The Tris McCall Report

Your Friends And Neighbors, August 17, 2002

Did you ever stare at a map of the world and wonder how archipelagos, like Hawaii or the Aleutians, formed in such improbably perfect lines? Well, probably not, but I have, and I'd like to tell you how. It seems the continental plates -- the same ones that are always drifting -- have "hot spots" in them, holes that extend down to the magma beneath the earth's crust. As the plate moves, the hole moves with it, throwing up towers of rock and ash from the bottom of the ocean, and eventually creating an island. But as the hot spot migrates, the island stays -- slowly cooling and eroding, giving its rock and ash back to the sea. The same hot spot, the same source of heat and energy, creates each of the islands in sequence, and by tracing the trajectory of its motion, you are actually reading a historical record, written in stone and sand.

Before I was born -- and probably before you were born, too -- the center of gravity for independent rock and pop music was Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. By the time I was a kid, that center of gravity had drifted east to the Bowery and St. Mark's Place. When I first arrived in the New York metro area to play music, the hot spot had again shifted -- first east, to Avenue A, and then south across Houston to Stanton Street, Ludlow, Orchard, through the old tenement district, and finally across the East River to Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. Today, as studios, music stores, hip clubs and restaurants continue to sprout up on Lorimer and Grand Streets beyond the BQE, the eastward migration of the font of greatest cultural experimentation shows no sign of slowing.

For those of us who have chosen to stick it out here on the left bank of the Hudson, it has been a daunting and troublesome experience watching the hot spot recede further and further away on the eastern horizon. The closing of Manhattan clubs like Brownies and the Cooler coupled with the increasing relevance of Williamsburg venues like Luxx, Galapagos, and Northsix now means that die-hard Jersey rockers often must cross two rivers in order to play or attend important shows. Some have responded by affecting a studied and occasionally hostile stance against "Williamsburg chic"; others have established countervailing institutions capitalizing on the resurgence of interest in independent music in general. The successes of Artist Amplification, Uncle Joe's in Jersey City, and frequent sellouts at Maxwell's for local artists testify to the resilience and resourcefulness of the players on the North Jersey rock and pop scene.

That said, it's silly for us to pretend that the indie rock boom in Williamsburg hasn't damaged us. We're hemorrhaging talent -- every day, North Jersey musicians pack up their drumsticks and Gibsons and relocate to Brooklyn neighborhoods. We're hemorrhaging resources, as people with a project and a little money to blow routinely bypass Jersey and set up shop in Kingsborough. But most of all, we're hemorrhaging what little hip credibility we have left -- as articles, attention, and national recognition continue to accrue to the Williamsburg avant garde, Jersey music has been increasingly ignored.

In an atmosphere like this, it's tough to blame anybody for bailing out on North Jersey and transplanting their project in Brooklyn. The endlessly proliferating Williamsburg record labels and production companies tend to feature acts that in some way push the margins of rock convention; here, labels are either extremely conservative or have little to do with the local scene. Every corner, restaurant, and café on Bedford Avenue seems to feature a stand of new publications dedicated to local cultural production; here, not only are there no arts magazines, but the Jersey Journal recently discontinued both its music column and its weekly events guide. The past few years have witnessed the opening of many new and viable rock venues on both sides of the BQE, all within easy walking distance of each other and the region's commercial center; here, we've got Maxwell's (which still trumps anything they've got) but beyond the establishment of Uncle Joe's, growth has been scanty, sporadic, and decentralized. Here, the indie rock subculture stops once you've left the club, or the Guitar Bar, or the local section of Tunes; there, the indie rock subculture seems to dominate the street, pervade every establishment, define the rhythms and patterns of daily life. There is no Whiskey Bar or Boo Boo's of Williamsburg -- no post-fraternity beer hall with cover bands playing "Under The Bridge" to ex-jocks in painter's caps. For geeks of all sorts, music geeks included, it's a comfortable place to be.

The forces that have pushed the hot spot across the East River are large and complicated, and nearly impossible to undo. We can't stop continental drift. But if you, like me, are a Jersey rocker and a Jersey loyalist, and you're tired of getting your ass kicked all the time by Brooklyn, I outline here for you a four-point plan that ought to help right the balance somewhat, or at the very least, allow us to recuperate a little dignity.

Point one: Re-establish the Independent Music Festival. Doug Forbes and his pals in the IMG have earned their reputations as true heroes of New Jersey indie music. Unfortunately, their biannual festival was discontinued at the precise moment that it had begun to achieve serious currency among Williamsburg musicians. The IMF was not nominally a Jersey event, but since it was always held in one of the major hubs of North Jersey music (and since the headline acts were invariably locals), it indisputably functioned as one. Since it seems unlikely that anybody involved in the IMG will revive the festival anytime soon, somebody else needs to pick up the baton and run with it.

