10/20/2017
Note: If you are here because you picked up a copy of our zine, or if this post seems generally out of context, please know that yes, the zine still exists, and I am currently working on issue 4 (though not as diligently as I would have hoped) and it should still come out this fall.
Now then...
I noticed recently that, out of the touring bands stopping in Dallas this year, the ones my friends and acquaintances seem to be the most excited about, have something in common: a large portion of the crowd in attendance is there due to nostalgia. I'm talking about bands like the Pixies, Depeche Mode, the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, the list goes on. I also noticed that there are a bunch of bands I would absolutely love to see live, that just aren't coming. They have something in common too: they were formed, or at least reached a peak of popularity between 2002 and 2010. Now if you're saying to yourself, "I know where he's going with this. Here comes another tirade about the importance of giving new acts a chance and discovering music past your adolescence. Bla, blah, blah..." And um, no, that's not it at all. I mean there may be a valid point there, but what concerns me isn't whether bands that are arguably past their prime continue to draw large crowds. What I wanted to know was why the bands I fell in love with during my early adulthood (2002 to 2010) seem largely absent from the touring circuit, and are they just waiting for their nostalgia-fueled comeback tours to be feasible? "Maybe I'm just not remembering enough bands from this time period," I though. So I asked my Facebook friends to name some bands that, for lack of a better term, came of age in the first decade of the new millennium. With their help, I feel relatively confident in what I am about to say. And to clarify, I am talking about bands out of the mainstream. I appreciate the input from people who mentioned major label acts, but those aren't really the bands I'm curious about.
Anyway, I have a theory, and this is it: nostalgia will never drive the continued success of bands from the '00s.
The acts that largely draw today due to nostalgia have a couple common traits. First, you the fan, likely heard of them in one of two ways. It's either, "They were on the radio a lot when I was in high school (or college)," or it's "my cool older sibling had a tape..." The latter, by the way is, I'm convinced, the method by which everyone first encountered punk rock, if this encounter happened between like 1982 and 1998. Second, these bands mostly had a solid, well-defined scene or subculture through which their music could propagate (punks, goths, new wave fans, indie kids, etc).
For their analogues of the "aughts" there were obstacles in place that affected both the methods by which music reaches new listeners, and the ability of communities of fans to exist and positively reinforce their members' listening habits. More specifically, I don't know what goes into the decision making process of radio station music directors, but (at least in Dallas) you wouldn't have heard Tegan and Sara, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or Metric six months after the release of a big single unless the band was playing a station-sponsored festival or you happened to be listening to KDGE's Adventure Club. Sure, you could find MP3s online somewhere, but who was there to tell you what new music you'd be likely to dig? Well, there are your friends, but how many of your friends shared your taste in bands from this period. And that's the other thing - emo was the only thing going on at the time that arguably had a scene in traditional terms, i.e., distinct style of dress, a music genre of the same name, subculture-specific trends in speech and behavior, and other social conventions. Sure, there were plenty of hipsters around, but a hipster's music collection is so specific to the individual that music recommendations often miss the mark or are generally unwanted or at least, rarely solicited. Not to mention (and I'm stereotyping here) many hipsters are sensitive artists who hesitate to reveal their esoteric music tastes for fear of rejection.
Ok, I will say metal is probably the only exception to what I've been talking about this whole time, and if any style of non-mainstream music from this time period is likely to effectively capitalize on nostalgia, it's probably metal.
There are, as with most things, both benefits and drawbacks of not being able to capitalize on nostalgia. On the bright side, an artist is more likely to play to an audience filled with dedicated fans, who have followed the band's entire career, not just people who want to hear that one hit from 20 years ago. The bad news is drawing smaller numbers makes playing in certain cities less economically viable, and as a result, bands I love end up only stopping in Texas for SXSW or ACL (ugh!).
So, let me know what you think. Does this theory hold up?
Mahalo.
