Friday, April 27, 2007

You Can't Be A Pimp and A Prostitute, Too

I just thought I'd throw a line from Icky Thump up for no particular reason.

Baby Heisman and Cat Dirt Sez have both commented on the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau's (ConVis) recently announced promotion of San Diego as a destination for our indie music scene. The Union Trib has an article on it. My Google alerts sent me to the website. Even my friend who works for the Chula Vista Convention and Visitors Bureau sent me a link. So yeah, I wasn't gonna blog about it. But here I am and it's on my brain, so let me pitch in my two cents.

First of all, I agree with CatDirt...who are the people commenting on "the scene"? Then again, I am not in music promotion, so maybe they really are a big deal and know their shit, but seems to me a lot of people writing about music these days or talking about music (on the radio) or promoting shows don't go out. They might know how to use 6 adjectives in a sentence to tell you exactly how a band sounds on CD but they aren't going to shows. I know. I go to shows. They are not there. One show a month doesn't count. Shit, four shows a month don't count if they are at any combination of the Sports Arena*, Coors Amphitheater, and House of Blues. Try the Tower Bar every once in a while. Or Over the Border. Or Scolari's. Or Surf n Saddle.

Apparently $1.1 Million dollars will be spent on marketing San Diego, including this Indie initiative. I say great. If we're gonna have commercials in Chicago and billboards in Atlanta, and radio spots in New York tellin people to come to San Diego anyway, better to promote our thriving music scene rather than just stick to Shamu, the Zoo, Legoland, our outlet centers, or leather skinned chicks sunbathing on La Jolla Shores. Yes, Tourists! Come to San Diego! Come check out our amazing bands! Send me an e-mail, tell me what you wanna hear, I'll tell you where to go. Unlike some people, I welcome you. I mean "Shamu" isn't even really named Shamu. Get over it. Come see our bands instead!

So everyone is bitching about the music selected. It's not cool enough. Not indie enough. Who are those people/bands anyway? They should've had (insert favorite local band here). I say good for the bands on there for having their name out enough that people completely out of touch with San Diego music were able to find them. Or maybe they're not outta touch but just have different methods in finding music (podcasts, for example). Good for you Adam Gimbel and Rookie Card. Good for the guys in A Weeks Worth, you know I love you. And good for you Bart Mendoza and The Shambles.

Newspapers and weeklies can say blogs are irrelevant; in return we bloggers can call them out of touch...the truth is we have similar goals. Yeah, they might be slow in reporting news. Yeah, we may not fact check. The fact that it's all out there and available should be praised. If "the man" wants to promote our city and use our musicians to do it, go with it. Few bands want to stay unknown and underground forever. Brooklyn has their scene, Portland has theirs, it's about freaking time people started paying attention to ours.

* By the way, apparently iPayOne stopped paying the bills for their naming rights, so we can happily go back to calling the Sports Arena the Sports Arena and remind people that it's called the Sports Arena because it was built for sports. It never was and never will be a worthwhile music venue despite that awesome scene in Almost Famous.

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