "underground" music are defined in opposition
[Kruse].
"Independent" music, in its most basic definition is that not produced
on a major label. Azerad emphasizes this distinction in his chronicle
of influential independent rock bands and artists of the 1980s (Sonic
Youth, Meat Puppets, Mission of Burma, Black Flag, Butthole Surfers,
and more from that decade who could be called successful), restricting
stories in his book, "solely to bands on independent labels," whose,
"stories trail off when and if a band signed to a major
label," [Azerrad 5]. Kruse chooses the term independent, and
shortened it more specifically to "indie" music, an abbreviation most
commonly used to describe "pop" and "rock" styles on which her
research focuses, as opposed to the wide variety of musical genres
released on independent labels [Kruse 8]. "Indie" rock is also being
the term used to describe the best known Triangle rock of the 1990s,
best represented still by the post-punk, pop-rock of Superchunk and
the record label they own and operate, Merge Records [Pareles,
Lazorchak, Kruse].
"Indie" is not, however, only defined by economic orientation. It is
also characterized by both the aesthetic qualities of the music,
redefined constantly by those who use it socially in clubs, on college
radio, local record stores, record collections, downloaded to ipods,
as well as political orientation, often linked to a working class
mentality associated to the DIY (Do It Yourself) philosophy as a basis
for artistic integrity, a legacy from American punk [Kruse, Hibbett,
Faris]. This definition is still not properly descriptive of
practices at Nightlight and in other "miniature scenes" around the
world whose music is "independent," but not always connected to the
"indie" network, circulating instead in more marginal set of alliances
that can be defined as "underground."
Scenes from the American Indie Underground1981-1991 is the second
title to Azerrad's book. "Indie" is used similar to the rock/pop like
Kruse with a more punk/hardcore/post punk orientation, but using that
term to modify "underground," suggesting that the opposition implied
by "indie" against "mainstream" is not strong enough. Much of the
narratives of bands in Azerrad's book, and those of scene participants
in Kruse's and Shank's work, chronicle the moments when individuals
are experimenting with others, defining a sound, recording their first
records, playing their first shows, and interacting with audiences in
small venues on intimate levels. Stories recount the development of
artists, labels, and styles. Music practice at this level is too
fluid for the other descriptive terms, especially now when even
"indie" rock has numerous established and successful networks and
institutions for its production and distribution and implies a
particular sonic structure of guitar driven rock [Kruse].
"Independent" falsely implies freedom, but "independent" and even
"underground" music "are positioned in relation to mainstream
production and consumption," [Kruse 30, Frith, Grossberg] and marginal
styles are constantly being co-opted into the mainstream. Kruse
writes, "Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an
economic and ideological struggle in which its "outsider" status is re-
examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical
practices," [Kruse 149]. Underground music, as defined here, can then
be portrayed in an analogous struggle with indie music. If the indie
"scenes" of the 1990s were defined by musical practice connected to
regionalism and a local "sound," [Kruse, Pareles, Lazorchak], then
contemporary underground scenes, like that at initially identified at
Nightlight, are a reaction against that tendency to categorize music
production in a locality to particular genres and styles and other
recognized scene formations. The contemporary underground scene will
also continue to react against itself. Certain networks and practices
and sounds will prove more relevant in the historical and cultural
contexts where the scene is articulated. When these formations become
stable enough, the underground scene becomes more associated with
something more specific, a place, for example CBGBs or Gillman Street
or the Kitchen, or a genre, rock, punk, or avant-garde. In the
narrative of Chapel Hill, the underground has shifted alliances away
from 90s indie rock and the institutions that rose to success from
that scene, towards new practices, many of a more experimental and
often noisy nature. Many of which can be found at Nightlight.
Nightlight as "underground"
The history of Chapel Hill underground scenes of the 1990s is well
documented in both local and national media. A piece from the year
2000 by Gavin O'Hara in the Triangle weekly, The Independent, neatly
summarizes the story. Looking to replicate the financial success and
mainstream popularity of the "grunge" scene of Seattle, Washington
represented by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, a number of regional
rock scenes, including Chapel Hill, were selected as potential
candidates [Pareles, Kobel, O'Hara]. The local scene reacted less
than kindly to this attention, the most popular artists like
Superchunk rejected major label deals, choosing instead to release
records on their own label Merge [Lazorchak]. Local zines from the
1990s, notably Stay Free!, are filled with vitriolic critique of the
corporate music industry and of local artists who are considered to
have been co-opted or products of that industry. Bands like Polvo,
Picasso Trigger, and Archers of Loaf toured nationally and received
play on college radio, but most other local rock acts received little
national attention. The ones that did, like the Squirrel Nut Zippers,
Ben Folds Five, and Whiskeytown, although arguably all roots oriented-
rock, were too different stylistically to distill into one genre like
"grunge." In the late 1990s, the sound-du-jour of the Triangle shifted
somewhat from indie rock to alt.country and bands like the
aforementioned Whiskeytown and the Backsliders rose from the local
scene to national prominence, but afterwards, like those before them,
left town or broke up. And so the Chapel Hill scene was left alone
again to its own devices, but remains fractured from the experience
[O'Hara].
The narrative of Chapel Hill independent rock often ends at this
point, and like other discussions of co-optation, "focus[es] on the
techniques by which rock and roll has been exploited and transformed
by the economic system and the various 'ideological state
apparatuses,' especially the mass media," [Grossberg 1984, 254].
Other scene histories are similar. Shank concludes his account of the
Austin rock and roll scene by documenting its splintering into
smaller, "insider" scenes according to industrial economic forces that
encourage musical differentiation according to genre and demographic
differentiation of consumers according to age, class, race, and gender
[Shank 240]. He further suggests that basis of music evaluation in
Austin had shifted from the "aesthetic of performance that
acknowledged the power of musicalized experience in the production of
adolescent identities," to the abstraction of that experience from a
commoditization of musical practice in the form of a recording,
reflecting a shift in the "interpretive structures that shape identity
formation," [Shank 251].
The Chapel Hill scene of the 1990s reflects this discussion and music
practice in Chapel Hill did change significantly. Active scene
participants moved away, new ones came, once upstart labels like Merge
became nationally known with an international roster, countless bands
formed and dissolved. Still discussions of the state of the Chapel
Hill scene, generally described in a weakened state, are a regular
feature on listservs like alt.music.chapel.hill, and nostalgia for the
Chapel Hill of the 1990s is a prominent sentiment
[alt.music.chapel.hill, O'Hara]. Such assertions are problematic,
assuming the only legitimate continuation of the scene is rock music
popularized and valorized in the 1990s. According to Local 506 owner
Glenn Boothe:
Unfortunately the sound that's being created now was en vogue in 1993,
and it's not necessarily the hip sound now. There's not as much new
blood coming into the scene. I think the scene needs new faces coming
out to the shows. I think a lot of bands are just preaching to the
converted because the same people come to see them all the time.
[Carolina Connection].
But "new blood" is coming into the scene all the time, particularly
through institutions like Nightlight. To resume the story of Chapel
Hill rock where O'Hara leaves off, co-optation must be recognized as a
process integral to scene production. As Grossberg noted:
Co-optation is the mode by which rock and roll produces itself anew,
rejecting moments of its own past and present in order to all the more
potently inscribe its own boundary...It is not necessarily an
alteration of the aesthetic or ideological constitution of the text,
but the production of new affective alliances with in the rock and
roll culture...Rather than a cycle of authentic and co-opted music,
rock and roll exists as a fractured unity within which differences of
authenticity and co-optation are defined in the construction of
affective alliances and networks of affiliation. [Grossberg 1984,
255].
Some current scene participants, like former WXDU-Durham music
director, and active Nightlight audience member, Kelly Kress, identify
this process as neccessary to current music practice in Chapel Hill.
The music scene is going to exist regardless of whether Rolling Stone
is writing articles about it.... In terms of the 'heyday' [of Chapel
Hill music], I guess there were a lot of bands that got popular just
for being from here, like the Archers of Loaf...but creatively, I would
disagree with saying that that was the heyday. The things going on
now are different, but there is still a lot to do and a lot to see,
and I think that's always going to be the case here.... I think there's
a legacy here.... There is so much stability with the radio stations and
the clubs.... People come here, they might not know anything...they might
turn on the radio one day and find 'XYC and hear something, and maybe
it's local and they'll realize they can go out and see it. And
they'll go see it and all of a sudden two years later they're one of
the people playing in bands and booking clubs or something [Kress].
Her statement is astute, recognizing the continuing importance of
institutions like college radio and local venues, but also recognizing
the way individuals' relationship to scenes change over time.
