I keep finding myself flipping through Erik Bauer’s recently published photo book, Had To Be There, and thinking to myself that the book is a document that music in Pittsburgh sorely needed. The book contains a lot of familiar faces and names. Some of which are no longer with us.
The era that the book covers is from the late seventies and goes into the early nineties which was just before I began going to shows and having an interest in music. With a few exceptions, most of the bands featured in the book were long gone before I even knew what music was so I’m very grateful to be able to use the book to give myself a history lesson.
Had To Be There was published by Mind Cure Mike who would always end up leaning on Erik’s photos when putting together an album reissue of a band from this period. Having realized how deep of a well Erik’s archive was, Mike got to work on putting a book together.
There was a reception/opening for the book and a photo exhibit to display some of the pictures from the book a week or so ago. I lasted for about five minutes after I walked in. I said hello to a few people, took a lap around the gallery, picked up a print and then made my way back to the car. There were way too many people there than I can bear to be around these days so I bailed out to take refuge in the solitude of my car and traffic on a rainy night.
I have noticed that there are some positive side effects of spending more and more time with the book. After reading that Erik worked as a chemist for a steel company, I started to feel better about myself and my lifetime of shitty office jobs. I always felt like I was failing somehow by having to put the real work aside for eight hours a day so I could go punch a clock somewhere. It’s still something that I struggle with and I have to keep reminding myself that sometimes the things that have meaning in life have to happen after business hours.
Had To Be There also served as a reminder that we have to do these things ourselves and in our own way to document and write about our scene and our music. Music has always felt like an uphill battle against the apathy that Pittsburgh has plenty of. There have always been very few outlets to put this scene on display and to give it the attention that it deserves.
Local radio doesn’t really care unless it’s a shitty rock band that can only play at ribfests within the tri-state area or relegates local music to a late night or early morning time slot when no one is awake. The local paper will only put out an article about a musician from Pittsburgh when it’s in the form of an obituary. And the remaining alt-weekly feels like they’ve been reduced to publishing PR pieces for tourists on the overabundance of indoor mini-golf and ax throwing places in the city.
There’s even a certain amount of apathy from within Pittsburgh’s punk scene itself. I know it’s not cool to care too much about these things but maybe if we cared just a little bit more there would be more traction for the various projects we all get up to in our free time. Then maybe we wouldn’t need any of the aforementioned media outlets.
And Satan forbid, this may actually lead to some of us being compensated for our work. I’ve only ever been paid by a publication after I called them out for “borrowing” a picture that I took. The papers in this town think my work is good enough to steal but not good enough to pay me for it until they get caught.
Our support for our scene must defiantly and loudly say that we are here whether or not anyone else cares that we are. We have to put the hours into nurturing this music and let the bands know that we give a shit about what they do.
With more and more publications getting bought up and shuttered by vulture capitalist tech-bro conglomerates, writing about and documenting music will start to get lower to the ground and almost down to a local/regional level. If a band puts music out into the world and no one seems to notice, we need to take it upon ourselves and get the word out. If we don’t do these things, the music might go away and we’ll be left with nothing but shows at overpriced venues out in the suburbs that gouge everyone with service fees.
Had To Be There has also given me the motivation to get off of my ass and get back to work. To avoid burnout, I may have to be more selective about the amount of shows I’ll get to throughout the year but the work must continue.
I’ve been happy to see other photographers and writers out at shows more frequently. Especially since they’ve all been much younger than me. I don’t know when my expiration date is with all of this but I know I’ve got one.
It feels like everything in Pittsburgh has to be a competition but documenting a scene is not that at all so I’m glad to see other people out there doing the work. And seeing the youths out there doing it from their perspective makes it even better.
In the back pages of Had To Be There, there is a rather long list of the dearly departed and it struck me that that list is only going to get longer and will start crossing the musical generations in Pittsburgh. I’ve already started going to too many funerals and hearing of too many people passing that I’ve taken pictures of. When I started doing this work, I never thought that an unintended consequence of it would be handing over photos that I’ve taken to family members so they could end up on picture boards at memorials.
After flipping through Had To Be There multiple times over the past few weeks, I can only hope to add my own chapter to Pittsburgh music. I’ll keep contributing to the scene as best I can and putting these bands on display at least until the arthritis takes over.
