What if they gave a

Northwest Music Conference

and nobody came?

Article for the Stranger, 6/28/94

First, the bad news about the first Northwest Music Conference.

IMIJ and Meddaphysical didn’t show for their showcases. The all-eMpTy showcase at Oz and the Friday showcase at the OK Hotel were canceled altogether. The Colourbox showcases were turned into regular Colourbox gigs. The KCMU debate and the zine-publishing seminar didn’t happen. Several seminars were bereft of scheduled panelists. Several of the seminars that did go off as scheduled were sparsely attended, or had awkwardly-devised themes that didn’t always fit what the speakers and audiences were prepared to discuss. Keynote speaker Nat Hentoff was stranded at the airport and phoned in his speech to a near-empty ballroom, then called back and asked for his full $4000 fee. Only some 300 people (including invited guests) attended, 60 percent of the organizers’ initial goal.

Now, the good news. Plenty of showcases did go on and attracted large enthusiastic audiences. Many vital things were said at the seminars–especially at the packed Women In Rock panel. Many people learned important things about some of the more mysterious aspects of the music biz.

The Washington Music Industry Coalition says it plans to hold future conferences. Here’s my $.02 on how to plan the next one:

1) Don’t promise more than you’re capable of delivering. If you don’t have the corps of organized volunteers, don’t try to mount a big conference with dozens of panelists and exhibits.

2) The more visuals, the more better. Get an exhibit of poster art and band pictures. This year’s modest auction of Alice in Chains collectibles wasn’t enough.

3) Redefine the panels and seminars to meet the needs of the Northwest music community. Don’t settle for imitating the programming of larger festivals like the ones in NYC that cater to major-label “alternative” bands and bands that want to be on the majors. Instead of so many topics about teaching ambitious bands how to kowtow to the business, there should be hands-on instruction in making your own opportunities–getting a practice space, making a DAT tape, getting that first self-released CD made and marketed, getting gigs without getting (excessively) screwed, making posters, creating legal postering sites, making videos, working for more all-ages shows.

4) Get more of the music community involved. Where was Sub Pop? Where was Rhyme Cartel? Where were the management and promotion companies?

5) Get more commercial exhibitors and give them a more prominent place, not a few isolated hotel rooms two floors above the seminars.

6) Schedule it when fewer important local bands are going to be on tour. It’d help greatly if some more established bands had headlined shows.

7) Spend wisely, not ostentatiously. If The Meeting Place in the Market or a few motel meeting rooms are the right size for the festivities planned, don’t bother with a major downtown hotel. This shouldn’t be done to show NY/LA that Seattle’s “made it” by having a big-time corporate con just like the big boys. This should be done to serve our own local needs, to build a community and get more control of our own art.

But everything that can be in one building should. The film matinees shouldn’t have been at a theater six blocks from the main conference site. Even some of the hospitality events should be at the main site.

And lastly, one word says it all: Organization.

NW Music Showcase Reviews

A large Vancouver contingent at the conference spent a lot of time talking up the praises of DDT, even claiming it would be the band to put B.C. back on the musical map. Disappointingly, all the hype turned out to be about an extremely average macho white funk band, fronted by two frat boys in backward baseball caps chanting “Yo” as if they were doing something profound or “rebellious.”

More portentious of the future was Danger Gens, the ex-Maxi Badd fronted by that consummate local insider Gretta Harley. Harley’s voice and stage presence are powerful without being afraid to be vulnerable, or perhaps the other way around.

Scribble, a recent Oly band with a typical Oly-scene childlike name, ground out powerful neo-power-pop ditties with a clear sense of melody married to guitar noise.

Vexed, local legends back together after a too-long hiatus, has a great sense of love and despair as interpreted thru dissonant but never incoherent art-damage.

And the second-ever local screening of the documentary Live With This: Adrift in America proved again what an engaging band ex-Seattleites Popdefect are. They’ve got a new EP on the Flipside label (only the band’s third non-45 release in 14 years), and are working to get on a bigger label. In keeping with the band’s hard-luck career, the film still doesn’t have a distributor; director Brad Vanderburg vows to at least get it out on video within the year. Few other still-obscure bands are more deserving of bigger exposure.