L.A. Indie Rocks

I believe Los Angeles has the best DIY music scene in the United States.

As I write that, Pitchfork stands on its brownstone roof, turned the other way, staring over the Atlantic with defiant disinterest. Stereogum’s shrill mocking laugh can be heard from here, 2,800 miles across the country. Even some of the most senior Los Angeles music writers snort and disagree.

But I tell you, it’s true.

If the Brooklyn-biased indie music machine had their shit together, seven years ago they’d have found a snot-nosed 16 year-old kid from Los Angeles and made him their permanent nightly correspondent, Live from The Smell.

If those publications had done their job, every hipster in Brooklyn would covet that unforgettable DIY golden age in Echo Park when Pehrspace, L’Keg, Echo Curio, and half a dozen homes were resurrecting the specter of punk rock ethos with the complete index of musical genre.

Today at Pehrspace and The Smell, people still search subterranean LA for diamonds in the rough. If a person that desires only artistic integrity exists, they exist en masse in those hallowed underground halls of gem and stone beneath the City of Angeles.

You can’t say the same for Williamsburg, where zirconia and carbide are oft mistaken for the genuine article.

You can tell me all the ways in which sites like Pitchfork should be so revered for their awesome might and scope in music mining, but they’ve passed over a massive vein of DIY gold in Los Angeles. (And no, a nugget of No Age or Abe Vigoda coverage here or there doesn’t cut it.) The widespread ignorance of LA indie music amounts to criminal cultural negligence by the Brooklyn Bloggerati.

Here’s the great thing: It doesn’t matter.

Here’s the greatest thing: The snub is good for the scene.

Truth: Intense interest from the nation’s tastemakers would ruin it.

The indie music elite will never understand the perfect fury of a Manhattan Murder Mystery show. They’ll never know the rapturous joy of The Underground Railroad to Candyland. They’ll never regard The Monolators as a DIY Hall of Fame band. They don’t care about Sean Carnage or Kyle H. Mabson or KXLU. They’ll never bestow validity upon Los Angeles’s brow.

And that’s what makes it so pure. It is ours. Uncut. Unpolished. Ever lustrous, even in its rawest form. Our cave of secrets is for the Angels. Here are my words of encouragement for you with halos glowing over your heads:

If some elitist blog or publication of power takes notice of you, good! You’ve earned it. Be polite, be professional, and use them like a whore.

Continue to create courageously. Disseminate your works with abandon. Your successes will outshine your failures.

Take video, audio recordings, and photos of every show you go to. Write it all down. Document the personal. Publish. Encapsulate your memories in digital prisms and decorate everyone you love with those glimmering jewels. Never stop doing it for you. In this age of creation, there is no Authority. There is only experience as it is shared. Your experience is being overlooked and that makes it the rarest of kind, priceless in its worth, more valuable than a hit of Pitchfork hype.

‘Cause didn’t you hear? LA is the place to be.

Shh! Keep it secret, keep it safe.