Underground scenes resist the tendency to be narrated into a lifecycle
because of their tendency toward stylistic experimentation and
constant reorientation in relation to other music practices. The
processes of differentiation that identify a scene, however,
underground or otherwise, demand that it be located in a historical
context, making a rise and fall, or a recognition and cooptation, for
at least those who are invested in the scene, inevitable. At
Nightlight, current musicians and fans work to reconcile the influence
of the underground scenes of the past that legitimized Chapel Hill in
popular culture as a viable site of music production while carving out
their own spaces in order to counter the opinion that the scene has
become stagnant.
"Rock music is dead," acerbically notes Ryan Martin, current co-owner
of Nightlight. He continues:
All the rock music I listen to was made years and years ago. There's
not a lot of new interesting rock music and it is not as potent as it
once was. Right now you have bands who are carrying on the form of
rebellious music that happened a long time ago, but it's not so vital
somehow. I hope that people are wanting to see, in place of a rock
show, something that's more of a performance, parties where people can
dance and interact. [Martin]
Martin's emphatic statement is important, even if not entirely
reflected in booking practices and performances at Nightlight. There
are still many rock shows at Nightlight, but these often follow a
different format than those at a more standard rock venue like the
Local 506. DJs often perform between sets and after the performance.
Bands seldom know the order in which they will perform before they
begin. There are very limited (if any) sound checks. Some bands
refuse their share of the door, instead offering their portion to a
touring band or back to Nightlight to cover expenses. Such an
environment encourages socialization between performers and audience
before and after the show, increasing a sense of community and
strengthening identities of the participants, but also can negatively
affect the success of Nightlight as a business. As Mike Nutt, former
Nightlight employee suggests:
Community is something that's really important to me...I still am
hesitant to say that it was something I was looking for in a music
venue, but once I did happen upon it I think that was one of the
reasons why it felt comfortable to me and right to me. Because it was
like, Nightlight is more successful as a community center than a
business. [Nutt]
Nutt is quick to include, however that while he and others feel
comfortable in the "low pressure" community of Nightlight, that "it
has a self-selecting community that excludes people for various
reasons." [Nutt] Exclusivity and constructed boundaries seem to be
precisely what Nightlight idealistically seeks to avoid, but such
contradictions are implied in the business's own rhetoric.
According to Nightlight's website, it's goal is "to host as many
styles and tastes of music as there are fans-maybe more. In
particular, Nightlight hopes to provide a forum for new music and
ideas not getting the attention they deserve," [Nightlight]. As a
locally produced rock and roll apparatus, that "constantly reinscribes
a boundary between 'us' and 'them'" [Grossberg 1986, 57], Nightlight
separates itself from the local music community, defining itself as
representative of newness and difference, and not only that, but
values these qualities as significant. Many fans demand consistency
in rock and roll and do not look for "anything off-beat or
weird" [Parker 1]. Mike Nutt observes:
...if Nightlight invites or caters to these people who have these social
quirks and there's this room full of people who have all these
strange, social quirks, you walk in there and you're probably gonna be
like, "Who the fuck are these people and why are they so weird?" You
are kind of disoriented; the music's all crazy. You go there once and
you have this kind of weird experience-people are looking for the same
thing that I'm looking for when I go to Nightlight, which is to feel
comfortable in a place. If they aren't feeling the signals that make
them feel comfortable, then they're not coming back. I think that it
just kind of fills this niche. I don't think it's for everybody.
It's not for everybody in Chapel Hill; it's not for every touring
band. [Nutt]
Other active Nightlight regulars agree the space and scene drive many
people away. Martin even goes so far as to suggest there are less
than twenty people who attend Nightlight on a regular (weekly or more
often) basis, but even they are particular about what types of shows
they attend: local, noise, improv, punk, dance, folk, or other variety
[Martin]. While this core group may be the most active participants
at Nightlight, many other people make up the Triangle's rock community
and have attended many events at Nightlight or performed there on
occasion. Perhaps they do not consider themselves part of a scene,
but their occasional attendance, decisions not to attend when the
music is "weird," and ideas formed through local media, interpersonal
communication, and online resources like trianglerock.com, all
contribute to the constant negotiation of the cultural space that is
the Nightlight scene and underground music in the Triangle.
Scenes are where a variety of music practices coexist and interact
[Kruse, Straw] and music practice at Nightlight is extremely variable:
rock, noise, improvisation, and dance music nights (from techno, to
80s, to post-punk, to world music) have been mentioned, but Nightlight
has also hosted old-time country jam sessions, traditional Irish
music, hip-hop, high-school garage bands, singer-songwriters, open-mic
nights, movie nights, trivia nights, puppet performances, theater,
drag fashion shows, and more. Much like folklore has too often been
defined as "what folklorists study," it can appear that the Nightlight
scene can only be described by the variety of performances at the
space. The only requirement seems to be that the performances "can't
really happen at a different venue in town. I mean if it can't happen
at Nightlight, where else could it possibly happen? I guess Chaz's
(Bull City Records) is a possibility now, but it is pretty rock
oriented" [Harper]. Again and again in discussions about Nightlight,
rock and roll is posited as being oppositional to the kind of
performances typical at Nightlight, while at the same time the space
is upheld as being the only place where one can currently can witness
an authentic "real rock show, even though the music isn't really rock
and roll like all the old Chapel Hill indie shit, it is noise and
crazy shit" [Arzano].
While diversity in programming and tastes are characteristics of
underground music in Chapel Hill as currently articulated through the
Nightlight, as a micro-scene became identifiable with the space, music
styles and practices mostly identified with the experimental and noise
genres demonstrate the affective investments of scene participants.
As a contemporary underground scene, Nightlight has from the start
been dependent on interlocal interaction with musicians and artists
outside of Chapel Hill, the first shows all interviewees remember
attending were by DAT Politics, an experimental electronic dance group
from France, and Wolf Eyes, a brutally pummeling noise group from
Minnesota who have risen to internationally known musicians and
status. At the same time, they are dedicated to nurturing and being
nurtured by a local musical tradition of experimentation and avant-
garde performance, as long as it can be distanced from the indie rock
legacy. Two regular events at Nightlight, the annual No Future Fest,
a weekend festival of over 20 noise artists from around the country,
and the almost monthly Recess, a local experimental kind of open-mic,
demonstrate these seemingly contrasting characteristics of the
underground scene.
Nightlight and Noise
A semantic discussion of the definition of noise vs. music or noise
music is beyond the scope of this paper, and like rock and roll and
scenes, the boundaries of noise are in a constant state of flux
according to current hegemonic discourse about what constitutes music
and those who challenge that definition. For the purposes of this
paper, noise is best defined by participants in the scene as an
approach to sound that steps outside conventional notions of melody,
harmony, and rhythm. [Mayshark, Howe]. The current noise scene can be
traced to a number of genres in musical history: the work of John Cage
and the Italian Futurists Luigi Rosollo, the European avant-garde of
Karlheinz Stockhausen, tape experiments of Les Paul and Terry Riley,
the free jazz of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, punk and post-punk
music, the drone based minimalism of La Monte Young and Tony Conrad,
and the no-wave music of 1980s New York, from Glenn Branca and Rhys
Chatham to early "alternative rock" bands like Sonic Youth and the
Swans [Mayshark, Cox, Currin 31 May 2006].
Noise was not new to Chapel Hill in 2003 and Nightlight did not
suddenly bring it out of its dark recesses and into the local media
spotlight. Local records like the Friction Media compilation of 1998,
Cognitive Mapping II, include tracks of free jazz and experimental
noise side by side with Chapel Hill rock from the 90s. From 1998 to
2000, Chapel Hill was home to the Transmissions festival, a multi-
night event including musicians like John Fahey, Alan Licht, Pelt,
Eugene Chadbourne, Fennesz, David Grubbs, film and art installations,
as well as local performers, including Zuerichten with Nightlight's
founder, Isaac Trogden performing among the international cognoscenti
of experimental music. The Alliance for Improvised Music, a non-
profit concert promotion company founded by Walt Davis, consistently
brought some of the biggest international names in improvised jazz to
the Triangle from 1996 to 2004, including legendary percussionist Hans
Bennink, Ellery Eskerlin's trio with Jim Black and Andrea Perkins, Joe
McPhee, and more. WXYC 89.3 fm, the UNC student run radio station
(where Trogden also volunteered and acted briefly as station manager),
is nationally known for often playing "challenging" music, especially
on it's Sunday afternoon specialty show, "Broken Music," featuring
music and sounds that can often be heard at Nightlight. Throughout
this history, however, there never developed the stable (at least
temporarily) economic and social networks for a scene to organize that
offered regular opportunities for performance and participation. That
an institution like Nightlight would surface to serve this a growing
community, both in and out of Chapel Hill now seems predictable
[Grossberg 1984, 236-240].
