Did MAMA get a little too crazy last night?
by Mikey Dunn - Special to Modesto Famous
by Ruben Porras
October 17, 2007
October 17, 2007
Let me begin with an introduction. I am a newcomer to this local scene, having never written about it before, having participated few times willingly, purposely keeping my distance. Yet, I have been in Modesto since 1983, seen music a couple times at the Fat Cat, drank at Tresetti’s, sipped hot brew at Queen Bean, and, yes, even back in high school played shows in a band. I adore music, the arts, and independently study Pythagoras’ other passion (the one not called mathematics).
But for many years, I have felt disappointed in the local quality … of nearly everything. Here comes the same old song from us central valley nostalgists: strip malls, housing developments, pave over every inch…
And I have been waiting for Modesto’s cultural revolution: in rebuke of ““spend money to have fun! Hehehe!� In rebuke of “Oh it’’s great, 2 hours from everything! Hehehe!� In rebuke of all the shallow, uniform, all-nonsense look-alikes that have been dominating this town’s “local� scene for nearly two decades now, where is our Modesto Renaissance?
Sadly, my hopes of artistic quality, some form of standards, some pride and class in what we do with art and who we are as artists, all took a plunge down the ego-infested drain of “Now how badass am I?� last night at the MAMA awards--you know, the one at the new Gallo Center, with more categories and nominees than ever before; come on, you know: the one that was supposed to be the best there ever has been? Were you there? Wait, where? In the balcony yelling like it was some high school football rally? Were you talking casually, in outdoor-like volume, on your cell phone sitting a few rows from me while awards were being presented? Were you the one with your face painted like some hack-nouveau rendition of Gene Simmons? Or were you out in the lobby, getting hammered, watching the show occasionally on the flat screens? Or did your band lose and that meant your ticket out of there? Win or lose: did it help your local status with the opposite sex? Did you party like a rock star? You know, “after parties� tend to start after the show, not before.
For much of the night, it felt like some surreal circus: cheap, full of clowns, to the brim with self-indulgence … it was a night about the self. In great strip mall mentality, I got to watch some rock band play some easy trite song and guitar-hump the drum set and in their big pelvis-thrusting finish, get this: pretend to smash their guitars on the stage. Pretend. Only one of the guys seemed so drunk (I witnessed him hitting the sauce pretty hard prior to this thing even starting; what a rock star) he nearly hit the stage with his axe--whoa whoa, we aren’’t that rock and roll … I mean, let’s not forget that we have to go to real jobs tomorrow and earn a living, too. But, for a night, we all got to pretend to be stars, to get the chicks, to give a thank you speech, to feed our bulging egos once more. We may not be in this for the art; but that doesn’t make us sell outs.
Sometimes I am a joyous cynic. But sometimes, there isn’t much joy in it. Talking with my wife last night about the awards show, I was forced to justify my criticism (Dylan: “Takes a woman like you …�) and I persisted that my words are not meant to destroy a scene; I am no cultural-abolitionist, no matter the baseness of said culture. My words are meant as encouragement: the type of encouragement that sets standards, raises the bar, forces us to examine what we produce so that we always have an eye for progress. Music is supposed to be art, people; music is supposed to be sacred, cherished, fought for, wept over, all those things that make us human: music can illustrate the human condition with this incredible all-encompassing rapture of the sensual colliding with the conceptual: the wail of a voice that comes from nowhere but the soul, the precision of fingers moving up and down frets faster than the eye can manage, the raw instinctual beat and tremble of drums that forces our cells to dance; the words of truths, wisdoms, lessons, stories, abstracts, memories, prophecies, reminders.
Music is special. And since I already served up a platter of “a beautiful thing was used and abused last night,� I will now give a dessert of recognition to those who cherish the idea that art is bigger than a person, that music takes not only good musicians, but a good audience. I applaud the young gentleman that, while playing his guitar on stage, danced all over letting the rhythm consume that moment; I applaud the older gentleman that stood up out of his chair, and in great style, bumped his hands in the air to the group winning Best Urban music; I applaud the courage of that Best Urban group to pursue a new synthesis in hip hop (at least in their music, if not their rap-itudes); I applaud all the bands that got on stage and had some of the worst live sound mixes some had ever experienced and yet still played with love and appreciation; I applaud the effort by the establishment and the bureaucracy to encourage the growth of our still-immature music culture.
The night may have ended with a fire engine and an ambulance (suspected alcohol poisoning … entourage of that pretend to smash guitar band), but the sun came up again this morning fittingly invisible behind gray clouds, allowing our swollen eyes and ringing ears to adjust before we begin to look back . . .
