The Airing of Grievances: A Brief Rant @ WW

contributor: Ed Thanhouser, May 11, 2009

“Best New Band” …what does it mean? What is it for? The WW is quick to disclaim nearly everything about the list before you’ve even read it. They tell you how “the words “best,” “new” and “band” are all relative…” and talk about how “unscientific” it is, and even come right out and say, hey “it’s not our list,” man! There’s so much ass-covering in the first paragraph of this years edition, so much demurring apology, that reading through it I wonder why they bothered to print the thing at all. Why DO they bother to print the thing at all? They say it’s to “inspire conversation among fans and put a fire under artists who didn’t make the top 10.” Right. It’s all just for the sake of argument. And bands… yes, what bands in Portland really need is some *motivation.* They need someone to light a fire under their ass to get better and work harder. “This year we’ll make that list boys, I just know it!” Break huddle. Can we please cut the crap? Everyone knows what this is: it’s the home-town music equivalent of the high school bathroom wall. I ask myself all the time – Why “rank” bands? Why juvenile points and lists? And most confoundedly, why do people eat this stuff up? Maybe because we all went to high school.

Regardless, there’s something especially irking about this year’s list that I just have to get out of my system. Do you remember a band called “The Punk Group?” No? Really? They were a big deal around town for a while… they still play out occasionally, I think… cheap Devo ripoff, basically. How about “Black Kids?” No? Not at all? They were catapulted to indie-darling status for like 10 minutes after devilstickwhatever.com pulled a (crappy) single from their myspace page demos. A (no doubt crappy) deal was hastily closed, a crappy record hastily made. Que backlash. Even the publication that originally championed them turned right around and slapped them in the face. Anyway, long story made short, the internet and the age of myspace can be a dangerous thing for bands. Imagine a baby. No, a fetus. A fetus in the womb. The fetus is your band. It’s brand new. You just finished art school and you’re unemployed so you think, “hey, I’ll take a crack at this music stuff.” You record your new song on a Casio tapedeck from the 80’s that sounds more or less like a duck farting on a snare drum + lots of static and screaming. You load it up to your myspace. You play some basements. you meet some people with great haircuts. All of a sudden you’re the best band in Portland! Ta-da! You did it! Here: take a K-Records deal! Take a tour across country! … … … Suddenly that fetus is coming premature. Vitals are dropping. Doctors rush in to save it, but it’s so tiny and underweight and undeveloped… ok I won’t gross you out any more with baby metaphors and we’ll just say that this scenario has a high infant-mortality rate.

What’s so wrong with a quick jump to the top? Why begrudge someone’s success? Honestly, I’m not here to tear down Explode Into Colors. Really. I can even understand why they excite people. As far as experimental groups go, there’s no shortage of potential in the group. What concerns me is that a heavily (bike!) touring, recording, and generally kick-ass group like Blind Pilot should be bumped by one without so much as a single or a headlining local ticket/tour. It concerns me not because I think XIC isn’t a good group, actually the opposite. I don’t want to see them crushed before they’ve had a chance to mature. The examples above should be illustrative enough of what happens to bands with too much exposure too fast-casualties of the internet/blogosphere era of music buzz. Buzz bands get unfairly exposed, pressured, hyped and very very quickly squeezed dry without any chance to actually define themselves or grow into whatever it is they might become if properly incubated. There’s just something that smacks me as irresponsible, journalistically, in this feature. [I know, I know, "it's not 'their' list... but they print it = they're responsible] A band like Blind Pilot is ready for this kind of exposure. They’re primed for it. They even deserve it in my personal opinion… XIC might have been a good choice for a feature, or a spot lower down on this list, if you’re hellbent on lists of this sort. but I fear a year from now we may be watching Explode Into Colors implode under hype.