Micro-scenes like Nightlight demonstrate what Straw suggests is the
"paradoxical status of localism" within alternative-music culture
[499]. Access to vast array of musical languages and styles via the
internet has vastly altered the way music is used in the small
communities, shifting focus away from regional difference and
resulting in a "musical cosmopolitanism wherein the points of musical
reference are likely to remain stable from one community to
another" [Straw 499]. The result is that particular styles of music,
in this case noise, circulate between local scenes with little need to
adapt to local circumstances. More important is that local scenes
develop institutions to function as part of the "circuits" by which
music circulates and local scenes of activity relate to one another.
Because Chapel Hill had a history of underground music production, as
well as a local history of experimental music events to which one of
the co-founders of Nightlight was directly connected, it easily found
itself on the relatively new circuit of noise music.
>From 2003 to 2004, Nightlight's first year in business, over seventy-
five percent of the performances I would identify as experimental or
noise oriented were by non-local musicians. While audiences were
initially less than 10 people [Martin], Nightlight still became
regarded on the noise circuit as a "friendly" place to play
[iheartnoise.com]. Within a month of its opening, however, local
musician Robert Biggers, drummer for prominent late 90s post-punk
bands The White Octave and Cold Sides, and currently the Nein,
initiated a monthly music series called Recess, a "semi-regular
experimental-music evening curated by Nein drummer Robert Biggers. The
idea is that local musicians break out of their "normal" rockband
roles & try something new, generally involving short solo or
collaborative sets with different instruments/noises than they're used
to" [Grady August 2006]. Recess offered a regular opportunity for
musicians to experiment with ideas in contrast with the indie rock
more typical of the Triangle. Each month is curated by a different
local musician, ensuring variety of performances as each curator would
most likely draw from different social circles. The intention was to
foster local community support for experimentation, a concept that fit
perfectly within the mission statement of Nightlight [Martin]. Recess
then worked to establish Nightlight as the local venue for non-
traditional rock performances. Attendance at Recess varies, but the
audience often numbers over twenty people, many of whom did not yet
attend Nightlight regularly on other occasions, but through this
series could develop a connection to and vocabulary of noise music
culture.
At the same time, Trogden used his former connections through WXYC and
the Transmissions festival to bring more and more experimental
performers to Chapel Hill. When Ryan Martin took over for Trogden in
late 2004, he continued this trend, admitting to try "and just keep up
with what Isaac was doing. By that time, lots of people were just
contacting us. I guess we developed a reputation as being some freaky
place in the Southeast people could play" [Martin]. As such,
Nightlight became a regular stop for noise musicians from more
established local scenes like those in Providence, Rhode Island, New
York City, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Michele Arzano and Martin
both observed that soon there were soon more local musicians
developing noise projects to open for or perform with touring bands,
making a local journalist's comment that, "in the past decade, the
relative popularity and propriety of noise has hit an exponential
curve, moving beyond experimental anathema to accepted demi-obscurity:
The standing joke is that every indie rock musician now has at least
one noise project in vitro," [Currin, 31 May 2006] seem strangely more
accurate than funny. Very different than the Chapel Hill scene of the
past, however, where outside influence and attention were regarded
with suspicion and even open contempt [O'Hara, Bogas, Lazorchak], this
new scene was intimately connected other music communities,
culminating in a new annual event founded at Nightlight in May of 2005
called No Future Fest.
Inspired by the highly lauded (and widely publicized) No Fun Fest
founded by improvisational electronic artist Carlos Giffoni and
supporter Thurston Moore, an elder statesmen of alternative-rock and
musical experimentation, North Carolina noise musician Jason Crumer,
along with Martin and visiting Italian student Arzano, organized the
first No Future Fest in less than a month. Because Nightlight was
already recognized as the home of a local scene welcoming of noise,
and many artists who performed at No Fun Fest had also performed at
Nightlight-including Prurient, Pedestrian Deposit, Exceptor, No Neck
Blues Band, Jessica Rylan-the first No Future Fest was considered a
success [Arzano, Martin, Currin 31 May 2006]. Twenty noise acts
performed over two nights in 2005, many of whom would return over the
course of the next year as they toured the noise circuit up and down
the East Coast. The second No Future Fest in June 2006 attracted more
performers, including Mr. Giffoni, and more attendees. Feature
articles about noise music and noise musicians in Chapel Hill have
occurred three times since March 2006 in the Triangle weekly newspaper
The Independent and have even appeared on prominent international,
online music news site Pitchfork Media. Noise and experimental
performances at Nightlight are also listed regularly in the
recommended section of The Independent as well. Where this attention
will lead is questionable, but the consistently transitory nature of
music scenes suggests this attention is only temporary.
Already the contexts of the Nightlight scene are changing that suggest
a transformation in itself and its role in Chapel Hill. Martin and co-
owner Lauren Ford-co-founder with Mr. Trogden-sold their interests in
Nightlight at the end of June. While new owners Alexis Mastromichalis
and her partner Charlie are committed to maintaining Nightlight's
current trajectory, stating ""I've always described Nightlight as an
experimental music and performance space...I want to make it clear that
it's still that, that this is still Nightlight" [Currin 19 July 2006],
with the loss of Martin the growing media attention of noise music
will likely lead the Nightlight scene into a narrative of cooptation.
More likely, the processes of differentiation active in the scene will
work to locate audiences around different "particular coalitions of
musical form," [Straw 504].
This brief description of the micro-scene at Nightlight only begins to
elaborate on the complexities of underground musical practice, in
Chapel Hill. Rather it attempts to demonstrate how one site,
Nightlight, where music is disseminated interacts within a broader
music community, organizing particular audiences "aligned with
populations along the lines of class and taste, provide the conditions
of possibility of alliances between musical styles and affective links
between dispersed geographical places," [Straw 504]. While the future
of Nightlight is now, and has from its inception been, uncertain,
other micro-scenes are developing around the Triangle. While other
venues and locations maintain these diverse music communities,
historically 405 1/2 W. Rosemary St. has been a setting for
underground music practice in Chapel Hill for forty years and likely
will continue for some years to come.
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Evan Rowe
1. Economics:
a: My wife and I were able to buy a house in Durham. That house is
three blocks from my work, three blocks from a grocery store and local
video rental store, and has five or six bars within a five-minute bike
ride. Having these things taken care of and so accessible allows you to
feel more part of a community, I think. That carries over to community
among bands. Now if we could just decide on a bar to replace J&J's as
the default watering hole...
b: When my parents wanted to send flowers to my wife I was able to
identify a friend who runs a flower shop, and give my friend some money.
When kids at my school ask about music, I can send them to see my
friend at Chaz's. People can actually afford to open businesses in
Durham. That's nice.
2. Not Economics: I like the way Durham feels. I like that you can get
places in Durham fairly quickly, and that different parts of it feel
distinct. Neighborhoods have identities. [This is not an invitation to
start printing "Burch Ave" neighborhoodies.] My experience with Chapel
Hill and Carrboro was that they felt more homogeneous, but that's likely
a function of their size.
3. Bigger bands: I think to have touring bands stop in Durham rather
than Chapel Hill or Raleigh, you might need a more traditional club,
with drinks and all, so they can make guarantees. Passing the hat can
sustain you for a while, but it might have to be one of those hippie
Cat-In-The-Hat type hats. They're big. Gas is expensive.
4. Identity as a Durham Band: Two of us live and work in Durham, one
lives and works in Raleigh. We practice in Durham. Most of our closer
friends in rock live in Durham. But we're relatively new here.
5. Deadwood: Our band already has a song called Heng Dai. Now get that
unauthorized cinnamon off the goddamn meeting table.
=E
grady wrote:
> Umm, I think so many groups are self-identifying as Durham bands because
> their members live in Durham. Root cause: for some folks, it's the most
> affordable place to live, and for a lot of folks, it's the most
> desireable place to live. I stopped counting a long time ago the number
> of my friends who'd moved to Durham from the other points in the Triangle.
>
> So if you're trendspotting, the trend started at least a half-dozen
> years ago, and it's called "musicians like cheap housing."
>
> As for the question about t-shirts, well, I guess you just haven't seen
> the Carrboro t-shirts, or the OCSC t-shirts. Given the longstanding
> basketball/rock connection in Chapel Hill, I'd say any UNC
> basketball-related t-shirt would probably count for Chapel Hill.
>
> Are you asking "why does Durham have such uncanny self-esteem-boosting
> T-shirts?" Because the answer to that is pretty much "James & Michelle
> Lee," and if you start asking "why James & Michelle Lee," I'm not sure
> that there's an answer for that. Other than, getting back to point A,
> musicians like cheap housing. Where else could they afford to operate
> such a sprawling enterprise as 305 South?
