FANZINE

Hey special thanks to Kaya Oakes for a great time last Sunday at Skylight Books and thanks to everyone who was able to make it there. The show was kicked off by a lively, charismatic  performance by Old Lumps. Charlene Yi, in the center is a musician and comedian who appears in Knocked Up, and was full of quips and microphone duct-taping throughout the show. After leading off with three solid originals, the Lumpsters followed with a cover of “The Greatest Love of All” and a finale of “Beast of Burden” inviting Kaya Oakes up from the audience for a very special one woman dance party.

On tour for her book on independent culture, Slanted and Enchanted, Kaya read a selection from it about humans impersonating robots in order to sell handmade postcards at the San Francisco Renegade Craft Fair. Generously, sharing the spotlight on her book tour Kaya welcomed The Fanzine and other bastions of independent media to join for a discussion.

From left to right: Kaya, moderator Justin Gage of the Aquarium Drunkard music blog and host of a weekly XM radio show of the same name, Courtney Knopf of Everloving Records, Daniel House of CZ Records and, um, me.

Justin and audience members asked an array of engaging questions, including Charles, one of the Skylight Staff, who asked about race and indie rock, commenting on New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones’s piece on race and indie rock, which criticizes indie rock for distancing itself from the African American influence in American music. Charles attributed this as the cause of much of what he found a little boring about indie rock.

Carl Wilson, author of the awesome 33 1/3 book about Celine Dion, has an equally compelling rebuttal to Frere-Jones that’s also worth reading. His Celine Dion book is an examination of taste and class and a totally great read on a lot of levels and he brings a lot of those ideas to bear in his response.

Another recent piece of music writing that came up in the discussion was this piece from the New York Times about indie rock finding its way into the hands of these young scions of Beverly Hills. Kaya and I exchanged several hand-wringing emails about it a few months back, unsure exactly what mixture of good and bad it represented. It seems encouraging that these young folks are interested in listening to and creating the odder extremes of music instead of plastic surgery but it also paints a sort of haunting picture. In an era in which the economics of making music are so bleak will only the wealthy and well-connected be able to create and distribute music?

But doomsday theories are a dime a dozen. I’m not sure why, considering the sometimes bleak news of magazine and newspaper closures, but I find myself oddly optimistic about the future of independent media. I’m not sure whether its intuition, naivete or some odd thoughts about how ‘The Long Tail’ theory might actually be kinder to smaller media sources than big ones but I think the future won’t be too terrible for fans and advocates of independent news, music, art and literatue.

It was a treat to meet the other panelists and to hear their thoughts. Thanks again to Kaya Oakes and Skylight for the opportunity for all of us to think and talk about one of life’s greatest pleasures, music. -Ben Bush