Towards the end of June, I ended up at the Shred Shed for a few consecutive nights, taking pictures and serving as the venue babysitter. On both nights, I noticed a few different youths wearing t-shirts that were advertising for a not so local venue that’s about an hour outside of Pittsburgh.
On the back of these shirts there was a slogan printed that read “Only Real Bands Play Real Venues” or some such silly bullshit. After laughing hysterically at the macho posturing of such a stupid statement and the fact that people were collectively dumb enough to print, sell, purchase and then wear this shirt in public, I began to wonder what constitutes a real band and a real venue.
I try not to complain about things involving music in this space. I’m not in a band and I know how extremely difficult it is to create something so I try to keep my complaining to a minimum unless it involves a punchline. There are enough whiny dickheads out there that will try to talk shit on anything and everything because it’s so easy to do. I try to bring attention to things that I enjoy so as to spread the word and share things with the handful of people that take the time to read the things I write. That is unless something sticks in my craw. This dopey shirt got stuck and really burrowed in like a goddamn tick.
I will be the first to say that I don’t consider myself an expert in the field of music. But over the past thirty years, I have been to countless shows, both large and small, and I have seen my fair share of bands, also both large and small. I have a tendency to spend way more time than a person should pondering music as an art form and when it’s been successfully pulled off by the artists. I can barely put it into words but I know it when I hear it and see it. Quality is subjective and difficult to describe.
Over the years, I have come up with the idea that the only two things necessary for a punk show are electricity and gravity. And sometimes we can make due without the electricity. Location in and of itself does not matter. I have been to outdoor generator shows, house/basement shows and DIY spots that only used a PA for the vocals. Some of the best nights are when there’s a sense of the show falling to pieces because a breaker might blow or the cops might show up and then the sense of wonder when everything goes off without a hitch.
And on the other side of that coin, some of the worst nights I’ve had were at mid to large size venues. All of the pointless rules and protocols render the experience and the music sterile and take the fun out of the evening. These larger venues take themselves way too seriously, are all business and have more interest in selling booze and taking merch cuts than they care about the actual music. It’s to the point where I probably won’t leave the house to go to a larger venue unless I’m working the show. Going through aggressive security checks by a failed high school football player and putting up with the behavioral problems of drunkards cutting loose on their night out is no longer worth my time. If I’m not going to come out of it with pictures of the show, I may as well stay home.
That’s why I try to stay as low to the ground and close to the DIY end of things as I can. Everybody from the bands to the promoters work really hard to pull these things off. Especially if it’s a DIY space run by volunteers. No one’s raking in the money but if there is any at the end of the night, it usually ends up in the hands of the touring bands so they can get to the next town.
The people that put these shows together didn’t feel the need to sign up with a third rate promoter that books cover bands and has a weird pay-to-play scheme for local bands. The scene in Pittsburgh has always been small and fractured so trying to draw some sort of competitive line in the sand seems pointless and counterproductive to me. We don’t need some dickhead on an ego trip trying to put himself on a nonexistent pedestal. Especially if that dickhead has years of questionable and problematic baggage to carry around. And I’m sure if the dickhead in question, or the weird cult-like group of youths that seem to swarm to the venue, ever read this they would probably threaten to kick my ass and try to challenge me to fight or at least get incredibly defensive while chest thumping and leave no room for introspection and growth.
I guess the use of “real bands” is being used to describe super-aggro and incredibly boring hardcore bands that all sound the same. Most of the bands use the same tired riffs and double bass kick drum beats that I’ve heard since I was a teenager. These bands are so real that they take forever to set up their gear because they don’t know how to use it outside of the practice space that they should probably spend more time in. These bands wouldn’t last a minute on an actual tour where sleep, food and petrol were never certain.
All the while the tough guys in the crowd kick and flail about in some sort of weird Mary Lou Retton meets Chris Farley fighting off a swarm of invisible bees dance routine. I say this as someone who should probably go to therapy and refuses to but these idiots really need to go to therapy to learn how to deal with their emotions. There is nothing that will suck the fun out of a show faster than a handful of toxic males putting their jock bullshit on display. Some of us got into music as an escape from that stupidity and know for a fact that that behavior keeps people from coming out to shows.
In this day and age, I can’t figure out what all of these white boys are screaming about. Are they angry at themselves because they couldn’t figure out how to use their privilege to their own advantage? Yelling about feelings of betrayal when things weren’t handed to them? I can’t wait until these lightweights are in their mid forties and have to go through the hellscape of family court. There won’t be a clean pair of gym shorts among them.
I always fall back on that line that Ian MacKaye said in the American Hardcore documentary that went something like, "I didn't leave hardcore, hardcore left me." Once I realized how intellectually stunted the music was, and the attitudes behind it were, it was very easy for me to move on from it.
One of the more unexpected and unexpectedly funny things that I’ve encountered over the past several months is overhearing conversations where people complain about the Mr. Roboto Project. Every single time it’s been a different younger fellow that thought his band deserved to be booked there and was angry that they weren’t. The thing with Roboto is that it’s run like a cooperative. If someone wants to book a show there all they have to do is sign up to be a board member and pay their dues. It’s not difficult. The difficult part is promoting your own show and hoping people come out.
The thing of it is is that the “scene” in Pittsburgh would be absolutely fine without this “real” venue. Much like if I never took another picture or wrote another word about music, the music would still happen. Shows would happen with or without it because they always have. The shows would probably just be closer to town. None of us are special and we don’t need to start treating ourselves as more precious than anyone else. We’re all trying to do a thing and should maybe try to help each other out instead of inflating our own egos and making everything into a competition.
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