>
> There are other folks whose outsized level of involvement/boosterism
> sort of singlehandedly makes Durham seem more "together" or "organized"
> or "scene-like" [than it actually is]: Melissa Thomas at 307 Knox, and
> certainly Chaz. Shannon Morrow moved back to Durham from Chicago (though
> before she moved to Chicago, she was living in Carrboro, so there ya go)
> & started the Scene of the Crime Rovers.
>
> What do all *these* people have in common? Maybe that they like the idea
> of being able to get something done more or less singlehandedly, or with
> a small group of co-conspirators. Durham seems like a tabula rasa,
> culture-wise, at least to youngish white-ish indie-rockers. Check out
> that article in the Indy from a couple of weeks ago about the NCCU jazz
> program & you'll see that Durham isn't really such a clean slate, but
> when it comes to youth culture, all it takes is a fallow period of a
> couple of years to wipe everything pretty clean.
>
> Maybe another thing they have in common is the good old fashioned
> punkrock ideal that community is a good thing, and that building
> community is an end unto itself. Obviously there are some folks who have
> slightly different ideas (i.e. the Troika folks who like to salt the
> festival lineup with a few out-of-towners), but even they do what they
> do by and large for the sake of the community, rather than out of some
> quest for larger fame/fortune.
>
> But then I think you'd have to go all the way to Charlotte to really
> find anybody who was desperately seeking fame via indie-rock. Oh, well,
> I guess there are those guys from Raleigh who bought a tour bus to live
> in while they wait for their ship to come in, Airiel Down, but they're
> an aberration even for Raleigh.
>
> The thing about people who like the idea of a close-knit community, is
> that they tend to seek out other people who also like that idea. Couple
> that with real estate that's cheap enough for peeps to be able to afford
> to open something like BCHQ . . .
>
> I hope you don't have some thesis in mind regarding sharp distinctions
> between the various towns, or anything like adversarial relationships
> between the towns, the clubs, or the bands. Periodically people try to
> advance some notion that there is some level of competition or
> something, but if there is, it's isolated almost entirely to the annual
> WXDU/WXYC kickball game. There may be the occasional crackpot who sees
> things as a zero-sum game where somebody's gotta lose, but I would
> strongly caution you against extrapolating from them to anything bigger.
>
> Or before you do, talk to Chaz & ask him how many Raleigh bands have
> played his store and/or Bull City HQ. Or talk to DJ Stevo at WKNC & ask
> him how he feels about bands from Durham & Chapel Hill. That dude loves
> *everybody* & he works his butt off to prove it.
>
> Anyway. The more I think about it, the more I come back to point A:
> cheap real estate makes for countercultural magic. This is not a new
> concept.
>
> Nor, for that matter, is the converse, which is that expensive real
> estate can kill the countercultural magic. Just look at Raleigh. Goodbye
> Kings, goodbye Bickett Gallery.
>
> Ross
>
> betsy...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hey Alt.music.CH
>>
>> I'm a student at Duke and am writing a paper about the indie rock
>> scene in the Triangle, with a particular focus on Durham identity. I
>> was hoping I could maybe spark a little conversation or a little
>> interest to email back and forth about what it means to be a member of
>> the community, either as a fan, a band member, an info center,
>> whatever the case may be.
>>
>> I'm interested in exploring what exactly it means to be a "Durham
>> band" since the proliferation of so many groups claiming this lately,
>> as well as what it means to be part of the Durham scene, and how (or
>> if) this differs from say, being part of the Raleigh scene or the
>> Chapel Hill scene (and being a Raleigh band or CH band). I wonder
>> what *you* think of when you think of Durham (and be completely
>> honest) or if you ever think of it at all. Why does Durham have tee
>> shirts and no other town does? What's the pride all about?
>>
>> I'll keep an eye out and hope I get some replies.
>> Thanks
>> Betsy-Shane
Nathaniel Florin
--- Duncan Murrell <dvmu...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> but I _did_ think you'd pick up on the population
> density differences
I wonder how real the density differences are. From
the late 80s to the late 90s Durham annexed a huge
amount of land towards Chapel Hill along 40, the
15-501 corridor, up Farrington Rd, and so forth. It
might have done the same in other directions; I don't
know. This was a pure land grab of a lot of space with
nothing in it. There still isn't anything in most of
it (though it's coming; what in the hell is that gated
community/disaster area near Ephesus Church?), or
things like Wal-Mart that contribute nothing to
population density. This drives down overall density,
but doesn't mean anything in this discussion, because
the areas that are not dense are areas with no one
living in them (this is not quite tautological). When
you're considering the scene in Durham and Chapel Hill
you're not talking about the box stores on 15-501,
Hope Valley, Briarcliff, or the houses along the golf
course at the Chapel Hill Country Club. Those areas
don't count; their density is irrelevant (obviously
this is not true at all of many many larger regional
issues like transit, etc.).
Density *from an "effect-on-the-scene" viewpont*
speaks to a built-up core with mixed
residential/commercial space; the place where the
events are and where the people who go to those events
would want to live. Carrboro is at least half core, so
of course it's dense. Chapel Hill's proportion is
lower, Durham's lower still, but the dense area in
Durham has to be as large as that in Carrboro.
Put in other words, I think that Carrboro is likely
functionally denser than Durham and Chapel Hill, but
not by the huge margin indicated in the raw numbers,
and the difference is accounted for at least in part
by empty commercial and residential space in Durham.
This is Durham's advantage; you can do infill simply
by renting or selling available space, without tearing
things down or filling in parking lots or whatever.
> -- Chapel Hill and Carrboro are smaller but more
> dense than Durham.
> Carrboro is the most dense, and has been for at
> least the last seven
> years. At the same time, Carrboro has enjoyed a
> renaissance.
I wonder how circular much of this is -- did people
moving to Carrboro cause its density as much as result
from it? I don't know, but I remember Carrboro ~1990
feeling pretty empty.
OTOH, I have a *really* hard time thinking of Carrboro
or downtown Durham as dense in any real sense. Dense
for the South, sure, but 3700, even 5000 people per
square mile really what I'd think of as "dense", and
when I'm back I notice the infinite pine trees I'm
always driving by, even well inside town limits.
Nate
trekky records
laundromats, etc.) is usually just the sound. Maybe I'm not punk rock
enough (I play guitar, but also accordion) but sometimes if there
isn't a good PA and a competent sound guy, I totally turn off. If
these places could get good systems, work on their rooms to sound
good, then I'd be into it, but until then it just gives me the vibe
that those places make the actual music a low priority.
That's of course extremely general, some places do just fine, and I
know good equipment is pricey, but it certainly is a factor in my
deciding which shows I'll go to.
trekky records
To get more general tho, I'd like to say that generally I think of all
Triangle bands together, as opposed to focusing on the differences
between the 3 points. The differences are fascinating, and I
definitely appreciate the personality of having your own, semi-
exclusive community ("Durham Rocks!"). But Carrboro/Chapel Hill//
Durham/Raleigh are SO close. I'd like to think it could be one scene.
Power in numbers and all that.
If anything it'd just be easier for me. When I do the Backyard BBQ I
never know where the hell everyone is from, so I just say Chapel Hill,
or "around here".
-will
Duncan Murrell
density really means in Durham), but this graphic from the News and
Observer is kind of fun to look at it. Go to the page, click on the
"Related Content: Graphic" link to the right of the article:
http://www.newsobserver.com/167/story/542169.html
d
Someone out there must be able to work some GIS magic and figure out
how dense these places are, neighborhood by neighborhood and block by
block. I love giving out assignments!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Duncan Murrell
www.rattlejar.com
grady
video at shows (and thus gets to listen back to it the next day), the
crappiest sound I hear lately is at the Cradle. TOO MUCH BASS, and half
the time the kick drum is all I can hear. (Note that I'm aware of this
problem at the show, and not just while watching the video later.)
Local 506 & the Coffeehouse usually sound OK, once the person at the PA
at the Coffeehouse gets the mix under control, which can sometimes take
a bit of time. Shows at Chaz's actually used to sound pretty good too;
BCHQ is a little bright n boomy, but they're talking about ways to
mitigate that.
What's important is that the PA be matched to the size of the room, and
that, yes, someone with ears & some knowledge of how to run it be put in
charge of it. In most small rooms, all you need in the PA is vocals and
any acoustic instruments, and your biggest problem is getting the
freaking drummer to not play like [s]he's filling in for Keith Moon at
Wembley.
