Much like the early 90s grunge scene in Seattle, Washington, the current music scene has been destroyed by a few bands that made it big in the mainstream marketing.
In 2006, Ohio was a Mecca for local music. Everywhere you turned, there were bands coming out with new singles and pushing their newest merchandise. Band stickers and flyers for local shows were plastered on any open space and, as a young musician myself, this was exhilarating.
That's me in the middle, playing live at Howard's Club H in 2008.
For many young bands, “making it” and getting signed were dreams that rested in the back of the mind, but what really mattered was practicing and playing live, in front of family, friends and complete strangers.
I can tell you, firsthand, that there was nothing more exciting than looking out into the crowd and seeing people moshing and dancing to your heaviest breakdowns or the glow in the eyes of the females in the front row as they looked up during the clean choruses. I’m getting chills just by recalling it.
Bands took whatever measures they could to record their songs. Whether it was through the use of pirated music software, a grassroots record producer (Swordfish Studios in Findlay, Slaughterdog Records in Lima, ect.) or just a hand-me-down 8-track recording device, bands were adamant about printing their own music.
Bands would record anywhere and do just about anything to get their music into a reasonable sounding format and then onto their Myspace music player.
At this time, the music was nowhere near perfect. In fact, it was perfectly imperfect. Listening back, one can hear missed notes, off time bass drum hits and poor leveling. But those little miscues are what make this so special to me. It was more about the message and the experience than the money-hungry attitude that consumes today’s music industry.
Bands began cutting their hair, spending thousands of dollars on recording and acting like complete snobs. The Internet was always a mainstream outlet for pushing shows and your music, but it quickly turned into a cesspool of shameless plugs and “You can only listen to this band if you ‘Like’ it first” messages.
In this way, MySpace.com trumped Facebook. Myspace was a purveyor of music; the guy who would let you play at his church or record your EP for free. Facebook is just that slimy guy who collects the money at the door and cuts your playing time in half.
After bands like The Devil Wears Prada, Before Their Eyes, Bring Me The Horizon and A Day To Remember started gaining speed, other bands ditched their originality to sound like the bands that were making money. They started over producing their records, tuning to ridiculously low tunings and mixing their bass guitars out of any song.
Now, we are living in 2012. It is a time where local shows are an endangered species. It’s more profitable to record an album and push it online than it is to go out and play the music that you wrote from your heart. The emotion has been sucked out the local music scene.
Even though the good ole days are gone, I can still be proud to say that I was out there living each day. I can still recall the feeling of walking onstage hundreds of miles away from home. I can still remember meeting hundreds of new people. I can still reminisce on a time where music was full of heart.
As lame as it may sound, I can’t wait to look at the younger generations and tell them my stories. “Back in my day, music was real.”