The final Hoboken festival came under fire for being too large, too monochromatic/male, and too unwelcome by its host city. All of those charges were justified. Nevertheless, it was also the richest and most exciting musical event I've ever attended, one that managed to imprint a subculture and impart a creative energy to a great rock city that has become increasingly conservative and staid. For five days, New Jersey became a rock destination, as Brooklyn artists rode the PATH train in order to perform, listen, and participate in a homegrown event that offered the authority of a benevolent institution while retaining the flexibility and spontaneity of an uprising. Since then, all traffic has gone in the opposite direction.

The Independent Music Festival was more than a schedule of groups and an array of great shows. It was the Jersey scene's best consolidating mechanism, more a convention than anything else, a chance to put names to faces, share ideas, and become immersed in the trends and movements happening statewide. The cross-pollination and camaraderie bred by the IMF continues to sustain much of the cohesion that characterizes Jersey music, but two years later the luster has faded to a dim glint. The Jersey indie rock calendar, briefly fixed and coordinated by the certainty of the spring and fall events, has lost its lodestone, and area musicians are now more attuned to Manhattan and Brooklyn-based money-grab events (you know what I'm talking about) than to anything happening locally. But we can fix that, and in the process restore to life a festival that actually did function as alternative, cool, underground-edgy and driven by subcultural energy, and not as a breeding ground for careerists and status-seekers.

Point two: Launch an intelligent arts/listings publication for Hudson County and North Jersey. So you're a local Jersey group, and you've just put out an independent recording. You want to get reviewed, maybe have a record release party at an area club, get some publicity and attention for your achievement. Where do you turn? The Star-Ledger and Bergen Record aren't options, the Jersey Journal can't help you anymore, the Aquarian and EC Rocker aren't published frequently enough (and maintain a narrow focus on musical styles that are, in the face of Williamsburg's cultural currency, passé), and the Hudson Current -- the weekly which appears so promising from a distance! -- runs nothing but feature stories, has no scene presence, and is almost completely inaccessible. Inevitably, you are forced to turn to New York City publications, and you have been reduced to yet another instantiation of that quintessentially Jersey phenomenon: the local artist fruitlessly begging out-of-town writers to cover her activities.

New Jersey independent rock music and art -- this rich and varied tapestry of countless interrelated but distinct projects, each deserving comment -- is ridiculously underserved by area journalists. A newly-launched arts and listings magazine for Hudson County and North Jersey would instantly be flooded with demos, full releases, invitations and concert dates from local artists starved for recognition. I have heard all the reasons why such a publication would not be commercially or aesthetically viable, and upon reflection, I find them all either illogical, overly pessimistic, or, in the case of the oft-heard argument that the Latin population would not be interested in a listings magazine, downright racist. And if the Internet has rendered print magazines superfluous, then why is Williamsburg -- no stranger to the net savvy, surely -- the host of countless new listings magazines, with dozens more on the way? If Brooklyn can support (even briefly) its scores, surely Jersey can set aside its proudly-professed anti-intellectualism and illiteracy, and support one.

Point three: Take the Uncle Joe's initiative and run with it. Anybody who maintained that there was no room for another rock club in Hudson County was put to shame by the successful commencement of shows at Uncle Joe's, a nowhere bar on a nowhere street in Jersey City that has quickly established itself as an important venue and a viable alternative to the Hoboken club scene. Certainly there has been no shortage of area groups willing to invite their fan base out to the semi-industrial setting, and an increasing number of Brooklyn bands -- hipster bands who'd never condescend to playing the Harvest Moon, Loop Lounge, or a comparable Jersey dive or microbrewery -- have been crossing the Hudson to take their place on the imaginary stage in the back room and contend with the highly questionable sound system.

How many bars are there in Hudson County with unused back rooms, ready to play host to a show that will fill the building with patrons, raise its profile, carve out a bit of legend and take some small part in music or performance culture? How many warehouses and empty buildings are idle along the waterfront, sitting quietly on one of the plank roads, waiting for someone with a vision and a wallet to breathe life into the space, install a sound system and a stage, and generate our own version of Northsix? I hope that every commercial and industrial property owner in the county (especially those who own properties within walking distance of a PATH stop) is looking at Uncle Joe's and kicking himself, thinking "I could have had that business, those crowds, that caché, if I had swallowed my resistance and booked a few groups." We are clearly nowhere near a saturation point -- both supply and demand for performances is not sated by our current range of options. And rather than competing for the same limited audience, another club -- a classier one, maybe -- located near Uncle Joe's in Jersey City would reinforce a much needed feeling that something exciting has taken hold and is happening, and will encourage more New Yorkers to forget their reservations and prejudices and participate wholeheartedly in our scene.

