🚀 go-pugleaf

First of all I just want to state for the record that I didn't start
this thread in order to provoke an argument with the Chronicle, or with
other respondents, for that matter - I stated my position and then let
the thread run its course.  Nor do I intend to descend into the type of
personal attacks seen in these newsgroups as of late; I framed this
discussion in terms of cultures rather than persons, and that is how I
intend for it to remain.

I expected, and have yet to recieve, responses explaining exactly how
the Austin Music Network is a judicious expenditure of sorely needed
funding while the City of Austin sinks even deeper into debt, and while
emergency services continue to lag far behind the city's growth rate. 
Instead, I got counterpoints consisting of "get a life, ASSHOLE" (got
one, thanks); unimpressive endorsements of AMN from people with a
financial interest in its continued existence; some agreements (m�rci),
and some college boy calling my opinion "laughable."  That's fine, you
know, that's Usenet - but not exactly worth my time.

A full column in the Chronicle, however, rather merits a response, I
suppose, if for no other reason than to counter the thinly veiled
insinuation of racism on my part in said column.  I will therefore treat
this column ("TV EYE," page 35, Volume 16, No. 47) as if it had been
posted to Usenet, since the author apparently was unable to address my
posting here, and instead opted to speak from the unanswerable position
of her measly Chronicle throne.

Margaret Moser (TVEye@auschron.com) wrote:

> Most of my friends will agree that I spend a lot of time on the Net.
> "Pathological Use," one described it.  Huh?  I say, while cursing
> our still-inoperable server.  Rats.  No Net.  That means I couldn't
> get to that letter posted in several Austin newsgroups calling for
> the elimination of the Austin Music Network; the letter cited the
> network in the recent rape-murder that happened close to the police
> station and the writer places "...the blame for this horrific atrocity

> squarely on the shoulders of irresponsible city leaders who, for
> some insane reason, consider the means for beer-swilling, dope-
> smoking, guitar-grubbing losers to attain some paltry degree of
> local celebrity, more important than putting enough police on our
> streets to create an intimidating presence for scumfuck criminals."
> (The Usenet writer had previously attacked an "aging Chronicle
> scenester hack plugging 'gigs' for talentless, futureless alleged
> 'musicians.'"  In his defense, I would like to point out that Andy
> Langer is in his mid-twenties and is only rarely seen on AMN.)

It was "consider PROVIDING the means..."  Don't edit my writing - I
don't work for the Chronicle.

> All kidding aside, this line of thinking is appalling (though not as
> appalling as the vision of an Austin with police officers lining the
> streets to create an "intimidating presence."  I bet even the cops
> think that's ludicrous.).

Do I really have to explain a ridiculously old clich� such as "putting
police on our streets"?  Are you genuinely ignorant of this expression? 
Because, I mean, it's only been uttered by EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN
running for office in this country since, oh, WORLD WAR II.

Since apparently I have to articulate it explicitly, my point was this:
Austin needs to hire enough police officers to substantially increase
its police-to-citizen ratio, especially considering the enormous growth
the city has experienced in recent years.  New York's violent crime rate
is DOWN, Austin's is UP.  The reason is POLICE PRESENCE, or lack
thereof.  The meaning of "putting enough police on our streets to create
an intimidating presence," used in this context, should be obvious - and
you offered no argument that could undermine this position, or even
indicate that you understood it.

Instead of addressing my point, you made a weak attempt at ridicule and
dismissal by suggesting that I meant the statment literally - as in, I
want TEN COPS in RIOT GEAR on EVERY STREET CORNER.  Don't insult my
intelligence - my point was, and is, valid, as further demonstrated by
this week's rape / murder on the Barton Creek greenbelt.  It's not that
I want police EVERYWHERE; rather, I want them ANYWHERE they're needed. 
But what's the current status of the Austin Police Department?  WE DON'T
EVEN HAVE A POLICE CHIEF!

Somebody in the previous thread claimed that 3.2 police officers could
be funded with the money in AMN's budget.  To this I respond: GREAT! 
It's a start.  If one of those 3.2 police officers had been on foot
patrol along the greenbelt, perhaps there'd have been one less murder
victim to bury this year.  If one of those 3.2 police officers had been
within shouting distance of that aforementioned darkened parking lot,
perhaps there'd have been TWO less victims, and a young woman wouldn't
have been sodomized and left tied to a tree, naked, bleeding and
weeping.

When it comes to city government, there are priorities, and then there
are PRIORITIES, and I for one am getting SICK of the marauding
gangbangers, degenerate bums and shitbag parolees pissing all over
law-and-order in this town, while the city (and the Chronicle, for that
matter) keeps prattling on about its stupid, insignificant "music
scene."  And I am FAR from being the only one, despite whatever cultural
blinkeredness you happen to be operating behind.

