There may be no more telling harbinger of the onslaught of middle age than the stasis that settles over an individual’s music collection, signaling that shift in a passionate fan’s life when he throws in the towel and resigns himself to a soundtrack stalled at a particular point in time. The precise date can usually be determined with a cursory glance through the titles in the CD rack or by estimating the vintage of nearby wedding photos or children’s portraits.
For many, this ritual surrender is bittersweet; for others, it is a source of plain bitterness. Some folks, self-conscious about their retreat from a scene that once meant so much to them, move their music collections to an inconspicuous place so as to deter eyeballing by trendier, judgmental, pathetically stunted, middle-aged (and childless) friends on their increasingly rare visits.
Perhaps you are one of these people. Perhaps you still make occasional trips to Roadrunner, Treehouse, Cheapo, or the Electric Fetus, where you scan the new-arrivals section with a growing sense of cluelessness or desperation, looking for something recognizable or familiar—or, an even greater challenge, something local and worthwhile. Perhaps you leave with a CD from The White Stripes, New Pornographers, or Arcade Fire; you vaguely recall reading about them somewhere and will play the disc once or twice before displaying it prominently in your home or losing it under the passenger seat of your car. More likely, however, you leave with the new Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, or Lucinda Williams, or that Waterboys record you remember loving so much on vinyl back in the day. No shame in any of that.
Yet still, why do you feel something approaching shame? Why this nagging sense that there’s a better, more exciting world going on out there without you, that almost certainly you’re missing out on something?
Used to be you never missed out on something new. You saw Nirvana at the Uptown Bar, for crying out loud. You saw the Replacements in the Whole, and Prince at First Avenue, even before Purple Rain came out. You bought your first Suburbs record at Northern Lights and still own a severely distressed Twin/Tone T-shirt. Maybe you were one of those real geeks who lived for the Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop music poll, who took pride in the fact that you’d heard, or at least heard of, pretty much everything in its top fifty. The last time you looked at the thing, you’d barely heard of most of the artists and didn’t own a single disc in the top twenty.
Sure, these sorts of experiences can be daunting. Maybe they even carry trace elements of humiliation. But one source of comfort is MPR’s The Current, which frequently plays something good and unfamiliar while you’re in the car (as well as, gratifyingly, some familiar things that bolster your flagging confidence in your taste)—but then there’ll be a string of like ten songs that come after, and by the time they say the names of the artists, traffic is moving again and you’re fumbling to find a pen and something to write on.
I sort of understand how you feel. We go way back. We still occasionally talk, and sometimes we agree that it’s not like it used to be. Other times, discussing some local band we’ve scarcely heard but are happy to dismiss as just another flavor of the month, we’ll conclude that it’s the same as it ever was, and there’s nothing new under the sun. Time and again, we’ll proclaim that the Emperor’s not wearing any clothes, even if we wouldn’t recognize the Emperor of the moment if he were standing naked in our shower.
That sort of sour-grapes, things-ain’t-the-way-they-used-to-be thinking is, of course, yet another telltale marker along the road to geezerhood. We nonetheless seem to have a hard time admitting that we’re out of touch and that we really don’t know a damn thing about the local music scene—and perhaps for that very reason, we often dismiss it as irrelevant or even nonexistent.
For those of us who were, however tangentially, involved in the music scene of the 80s—which some still insist on calling the Minneapolis Music Scene—the nostalgic pull of that period has been hard to let go of. From a vantage of more than twenty years down the road, everything from that time seems more streamlined and clear-cut, even if our memories are a little blurred around the edges (if not completely unreliable).
The screening of the documentary First Avenue HayDay at the Riverview Theater in August brought out all sorts of characters from that old world, and provoked plenty of flashbacks of both the pleasant and the uncomfortable variety. The film demonstrated pretty conclusively that a lot of the bands from that period were truly great. It also revealed that some of the groups we loved back then were not, if the celluloid evidence is to be believed.
Back then, bands would grind away in the clubs, often for years; if they were lucky, they might record a 45 or an LP for one of the smaller local labels, or if they were really lucky, for Twin/Tone. It seemed like everybody’s dream was a major-label contract, and for a few ridiculous years, that dream became a reality for an astonishing number of bands.
What often gets lost in the wash of nostalgia is the fact that those contracts didn’t ultimately translate into much beyond disappointment for most of the bands involved, and that disappointment trickled down into the clubs and record stores. The scene started to feel exhausted, and cynicism smothered much of the old enthusiasm.
