I’ve been struggling to write this, my final post for True/Slant. Writer’s block aside, it’s very difficult to sum up the fantastic experience I’ve had writing for this site and being a part of the True/Slant community.

To put it mildly, it’s been an absolute joy writing for True/Slant. I had no idea what to expect when I applied to write for the site last October with only a few writing clips under my belt. I received an e-mail from Coates Bateman less than 12 hours later, and, soon enough, I was off and running.

The thinking is innovation is the key to succeeding in journalism, and no doubt True/Slant brought that in force. Yet, this site did more than innovate: It cultivated a community. And that’s a testament to the True/Slant team’s fantastic work. This site was created with the believe of fostering a great range of voices, new and old.

I fit into the former category – probably as new to the field as they come – and I felt the kind of support one would expect was reserved for veterans of the industry. I felt it with the constant communication I had with Coates, Andrea Spiegel, Michael Roston and the rest of the folks at T/S headquarters, an experience that made me feel that I was an integral part of site. I felt it with the fantastic comments left by T/S reader and writers: Whether the words were critical or congratulatory, I relished the opportunity to create a communal forum and appreciated each and every response. I felt it with the communicative nature of the site, with a slew of fantastic writers giving their own spin on the news of the day and opening their lives up to one another.

Needless to say, I’ll miss writing for this site. And I’m hardly the only one. I’ve been lucky to have the wonderful opportunity to write for True/Slant: It felt like I purchased the winning lottery the day I joined the site, it felt like that with every post I wrote and it feels that way now.

As this version of True/Slant ends August 1, I’ll continue to keep my writing about music, culture and just about anything that catches my interest. Check out my personal site – leorgalil.com – for updates on my journalism work, follow me on Twitter (@imleor) and feel free to send me an e-mail (leorgalil at gmail dot com) if you want to say hello.

But – for now – goodbye. Thank you for reading.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Germany’s Love Parade, an annual dance music festival, was the scene of a terrible tragedy this weekend [via the L.A. Times]:

At least 19 people reportedly died at the Love Parade, a well-known dance event in the German city of Duisburg, and more than 340 were said to be injured as the apparent closure of a gate resulted in a suffocating crush of people. Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland was quoted in German press as saying the Love Parade was “one of the biggest tragedies the city has ever experienced,” and festival organizers announced Sunday that the event would be  discontinued permanently.

Yes, the incident is, to put it mildly, horrible. But how the aftermath is handled must be done carefully. The Economist’s coverage of the event displays a dangerous pitfall in the reaction to the deaths, yet one that’s understandable throughout:

IT IS going to take some time to sort out just what happened at this year’s “Love Parade” and who is to blame.

That statement, specifically “who is to blame,” seems to reside in many of the emotions one would expect to encounter after a tragedy like this. And I fear that in such a state of emotions, the scenario to permanently shut down these kinds of events will move from “an option” to the popularly-supported option, aka “the option.” There’s no doubt that, in the search for “someone to blame” or “those responsible,” part of the focus will eventually focus on the music itself. Individuals will come out of the woodwork to speak out against live music, in this case techno and trance specifically, and others will join in the conversation. It’s already happened in L.A., where the city government established a “rave task force” after a grim death at a music festival this summer [via the L.A. Times]:

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to establish a task force to examine and “enhance rave safety” after last month’s Electric Daisy Carnival led to more than 100 hospitalizations. A 15-year-old girl died last week of a suspected drug overdose after attending the two-day dance event at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and adjoining Exposition Park, which drew between 80,000 and 100,000 people per day.

While it’s great to see county boards showing they care by creating tasks forces after a tragic event, it’s often painful knowing that, sometimes, these events could have been prevented because of better oversight prior to the event. Take the E2 Nightclub tragedy in 2003, where 21 people died in a stampede at the Chicago nightclub. A report on the stampede [see article sidebar] revealed a number of license violations, ranging from liquor license issues to capacity violations, that were reported months prior to the tragic event. With better communication between the various government branches, those 21 individuals may not have had to die.

While improved government oversight is key, there must be checks and balances. There’s something insidious in a rave task force because it focuses far too much on a specific genre of music, as if outcasting it simply by name rather than by, say, security issues across the board. There appears to be a new movement to place an overwhelming amount of pressure – economically and bureaucratically – on those who host the events, and not at all in a constructive manner.

There’s Chicago’s promoter’s ordinance, which calls for untold fees placed upon mid-sized and small venues. So, rather than a renewed focus on, say, targeting venues with a history of safety issues (such as E2), the legislation merely targets any and all venues. It’s an ordinance that reeks of faux-responsibility, while having the potential to do irreparable damage to the city’s independent music community which lives in the small venues, practically driving underground music, well, underground. Though the ordinance is tabled, it could come back for a vote at any time. All the while a businessman by the name of Kevin Killerman, who has a history of liquor license violations and a handful of bars in his command, has near-exclusive control over alcohol sales at Lollapalooza. Legislation should be made to prevent the irresponsible from handling such massive live events, instead of hindering an entire city’s cultural experience.