> It's not that AMN is above criticism - they've taken it on the
> chin from me more than once here, and the Chron's cover
> story on them earlier this year was less than impressed with
> its behind-the-scenes goings-on (which sort of makes the
> Usenet writer's other assertion of AMN as a "subsidized
> mouthpiece for The Austin Chronicle" somewhat specious.)

Oh, please.  The relationship between the Chronicle and AMN is the most
nepotistic I've ever seen, except perhaps for the relationship between
the Chronicle and the "music scene" itself.  You and I both know that
when it comes to Austin, every band, every musician, every writer and
artist and filmmaker, LIVES and DIES by how close they are to the
Chronicle.  You hype your FRIENDS and the people who KISS YOUR ASSES
through the ROOF (until their inevitable failure... ARC Angels, anyone? 
Pariah?  Sincola?  Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom?), while everyone else gets
maybe a footnote, if not blatantly ignored.

The SAME is true for the content of the Austin Music Network - the
Chronicle "validates" AMN and vice-versa.  It doesn't MATTER if you
occasionally criticize them, in some faint attempt to appear objective
or detached - AMN will still ONLY play material that would meet with
approval from the whole incestuous Chronicle culture, to the point where
you might as well be doing their playlist.  Does ANYONE on the city's
"music commission," which serves as the channel's advisory board, get
their post without being hand-picked by Chronicle scenesters?  Could
ANYONE whose nomination you OPPOSED ever POSSIBLY receive that
appointment?  Of course not - you've set yourselves up as the local
cultural dictators, and you guard that position jealously (as your
column demonstrates), and you might as well just admit it, because
EVERYBODY KNOWS IT.
 
> The Austin Music Network is a result of the city finally
> having put its money where its mouth is, an effort to support
> the "Live Music Capital of the World" slogan it adopted so
> blithely and supported with little more than a bumpersticker
> campaign.  As with all government-funded projects, the reality
> is much different from the dream.

And HOW much money has the city put "where its mouth is" thus far? 
What, almost a cool million?  And now AMN wants even MORE?  So, what
exactly does the city get in return from this investment?  Oh, I see -
it proves that it's the "Live Music Capitol of the World."  Ah... well,
NOW I get it!  Yes!  MORE MONEY!  We've gotta VALIDATE that stupid
SLOGAN!

Los Angeles has no local music channel, New York has no local music
channel, Seattle has no local music channel, Nashville has no local
music channel, nor San Francisco, nor Chicago, nor ANYPLACE which
produces bands that garner a NATIONAL following.  You might think this
establishes Austin as some sort of incomparably brilliant "music scene,"
but in reality, it does nothing but confirm its reputation as a
backwater full of pretentious wannabees, and, yes, culturally and
artistically irrelevant "music."  Ten miles outside of the city limits,
nobody gives a damn about Austin music - that's why the
too-appropriately -entitled "Austin City Limits" VERY RARELY features
local acts, IF AT ALL.

> The Usenet post-man is perfectly entitled to trash Stevie
> Ray Vaughan if he wants; heroes are for that too, but he then
> dismisses the entire music scene as "culturally and artistically
> irrelevant."  When he goes on to cite 8 1/2 Souvenirs as being
> just that, I have to wonder, does this also include the Bells Of
> Joy, Martin Banks and Ruben Ramos?

Well, YEAH.  To illustrate my point, take a trip to the Bay Area, and
ask 100 random people whether they've ever heard of them.  Do the same
thing in New York, Los Angeles, and anyplace else you choose.  Everyone
will say "no."

> Is Starfish any less relevant than Willie Nelson?

Of course they are.  Willie Nelson has a GLOBAL following, and besides
that, he was an established NASHVILLE musician who ultimately MIGRATED,
not to Austin, but to Pedernales.  If he'd spent his entire life HERE,
nobody would've heard of HIM, either.  Starfish?  Who's that?  Who
cares?

> Pam Hart over Nanci Griffith over Tish Hinojosa?

Putting aside the obscure nature of this sentence:  Nobody cares, nobody
cares, nobody cares.

> Chris Wall or the Ugly Americans or the Butthole Surfers?

Chris Wall:  Never heard of him, and I've lived here for a decade.  I
regularly hear more from, and about, bands from Olympia, Washington than
I EVER hear about Austin bands, except, of course, in the Chronicle. 
Name one bona-fide, created-here-and-still-lives-here Austin band that's
been featured in the NME in the past five years.  ...That's what I
thought.

