A built-in audience
By Bliss 08/14/2008
On a recent flight to Salt Lake City, a fellow traveler insisted there have been no musical movements since 2000. Every decade has been defined somewhat by its movements: grunge in the 1990s; New Wave and bands like U2 in the ’80s; Led Zep and other classic rock behemoths, plus outlaw country and heartland rock, in the ’70s. But he insisted this decade has produced no such connections between artists and zeitgeist, and thus no real rock bands like Guns ’N Roses creating great, memorable anthems that gather people ’round.
It’s a provocative theory. But analyze the wider landscape of industry trends and it’s immediately clear that the do-it-yourself ethos of the tidal wave of independent artists has transformed music as a grassroots community as well as a corporate industry. DIY indie-rockers have promulgated new sounds and ways of recording and taking music to fans that have triggered cultural change as profound as any strictly musical innovations, aided and propelled by larger forces such as societal corporatization, globalization, the Internet and the insane proliferation of entertainment choices
Those have fostered yet another trend: tribute bands. Club scenes nationwide are lousy with ’em. (Sure, they give musicians a way to keep working, but tribute bands have become so popular that, in some Midwestern markets, they outdraw their original inspirations — a topic for another column.)
Then there’s Previously On Lost, a New York band that goofily marries the DIY and tribute trends under the banner “recapitulation rock.” It’s gimmicky as hell, but when the mainstream’s narrowing and niche markets are proliferating like algae off Qingdao, it’s also borderline genius: Every song in Jeff Curtin and Adam Schatz’s updated-weekly repertoire recaps an episode of the TV series “Lost.”
The madcap songs reference the plane crash, chemical disasters, orchid stations, hiding from hunters, the Palm Tree Massacre, the Smoke Monster, surprise birthday cakes, the Oceanic Six and the eternal question, “Who is gonna save us?” Curtin and Schatz craft sing-song-catchy pop tunes that assume the voices of different characters on the show lamenting running out of chickens and the need for a “Male Role Model” who’ll “help me through these troubled times ahead/ Rock me to sleep with a serenade, won’t help me teethe with a grenade/ Won’t scuba-dive, and later turn up dead.”
If you’ve never seen the show, they won’t help you understand it. But if you’re hungry for new episodes (and/or appreciative of Flight of the Conchords’ similar brand of cheeky pop), Previously On Lost should make the wait more entertaining.
Previously On Lost play Spaceland, 1717 Silver Lake Blvd., 9 p.m. Tuesday, and Silverlake Lounge, 2906 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake, 8 p.m. Wednesday. For more info, call Spaceland at (213) 833-2843 and Silverlake Lounge at (323) 663-9636. www.myspace.com/previouslyonlostmusic
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