But all that was a long time ago. It’s interesting to note that the landmark year of 1984—which saw the release of the Replacements’ Let It Be, Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade, and Prince’s Purple Rain—is as much ancient history to today’s twentysomething scenesters as 1962 was to the zealous fans who packed First Avenue during Reagan’s first term. In 1962, the Four Seasons had two of the country’s top-ten singles, keeping chart company with such sock-hopper stalwarts as Joey Dee and The Starliters, Bobby Vinton, and Gene Chandler. It’s hard to imagine that anyone who bought records by those artists in 1962 was popping into Northern Lights to buy Let It Be when it came out twenty-two years later.
Think, though, what they missed, the poor bastards.
Chris Roberts is forty-six years old and hosts The Local Show on MPR’s The Current (89.3 FM). He moved from his native Detroit to the Twin Cities in 1989, at the tail end of what many older fans consider the glory days of the local music scene. “I was drawn here in large part by the stuff that was happening musically,” Roberts said. “I missed it, to some extent, but it seems to me that the scene is as vibrant as ever now. It’s changed, certainly, but so many of the things that are going on now that are really interesting didn’t exist in the 80s, or they were strictly underground phenomena.” For one thing, he sees that there’s a lot more experimentation going on. “These younger bands have twenty years of music under their belts that the older guys didn’t have; they have a larger frame of reference. So along with all the indie-rock bands, you’ve got hip-hop, cabaret rock, electro-pop, and a huge range of electronic music. The stylistic diversity always amazes me.”
That diversity, to no small degree, comes out of the growth of home studios, computer technology, and the Internet, all of which have made it easier than ever for musicians to record, manufacture, package, and promote their own CDs. “Because of that, some older guys might have the impression that it’s not as hard these days,” Roberts said. “But you can’t discount the fact that these younger musicians really know how to use those resources. So many of them are just incredible businesspeople.”
Aside from access to technology, cyberspace itself—the realm of podcasting, music blogs, obsessive online fan sites (e.g., HowWasThe Show.com, More Cowbell, and Pitchfork), and for-profit download shops like eMusic and iTunes—has also ushered in a revolutionary change, not only in how music is produced, but also how it is disseminated. The ’net has proved remarkably effective at building word-of-mouth buzz for bands as well as providing all manner of context and cross-reference for a local and national indie scene that is constantly growing and mutating.
“I think that some of the people who like to disparage the scene maybe just have to accept the fact that they’re older now, and things have changed,” Roberts said. “There’s still a lot out there that I think they’d embrace if they were exposed to it, but it takes some work, and you have to still have the curiosity. You also need to recognize that there’s a certain feeling you have when you’re in your twenties and you attach yourself to a band or a scene. You have that sense of freedom and independence that you maybe lose a bit when you get older. Every generation’s entitled to its own heyday. I do know, though, that my iPod is filled almost entirely with local music, both new and old, and I feel like I can get pretty much everything I need from the scene in the Twin Cities.”
The Internet has essentially become an incomprehensibly massive, yet easy-to-use, combination of an exhaustive record store, pirate radio station, and the densest and most eclectic of zines. It is equal parts bazaar and old-school listening party. Yet that free-for-all accessibility and heady atmosphere of sampling and sharing haven’t come without a cost, of course—primarily to the record industry, but also, perhaps more poignantly, to the independent brick-and-mortar stores that used to serve as reliable hangouts and sources for both new local music and buzz about bands. The Twin Cities have lost scads of great indie record stores in the roughly twenty years since the local scene made its big national splash. Gone are such tastemakers as Northern Lights, Garage D’Or, Flipside, Let It Be, Wax Museum, and Positively 4th Street.
Oarfolkjokeopus morphed into Treehouse and continues to anchor the intersection at Twenty-sixth Street and Lyndale Avenue, which was once upon a time the nexus of the local music fan’s orbit. Across the street is the CC Club, the former de facto clubhouse for many bands and fans. A few blocks to the east, along Nicollet Avenue, were clustered Garage D’Or, Twin/Tone Records, and the headquarters of Amphetamine Reptile. From there it’s a short stroll past the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to the Electric Fetus, which is a surviving—and by all indications, thriving—local monument that manages to be both independent and essential. The Uptown Bar, south and west of Twenty-sixth & Lyndale, was a straight shot down Hennepin Avenue from First Avenue/7th Street Entry and Northern Lights. Though there were plenty of other cool places to see and hear and buy music twenty years ago (the 400 Bar, Let It Be, etc.), that relatively compact constellation of landmarks provided a good portion of the memories that fuel the nostalgia for the 80s.
These days, the scene is not nearly so neatly contained. If that proves a challenge for people trying to navigate it from the outside, it’s nonetheless hard not to conclude that this relatively new musical diaspora is a good thing. While the number of record stores has sadly declined over the years, new venues for live music have only proliferated, popping up all over the Twin Cities map: in St. Paul (the Turf Club), Northeast (the 331 Liquor Bar), the West Bank (the Triple Rock Social Club, the Nomad World Pub), Dinkytown (the Dinkytowner, Kitty Cat Klub, the Varsity), and Seward (the Hexagon Bar). And yet, just as it was back in the 80s, First Avenue is the scene’s polestar, and the number of homegrown bands booking shows and attracting audiences there is a solid barometer of the health and diversity of local music.
