Hopefully, these will be my last words on the subject. I’m done.

When I started going to shows, I was in the middle of high school. Evansville seemed like a barren Germanic community, a factory and work town with an imbedded Puritanical work ethic. All forms of creativity were so rare that they bragged their own existence. The initial greatness that struck me about this town’s music scene—that bragged existence—has come full-circle and led me to my disillusionment.

A scene, as I’ve stated before, is a network of communications, not just a collection of bands. It’s a diversity, and openness to other types or styles, opinions or ideas. It’s ideas about music, passion for music, hatred of music—all pooled. But what I’ve tried to write about in my tenure was not a glue-smile approach to happy thoughts and insincere compliments. A scene must have all dimensions; it must have people properly analyzing and engrossing themselves in what other’s have produced. And that, very simply, rarely creates blissful, all-complimentary status. In a good scene, it should be OK to not like, and to even hate.

I tried to write about a local scene with a critical, discerning eye. I realized that there was some music that left me cold, indifferent—I realized that because there was some music that left me just the opposite: alive, excited. Good art makes lesser art ashamed in one’s mind. What seemed to be missing in this scene was someone who didn’t put the gloss on all things, who cared enough to question; because when you question, and the answers are satisfying, it’s closer to truth. And, as Einstein said, truth is beauty. Critics are not the enemy of art; they’re the voice of one half of the symbiotic nature art assumes, the voice of the audience; they are the supporters of art.

So I assumed that asshole critic role, hoping that I could fill a lacking dimension to this scene. I refused to write what the musicians wanted me to write, because it did nothing to enrich the music. I wanted to put it through the gauntlet I put all music through—otherwise, it would simply be a forced, watered down, and insincere devotion to localized cults. This approach was too close to home, because it wasn’t criticizing people who made schlocky-glossy music in the decadent confines of an L.A. studio on someone else’s bill—this was tearing apart amateurs-wanting-more, barely confidant about sticking their heads out with music/art, pouring their own limited monies into something they sweat, bled, an cried into. They knew their own struggles and plights, and anyone who can’t appreciate those just seemed to be bellyaching.

There’s eight billion people on this planet, all of whom have something to say, all of whom have sweat, bled, and cried to communicate to others all that it means to live in their own skin. With that many people speaking and so little time to hear it, all you can do is set aside the well-intentioned and put before you that which does speak to you.

There are a few talented critic writers in this town, but as far as I knew, I was the only one putting an honest approach locally. I’d talked to some of them, and they thought it was pointless, idiotic, even dangerous to do so. I was a critic, frankly, because I cared enough to be one. And all along, it was just my opinion—my subjective opinion. I never claimed to represent some object standards, simply because there aren’t any in art. I wrote like what was before me was mine, my experience. And if I feigned objectivity I doubt I could stand myself all that much. People who believe in objectivity in art are the embittered haters of art. I wasn’t; I thought I was one of the highest fans.

Maybe that’s why I’m giving it up; I don’t have the stamina or the passion anymore. It doesn’t strike me as a vital component to survival in this town anymore and I get little surprises. Maybe it started when I stopped playing in a band. Maybe it was when high school ended and none of my friend were around to go to shows anymore. Maybe it was the numerous people who handed me a CD and asked for “just an honest review,” only to read the honesty and call for blood. Maybe I couldn’t any longer suffer the snobs who claimed that they wanted pacific magnanimity and camaraderie amongst local bands when they egotistically and pettily tore bands apart in “private” conversations. Maybe it was when lines felt drawn between old friend’s of mine, because I had to write about what they produced. Maybe it’s when I couldn’t go to a show anymore without the paranoid feeling that someone hated me for having shat on that which they had put so much into. Maybe I was tired of being, as Cameron Crowe put it in Almost Famous, The Enemy. Or maybe I never got over Sankofa closing. If I had had more passion about local music, I could deal with that. But I don’t. 

Instead, the shows I’ve gone to lately, they have people who seem to have that passion. So my last words to all local musicians is this: encourage people to not like you. Be confident in what you produce as an expression (and if you’re not, put yourself through your own gauntlet); don’t depend on others to bolster away the insecurities you have about your own music. Just because you make music in this town that seems to have an anti-art, anti-intellectual stance, does not give you some innate and deserved kudos. It does not make you special. If you have discerning crowds that have their options open, if they can freely hate you but choose to like you—that reward is bigger. That reward is earned. That reward makes you special.

That’s a scene. That’s something I would like to come back to, and be apart of.

Bye,
—Shane

P.S. I still hate Subotai.