Respect your local music scene!

What was the best concert you have ever been to? And maybe even more important: Where was it? In a stadium, on some festival, in a small, club full of sweaty people or in a DIY venue in some abandoned building?

As I was living in a (relatively) small city last year, with no really big venue and furthermore no big names around I learnt something: The smaller concerts with local bands for cheap money are the best ones. Sometimes also the worst ones! But this is part of the game, also The Rolling Stones can play a bad show (but you probably paid a shitload of money to see them).

Luise Pop in action

How often do people go to concerts: Once a year? Maybe a few times? In my opinion the seldom attendance of music shows has something to do with their price. Bands with worldwide fame can easily sell their tickets for 100€ and more and nobody is complaing. But you should! They fill a whole stadium with people, sell 10.000+ tickets and play almost the same setlist in every city. The outcome: companies not necessarily connected to music make millions.

Most of us live in a city. No matter if big or small, there are always some local music venues and local bands that play there. If you are a music aficinado and REALLY interested in discovering new music, then go there, listen to bands you haven't heard of before, bands that have a few hundred likes on FB and get free drinks at the bar as payment for their gig.

The direct contact of musician and audience is something magical. It creates an experience, you can sink into the sounds, see the emotions created by the music on the faces of both the audience and the playing group. To attend a concert with thousands of other anonymous people is so different to an intimate club concerts. 

Wild Evel and his band The Staggers tearing up culture center WUK

I just feel that people need to get aware more of the music culture that is prospering around them. The money you spend for concert tickets goes to bands that are in need for it, that want to make a living off music and aren't established yet. It is like with food: you should support your local farmer and not Nestlé!

Another point I want to consider is the cultural environment. Everybody knows the New Orleans jazz scene, the San Francisco garage-rock movement or Berlin's vivid Techno playground. These are all local musical happenings before theh received worldwide recognition. Without the support of the local people, nobody would know these groovy scenes around the globe. The bands and musical microcosmos of a region are part of its culture, a culture that should not fall apart because of a lack of interest. 

I love to hear about the music scenes of other parts of the world and to discover new tunes and groups. So maybe we can start something here on the blog, share remarkable music from different parts of the world and show others the diversity and particularity in music of different places all over. To start, I will take a closer a look to the scene of my hometown Vienna and introduce you to some of my local heros.

Ernst Molden (with Resetarits, Soyka & Wirth) - Ho Rugg

The first one is a though one: Ernst Molden, a guy who is incorporating the Viennese spirit like no other, is one of the most prolific Austrian songwriters. Also the lyrics are sung in the local dialect and tell stories about the places and people that make Vienna the city it is.

The Staggers - Wild Teens

The most authentic garage-surf-trash rock combo you will find here. Their shows are wild havoc, you better get a few beers before going crazy in the crowd. 

Luise Pop - Feminist Terrorist

These girls make proper rock with a feminist attitude, that's probably enough to dig their music. Their front-women is not also a well-experienced songwriter but also an excellent guitar player. Listen also to: Time Is A Habit.

Ash My Love - Fire

Yeah, this two-piece band was emerging over the past two years in Vienna and I absolutely love their stripped-down, short and wild tunes. The music of Ash My Love is some kind of mix between punk, early blues (a la Robert Johnson) and garage rock. They recently released their debut album Honeymoon Blues.