Point four, and the most crucial: We must all raise our games. As a notorious local booster and state ambassador it pains me terribly to admit this, but it's impossible to fudge: Jersey indie rock writ large is simply not as good as Brooklyn rock -- not as interesting, not as committed to experimentation and taking chances, not as stylish, not as sexy, not as conceptual, not as discursive or as communicative, not as good. We are chasing those guys because they are better than we are, and admitting that the discrepancy exists is the first step toward filling the chasm. Even at the best North Jersey clubs, far too frequently the music we hear is absurdly formulaic, completely beholden to generic conventions, whether those of standard-issue emo, or skate or radio punk, or the dreadful DMB-jam band influence that has infected the state during the past several years. In these instances, the famous New Jersey knee-jerk dismissal of anything that seems hip or trendy doesn't help matters. It's served us well over the years, but lately, it's been little more than an avoidance strategy, and a threadbare one at that.

None of this is to suggest that the Williamsburg scene is flawless; far from it. Female and multiethnic voices are rarely heard, and women are subtly marginalized. The sudden influx of capital has slowed the pace of experimentation somewhat, and the current garage-rock vogue has grown tiresome. Camaraderie blends uncomfortably into competitiveness, and an undercurrent of cutthroat sentiment, made manifest by gossip, backbiting, and defaced posters, occasionally gives a negative valence to the charged atmosphere. Regardless, the musical record is undeniable, and if the competition and seriousness with which people take indie music can occasionally be oppressive, it also serves to keep standards high. Here, we have long been far too apt to help cultivate projects that indulge in excess or lapse into autopilot, or thoughtlessness -- projects that would wilt under Brooklyn's harsher light. The Williamsburg indie rock scene is improved by its diligence as surely as ours is so often discredited through our critical sloppiness.

There was, at one point, a local magazine of relatively considerable circulation that promised comprehensive coverage of Jersey arts. I anticipated it with high hopes. But when I read it, I was completely appalled -- not only was the journalism shoddy and the syntax and diction graceless, but it was rife with grammatical and typographic errors. Its effect was to reinforce every out-of-towner's worst prejudice of New Jerseyans as uneducated and thoughtless mooks, congenitally clumsy, miles removed from anything that could be mistaken for sophistication or sensitivity. I expected the publication to be condemned and shunned, (or mocked, at the very least) but instead, Jersey artists lined up to win its favor and to be featured in its pages, or on its equally embarrassing website. Without a doubt this reflected our limited publicity options; still, it wouldn't have happened in Brooklyn. If we ever hope to be on equal footing with our Kingsborough peers, we first must raise our expectations and demand from ourselves a much greater degree of sophistication.

The irony of this all is that North Jersey is a considerably more interesting place than Brooklyn. Development here has occurred in unusual and unprecedented patterns; Williamsburg's gentrification has been wearying in its predictability. Politics here are fascinating; politics there are not. Our public life bears the imprint of some cultural cross-pollination between different ethnic groups (though nowhere near what it should); in North Brooklyn there is virtually no site of intersection between the new white settlers and the old Hasidic, Polish, and Latino communities. North Jersey is characterized by odd, unsettling, and occasionally inspiring juxtapositions; Williamsburg feels homogenous by comparison. All of this ought to be apparent within the music we make and the subcultures we create -- and occasionally it is, but far too infrequently. But because there are so many passionate loyalists on the left bank of the Hudson, we have it within our power to re-create this scene, and make it better than it's ever been. If you're reading this article, and you're moved to do something about the state of North Jersey rock, to open a club, or start a magazine, to participate in a festival, know well that if you make your intention public, you will never be short on volunteers willing to put the full weight of their minds, backs, and hearts into the project.

As Jersey artists, we step into the box with two strikes against us. We live in the shadow of the world's largest city, and the center of its entertainment industry; a huge engine of cultural production absorbing attention and energy. Then, we deal daily with uninformed and preposterous stereotypes about our state; that we're uneducated and unsophisticated, that we're mobsters or wacky convenience store clerks, that roving herds of frat thugs and mallrats with big hair will accost you on the street if you aren't wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt. Arrogant New Yorkers will not come here, and, increasingly, they do not have to. Tempting as it is in our famous defiance to write them off and pretend they aren't there, it's an impossible, foolish thing to do here in the shadow of the Empire State Building. Whether we like it or not, our principal relationship is to the New York scene, and right now, we've got the short, sharp, and meager end of that relationship, and our grip is slipping.

Let me in, be my friend, guide my dreams and visions.