First Notes/Reflections/Research

A few questions have come up since starting on this topic. First, what "scenes" are related to the specific one I have chosen to write about? What shows and events are relevant to my research? I've found, unfortunately, that specifically drum and bass shows are harder to come by in Providence than I had initially anticipated, so my first step was to identify a little more clearly what exactly I'm looking at. Myspace, surprisingly, and Lots of Noise, less surprisingly, was somewhat helpful.

As I said in my topic proposal, this scene is not very active on the internet, and with certain bands, this is a very purposeful decision. I'm lucky to have a good friend from Philadelphia in the band Snowstorm on tour right now. They'll be in Providence on March 1st, and are playing a show at a space in this area with a few local bands. Looking it up on the internet, while I was unable to find the location, I was able to find a few other bands that will be playing, and start off in the Providence scene from there. Unsurprisingly, many of the bands listed do not have Myspace pages, and the pages that do exist could be described as using the webspace in a less informative way. Black Pus, for example, is a Providence based performer and the drummer of Lightening Bolt. His pages seems to function mainly for access to a few tracks, announcing a few shows (but not always addresses), and posting art, both visual and written. The blog, which is updated quite frequently, consists of several strange, fictinal stories with characters with names like "Yabo". There are also links to a youtube clip of a performance, Black Pus (Brian Chippendale) with his characteristic mask utilizing his drums as well as electronic equipment. (I intend to find out more about the equipment these bands use.) The environment looks familiar, people standing around watching, sometimes moving around to it but mostly restrained to nodding their heads to the beat. I'm curious to see what the show on March 1st will be like in this sense.

*Quick note on a reference I made in the first paragraph: Lots of Noise is a blog on Providence local music (mostly punk, metal, noise, related stuff) with show listings by date as well. The Black Pus show on March 1st is notably listed as address ????????? and contact "ask a friend."

The last Lightening Bolt show I went to was in South Philadelphia, in a warehouse, and as usual for this band I had found out about the show from friends (and heard it was a secret location, which really seems to just mean it's not posted online). It was very crowded and very dark, and people did not stand still whatsoever during Lightening Bolt's set. I remember people climbing up to the rafters on the ceiling so they could be right above the band, sometimes dropping into the crowd. Of course, there was no stage (same deal in the youtube clip on MySpace for Black Pus) and the crowd was around the band, almost on top of the drummer. Being near the front, it took some serious physical effort not to fall onto the drumset. This didn't do anything to hinder the energy of the performance, of course. If anything, it intensified it. People were quite literally on top of each other as well, and at one point one of the kids close to Brian Chippendale got a drumstick cracked right on the forehead. He had a pretty good size welt, but kept right on headbanging, very much in the spirit of the show. With energy like that, it seems nothing can disrupt it.

In looking through related bands in the Providence area, the genre names stuck out to me as a point of interest. This scene does not, like many others, have a very specific style of music. I'm focusing on instrumental/electronic noise shows in warehouses; this is very specific. However, on myspace the genres of what are, in my opinion, very closely related bands, are called d-beat, drum and bass, experimental, big beat, psychedelic, grind, and a few others. Black Pus, for example, is listed as Big Beat. Snowstorm is listed as d-beat, drum and bass. Bellows, another band playing the March 1st show, is simply listed as "Other." A look through the bands listed under "Top Friends" on some of these pages revealed connections to other bands of different genres, ranging from metal to electronic and beyond. More detail on that later.

These are my first reflections/questions!