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Last night my friend and I had a debate regarding why we liked the bands that we listened to in the 1990s. My friend claims that we liked them because they were good, or at least because they had some magnetism. I say that we liked them just because we didn't have enough musical diversity and choice to have the luxury to discriminate. Sources for new music were limited to MTV and...well...MTV was it really.
Our discussion was sparked by yesterday’s performance at the Echo by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (CFTPA). CFTPA is essentially a one-man band with a lo-fi sound consisting of Owen Ashworth, his beard, his eye-glasses, and at least six keyboards. Ashworth’s songs are chaotically deliberate vignettes of electronic cacophony and afterthought. His unassuming stage-presence is both intriguing and endearing. The performance began with an unexpected homage to Bruce Springsteen’s “Philadelphia” and concluded with a collaboration with psychedelic rock band the Donkeys.
When asked by my concert companion how I first learned about CFTPA, I admitted with some embarrassment that it was not through some cool in-the-know friend or via my music review reading prowess, but instead through a Live Journal internet search to see who else finds crustaceans and dinosaurs interesting. Given that the first CFTPA CD was released way back in 1998, I am sadly late to enjoin in the Ashworth cultism.
Which brings me back to our debate: the World Wide Web has opened up the musical floodgates making a whole plethora of new bands and sounds available to the public. I am quite sure that I never would have been exposed to CFTPA, and numerous other bands for that matter, if not for internet music blogs and the like. All of this new accessibility to harmonic pleasures and sound-diversity makes me wonder that if the bands that I was force-fed in the 90s were new to the music scene today, would I like them? Would I listen to them? Would I send them MySpace friend requests? Or would I indulge in something more unique like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone?
Check out www.cftpa.org for Casiotone for the Painfully Alone tour dates and other stuff.
Photo by Theo Adorno via Flickr
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i too like crustaceans and dinosaurs. good work.
I say that we liked them just because we didn't have enough musical diversity and choice to have the luxury to discriminate. Sources for new music were limited to MTV and...well...MTV was it really.
Er...what?
MTV was your only source of new music...in the _90s_???!! The 90s was a golden age of music press in the US, if you ask me. Any Tower Records would have had Alternative Press, Magnet, Big Takeover, Punk Planet, etc. Yes the internet has made this process easier (no more standing in the magazine aisle at Tower trying to read as much as you can of the mags you're not actually going to buy), but it's made everything easier, right? Everything except publishing a print music magazine, I suppose.
I guess I'm a little curious about what it was that you were "force fed" in the 90s anyway...for some reason I keep thinking Better Than Ezra. :-)
Another thing to think about is the historical view: if you think it was hard to find new stuff in the 90s, imagine what it was like in the early 80s (no desktop publishing--hopefully you or one of your friends had an office job with a copier you could use after hours for your 'zine), the late '70s (typewriter, mimeograph), the late 60s/early 70s (???). It makes the fact that someone like Big Star is even known today all the more incredible.
Dan