The Ugly Americans:  Didn't your own paper run a big column detailing
how they were basically hissed from the stage at an L.A. club?  And now
you're claiming that they matter?  White-boy dumb-ass "funk"... yeah,
whatever.

The Butthole Surfers:  Had a cult following that was confined mostly to
the Austin / Texas region for about twenty years, then moved to Los
Angeles and scored one college-chart top-ten single.  Austin's one
quasi-success story, musically speaking, in recent history, despite the
fact that most people outside the state haven't the slightest idea where
they're from.  I don't exactly see Gibby Haynes hyping the Austin "music
scene" on any regular basis... okay, not ever.

> Is La Diferenzia "artistically irrelevant," or just bands like
> Vallejo?

I don't know - how many tens of thousands of albums have they sold?  How
many other musicians (OUTSIDE the city limits) cite them as influences? 
I'm not stating that commercial success = relevance; far from it.  But
consider bands such as Beat Happening (Olympia, WA.) or My Bloody
Valentine (Manchester, U.K.) - neither of which sell anywhere near as
much as fucking stupid smashing pumpkins or really-fucking-stupid
marilyn manson, but BOTH of which are cited as HUGE influences and
SUPREMELY relevant musicians by critics, musicians and fans alike,
worldwide.  Austin has NO such counterpart, despite how "cool" the
Chronicle culture considers its pet acts.

> AMN has never acted as or pretended to be an arbiter of
> popular taste;

You didn't score very well on your reading comprehension tests, did
you?  The term "self-appointed local arbiters of 'hipness'" was in
reference to YOURSELVES at the Chronicle.  I consider AMN a hapless,
inept bureaucratic agency whose aesthetic and perspectives are dictated
by the same Chronicle hacks who purport to determine all that is Right
and Good about Austin.  Without the Chronicle scenesters backing it, AMN
would have no reason to exist, and in fact WOULD NOT EXIST.

> To dismiss the astonishingly diverse ethnic musical styles
> seen on such a unique medium is both ignorant and frightening.

Or, put another way, I'm just some angry racist who can't stand to see
minority acts get exposure, however pitiful.  What a pathetic
"argument."  Oooo, gee, since I'm anti-AMN, I must hate all other races
than my own, because AMN will occasionally play a Tejano clip.  WOW,
such PIERCING GENIUS - I'm so SHAMED, I think I'll go crawl into a HOLE
and DIE.

As I said before, most of AMN's programming consists of non-local acts. 
Whenever it does play local music, these are almost always
white-boy-blues bands, white-boy-funk bands, ridiculous
white-losers-with-stuffed-pants "heavy metal" hair bands from 1991,
white bumpkins, white alterna-crap, or white idiot lesbians reading
"poetry" over white-guilt-ridden "folk" music.  Gee, maybe I AM
prejudiced - AGAINST _WHITE_ PEOPLE like myself!

Like I said before, I have no problem with any local nobody band going
and getting themselves put on an access show - it rather seems that's
what access is FOR, given the overabundance of music programming on
channels 10 and 16.  What I OPPOSE is the city using scarce tax dollars
to create this SPECIAL CHANNEL for the "elite" acts (as determined by
the local elitists at the Chronicle), which is exactly the case with AMN
- neither you nor anyone else has offered anything even remotely close
to an argument to the contrary.

But despite all of this, I'll be diplomatic.  You want to keep the
Austin Music Network?  Fine.  Here's my proposal, and the Chronicle
should advance it in its next issue, since you considered my first post
so important.  This city needs a sales tax hike, and it needs it five
years ago.  The city should just go ahead and raise the sales tax to a
solid dime - it could call the proposal "ten for tomorrow" or some such
pablum.  The resultant revenue could easily fund all of the necessary
enhancements to the city's infrastructure and emergency services, with
enough left over to fund AMN until hell freezes.  I still won't like it,
but I'll resent it a lot less if I can get a cop to my house before the
burglar murders my family, or let my wife go out alone for a loaf of
bread (or a walk in the park) without having to worry so much about her
being carjacked, raped and strangled.

Until then, anyone who considers funding AMN more important than funding
additional police is an irresponsible child, still either vicariously or
directly pursuing the rock-star fantasy that everyone else gave up in
10th grade.  Grow the hell up, already.

Or if that's just too unappealing (and it probably is), how about you go
to the funeral of our latest murder victim, and explain to her family
that, sorry, we just couldn't afford to assign a police patrol to the
Barton Creek greenbelt, because we needed that money to prove that we're
the "Live Music Capitol of the World."  I'm sure that'll make them feel
much better about their loss - it was a necessary sacrifice, after all,
for the good of the "music scene."