In order to write effectively about the arts, of course, you have to seek out the results of artistic efforts: exhibitions, plays, films and performances of all kinds. That can fill up a calendar in a hurry, especially around these parts.
That’s often more fun than most jobs allow. All the same, it’s easy sometimes to be envious when news reporters manage to have their sources come straight to them for the dog and pony show—many is the unctuous politician who’ll happily saunter into the Advocate‘s offices for a bit of blathering on the record, and people seek out facetime when they have a news story to spill.
Not so much in the arts. Arts reporters get visitors, but without the benefit of a ready display of talent (not that in-office banjo breakdowns when deadlines loom are good, on the other hand), it’s impossible to know if those visitors are peddling genius or non-genius. The annual Grand Band Slam show reverses that equation in many ways. Suddenly a whole issue’s worth of Band Slam winners gather in one spot to demonstrate why they’ve won.
Wandering around Maximum Capacity last weekend felt rather like perusing a musical buffet. The juxtapositions were sometimes grand—Tony Vacca and Backa Niang (of Gokh-Bi System) offered a remarkable demonstration of West African-style percussion, and a few minutes later, the same stage held ’80s cover band Aquanett, screaming out the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” Best of all, a fair bit of the audience stayed through the changeover from gourds and skins to hair curtains.
High-decibel rock blasted from downstairs courtesy of hardcore winners The Uncomfortables, followed by a pulsing slab of electronic madness from Jeff Bujak, a man possessed, jamming and bobbing in the command seat of what appeared to be NASA’s mission control.
That was followed by acoustic jazz band Jamie Kent and The Options. That band’s set occasioned an important question: what happens to the idea that genre is important to people when a modern hipster can whip the audience into a fist-pumping froth with “Minnie the Moocher”? It seemed some particularly weird magic had occurred, the sort of thing you can hope for in a live show, but never plan.
The weirdness of all that mixed-up stuff is the reason to bother with heading to the show. The Valley’s music scene (like every other one) has its divisions—Springfield versus Northampton, metal versus minimalist folk—and its cliques and subsets. But if you’re not a musician, those things don’t matter; what matters is the music that comes boiling to the surface.
When you see so much of it in one place, with anything and everything jammed up into one enormous and multifarious show, common themes emerge. It’s a rare chance to draw large-scale conclusions.
To my ears, the main surprise was the consistently high level of ability on display. Not everyone can be virtuosic, but this year’s lineup offered an unusually high number of musicians who engaged the audience in solid and well-played fashion. Even the solo in “Rock You Like a Hurricane” flew from the amps with a blazing conviction that would have made the Scorpions proud.
Appreciating that level of musical craft, instead of measures of mere like and dislike, is key to understanding just what an embarrassment of musical riches the Valley holds. Metal may not be your cup of hellfire nor jazz your martini, but it’s good to know that many of our homegrown versions are so high-caliber.
