And Then There's This_ How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture - Bill Wasik [26]
It was a great story, Tapes ’n Tapes, every bit as good as the story of Annuals. A new band, sprung up from nothing to become something—this was the prototypical tale told by music journalists, of which I happened to be one. As Richards poured out his enthusiasm, as we sat there on a beat-up leather couch, 120 Days was still next door, plying their synths in the studio: another new band and another great story, no doubt. But a question nagged at me, and I put it to Richards with almost a twinge of embarrassment, at asking him to interrupt his reverie about new bands. Why did so many of these bands disappear? What about the second album, or the third? Why did indie rock seem to have become wave after wave of disposable new bands? Richards thought for a bit before answering.
“You have these bands working really, really hard,” he replied. “They’re writing great songs, they’ve had five years maybe; and their best material is going to make it on their first album.” But then, he went on, “You have a label involved at this point, you have deadlines now—another album in six months, nine months.”
Richards said he now assumed that he would not even see second albums, even from bands he loved, no matter how good their sound. “Even an Annuals,” he said. “I’m not even thinking about a second album from them. I just assume that this is the document that I have. . . . You think: ‘This is a great movie—I hope there’s not a sequel.’ ”
But when pressed further, Richards acknowledged that he and the other indie-rock tastemakers bore some share of the blame. “A big deal with us is discovery,” he said. “And you’re discovering not just a song; you’re discovering a band. When you’re just discovering a second album, there’s not as much hype involved.” He began to recount his own discovery of the Pixies, in 1988, and as he spoke his speech became subtly emotional, his hands began to clench. “I heard Surfer Rosa when I walked in a record store, and it changed my life. And you know, all the other albums I heard after that were great, but man, it never equaled that. . . . It was like a drug, I guess. You take the drug, you never get that high again, you know?”
He laughed at this, but he was coming to the crux of something. “It gets harder and harder to achieve that,” he said. “You keep thinking—I want to be the one to discover that band. When you hear someone talk about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and you’re hearing that David Byrne loves them, or David Bowie. And—wow, I saw them! And it was packed!
“But the second time,” he went on, “well, now it sold out early, and it’s at a bigger club. And I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not the guy discovering them. I’m just a guy who is with everybody else who also knows who they are.”
THERE’S TWO SIDES TO THAT SHIT
One unlikely outpost of the hipster archipelago can be found in a strip mall in Carrboro, North Carolina. At the rightmost end of a startlingly hideous facade, the top half of which consists of some strange, brown corrugated metal that harkens back to 1980s slapdash futurism, the Cat’s Cradle sits nonchalantly, as if a rock club somehow naturally belonged there alongside the video store and the Amante Gourmet Pizza. Despite its prosaic setting, the club is a longstanding and vital node in the national indie-rock network. To scan the list of bands playing at Cat’s Cradle in any given year is to get a decent sense for the “big” indie bands that are touring the United States that year; one would find general overlap with any list of bands playing at, for example, the Bowery Ballroom or the Knitting Factory in New York; at the 9:30 Club or the Black Cat in Washington, D.C.; at First Avenue or the 400 Bar in Minneapolis; at the Middle East in Boston; at Hailey’s in Denton, Texas; at the Casbah in San Diego; at the Earl in Atlanta; at the Metro or the Abbey in Chicago; at Bimbo’s or the Independent in San Francisco; at Chop Suey or the Showbox in Seattle; or at the shows put on in Philadelphia by Sean Agnew’s R5 Productions, many of which take place in the basement of a Unitarian church