`MISC.’ GLADLY LEAVES behind the Year of ’96 Tears and heads face-forward into a time of uncertainty in many aspects of our civic culture. Three months ago, the regional architecture rag Arcade ran a story called “Is Seattle Losing It?” The piece was predicated on the Commons defeat, which I called a victory for city-dwellers and they called a defeat for planners and dreamers. Since then, my faith in local voters’ priorities was further affirmed by the transit vote, which will add immeasurably to regional liveability.
THEN CAME the dueling-stadia debacle. Since the Mariners’ and Seahawks’ demands and responses to those demands seem to change several times daily, there’s no way to predict how it’ll turn out. It should’ve been expected, tho’. Sports-superstar salaries continue to skyrocket, while sports TV ratings have been fractured by cable. Since team owners won’t give up their private jets, their only new-income sources (besides team-logo products) are to sop up additional stadium revenue (through high prices, luxury boxes, etc.) and to slash stadium costs (by getting taxpayers to foot the bill).
It’s all coming to a head now because some U.S. Senators threaten legislation this next session to stop localities from issuing tax-exempt bonds for stadia. So if the owners are gonna get their big public subsidy, they’ve gotta get it now. Hence, the PR blitzes, threats, and crocodile tears to cajole our leaders and us to fork over a staggering half-billion. That’s $100 (plus future bond interest) for every Washingtonian. And it still won’t solve Big Sports’ real problem–runaway costs in the face of heightened competition for entertainment and ad bucks. The sports biz hasta get its own house in order; then it can invest its own dough into new houses based on the basic risk-and-return principles that got these owners rich in the first place. Besides, there’s something annoying about the sense of bland “luxury” in the drawings of the proposed new Hawk stadium, something deadeningly Commonsesque.
MEANWHILE, the side of Seattle Stranger readers are expected to care about has hit its own doldrums, as Kathleen Wilson deftly analyzed here last month. The major record companies, MTV, and commercial radio have succeeded at killing “alternative” music by ignoring or mishandling today’s more original artists in favor of promoting the most formulaic, derivative bands. (How can anything called “Blur” be distinctive? How can anything called “Garbage” be really good?) That, and the maturing of the late-’80s music scenesters beyond prime moshing age, has left a distinct malaise over the local scene. Many of the more promising 1993-94 bands have broken up. Others are wallowing in the purgatory of record-label nonsupport. The three top local clubs get their biggest draws from touring acts. Everybody from the NY Times to Time has noted how the latest Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Presidents discs are vastly underselling their predecessors.
But they’re underplaying the fact that overall record sales are holding steady, despite the drop in superstar sales. This means more listeners are listening to a wider variety of stuff, not just the same few hyped celebrities. For everyone except the major labels and the celeb-obsessed media, this is good news. It’s good for musicians, for indie labels, for the stores that bother to stock indie labels, for clubs, for fans who prefer non-arena venues, for publications like this that tell you who the heck all these touring indie bands are, and especially for my oft-stated ideal of a decentralized culture, where smaller groups of people are into things they really like instead of following the dictates of mass marketing. This is, at least on one level, what the Seattle music scene had been all about–not providing material for the rock star machine, but building an alternative to the rock star machine. To quote one of Bruce Pavitt’s early zines, “A decentralized cultural network is obviously cool. Way cool.” When the dust settles from this industrywide reorganization, I fully expect Seattle’s bands, managers, and labels to be better equipped than most for a post-superstar world. (And don’t worry about the Soundgarden guys; they can always sell more of their band-photo phone cards thru their fan club.)
