nings

i had an idea for a thread this weekend wherein we could leverage our combined brain trust and compile all the great scenes over the years. everything from 80s-90s Seattle (melvins, the u-men, nirvana) to mid-80s LA death rock (christian death, flesh eaters, 45 grave) to mid 90s manchester (blue mondays, stone roses) and all the little ones all over the globe in between.

i guess the criteria for this would be 1) each scene would have to have produced at least one seminally "famous" breakout artist, 2) each scene would have at least 3-4 similarly bent artists to define the scene's "sound," 3) at least one national media outlet has at one time defined said scenes for the masses (whether it stuck or not).

so basically, the half dozen local pop punk bands that play $4 pitcher night at ernie's pizza every tuesday night don't really count unless one of them gets a cult national following and some writer at SPIN pens a piece on that hot new Terra Haute sound.

this thread is an equal opportunity thread so everything from laurel canyon pop to bowery punk to silverlake ppdd to richmond VA punk to whatever scene begat pub rock, and all the little micro-scenes in between from the turn of the century to the present day are all fair game. post your personal prefs in here....i'm interested to hear the vast spectrum of your combined knowledge, obner.org.

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here, i'll start

Bakersfield, CA - mid-1950s through the late 60s



Buck Owens


Merle Haggard and the Strangers


Maddox Bros and Rose


Wynn Stewart

I only know about the Athens scene in the late 70's early 80's. And not directly, but from going to school / working there among a lot of the survivors.

welp

post a thing about it

It cranked our REM and the B-52's, of course. But right below that level was Pylon, Love Tractor, and slew of other also-rans I guess.

Looking into this led me to google my old boss when I sold electrical supplies. He just died of throat cancer last month. Fuck.



THANKS TOOTS.

Dunedin, NZ - early 80s

Flying Nun and the Dunedin Sound



The Verlaines


Tall Dwarfs


Jean-Paul Sartre Experience

English Midlands - early 90s




PWEI


The Bomb Party


Scum Pups

I sorta struggle with what really constitutes a scene. There are either countless ones or very few that really matter.

If one defines one as a geographical cluster of bands that play a common style with at least a handful of venues that cater to them, and some cross pollination/interaction/influence between the artists, that's not a high bar to cross and any large geographic area probably has at least one scene every decade. Take the Athens scene for example, it's notable that there was a large number of important artists coming out of a relatively small area but would we link B-52s and REM together in anyway if they didn't both come out of Athens? What really makes it a scene? I'm not saying it isn't one but it just seems much different than Seattle Grunge or LA Hair Metal.

Laurel Canyon Pop seems like a convenient grouping of artists than a real scene. There was a cluster of folk pop artists in Laurel Canyon and they were friends and interacted, and played with one another but it seems to me all those artists were really part of two larger scenes -- the LA folk/pop scene and the Laurel Canyon scene which was also much bigger than Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Mamas & Papas, etc. Frank Zappa was probably the ringleader of the Laurel Canyon scene but he's not the guy people think of when they talk Laurel Canyon Pop.

pylon's no slouch. wasn't Team Gar around during the burgeoning days of E6?

Yeah we were around for all that. Bloor started college in 1994, Gar and I in 95. So we were around for the beginning of the Truckers, Elf Power, NMH, Olivia Tremor Control, and my personal favorite (and completely unrelated) the Star Room Boys. Also-rans include Gritty Kitty, Macha, Japancakes, and shit there's more.


Specific quick mid-90’s Athens memories:

1. I went to every single Star Room Boys gig in town for about 5 years there, and more than a few in Atlanta. One gig was out 30 minutes from town at some river, in a field. Olivia Tremor Control and Elf Power also played, and someone brought kegs of shitty beer, and people were making out in the bushes and shit. There were strung up christmas lights and everything ran off a gas generator. Fuck I miss college.

2. I worked at a sandwich shop everyday for 5 years as well, starting freshman year and going a year after graduating. A group of really nice people (3 or 4 of them) all came in everyday, and clearly worked together. I asked where they worked and they were shy and cagey about it, which was bizarre and awkward. After they left, my boss explained that they worked for REM. I was like “Where, here downtown somewhere?” “Uh, yes, their office is right over your head. They have half this block on the second floor. And they don’t like to talk about it much – the band prefers to keep a low profile.”

