Truesday: The Movement Below

And I think there’ll be too much speculation about its structure to allow it proper time to become whatever the fuck it’s on its way to becoming.

Let me explain by meandering a whole bunch, getting meaninglessly tangential about whatever suits my mood, and then acting like I’ve done a great job of tying it all together at the end. Like every good journalist does.

Savlov’s got a good point concerning the recent rise of DJ prominence in his article. It wasn’t but two years ago that DJs were LUCKY to get regular gigs of any kind that didn’t involve suckling the Top 40 teet. Before that was the whole House and Rave thing, which were, believe it or not, hugely exciting during their time(s). But, alas, they faded away. I do believe the last of their ilk finally disappeared in 2002.

That was that.

I could make the Savlov jump from there and explain exactly what it is that we have today, but we’re far, far, far too close to it to have any reliable clue. So I’ll simply describe my way up to it and then speculate wildly about things which are likely so far off base that they should never even be mentioned.

Because I can.

There was a period between 2000 and 2005, during the House drop-off, where Hip Hop moved into high popularity, quickly went Top 40, and then things got so utterly confused that every club, bar, and hotel elevator seemed to have the same goddamn soundtrack. It got blingy, stale, and even the backpacker kids started thining out. Then “Indie” returned to Austin, and the kids turned back inward to local Austin music/art for inspiration. I’m going to try and briefly map that moment.

Soon after the fall of Tech-House Neo-Garage Speed Trip-Hop Dear Lord Not Another Genre, I was blessed to witness the brief but steep rise, subsequent misinterpretation, and heady fall of the much-maligned Turntablist movement here in Austin (closely linked to the Hip Hop Humpdays of The Mercury Room, in days of yore). Not blessed to see it go, but blessed to have been fortunate enough to see such a sharp and wondrous display. Nack. Mel. Chicken George. A handful of others and their visiting cohorts from bigger markets. They’re all still here, because their abilities are undeniable, and their tastemaking skills are coming back into play.

For that, and them, I am thankful. But Austin wasn’t as excited as it could have been, and it faded away.

I suppose what is most germane to whatever it is that’s happening today, started during that Turntablists’ stint. A weird sort of, well, a “happening” as it were, emerged from the back room of Whisky Bar. Thursday nights. Some classification-defying, total cluster-fuck CD shuffle-disaster that was just brimming with shitty haircuts, meshback hats, and pit-stained sweatiness. I happened in there on a whim, on some 1st Thursday back in late 2004. Whoever the hell was back there, up in the crow’s nest and safely out of my sight, was playing shit like The Smiths, Postal Service, Rod Stewart, The Rapture, and Michael McDonald. In that order.

Floored, I was.

Sure, that’s all typical and whatever now. But back then, when iPods were still a billion dollars and kids were heavy-blasting Lil’ John, it was a brilliant rarity. I don’t care who you were, or what crew you rolled with, that was a weird-ass mix to hear in someone’s car, let alone live in a bar. Especially since the DJs were making NO attempt whatsoever to blend, match beats, or anything even remotely resembling a pleasant transition. Almost as if they were giving the historic tradition of club Djing the middle finger. These fools were just needle-dropping like BAM! NEW RECORD IS NOW PLAYING! Most times I don’t even think they used vinyl. It was a mish-mash swapperoo between shitty MP3s and CDs, with the occasional record here and there, which was an absolute outrage to many, and plain sacrilege to those who followed the Turntablists.

Sometimes they’d even put on an album they really liked and just let that fucker go. Like when the DJ had to take a shit or whatever. One time it was U2’s Boy. They let it play for the first three songs while the DJ made a phone call outside. Then he climbed back up into the crow’s nest and put on another CD. Even as a vinyl purist, I was always pleased with their selection.

Always.

Looking back, what was important about this particular Thursday night gig was that it introduced a new sense of scene which had been seriously lacking since the raver days. It was more like a house party than it was a bar. It felt like we were all kickin’ it in someone’s backyard. But the yard party had found a legit home, with working plumbing, on a dependable day of the week. Some sort of “event” for goers to attach themselves to.

Not that these people were the first to ever forge a scene in this manner. Sure, there were the backpackers and hip hop heads that tooled about, mucking up the doorways and bathrooms of Plush and the like. And the Emo’s throngs before that. But all the more recent groups were rooted almost strictly in college culture. The vast majority of them were not graduates. They were in Austin for school, not by trade or choice.

They too, would soon dwindle in rank and numbers.

But the people who were packing that back room at Whisky Bar were grown-ass folk. They were existing amongst grown shit like real jobs, health insurance, and full-blown alcoholism. They weren’t fucking around. And when they danced to Joy Division and The Strokes, even when the two songs were beaten together with a claw hammer, they went sweaty crazy and spilled Maker’s Mark all over the goddamn place. Broken glass everywhere. You couldn’t see through the Parliament haze of the upstairs. Everyone was packed in there like a fraternity house donkey show, and it was obvious that no one minded the closeness of it one bit. In fact, one could easily interpret that everyone WANTED it that way.

