“Ian McKaye never meant anything to me” - Scream Club, J. Richman and more ranting

“Ian McKaye never meant anything to me”
Los Campesinos!, The International Tweexcore Underground
I love this song, watch it here.

SCREAM CLUB
We, the Ladyfest nbg posse, were sure that at least 40 people would turn up for this show. That didn’t happen. So the Ladyfest grrls are in debts again. Donations welcome, just get in touch. It’s frustrating.
Due to trains being down in France and Germany Scream Club were lucky to find two french girls to drive them from Lyon to Nuremberg by car on that day but still arrived a bit late. Martina djed before the show but there weren’t enough people to get anybody starting to dance. Scream Club were fun. Their show is so nicely balanced between trash and irony and being seriously good. Great costumes, trashy electro hiphop music, lyrics ranging from queer parties/love/politics. Somehow these two girls manage to sooth all the worries away for a little while and make you believe in the good of life again. You can find some more pictures of the show on www.evemassacre.org in the pictures section.

JONATHAN RICHMAN
I’m such a shitty photographer that although I took at least 15 snaps this is the only halfway recognisable picture I took of Jonathan Richman. He played at the K4 last Monday. Him and his drummer, Tommy Larkins. Since we have the smoking ban at the K4 I can judge the quality of a show by how long it captures my attention before the urge to go for a smoke wins. Mr. Richman got me for almost an hour which is pretty long. He didn’t play the greatest hit after greatest hit set and didn’t tell stories between the songs which I somehow had expected him to. Instead he played very free, stumbling artistically from one song into another and back, from time to time twirling his guitar with a charmingly boyish smile. An hour after he had ended he came back onto stage to play some more because some guest had talked him into it. Our soundguy had already put away the monitors and the mics and all so Mr. Richman simply played a totally acoustic set. How nice.

* _ *

On with the ranting. I said that I hate to hear people say “I never would pay more than 5 or 8 Euro for a show”. I think that this spirit is killing a certain type of underground culture. Shows have to become a little more expensive, it’s just a logical step as everything else has gotten more expensive too. Touring vans need gas, bands need to eat, and I even think it shouldn’t just be about the expenses they have on tour: Just cause I’ve decided to get little to no money for putting up a show doesn’t mean that I should automatically expect artists to be touring in their spare time and be happy with expenses or less. Of course I’m against paying unrealistically high guarantee fees but there are dedicated artists out there for whom I happily contribute a little money so they have the freedom to spend more time working on their awesome music instead of having to get the third badly paid shitjob to stay alive. I’m willing to contribute to this up to a certain level cause I think music is precious. D.I.Y. punk ethics often make me feel as if they accept music only as a vehicle for messages or for an entertainment factor that helps keeping a community together. That’s not enough for me. ‘More than music’ doesn’t have to mean you care about ‘anything but the musician’.
Of course creativity can’t really be measured in money and it would be cool if music wasn’t turned into a commodity but as we live in a society in which survival is based on money it’s only fair to pay more than plain cost coverage for music. I don’t feel good when I can’t give a band more than their expenses. It feels wrong. It feels like I don’t appreciate what they do while I know that music is one of my basic needs in life. And I don’t want this money to come from sponsors. I want this money to come from people paying for it because they appreciate and want it just as commonly as they pay for their drinks or for their cigarettes or for their sneakers or their gasoline. I like to believe that there still is a niche for putting up shows and celebrating parties that don’t follow mainstreaming rules of “how do I attract as many people as possible” but the rules of attraction by creativity or arty excellence or simple silly ideas.
I hate the ever increasing role of money. I’ve always been ready for compromises and never had the illusion that a real d.i.y. island outside of capitalist structures could work autonomously but these days the gap between commercial indie culture and d.i.y. punk ethics seems to grow bigger and bigger and the web of careful fair compromises I’ve always tried to spin across that gap seems more fragile than ever. No, wait, that’s wrong. A gap would suggest some kind of dualism, an either/or. That dualism is what is no longer there. The smallest d.i.y. promoter uses the same means as the biggest concert hall in town. The least known band gets a booking agency and joins the GEMA/ASCAP/BMIetc while it still plays the smalles d.i.y places. The biggest booking agencies makes fair percentage deals. There is no either/or anymore. Everything is so intertwined that it’s getting more and more complicated to make decisions that you yourself can tag as ‘fair’.
It’s crazy how much the whole booking and live music industry has grown since I’ve started playing my tiny part in putting up shows. It’s such an overdose of bands out there, most of them epigonic and exchangeable and boring but as long as people are satisfied with that instead of taking the ‘hit or miss’ risk to pay for a show of a band that they don’t know what to expect from cause they’ve not been written about to death by nme or pitchfork or intro this part of the scene will grow and grow and might suffocate those few bands that try a different approach, those few bands that still are in it for an existential urge to create music and not for the hope of becoming the next big thing.