3. The sandwich shop’s owner had her friend Michael make t-shirts for the shop. He used to come in an lot and hang out with her. He was an artist and a dj. One day she told me he had been the bassist in Pylon, and I had heard of them and knew more or less what the deal was. I asked him about it one day when we were having a beer, and again, he was sorta shy about and didn’t really want to answer questions. So many times back then I’d just want to talk to people about their band, ask what kind of bass they played, whatever, and more established bands were really shy about it. Big mis-match between my head and theirs. I was like 19 or whatever so there’s no telling how I sounded, probably came off too pushy.

When I hear EARLY REM stuff, especially live things from the very very beginning, yeah I hear a good bit of overlap between them, 52's, and even Pylon. But it all diverged quickly.

to billy g's point, yeah the aforementioned criteria for what makes a "scene" are probably a bit off base and/or limiting. clearly some locales breed a slew of bands that sound nothing alike, yet are somehow part of some kind of zeitgeist for an era/area, while others have half a dozen bands that all (intentionally or not) hone a distinctive sound over time.

i think what i am honestly probably looking for are really any geographically based spurt of conjoined creativity that's been recognized, acknowledged and documented at some point. that probably means "media-driven narrative" but i'm ok with that.

also, those are some good athens stories, capn. we lost a van tire there once.

I'm anxiously awaiting Frew's in-depth analysis of The Great Glaswegian Protoskiffle Explosion of the mid-aughts.

here's one that maybe speaks to the idea of a scene as less of a sound-sharing organism...

Los Angeles Death Rock Scene - '82-'84

I'm not trying to be critical. It's a potentially interesting topic and I'm not trying to say that I think you've defined a scene wrong in anyway and while I know nothing about the Grebos (other than the Wonder Stuff) or mid 80's LA death rock, the other examples you came up all seem like legitimate scenes. The Grebos and LA Death Rock might be too...I just have no idea about those. However, I think there are plenty of groupings where it is either happenstance and not much commonality (Athens) or a large and important cluster but nothing really unique (eg insert city, insert large genre). When I think of a scene, I think of there being a kind of musical terroir, a common sound/attitude/viewpoint that is not only present in the geography but somehow uniquely develops in that geography. Grunge has that. I'm not sure Athens does but if it does it would be an interesting story that I've never really heard.

By contrast, think about early 70's Detroit where you had MC5, the Stooges, the Amboy Dukes, Detroit, whatever Fred Smith's band was called (I forgot) and a bunch of others following them. At least to me, there's something very unique going on there. Those bands probably would have sounded a whole lot different if they came from any other city, and there is a soulfulness even in the hard rock that has lineage through Mitch Ryder back to Motown. And it probably isn't an accident that Funkadelic/Pfunk were there as well (at least I think they were). Yet I'm not sure I've ever really read much about that scene as a whole rather than about the bands individual or maybe Stooges and MC5 together, and if there is any press created name for the scene I've never heard it. Could just be me...maybe there is a name for that Detroit scene and I've just never noticed it.

i like this definition a lot.




i also like this word. a lot.

My concern here is the suggestion that scenes end.

You don't think so? (Thinking of Seattle Grunge, can't picture it still going on as-was)

terra haute ain't what it used to be

I'd argue that Athens had it in spades. I don't really disagree with anything you've said here but I could argue that a common sound is less important than having a supportive scene that is allowed to grow organically.

In the late 70's, Athens was still a sleepy college cow town with a few bars to support college kids and maybe a few bands to play covers of Journey, Zeppelin, David Allen Coe, or maybe The Allmans. Having a career as a musician or be in a working bad was an impossibility.

Most all of the bands were associated with the UGA Art school. They were art freaks that played music for house parties and Athens was not the art friendly liberal place it is now.

There was no expectation of success so all of those bands at the time played each others shows, went to each others parties and slowly got better and better. It wasn't until the B-52's went to NYC that any of them thought they could do anything other than play Athens or Chapel Hill or wherever.

I also think the media found Athens to be a better story with these bands because it was such a random place for good bands to come out of.

more of a refined sound than a scene, but still something that happened, was influential on a large scale, and was documented

Muscle Shoals, AL - '69-late 70s (DBT notwithstanding)












l00g should probably check my work here. some of those clips might be iffy. i am merely a tourist in this place. (and i have TPS reports to turn in)

you weren't there you don't know

100% true.

summer of 89 man

all the kids were wearing tattied bugle boys and 'do rags

every t-top in town was blasting henry lee

there was somethin in the AIR

it was probably fertilizer but i mean