“I tend to hit most of the clubs on a fairly regular basis,” said Lindsay Kimball, a twenty-three-year-old intern at The Current. “I think of it as my other part-time job. Most nights, I’ll come home from work and then head right back out. The other night, I went to the Entry to see Sam Keenan, and then over to the Kitty Cat Klub for the Big Trouble show. Most of the venues don’t cater to a specific sound, so bands will sometimes play many different clubs and you end up everywhere. You’ll end up with completely different sorts of music on the same bill, which is fabulous. Even with all the diversity, it’s a really tight-knit scene, both among the bands and the fans.”
Still, the notion persists in some quarters that the present scene is a watered-down version of the 80s. Nate Kranz, who books bands at First Avenue, very much believes otherwise. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s pretty much completely incorrect,” he said. “There are more bands locally than ever before, and more bands getting national press, and out touring and selling out clubs in other cities. You also have a lot of the old-guard bands that are still active in some capacity—Soul Asylum and the Jayhawks, for instance—and there are a bunch of local acts that draw great here. Atmosphere and Tapes ’N Tapes both sell out the mainroom.” Kranz also noted that the ways various bands find success has changed. “For a local band to move between the Entry and the mainroom is not necessarily a slow progression anymore; a band can go pretty quickly from not even selling out the Entry to packing the mainroom,” he said, going on to mention Low, Plastic Constellations, the Hopefuls, Trampled by Turtles, Mason Jennings, Dillinger Four, and Motion City Soundtrack.
The success of a lot of those bands and artists, and the ways in which they’ve achieved it, demonstrates the extent to which the business of music has changed in the last couple decades. Atmosphere, for instance, is the standard-bearer for the extraordinarily successful Rhymesayers Entertainment, the organically and almost collectively grown indie hip-hop empire that now includes a thriving label and a record store, Fifth Element, on Hennepin Avenue. Probably more important, Rhymesayers has the sort of Internet presence, marketing savvy, and shrewd business acumen that make the efforts of many supposedly hip corporations look strained and foolish by comparison.
Tapes ’N Tapes, meanwhile, are the current poster boys for the local indie rock scene. The band has, in rapid fashion, gone from self-producing and releasing its debut CD, The Loon, to receiving rave reviews in national publications, selling out shows in both New York and its hometown, and appearing on the Letterman show. Anybody who cut their teeth on second-wave American punk or indie rock will likely find the band’s disc catchy, accessible, and even comfortably familiar. There are a great many things in the world deserving of your fear and contempt; Tapes ’N Tapes are not one of them.
The local scene never did die, of course. It may have gotten fragmented or diluted, and a product of that fragmentation was the loss of any sort of critical consensus, such as the annual, near-unanimous coronation of a local band or two in the alternative press. Without that, it was tough to keep score if you were no longer in the trenches yourself. Still, people continued to make interesting and even terrific music right up to the tail end of the 80s and all the way through the 90s. For evidence of that, check out RedEyed: MPLS Shoegaze and Dreampop, 1992-1998, a CD of cuts from such overlooked bands as Hovercraft, 27 Various, Colfax Abbey, and Shapeshifter. Locally produced and beautifully packaged, it’s the sort of thing you can still pick up in the handful of remaining local independent record stores.
Bob Fuchs, manager of the Electric Fetus, said his store accepts hundreds of local CDs on consignment every year. “Between the warehouse and the store, we have something like five hundred or six hundred local titles in stock,” Fuchs said, “and virtually all of them on consignment. I’m blown away by how much stuff is being produced. The city keeps getting bigger, and we’re constantly struggling to keep up with the local discs. It seems like we’re seeing ten new discs a week, and it’s all over the place—rock, hip-hop, jazz, country, blues.”
Some of the Fetus’ biggest-selling discs are local recordings that, at least initially, came through the door on consignment. “We dealt directly with Rhymesayers and Mason Jennings for years,” Fuchs said. “Brent Sayers from Rhymesayers used to just run stuff over to us every week, and we sold thousands of their discs.” The Tapes ’N Tapes disc, initially a consignment as well, has now moved into the store’s top ten for the year, with almost five hundred discs sold. Jennings and Atmosphere also share prime space at the top of the Fetus’ list, rubbing elbows with folks like Neil Young, Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley, and Bruce Springsteen. And even the most out-of-touch ex-club crawler can take heart in the fact that the disc holding down the top spot at the Fetus is another locally consigned offering: The Bootlegs: Celebrating 35 Years at First Avenue.