Cranes. They’re everywhere. That means our cities are changing, just like they’ve always been. But how does that play out in the Bay area’s local music landscape, where venues so often shutter and relocate to make room for the person with the next best idea or at least an ability to pay the new increased rent? What does that mean for the new incoming residents, especially music-loving ones, who relocate to our rising Southern metropolises in search of something better for themselves?
Think about it: How can anyone really feel pride for a new neighborhood when they don’t even know that their favorite chicken wing joint used to be the gnarliest of record stores?
Where the records were, and still are, in Tampa Bay
Manny Kool on spreading the word and the heard
Prior to taking a full-time job at CL, I spent half a decade trying to understand and document the efforts of local creatives by coding collections of run-on sentences into web pages alongside those nifty Bandcamp-streamy-song-things the kids love these days. It was one of the most rewarding ways to stay poor (like many of the artists I wrote about) and in hot pursuit of the two things that have always made me happiest: music and community. My bank account still hasn’t swollen since I started trying to fill the shoes of CL’s last music editor (Leilani Polk, who’s now marshaling web things for The Stranger in Seattle), but my days have been increasingly filled with even more opportunities to keep bothering Bay area musicians (and their ilk) about the art that makes existing here feel worth it and then some.
Paving the way — Kim Dicce lived her dream and opened the door to a rock revolution
For my first stab at a special music issue, I wanted to take a long look into the history of Tampa Bay music. It was essential if I was going to have any hope of really telling stories in a way that honored and understood those who came before me. But as so many of the songmakers, producers, business owners and promoters already knew, that’s a whole lot of history. Certainly more than I could possibly fit on the pages of one issue.
Edwin Velez opened his doors to misfits galore
So what you’re holding is my own and longtime contributor Gabe Echazabal’s efforts to look back at some niche areas of Tampa Bay music. We talked to important figures in the rock, retail, radio and promotions worlds about their journeys, and we rattled off a few of the many faces and locations that made Tampa Bay a great place to be a music lover.
DJ Sandman made hip-hop his life, and now he's a hometown hero
These lists are guaranteed to make you mad (like we said, there’s no way you can get them all), and they’re probably going to make you sad (breaking up is hard to do). But at the end of the day we hope they make you feel a little bit more connected to the streets you walk, ride and drive every day. We hope they make you seek to know (and share) more, too. Most of all, we hope this brief history makes you a little less weary of, and more brave about facing, all the change happening around us — because, at least up to now, we’ve managed to do alright.
Check out the cover below, and learn more about it here. Follow the links below to read more.
This article appears in Jul 13-20, 2017.