I may be less picky than you are, or more punk rock, but all I want is
to be able to hear everything at more or less the right level. That
actually happens around the Triangle more often than not, in part
because a lot of the smaller pick-up venues actually do seem to care at
least a little bit about sound.
But yeah, I guess I am less picky than you are, because I don't think
I've ever said "fuckit, I don't like the PA at such-and-such, I'm
skipping that show." I have so many *other* good excuses to skip shows
that it just hasn't ever come to that ;-)
trekky records
Some rooms have good PA but are inherently echo-y. Some are good
spaces with terrible equipment/staff to run it. But, you're right, its
usually bearable. I think I'm just dreaming of my fantasy venue, which
is relatively clean, but has personality, has good sound, mid-sized,
the staff is friendly and supportive and the booker likes exactly what
I like.
But GO! is closed of course.
-will
jim.br...@gmail.com
> gradually been drifting away from Chapel Hill, towards Chatham, or
> Durham. There's a fun poll for us to conduct: Hey, Durham musicians,
> where did you go to college?
To respond to Ross's poll, I graduated from UNC, then stuck around
Chapel Hill for a few years. Then I moved to Raleigh and stayed for a
few years. Then I wanted to buy a house. I weighed my options, and
Durham was the best option. I've worked in RTP most of this time and
played in bands ("based" in each city) the whole time.
As Bendy said in a previous post, I came for the housing prices and
stayed for the town (including the food, art, music, down-to-
earthness/"grittiness", parks, and the many other benefits tossed
around in previous posts - if I had the time and/or energy I'd love to
do a "what I love about Durham" post to see how that compares with
others of my Triangle musician cohort...).
Anyway, I share your suspicion/theory that I'm not unique in having
made this type of migration over the past few years (I moved to Durham
in 2004). And that's another thing I like about Durham.
jim.br...@gmail.com
threads (and as a longtime lurker I've read quite a few). Betsy-Shane,
I hope that you share whatever paper you make out of this conversation
with the group.
On Apr 4, 10:42 am, "betsysh...@gmail.com" <betsysh...@gmail.com>
Shayne
> Fascist!
>
> I don't really think Shayne was talking about artistic decisions,
> although it is interesting how he's managed to incorporate singing saw &
> trombone into his otherwise pretty much acoustic pop-punk band . . .
> throwing a bone to the homies, eh?
Was that a pun? Besides, I always figured they were throwing the bone
to us.
betsy...@gmail.com
I am getting a lot of really great information (I did some work a few
years ago on women in Durham and have some pretty good numbers
comparing to the rest of the country-- women make more on avg here,
more women owned businesses etc but that also may have something to do
with RTP which is technically in Durham Co)
But that census info really threw me...the median income in Durham is
higher than elsewhere, so does the money thing still hold up? I guess
that's a whole other investigation; why is Durham real estate so
damned cheap?
>From some of the research, I've heard that things may have sort of
been like they are in Durham in Chapel Hill a while back-- a bunch of
people who play shows with their friends and want to "make
something." And Trekky Records has actually been cited as a good
example of people sort of taking a different route to help promote
themselves/friends in the area (so Will if you have anything to say
about community or forming an identity, that'd be swell).
I generally ask bands to "map out" the scene or identify the cliques
that are present in their view, and to situate themselves in
relationship to other bands and venues. Sound is often a factor in
considering "favorite" venues or as one band called them "real" venues
(they meant it in the context of places who hire out soundpeople and
have professional shows as the main event), whereas others cite the
crowd. Some venues just kind of have a built in sell, I think.
Obviously it's a chicken or the egg thing-- if you're playing the
Cradle frank's not going to book you unless he's sure it'll be full,
but at the same time, if you just get lucky and tucked on the bill
under another band who would've filled the house, you've still "played
the cradle" and have that respect. To the same token, I had a friend
recently write me and say he used to go out but going to "unventilated
clubs with awful sound probably means the bands I like have let
themselves go." It could be the same with building bills-- I know
that when you make a one-sheet you're going to put on every big dog
band you've played with, or who you perceive to be on a tier further
up than you, and I wonder if "playing down" means anything around
here. I'd be interested in knowing what you guys think too as far as
that goes, although in a public forum I'm sure nobody wants to say
anything too incindiary.
I became interested in this project because in my mind, indie rock in
the triangle was sort of a constellation of three gravitational forces
of towns, around which smaller cliques, ideas and groups revolved.
Despite the number of people who rally for togetherness of the
triangle as a whole, I'm not sure I've been swayed. My research has
probably been indicative of this-- I am situated in a particular
place, I know particular people and those are the people I've been
able to speak to. James Hepler (thanks!) clued me in about this
list-- I didn't even know it existed, because nobody I'd spoken to
before him (and that's about 20 interviews) mentioned it. It's weird
how that works out.
On a note unrelated to the paper but marginally related to our
discussion, I think that a lot of the new venue types are wisening up
in the face of a changing culture-- people still will pay a $10 cover
and then $4 a beer at a "venue" but they'd rather go somewhere that
they can either BYOB, or drink with their friends, that will be open
afterwards and offers other options for the evening. Our culture is
slowly but surely fragmentalized and eaten up by huge conglomerates.
Almost any chain store I can think of that's been popular and stayed
that way recently has expanded into more than one type of thing, from
target adding the "supers" to get that grocery store/pharmacy business
to places like the gap expanding into undergarments and body lotion
crap to keep an edge on the game. We love the one-stop-shopping. In
a way, I think that's the greatest promise of 305 south-- the fact
that you can go there and there's the possibility of lots of shit to
do, even if all of it is spending money.
bs
Chris Rossi
>Hey all
>
>But that census info really threw me...the median income in Durham is
>higher than elsewhere, so does the money thing still hold up? I guess
>that's a whole other investigation; why is Durham real estate so
>damned cheap?
>
>
>
The college student populations are making the income figures seem
artificially low for Chapel Hill/Carrboro. Notice the big difference
between household and family income in Chapel Hill. The family figure,
presumably, factors out the college student population. But also the
single adults not in college. I dunno. I think you'd want to factor
out the students to figure out what the economics are for people with
jobs in those places.
rossi
grady
Triangle are in Durham . . . there are a LOT of doctors & lawyers in
Durham. More generally, I think I read recently that the single biggest
employer in Durham is Duke Med Center.
w/r/t all the stuff you're talking about RE: putting the Cradle on yr
one-sheet or whatever . . . do people really take that stuff seriously?
Especially nowadays in the age of MySpace, do any venue bookers really
rely on much more than music on MySpace, plus legitimate press clips or
whatever? Any fool & his brother's dog can get a gig at the Cradle
during their periodic Sunday showcase things.
I'm pretty sure that most bands in Chapel Hill just wanna play shows
with their friends as well . . . it may just be that they perceive the
necessary hoops that require jumping through to be harder to deal with,
certainly when talking about the Cradle & 506.
But go talk to the Reservoir peeps . . . that seems like a community of
folks throwing shows for themselves & their friends, some of whom are in
out-of-town bands.
Or read Aaron's thesis on Nightlight . . .
I don't have a problem with the notion of Raleigh & Durham & Chapel
Hill/Carrboro being perceived as distinct from one another, but I think
that mostly just underlines the fact that in all three towns, we're
talking about communities of people who hang out together at the bar &
play in each others' bands, so they tend to hang together locally &
close-to-home. Sometimes I hear from folks wanting to find out how to
book shows in the other towns, and I try to point them to like-minded
bands to team up with, and it usually seems to work out OK. Plus Durham
is full of people like Jim, who used to live in the other two towns. Or
Sara Bell . . . have you talked to her?
Certainly one could make arguments, surrounding Kings, that Raleigh
continues to be the home of ROCK, but I haven't ever done the math to
count up how many bands of each sub-sub-subgenre call each city home.
