A couple weekends ago, while quietly swaying alone in the fringes of a growing crowd outside of Village Green Records, I watched unknown local bands play their hearts out on the grassy and unglamorous corner of Martin and Ashland avenues.
As I enjoyed the show, which consisted of eclectic music that will blow away anything you hear on local modern radio stations, I marveled at the camaraderie displayed by all of the bands and the patrons alike. This made me wonder if more people are joining the trend to support local art and business.
In the case of these free concerts Village Green puts on nearly every week, it is a symbiotic relationship between the artists and the business. The bands get a chance to spread their music to new ears and the business, one of the few remaining independent record stores in the country, gets a chance to attract new customers.
The bands that played that weekend were actually there as part of Record Store Day, a nationally recognized day that celebrates the importance of independently owned record stores. Places that were once as vital to communities as the local grocer and post office.
I am a lover of all kinds of music. To many that phrase means they like everything from Justin Bieber to Lil Wayne to Taylor Swift. But to me, that means everything from Andrew Bird to Gram Parsons to The Velvet Underground. Those first three names, while I respect their choice to be artists, represent the problems with today's music. Music that lacks the effort and originality to sustain listener's attention for more than a song or two.
Doesn't it bother anyone else that "NOW: That's What I Call Music" stays in the top of the albums chart for weeks and is up to its 33rd version? It's not even an album! It's just a mix CD. Personally, and with few exceptions, I wouldn't mind it if we packed every artist on Billboard's Top 40 chart into a plane and flew them around the Bermuda Triangle until they ran out of fuel.
Where does the fault lie? It's likely that it stems from the advancement of technology.
My close friend once burnt a mutual acquaintance of ours a data disk which held The Beatles' entire discography. For most people, this would be considered a triumph of modern technology, but it left me with a sick feeling inside. It seemed impossible to me that this listener would ever fully appreciate what had just been handed to him because of the way it had just been handed to him.
For instance, he would never know the anticipation of waiting till his next paycheck to buy "Yellow Submarine" and hearing "Hey Bulldog" for the first time. And he would never know the pleasure of taking a drive with friends, listening to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" while trying to figure out who the heck those people on the cover are. These experiences are what makes music so special in the first place.
My point is that we live in a throw-away society. Nothing is sacred when everything you could ever want and desire waits for you at your fingertips.
With the rise of the digital era we've lost that nostalgia that comes along with truly listening to whole albums; instead we're relegating singles to the embarrassing role of background noise.
For those of you that always felt there should be something more than the kind of music we're being force fed by Virgin and Walmart, I beg you to take that first step inside your local independent record store, even if it's just to browse. And to those who don't want to watch bands like Air Supply or Styx perform at Emens, maybe you should check out a local band at Village Green or any of the venues downtown.
You might just find out that you've had an ear for good music all along.
Write to Kevin at kltodd@bsu.edu.
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