And in that crowd of drunken, laughing, and misbehaving post collegiates, you would have found the future owners of several local bars, members of many future-favorite local bands, clothing designers, flocks of soon-to-be media collectives, writers, painters, promoters, advertisers, on and on. They were all there, kickin’ it, bumping into each other’s backs and inadvertently putting cigarette burns in each other’s shirts.

The age of Austin Hipsters had finally come.

I say “finally” because it was a full five years after Brooklyn was already tired of them smugging about on Bedford Ave.

--- previous paragraphs were subject to my poor memory, the following are subject to my poor opinion ---

And that leads us to today, which is where I believe there will be some necessary confusion. You see, Austin is in its next moment. Not yet a movement, but certainly a “moment”. We always get opportunities to DO something. Those opportunities are the moments, whereas the somethings are the movements.

We rarely see full-fledged movements around here. Rarely.

There’s always a group of youth, every three years or so, who is “on the cusp of DOING something!” Something amazing. Massive in potential scope! Probably artistic and important! Maybe even important on a national if not international scale! And if those elements of creativity can manage to blah-blah-blah then they’ll be recreating the same conditions of the blah-blah art movement from back in nineteen seventy blah blah! It’ll be bigger than the love-child of Willie Fucking Nelson, born from Quentin Tarantino’s ass! But, more Dadaist in conceptual design, of course.

And in true Austin fashion, the spirit of what could have been will softly sink into its velvet coffin, drunk on free Lonestar from dozens of doting Austin lovers, and never be heard from again… unless it breaks the hell out of here, explodes somewhere else, and is periodically referred to as “ORIGINALLY from Austin”. Or unless/until it inevitably returns later on to find peaceful pasture and respite from the wild success found elsewhere. Butthole Surfers. Spoon. Linklater. Johnston. Fastball. List goes on.

I’m not sure that Fastball belongs with the others mentioned there. Well, maybe with Spoon. Tough call on that one.

The point being: rarely do moments turn into movements. And that doesn’t just go for Austin. That goes for anywhere. But I’m not talking about just anywhere. I’m talking HERE.

So, if there’s something different about the current situation, something different than five/ten/fifteen years ago that gives TODAY a potential unseen in over a decade, then what the hell is it? Why would the ideas of the people who are here today stick any better than those of the recent past? What makes today’s population and economic climate ripe for a jump from moment to movement?

1) People have stayed here beyond college in large numbers. There is a sizeable population of active twenty/thirty-somethings who DO shit here. They OWN shit here. They won’t be going back to Boston in two years after their Psych degree finally comes through. And it’s in these years that an individual’s drive to produce will skyrocket. More so if they’re surrounded by like-minded folk. So there’s a large population of people here who are active, young, have enough money to fund projects, and don’t intend on leaving any time soon.

2) Better organization. Everyone is connected. This is a given. People get more information about what’s going on in Austin off of blogs, texts, old school emails, and those crappy myspace bulletins than anywhere else. Word travels fast, and you can pull off an impromptu public pillow fight if you are so inclined. One has to CHOOSE to be isolated these days.

3) Support. The DJ groups are out there to provide a canvas of sorts, or a meeting place, a venue, or whatever, for everyone else to form around. They aren’t the scene itself, but are more of a beacon, a lightening rod, and a structure. The Leading Indicator that a moment may actually become a movement. The precursor to, and magnifier of, a movement. Other plentiful forms of support are the number of bars, restaurants, stage clubs, gallery spaces, performance spaces, DIY shops, and art studios (the Blue Genie variety) which are locally owned by others who are actually INVOLVED with each other’s efforts. A network of creative types in positions of influence who can and DO incorporate and mix between talents to augment their own endeavors. Synergy and shit.

So it isn’t specifically about the newest wave of “DJ culture”, the mix of Punk and Disco (please don’t let that be it, anyway), how close Austin will reproduce the LES scene of the early eighties or whatever. It’s not mash-ups, it’s not the building army of DIY fashionistas, or the overabundance of party photographers taking pictures of drunk kids passed out on sidewalks. It’s not expensive clothes, bushy beards, bleep-rock, robot sex, or corduroy.

Whatever it is, it has yet to arrive. And the one thing that will guarantee this moment will never become a movement, is if everyone stands around wasting their time speculating wildly about exactly what it will be. I’ll go so far as to say, at the risk of implicating myself, that if you’re burning minutes waxing philosophic about it, you’re probably too busy with that trivial, speculative nonsense to be a part of it.

If it ever becomes anything at all.

And I can’t believe you read all the way through that.