That'd be an amusing exercise, I think. Beyond that, I dunno, I don't
really see the three cities as having distinctive musical sub-styles
unique to them. People used to talk shit about the Chapel Hill
detuned-guitars thing vs. three-chord rock in Raleigh in the 90s, but I
was skeptical of it at the time, even. Moreso now.
trekky records
venues spread out and had more things to entertain.
as for the cliques, community, forming an identity, i'd say its
extremely complex, and i'm still trying to figure it out. they way
that we operate is: our crew comes first. the family vibe, the
unconditional love. however, our crew of 40 people are not enough to
totally sustain a scene (and we wouldn't want it that way anyway), so,
after the priority of focus on our bands, we jump right up to
attempting to organize, collaborate with and help out everyone that we
like in the scene (that means people in the Triangle and Greensboro).
and there are a good number of other labels, cliques, friend groups,
whatever out there. we are really young and like so many different
kinds of music, so we try to be down with a lot of people and help a
lot of people. sometimes we aren't met with a ton of enthusiasm,
either because people just like their specific kind of music, or their
specific group of friends. we're fine with that. kill 'em with
kindness, you know?
my feeling is that this sort of comprehensive support is the road to a
happy, supportive and ultimately financially sustainable scene for my
crew as well as everyone else. we need a ton of people who not only
people who support all kinds of indie rock, hip hop and bluegrass
music, but also people that are down with art, theater and even dance.
its probably naive and impossible, but we can't help but try. i like
the music around here too much not to. the sentiment that the CH scene
is dead and that there won't be inter-town support just makes it more
of a challenge.
ron thigpen
> But that census info really threw me...the median income in Durham is
> higher than elsewhere, so does the money thing still hold up? I guess
> that's a whole other investigation; why is Durham real estate so
> damned cheap?
don't read too much into a median income number. it tells you very
little about the distribution of incomes, only that half the incomes are
higher than that number and half are lesser.
it helps to think in graphical terms, x axis being income and y being
number of folks at that income level. you could be looking at a lot of
shapes to the data, but consider two options: a bell curve with the
median right at the peak, or you could be looking at a big trough with
the median at the bottom. each case would have the same median, but a
very different distribution of incomes.
For the trough example, you'd have a lot of poor folks, a lot of rich
folks and relatively few in between. i wouldn't argue without facts
that Durham has a trough distribution, but it probably does have a
different distribution than some of the other cities in the area.
the takeaway here is that you go at your own peril if you try to read
too much into a simple statistic like median income.
--rt
Chris Calloway
(I've heard arguments
> that carrboro is
> cheap enough, or comperably cheap and I don't really
> know the orange
> county housing market)
wonderous thread with many furry spikes like a
*freaking scene bibliography*. wtf. long after butch's
rekkids are forgotten, this will be his legacy: a
steady stream of "scene" dissertations. woot!
lived raleigh 10 years. durham 15. moved to carrboro 1
year ago. couldn't afford chapel hill. ($1500/mo for
600 sq feet? that's like manhattan, damitol.) can
barely afford carrboro. best deals in carrboro are way
out by the plaza, if you don't mind apartments. some
nasty ass apartments on north greensboro just got
carved up into condos for a quarter mill apiece, which
is also about what tiny four squares go for here also.
durham much nicer and cheaper. but have strong belief
in living near work. mustn't waste the precious
petrol. and durham will soon enough price itself out
of the market, too, what with all the people moving
there. i moved from one neighborhood to the next
fleeing rent increases on mill houses as yuppies moved
in. almost everyone i've ever known from chapel hill
lives in durham now. every once in awhile i'll run
into an old familiar face on the bus to franklin
street. but this is happening less and less. most all
the familiar faces are in durham, a thousand miles
away, and i'm meeting lots of new faces, although most
of them work in chapel hill and live in durham.
i've seen the same 500 hundred people at shows around
the triangle for the last 30 years. weird. i was saw
about 300 of them all at the same time at kings a
couple of years ago. then going to the db's three
months ago was like stepping into a time warp.
suddenly the place looked like the station on a
saturday night. i saw people i went to high school
with in winston. when i saw them, it's not like i
recognized them from across the room. i would just see
someone standing, or fidgeting, or walking in a
certain way and would think, that looks like the way
so and so used to stand/fidget/walk. and on closer
inspection it would turn out to be them, even though
the looked nothing like they used. that's when you
know you've been in the same state too long. but i
like it here.
petty crime in chapel hill and carrboro is totally out
of control. can't park a car anywhere without a window
getting smashed out. at least in durham they just
steal your bombed out car once every fifteen years. in
chapelboro it's file a small insurance claim every
week. i'm pretty sure it's just drunks acting out.
last week it was a friend sleeping on my floor
overnight. in the morning a cop was standing by her
car with the driver's window smashed out. the cop said
there were windows smashed out all over town. it
matched the big crack someone had put on her front
window the week before. then she went home to
pittsboro where crackheads had broken into her house
and were dealing out of her bedroom. nice. i heard
stories like that in durham. i hear more of them here.
maybe it's because the dth actually prints a pretty
complete police blotter. i'm not very scientific about
it. but more shit has happened around me here in one
year than in all the time i was in durham.
population density of durham must be understated by
method which nate invokes. i live halfway up north
greensboro and nothing is within walking distance
except a bait shop converted into a taco stand. it's
like being in a wasteland. i walked home in a warm
rain from the 506 in the wee hours of new years day.
it took forever. in durham, biking to hangouts was
easy. the saving grace is i can take a cab between any
two points in chapelboro for about $7. yeah, there is
free bus service here. it just stops at a time in the
evening right before you need to go anywhere. it's
about to get bike weather again, though. so more
freedom for less money. i am not a citizen of the
triangle. it takes something pretty special to make me
drive down 15-501 or i-40. these things happen maybe
once a year. it's nothing against those other places.
i like them, too. i feel sorry for the peeps in
rollywood right now, what with their nice places going
away. but driving is simply more hazardous and
expensive than i feel comfortable with most of the
time. and i'm not fond of the idea that every citizen
of the triangle should be saddled with 50 grand of
debt in perpetuity just so we can build a monorail
between the restaurants dishing out shrimp and grits
on either side of our fine metropolis. live near your
work and work to live. then go have some shrimp and
grits near where you work and live. when you get tired
of that, maybe it's time to cook at home for awhile.
speaking of, i'm pretty sure there's more super fine
food in durham. and dang, when you add up all the
money being spent on slow roasted monkey butts on
fennel coulis within the bakatsias empire around ninth
and markham, whoa, you might could make some
unsubstantiated correlation between the faux creative
class and your rising star of grittiness. but the two
tops are lantern and vin, making a sandwich of durham.
i was dragged kicking and screaming to durham from
raleigh long ago. nothing to do there then except go
see bad white boy blues at halby's and the occasional
ugly americans at the hofbrau or corrosion of
conformity at some historic church. within a year
everything changed, and that was pretty much
concomitant with the rise of college radio in both
durham and chapel hill. i'm pretty convinced that is
the magic spice and we can pretty much trace the good
effects of both back to either ken friedman or mike
woodard. individual efforts can have long lasting
effects on many more people. anyway, there have been
weekly shows in durham pretty much continuously since
then. even when people said there was nothing to do
there, there were always shows at the kaffeehaus,
deliberately under publicized in order not to lure the
off campus "elements" onto campus. even during the
summer. nobody knew. they were just spontaneous
happenings. we knew and that's all that mattered.
once a bunch of us pretty much squatted in a space
above an itinerant restaurant in downtown durham. it
was like jo and joes on steroids with time
compression. we knocked the plaster off the walls down
to the bricks, hung art, and brought in a bunch of
bands. a bunch of people came. we had a month long
party. by the next month it was gone, but not before
we had gone spelunking through all the adjoining
abandoned spaces like a department store closed since
the 60s. some of those people like jim k went on and
made their own more permanent, though not permanent,
spaces. stuff like this would happen all the time.
when it was happening, we would talk about how if we
made it permanent, it would disappear, because the
bohos moving in to make a place fashionable is only
the precursor to the gentry moving in to make it
expensive and full of assholes. today all those places
are condos in the durham renaissance. yes, a scene is
all about change. jo and joes was too wonderful to
last. be careful what you change. it can have long
lasting effects for many more people, long after you
are gone.
i booked a show at 506 last month. all the bands were
from durham. glenn made it easy. the only downside was
the sound, which blew chunks. everybody complained
about the sound and had a great time anyway. there
were fights. somebody got fired. it was fun. i figure
that sound guy owes me $75, though, cuz i know that
room can sound good when somebody who knows what the
hell they are doing is on the case.
the big touring band thing is occasionally useful. i
saw deerhoof at the cradle a couple of months ago and
it was the best single band i'd seen in ten years,
even with just the one guitarist.
don't underestimate the ladies in chapelboro compared
to durham. two women were just re-elected to the top
spots at xyc this week. i've always noticed more women
working at internationalist. the best band in town are
two women. the list goes on. everywhere i look, there
are women all around here. wtf.
finally, a plug for my friend's really hard work:
3
kx
ansmi...@yahoo.com wrote:
> My ideas are surely indebted to the work of Mr. Butch Lazorchak, whose
> paper on the CH-Scene from teh 90's I first read off of this list.
I was lucky enough to have Butch give me a little personal talk about
this paper. it was awesome.
And Ross - people seem more like people in Durham? I live in my house,
in Chapel Hill, and I am just as much "people" as any of y'all.
jsw.
grady
"people?"
