![]() ![]() Bear ( ) sang the praises of local favorites like Voxtrot Sound Team and Tacks, the Boy Disaster for months, while former Austinite Matt Sonzala ignited Houston hip-hop with his HoustonSoReal blog ( ). It's now easier for bands to become familiar names among music blogs like Largehearted Boy ( ) and Stereogum ( The Dallas-based Gorilla vs. Roger Miller (l) and Clint Conley of Mission of Burma (Photo By Aubrey Edwards) Regular folks, not grizzled music critics or professional writers, have been able to write about, and subsequently hype, bands they like, with ever-growing audiences. With the increasing necessity of the Internet, an interesting thing has happened in the last six years or so. Since the Seventies halcyon days of Creem and Rolling Stone, the Internet has become the hype machine, and the hype machine has become a necessary evil for indie music. The Giant Slingshot of Bullshit might not reach as far now, but it's only because the landscape has changed severely. You don't even have to think it up, all you gotta do is invest in a slingshot." and some ability to sling bullshit around. When Lester Bangs wrote his 1974 essay "How to Be a Rock Critic," he was being not-so-subtle in his disgust, but his ecstatic jive was kind of true: "Anybody can do this shit, all it takes is a high level of unconsciousness. Sure, it's easy to joke about the current state of indie rock. One to screw it in and all the rest to say the first guy sold out. Q: How many indie rockers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?Ī: Dozens. As a young blond man walks past with the requisite messenger bag, sleeveless shirt, and neck bandana, a weird vortex appears, as if all the clichés have altered time and space, leaving only one question: But there they were: grown men dressed like extras from Meatballs and women dressed in spandex and Olivia Newton-John headbands milling about, pawing records, throwing out obscure band names, and talking about their "early stuff." This is Chicago's Union Park, where thousands of fans have converged for the Pitchfork Music Festival. ![]() There's never an excuse, in 2006, for men to wear tiny gym shorts in public, even in blistering, dead-of-summer heat.
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