Tuesday’s Article (08-24-10)

Wiki Scenes…I must be getting old.

The days of local bands that never quite broke out of their hometown surviving in the whispers of ‘scene people’ and their little brothers are apparently over. The local band hero has been relegated to the pop culture graveyard where it will spend the rest of eternity slowly decaying along with other formerly relevant items such as pogs and slap bracelets.  From this point on, all will be well documented and those of us still living off of the greatness of a former band will no longer be able to keep snowballing our legacy.

In short, it’s reality check time.

Okay, so maybe this is a slight exaggeration, but the “Long Island Music Scene Wiki” is going to change things considerably.  The site was created by Dylan Ebrahimian of Gabriel The Marine (one of the more talented Long Island bands currently garnering ‘off island’ respect), and is tracking the progress and pitfalls of local artists as well as the incestuous band-hopping that occurs with Long Island musicians.  In addition to the bands that are currently active, Mr. Ebrahimian is also going through the process of completing the family tree of Long Island bands, using the wiki as a way to pay homage to great LI bands of the past such as Inside, V.O.D. and Silent Majority. If that weren’t enough, he is also compiling a 200 page reference guide of every place to play live music on Long Island and the relevant contact information with the goal of helping Long Island bands book their own shows.

Not bad for a 24 year old.

At this point you might be asking how the concept of a local music scene wiki is really going to change anything?  Well just like how it’s important for Dylan to give credit to Long Island bands of the past in his wiki, we too must look at the history of the local scene in general to understand.

First there were local shows.  These shows created a lineage of bands that were only known through word of mouth.  The history was kept in the way of the ‘ancients’, that is only through oral tradition (and demo tapes).

Then came Myspace, a.k.a. the worst thing that ever happened to the concept of a ‘local scene’.  With myspace came the dawn of it being cool to ‘know the unknown’ with regards to music.  This lead to the ‘myspace generation’ of bands, which had a shelf life of about 2 months.

Now that myspace is dying (darn…), bands are again forming new post-myspace scenes.  These scenes still utilize the internet for promotion and networking, but with the crowd that had been plowing through indie bands last year now devoting their ipod space to Kesha and Mike Posner, the old family feeling of local music is coming back around.

This wiki is a burning example of the return of the traditional local scene concept.  It reveres the idea of knowing your roots, and takes a more intelligent approach to using the internet in correlation with a real music community.  Something that works well with the intricate compositions of a lot of the bands currently emerging from Long Island like Gabriel the Marine or Robbers.

It shows pride in being a part of something special.  Something that was here before Taking Back Sunday (no dig at the band intended) and something that will hopefully be great long after our generation stops caring about local music.

Kudos to Mr. Ebrahimian and his cohorts for undertaking this massive project and approaching it the right way.   I’m glad they have the drive and intelligence to make it a success…

and that they dedicated a full entry to my old band.