QED
p.s. even if you are, in fact, people, there are fewer of you in Chapel
Hill than there are in Durham. Have you spent much time on Franklin St.
lately? They have valet parking there now.
kx wrote:
> And Ross - people seem more like people in Durham? I live in my house,
> in Chapel Hill, and I am just as much "people" as any of y'all.
>
> jsw.
-- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
Jeff Hart
'98. moved to durham in late '99. seems like home more than orange or
wake county. i can be on broad st. in 6 minutes, ninth st. in 8. wxdu
in 2. the last gig i played was 10 minutes by foot last friday (broad
st. cafe). lots of us walked home. some slept on the floor.
Duncan Murrell
band out there that might, by God's grace and the Devil's schemes,
bring us all just a little bit closer together. I'm talking about Sea
Cow. Not "Manatee," but Sea Cow:
Sea Cow, playing at The Cave TONIGHT at 7:30
Sea Cow: Living in Durham, recording in Pittsboro, playing in Chapel
Hill. Feel the Triangle love! http://www.reverbnation.com/seacow
(Seriously, I'm looking forward to the show.)
d
On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:36 PM, betsy...@gmail.com wrote:
> Despite the number of people who rally for togetherness of the
> triangle as a whole, I'm not sure I've been swayed.
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Duncan Murrell
3 is back!
d
On Apr 5, 2007, at 7:38 PM, Chris Calloway wrote:
> everywhere i look, there
> are women all around here. wtf.
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Duncan Murrell
only two bands I care about (two great, greying friends playing, one
in each) playing tonight at The Cave (one early, one late). And the
wife and kids are out of town! Whoot! Best band names going. Go Greg
and Misha!
d
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Duncan Murrell
www.rattlejar.com
Chris Calloway
DJ Golf
halfway-TIC mantra for anyone complaining about downtown Durham being
"unsafe."
> petty crime in chapel hill and carrboro is totally out
> of control. can't park a car anywhere without a window
> getting smashed out. at least in durham they just
> steal your bombed out car once every fifteen years. in
> chapelboro it's file a small insurance claim every
> week.
One of the other reasons for Durham real estate being "cheap" compared
to elsewhere in the Triangle is the widespread perception (justified
or not - we could argue all day) among potential homebuyers that
Durham is crime-ridden. This is perpetuated to at least some extent
by real estate agents trying to sell out-of-towners on the more
expensive properties in CH/Raleigh by badmouthing Durham ("there's
lots of crime, the schools are bad, gangs/drugs all over the place",
etc.) But I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone on here.
DJ Golf grew up in southside Virginia, went to college at the school
up on top of the Blue Ridge that recently joined the ACC and now beats
Duke and UNC in both basketball -and- football on a regular basis,
lived in that little college town for many years, then moved to
Carrboro on kind of a whim in '97. Has worked in Durham for most of
his 10 years here (at times in some of the Bull City's rougher
neighborhoods, with nary a scratch) and lives in the woods out near
Hillsborough, where Mrs. Golf and he can enjoy the pollen and be
surrounded by her family's land, which provides a nice buffer zone
between us and ever-encroaching anthills of $750,000 cookie-cutter
homes and the fleets of speeding minivans going antlike in and out of
them.
The golf around here is cheap too, as golf goes, although you gotta
drive out of town a bit. Nothing cheap at Duke or UNC-Finley.
DJ Golf has also rediscovered the Stranglers recently for some reason.
(Maybe it was hearing "Golden Brown" on the radio a while back.)
Their first 5 or 6 albums have aged about as well as anything from
that era.
jim.br...@gmail.com
agree that college radio *is* the magic spice in the Triangle.
When I moved from Raleigh (where in my house I could pickup only WKNC
and WSHA) to Durham (where I could then also pick up WXDU, WXYC, and
WNCU!), I had a hard time explaining to some people (mostly non-music-
obsessed people) why this made me so so so very excited and happy. The
disproportionate number of incredible radio stations we have in our
fair metro region contributes significantly to my quality of life.
As a musician, the preponderance of incredible local radio stations
has also shaped my ears (and thereby my musical taste) in a huge way.
I grew up in the Heart of the Triad, where from a young age I was
thankfully fed a steady stream of 90.9 WQFS (thanks Guilford
College!). However, it wasn't until I'd been listening to our Triangle
stations for a few years that my ears were truly no longer put off by
a playlist that goes: minimalist classical piece->Pavement song->art-
noise/musique concrète piece->song by [INSERT LOCAL BAND]->strange rap
song->etc. (From this description you can probably tell that WXDU and
WXYC have been the most common settings on my dial.) It's hard to say
exactly what effect this has had on my music, but it has certainly has
had an effect.
(I should pause here to re-emphasize the fact that unlike in Raleigh
and Chapel Hill, I can pick up all of these stations in Durham - yet
another item on my as-of-yet-unwritten "things I like about Durham"
list.)
As a side note, I wonder what effect the internets will have on this
ear-shaping of up and coming musicians? For example, I now regularly
listen to WFMU (from Jersey City, NJ) over said internets. A kid
growing up today in the Triad (as I did a few years ago) now has
access to listen to our Triangle stations, as well as those from
anywhere else in the world. But I wonder if that kid actually will.
This is probably a pointless digression. Let us now take a moment of
silence to reflect on our thankfulness for local college radio in the
Triangle.
Jim B.
P.S. How nice it is to now be able to listen to Divaville (Sunday at 3
on WXDU) straight into Ross's show (Sunday at 5 PM). Similar to the
weekly Saturday treat of 8-track flashback (Saturday at noon on WNCU)
straight into the Funk Show (4 PM on WNCU), which now leads straight
into the Soul Show (Saturday night on WXDU)! I think I listen to the
radio like most Americans watch TV.
Jeff Hart
> I don't know who Ken Friedman or Mike Woodard are, but I absolutely
> agree that college radio *is* the magic spice in the Triangle.
ken was music director at wxyc from about '76 to the late 80's (was he
there that long?). his show was called "anarchy in the p.m." if memory
serves.
chris calloway can probably comment more on ken's contribution to
college radio. i could barely pick up wxyc until about the time he
left. i finally moved to a hill in wake county where i could get the
signal. but someone dubbed me some of his shows from his time there
on some long lost cassette.
here's ken and jamie mclendon in a recent pic.
http://www.ipass.net/jhart/kenjamie.jpg
ken's also known for pulling together the nc garage rock compilation
called "tobacco a go go". there may have been 3 volumes. i know of two
for sure.
billburton
His wonderful show ran from 1978 until 1986.
bb
-----Original Message-----
From: ch-scene...@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:ch-scene...@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Hart
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 3:58 PM
To: ch-s...@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: On Durham and identity
On Apr 6, 3:15 pm, jim.brant...@gmail.com wrote:
> I don't know who Ken Friedman or Mike Woodard are, but I absolutely
> agree that college radio *is* the magic spice in the Triangle.
ken was music director at wxyc from about '76 to the late 80's (was he
there that long?). his show was called "anarchy in the p.m." if memory
serves.
-- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
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James Hepler
> We crack wise sometimes about bands and their tours
> of the Triangle (Hem
> of His Garment are in the middle of one of those
> right now), but isn't
> that sort of the best of all possible worlds? You
> get the exotic
> experience of traveling to another city to play in
> front of a crowd of
> strangers who just stare at you, but you still get
> to go home & sleep in
> your own bed.
Yeah, but you still gotta go to work the next day.
>From where I'm sitting right now in Ames Iowa, the
best of all possible worlds is playing in front of no
one in a town you've never been to, but the beer is a
dollar and you get a free pizza.
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James Hepler
discussion so far is house shows. Don't you lads
these days play house shows anymore?
--- trekky records <willh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem I have with these "specialty" venues
> (the restaurants,
> laundromats, etc.) is usually just the sound. Maybe
> I'm not punk rock
> enough (I play guitar, but also accordion) but
> sometimes if there
> isn't a good PA and a competent sound guy, I totally
> turn off. If
> these places could get good systems, work on their
> rooms to sound
> good, then I'd be into it, but until then it just
> gives me the vibe
> that those places make the actual music a low
> priority.
>
> That's of course extremely general, some places do
> just fine, and I
> know good equipment is pricey, but it certainly is a
> factor in my
> deciding which shows I'll go to.
>
>
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors
> alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
>
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trekky records
unfortunately, finding a good house has been harder and harder. all
the places we used to do house shows in Greensboro and the Triangle
are not options anymore, as people have moved out. there is one that
does a show every 6 months in CH, but that's so rare.
we're hoping to have small acoustic shows in our new trekky
headquarters house in CH, but there's always neighbors that hate
music...
Colin Booy
absence of house shows, at least in Durham. My speculation is that
some of it at least has to do with the actual houses themselves:
1) At least as far as I've seen there seem to be hardly any houses
with basements. And of course a basement (= dirt in all directions but
up) is the best possible soundproofing. Growing up in Seattle and also
in college in Ohio, almost all viable punk/show houses put the noise
in the basement. I guess here it being so hot (and also, I think,
there are sediment/water table issues -- Durham seems to be built on
hard clay w/just the thinnest layer of soil, as I discovered trying to
grow tomatos last summer) that it's not feasible or desirable
economically to build basements.
2) Even if you do decide to get serious about soundproofing, these
damn houses have zero insulation, making it almost impossible (also
infuriating ecologically: insulation keeps the cool in, as well as the
hot). I remember when Chaz, Ten, and I were living together, making
dur-rock plugs for the windows, stacking matresses in front of them,
etc. and it didn't really make a jot of difference. The cops still
came, we got pretty spooked, and that was that for house shows at Ft.
Awkward (of course it didn't help that the bill somehow grew to 4-5
bands, and the amps seemed to keep getting louder/the cabinets even
bigger as the night progressed).
I mean, probably there's always going to be a bit of a limited run for
this sort of house (Raleigh gets the props for persistence in this
regard), but still the deck seems a little stacked against us in the
Triangle. I think the hope for a space like BCHQ is that it can retain
much of that kind of informal atmosphere (witness: everyone moshing to
Red Collar, of all things, with a silly grin platered on each face),
while avoiding some of the downfalls.
best,
Colin Booy.
Ken
> Ken was music director at xyc from may 1983 until may 1985.
>
> His wonderful show ran from 1978 until 1986.
>
> bb
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> [mailto:ch-scene-boun...@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Hart
> Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 3:58 PM
> > agree that college radio *is* the magic spice in the Triangle.
>
> ken was music director at wxyc from about '76 to the late 80's (was he
> there that long?). his show was called "anarchy in the p.m." if memory
> serves.
>
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene
Sitting at home, nursing a cold, screwing around on the computer...
and a little ego-surfing takes me here!
Bill's timelines are correct for my involvement at WXYC. Some of the
best years of my life. I'd like to think the efforts of people like
Bill and myself, and our analogs at WXDU, were important to laying the
groundwork for the excellent left-end-of-the-dial we all appreciate
now. It astounds me that now, more than 20 years after Anarchy in the
PM ended, I still get recognized for doing that show. I got my back
slapped heartily at the dB's reunion show and at Broad St Cafe
recently, but more amazingly, by a vacuum cleaner salesman at a Home
Design show at the State Fairgrounds. I love watching my wife's eyes
roll back whenever this happens.
Jeff, there were just the two Tobacco A-Go-Go's. My only other
release was "Endlessly Rocks the Cradle" by Carrboro's Other Bright
Colors. That was fun of a different flavor. Guitarist/songwriter
Brian Butler later formed the Mind Sirens and still lives in the
area. Drummer Joe Jaworski was the grandson of Watergate special
prosecuter, Leon Jaworski. Joe is an attorney himself now, was the
mayor pro tem of Galveston Texas for a while, and is now running for
the state legislature. I was considering doing a third Tobacco A-Go-
Go, a 50's NC comp, provisionally titled "Tobaccabilly," and debut
releases from Four Who Dared (X-Teens spinoff), Three Hits, Mockers
(Norfolk) and Pecoso Landers (Greensboro). However, life takes odd
turns. John Swain died, and his NC rockabilly records vanished,
ending the Tobaccabilly idea. Mostly, though, I wasn't ready to take
my label to the next level, so when Beth and I learned our first child
was on the way, I used that as an excuse to close the label. Certainly
fun while it lasted.
Last thought...as I trip down memory lane, one of the things I miss
are my old, over-the-top promos for Anarchy in the PM. I've got about
3 or 4 of them (the ones Keith Weston posted ages ago), but I must
have made about a dozen, and I'd hate to think they're lost. If any
of you have one or more of these on tape, please let me know. Fred
Mills maybe??
Ken
PS: Mike Woodard is a former music scene maker and buddy of Robbie
Schultz. He is now a Durham town councilman.
Chris Calloway
> Drummer Joe Jaworski was the grandson of
> Watergate special
> prosecuter, Leon Jaworski. Joe is an attorney
> himself now, was the
> mayor pro tem of Galveston Texas for a while, and is
> now running for
> the state legislature.
I'm so glad to hear something about Joe. He was
especially nice to me when he didn't have to be.
> PS: Mike Woodard is a former music scene maker and
> buddy of Robbie
> Schultz. He is now a Durham town councilman.
Mike founded XDU. He worked at XDU for a long time and
most other people working there never realized what
he'd done to make the station happen because he was
running a syndicated "new age" music show on Sunday
evenings and wasn't really part of the station's
musical zeitgeist. He wasn't really into "indie" music
but made it possible for the people who were to have
the freedom to take XDU in the direction in which it
went, kind of democratic enabler. He's just one of
those upstanding citizens always working behind the
scenes without whom things would be less. For years,
every time I would do any charity work in Durham, no
matter what it was, Mike would already be there,
toiling in the vineyards. After awhile I started
calling him "Mr. Durham" because it seemed like all
good things locally either flowed from or through him.
I was very happy when he became a precinct chair a
couple of years ago, started coming to county party
meetings, and then ran a very good campaign for city
council. At sometimes contentious meetings, he would
always be the voice of reason. When he won his
election, I thought it was a victory for Durham. One
less politician to worry about. Anyway, without him
I'm not saying what's going on now musically in Durham
wouldn't be happening. But it would be a lot less
likely. There are stepping stones to go over in a path
and necessary conditions for fostering environments.
Mike laid the biggest stone at the beginning of that
path.
3
Jeff Hart
>Guitarist/songwriter
> Brian Butler later formed the Mind Sirens and still lives in the
> area. Drummer Joe Jaworski was the grandson of Watergate special
> prosecuter, Leon Jaworski. Joe is an attorney himself now, was the
> mayor pro tem of Galveston Texas for a while, and is now running for
> the state legislature.
thanks for the lowdown ken. so there was to be a 3rd compilation, but
john swain's death intervened. i sometimes wondered how he'd have been
on the web, posting here maybe.
speaking of mind sirens and texas connections, a pal of mine wrote me
friday to say he bought a guitar in texas from a guy who turned out to
be former mind sirens member jeff spillers.
Ken
Thanks, Chris, I had forgotten much of Mike's story, and his presence
at WXDU. I haven't seen him in years.
Ken
Ken
My impression is that John would still be trying to figger out them
newfangled compooters. Do you recall what he played records on his
store? Must have tracked at 200 grams. Gordon Lewis called it the
'sacrificial turntable.'
As for OBC, that leaves Tom Pafford (bass) who I think is still in the
area, and James Funsten (lead g) who was last heard from in
California.
Ken
Jeff Hart
>
> My impression is that John would still be trying to figger out them
> newfangled compooters. Do you recall what he played records on his
> store? Must have tracked at 200 grams. Gordon Lewis called it the
> 'sacrificial turntable.'
>
> As for OBC, that leaves Tom Pafford (bass) who I think is still in the
> area, and James Funsten (lead g) who was last heard from in
> California.
> Ken
i have a small piece of video footage of john swain's shop that tony
madejczyk shot 19 years ago after a hanks brewery show. he walked out
of the club and kept the camera on. he went straight across the street
to the record hole (was right next to college beverage then) and
filmed into the window of his store. he focused on that turntable for
awhile till the police came and asked him what he was doing. i think
someone told me that footage was used in a a short tribute film at his
memorial. the other footage was of john at a record show, probably
hillsborough at the big barn.
kut...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
I don't think people are "moshing" at our shows but maybe "mushing"..
philip...@gmail.com
Born Against rather acid. Like the sensation
..of cutting off one's own fingers. :)
On Apr 4, 8:58 pm, npflo...@yahoo.com (Nathaniel Florin) wrote:
> --- Joel Peck <joelpec...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On a side note: one of my favorite political
> > hardcore bands, Born Against,
> > have a youtube clip from a Durham show in 1992 or
> > so. I don't know the
> > circumstances for why they played there, but I can't
> > picture them anywhere
> > else in the Triangle. Was anyone there?
>
> I was perplexed by this, but I did some digging and
> found that, unfortunately, that Durham was Durham,
> England. See #153:
>
> http://www.sammcpheeters.com/music/ba-shows.htm
>
> Frankly, in their lifetime, I couldn't imagine Born
> Against playing anywhere in the Triangle. Maybe
> Greensboro, and Winston-Salem is close enough, but
> twice in Charlotte?
>
> Nate