The same thing has been in the works in Philadelphia. That bill provides the police department with near-complete control over the entire city’s live music. Again, the potential to kill off many small live music venues due to an overly-bureaucratic paperwork system, mostly because of a fracas at a large concert. And again, a misdirection of focus on those responsible. I fear the same may happen in L.A., in Germany, and elsewhere in the world.

It’s valid when The Economist wisely ponders the question of how long it will take to find those responsible. Yet, the recent-past has shown that responsibility is an ambiguous word. It’s an ambiguous word when the former owners of E2 were sentenced to two years in prison, and the decision was made nearly seven years after the tragedy. It’s an ambiguous word when headline-grabbing legislation is created to defer obligations to public safety to those who have protected crowds from danger day after week after month after year. It’s an ambiguous word when the issue at hand gets distorted by a fear of a foreign sound, be it techno or something else. Here’s hoping that, no matter what happens, those who would go to great extremes to see live music don’t end up suffering.

Another day, another e-mail from Universal Music Group Distribution CEO Jim Urie. Last time he urged people to write to Congress to support Music Rights Now, an organization that wants Congress to step in on music pirating. All well and good, except that their thinking is fairly backwards, and the organization’s wish to get Congress to regulate ISPs is more than unnerving.

With his latest e-mail, Urie proudly writes how the response “has been remarkable – nearly 14,000 messages to Congress have already been sent!”

Yes, almost 14,000 messages! That’s right, less than 14,000 people took the enormous amount of time needed to fill out an online form.

That’s a lot of messages. Here’s how to put it into a greater perspective:

-It’s nearly 4.98 times the number of physical copies that The Melvins’s The Bride Screamed Murder sold in its first week, enough for that band to crack the Billboard 200! (2,809 copies)

-It’s nearly 4.39 times the number of people who tweeted about The Huffington Post’s brief about the cover of Katy Perry’s new album in less than seven hours! (3,189 tweets)

-It’s nearly 7.5 percent of the number of people who like Animal Collective on Facebook! (186,650 likes)

-It’s nearly 1.2 percent of the number of visits to the Hype Machine in May 2010! (1,162,556 visits according to compete.com)

-It’s nearly .0056 percent of the number of views Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” has gotten on YouTube! (249,115,097 plays)

You get the picture. Urie’s stand on the issue aside, the man should certainly be concerned that, despite the number of people who filled out an online form to support him, there are millions and millions of music lovers, fans and consumers who, for one reason or another, aren’t getting behind him.

You can read Urie’s email below:

Dear LEOR ,

The response to the industry’s campaign on music piracy last month (below) has been remarkable – nearly 14,000 messages to Congress have already been sent!  The feedback and interest among our community has been overwhelming.   Together, I am confident Congress will hear our call — but we need to be louder still.

If you have not yet sent an e-mail to Congress via this link, please do.  It only takes a moment and will make a difference.

If you have already sent an e-mail to your members of Congress – thank you.  Please consider making an even bigger impact by asking your friends, family and colleagues to join us.  You can easily forward the e-mail by clicking here.

I’ll be in touch in the weeks ahead to update you on Congressional activity and other opportunities to get involved in protecting and defending the industry and art form that we all love.  In the meantime, be sure to join our Facebook community on www.musicrightsnow.org for news and information of interest.

Sincerely,
Jim Urie
Learn More at www.musicrightsnow.org

Image via Wikipedia

For the past four years, Baltimore’s Whartscape presented pop music on the edge of the avant-garde: Any hot band worth talking about now and several years from now seemed to play Whartscape at some point. As the festival hits its fifth year, it will also meet its untimely demise, as Dan Deacon told The Baltimore Sun [via Impose]:

“I don’t think it can get any larger,” Deacon said. “We do it for the love of arranging the festival, and I still love doing it, but I don’t want it to become an institution — something that just happens. I’d like to try something new next year and branch out.” …

There’s a bittersweet tinge to Deacon’s statement. Obviously, the man is proud to see his accomplishments grow in the way they have. But it must be weary, and anyone as intelligent as Deacon must be aware of the Icarus principle of pop: What shoots for the sun must come down. Hard. The Baltimore scene found some well-deserved limelight during the later part of the past decade, largely thanks to Dan Deacon.