Ha, pathos is my middle name, isn’t it? I know this rant doesn’t go anywhere useful but it feels good to get some thoughts off my chest. It would be nice to hear other people’s thoughts about it too.
Oh, and before I forget about it, let me share a part of an interview with Achim Bergman, the guy behind the Trikont label, that was on Telepolis yesterday, read it here. This year Trikont has become 33 years and it always has been the niche label par excellence, and has released truly awesome compilations with no subject being too odd for them. It’s an interesting article and among many other things it has Bergman complaining about an omnipresent neutralisation of subjectivity and instead the rise of the reduction of meaning to a relationship of capital. It’s a readworthy article, I think. Happy birthday, Trikont.
www.myspace.com/trikont

“Bringing me down” - a lil’ promoter rant

“Like a rat in a cage
Pulling minimum wage
Nuremberg, I Love You
But you’re bringing me down”
LCD SS or summink

I’m a bit angry at myself for being down. I could blame it on the weather turning cold and grey so quickly, or I could blame it on my period, but that’s not it, although I usually get more of a postmenstrual depression than a premenstrual one. Too much information? Sorry. Well, that’s not the subject anyway, no, at the moment I’m culturally depressed.

I still try to believe that if you put up a show or a party it doesn’t have to be 80% about promotion and trying to convince people that your shows and parties are the best ever, about forcefeeding it to them. I hate having to have discussions about the ‘wheres’ and ‘ifs’ of putting up posters and spreading flyers in our and other venues. Especially if two days later friends of mine get abused yet again by club stereo security staff for politely asking if they could put some flyers there. I also hate hearing about other venues working their connections to get more ways of promotion cause it makes me feel like ‘OMG we have to do something to get more attention too elso no one will come to our shows anymore’. Tsk, as if. Should we really have to pay money to get a show ‘presentation’ on the radio? Or is the other option better: banners and promo people of a radio station hunting down our guests at a concert? Promotion sucks. I wish it would cool down again to informing people. I don’t want to feel like having to sell something to them. I want to be a promoter no advertising agency.

I also hate being forced into competition. The Musikverein, the concert group I work for, is neither a commercial venue nor a municipal institution. I’m in this for a passion about music and creativity and about working in a community of likeminded and openminded people. I’m willing to work my ass off for that but I’m not willing to prostitute myself. Sadly sometimes it starts feeling like you need to.

Should it really be about having the best connections if you want to get your shit into a paper? Shouldn’t it rather be about the artists? About journalists being happy that exciting artists come to town and not about ‘oh yes, I owe this promoter something so I’ll plug his event’? Guestlists and promo copies and advertising killed music journalism. I’ll sign that in blood. Music journalists lost any sense for the value of music, for the fun of discovering new and interesting artists instead of lazily leaning back on staples of half-listened promo copies of artists and labels that have to whore themselves to get a review. Or have to advertise in said mag to get a review. Pathetic. I’m glad that there’s the whole wide world of music blogs out there where people get excited about music again.

And while I’m at it: Another thing that I despise about live shows is regularity. So there’s a band playing at your venue every Sunday for the same price? Hey, cool concept, do you also have those cards like at the pizza places, so that if I come ten times, I get in for free on the eleventh show? And do you have a happy hour too? Oh, I don’t mind who’s playing as long as it’s cheap and doesn’t disturb me.
Mass instead of class. Well, I rather want to be surprised and I want each and every single show or party to be a special exciting event I’m looking forward to.The overwhelming mediocrity of most of the bands that are playing here is killing me. And for which reasons! If I hear that a classy hiphop show like Mr. Lif and The Perceptionists aren’t going to get a show in this town cause there aren’t enough people who would pay 13 Euros for that package then I think there’s something deeply going wrong. I’d happily save somewhere else and pay that for an act that blows me away instead of paying 5 Euro for the next boring but mildly hyped crap that’s forgotten in a year anyway, or for the xth old school hardcore act that keeps the cosy hc community spirit alive within all its middle-class-pit&politically-active-cause-it-feels-so-adventurous-until-they-finish-studying-and-get-into-the-’real’-life-white-boy-safetyness. But this kind of nostalgic repetition and reviving is something for another rant.Where was I … ? Ah, do people really prefer the mass instead of class approach? Is music not worth anything anymore? I hate hearing people say “I never would pay more than 8 Euro for a show”. It’s killing a certain type of culture. Of course all the sociocultural promoters here try to keep prices as low as possible but usually the money made at the door isn’t enough and if you get some at all subsidies ain’t what they used to be and personally I reject sponsorship with big companies that try to suck up the passion that comes with underground events to big up their product.

I’m ranting, ain’t I? That’s good. Much better than the resignation I had been stuck in lately. I’ll rant on later. Promised. I’ve tasted blood. I’ll also put up pictures of some shows and might even write some show reviews too. But for now I’ll leave this blog with recommending a show to you that should be really fine but could be overlooked as it has been a kind of last minute booking:
ANTELOPE (ex-SUPERSYSTEM, Dischord, Washington DC) play in Würzburg on Tuesday, 23rd of october.
For more info on the band: www.myspace.com/ant3lop3
For more info on the show: www.myspace.com/xyeahx

PS.: Jens Lekman’s ‘Night Falls Over Kortedala’ album is fluffy sweet pop goodness. Beautiful.