The Scene, man...

Even if it's experimental avant garde folk, or experimental avant garde noise, or whatever, it's all sort of this cohabitation that's going on now in that scene that I find just amazing. That's always been where I'd like to be. It resonates so much more with me.

-Thurston Moore as dictated to Pitchfork

So I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a little while now, and had always figured that my thoughts weren't particularly relevant. As anyone from here will gladly tell you, Perf is (apparently) the most isolated capital city in the world, so consequently I had figured that our (more mainstream) musical scene had a bit of a genre associated with it because there weren't enough people here to make enough of much else.

I'm talking here about any shit that gets whored out by triple j primetime, and it really is a bit of an incestuous pit from which these people come. I don't know the name of the record company holding it all together, but anyone in this town who has made it is somehow connected to everybody else. The Steele family, obviously. I think Katie dated or is dating or is dating the brother of someone in End Of Fashion. Whose first bassist was the one from Jebediah. Interconnected. Yeah.

But then I know that there's a lot more going on beneath the surface. Nowadays everyone knows of Snowman, but they started out as being very detached from this scene. There's a lot going on. Like Mr Moore says, it doesn't matter what's happening, as long as it's happening. Does this mean that music has evolved from the typical genre-scene that was so prevalent for so long beforehand. The oft-cited example being Seattle/Geffen. But also Madchester/Factory Records, New York and the Blondie/Ramones/CBGB and so forth. Is Perth the last stronghold of the genre-scene?!

What with the world-wide-web existing and so forth, all that wank Baudrillard and Mcluhan spouted seems to be actually happening, with people losing ties to their geographical location and finding allies and collaborators further afield, allowing them to make what they want with who they want. Is the genre-scene nothing more than a giant compromise between undoubtedly great people? I think that question is for another time.

To answer the question of Perth being a fortress against the tyranny of post-modernism and Global Villagery, I'm probably leaning towards no. It's happening in other places, but much more below the surface. I'm only really aware of the Perth thing because I live here. Chicago/Minnesota, as far as I know have bit of a thing happening around Fog/Dosh/etc. There's the Anticon phenomenon, and I'm not really familiar with anything else really being a collective scene happening in San Fran. And there are definite die hards of the Pan-Formalist Groan-Huck Movement in Sydney.