Yet, unlike many other American towns that get eaten up by the music press for one reason or another, there was always something special about Baltimore that made it seem distinct from previous entrances in pop music geography. There was never a “Baltimore sound” in the way that one could equate grunge with Seattle, post-hardcore with D.C., Motown with Detroit, etc. In Baltimore, Deacon could make his odd mish-mash of glitchy, spazzy electronica alongside the likes of post-punk trio Double Dagger and the ambient anti-folk of Beach House, and it all seemed to work, and it continues to work.

Eventually, the music press packed up and found the next hot item in indie music, and the scene in Baltimore has continued to progress. And though Deacon’s announcement of the end of Whartscape is certainly well thought out – institutionalizing and traditionalizing an event can sometimes hurt creativity – it’s slightly painful to see the event end. I’ve watched it from afar, and felt the thrill of Whartscape through some great coverage by Impose and a number of other websites and blogs.

Perhaps it’s all for the best: If Deacon fears the festival would fall into an uncreative, rote tradition, then more power to him for mixing things up before it reaches such a level. And here’s hoping the future of Baltimore’s independent arts scene will continue to grow organically, limelight or not.

“Welcome to the magic kingdom,” said a ticket-taker at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Irony and humor aside, the volunteer’s invocation of the idea of Walt Disney World was quite apt. Music festivals – especially multi-day fests – are often not terribly pleasant experiences. Long days on your feet out in the sun, packed in with thousands of strangers and forced to doll out wads of cash on water and crummy food.

The Pitchfork Music Festival, created by the popular music website of the same name, on the other hand, provided one of the most pleasant massive live-music experiences imaginable. The fifth-annual festival (sixth if you count the Pitchfork-curated Intonation Festival in ‘05) filled Union Park with three days of eclectic music. Lineup aside, the atmosphere fused everything that makes a festival like Pitchfork an enjoyable, unique experience. Absent were the massive banners advertising brand “x” and “y,” with only a handful of booths displaying their brand name in spare parts of the park. The slaughterhouse feel that pervades many Live Nation-branded festivals and parks was missing too: The price of food was low, the cost of water was lower (and continued to drop with the heat) and those who worked the festival treated attendees with, well, a proper sense of camaraderie. As the staff made an effort to pass free bottles of water to those in need and brought a Greyhound onto the park grounds for anyone seeking air conditioning, the sense of compassion amongst attendees was high thanks to a shared love of the music being played.

The music itself was another story. If anyone was skeptical of Pitchfork’s diversity of musical taste, one glance at the festival’s two main stages would have changed their mind quickly. With a schedule that sandwiched a performance by the toned-down, orchestral indie stylings of St. Vincent between sets by spazzy, hard-and-heavy noise duo Lightening Bolt and the electro-dance crew known as Major Lazer, it’s hard to argue against the festival having featured varied genres of music.

It made for a festival that was exciting, exhausting and hard to predict. Like any mass gathering of musicians, there are a few bum notes. Panda Bear proved an utter bore, divorcing whatever tunefulness and individuality he brought to his medium of electronic-drone and churning out a fairly uninteresting and excruciatingly long set. Similarly, Girls sucked what little life was in their stylistically-pedicured fuzz-rock out of their performance and left it elsewhere. Hampered by audio glitches, Sleigh Bells grasped for something – anything – to help them make noise and stand out against the brazenly loud pre-recorded instrumental track that threatened to swallow the duo whole. Liars’s post-punk noise freakouts seemed to evaporate into thin air before the emotional complexity of the tunes registered with the crowd.

Fortunately, a lot of these little glitches were few and far between. Throughout the three-day festival lay many solid sets, surprises and genuinely fantastic musical voices. Robyn and Delorean brought some excellent dance tunes that simmered in the heat, while LCD Soundsystem made some emotionally-taught freak-out funk live on through the night. Alienation sounded great, as Titus Andronicus churned out fist-pumping, Americana-soaked crust punk for all to enjoy, while WHY? tackled the issue with a distinctly American hybridization of hip-hop, indie, electronica and some curveball experimentation tossed in. Beach House succeeded where many atmospheric bands would have failed, tossing out finely-focused, dreamy anti-folk tunes, while the equally aurally-focused group CAVE churned out a handful of lean, mean krautrock-inspired, classic rock-inflected jams. Big Boi cranked out old OutKast material and solo songs like there was no tomorrow.

The list goes on, quite literally, and it’s hard to squeeze in every last band. Sure, not every band arrived with the same eye-grabbing status that Sunday night headliner Pavement brought with it (the band put on a perfectly imperfect performance, which, depending on who you talk to, is either good or bad), but many acts had some great moments. However, the real kicker may not have been in the complex guitar noodling on stage C at a specific time, but that everything seemed to come together so well in the span of three days: The bands, the fans and the atmosphere blended together in one great, euphoric event. A magic kingdom indeed.

Delorean – “Real Love”: