It's a Friday night, right around 11. Inside Ybor City's Orpheum, a local post-punk foursome emotes for a respectful throng of 35 or so. Across the street at New World Brewery, a rockabilly trio entertains some imported beer aficionados, all of whom the band knows by name. And up north at the Brass Mug, barflies, diehards and a few adventurous college types are treated to a terminally underrated pop outfit, sandwiched between death metal and some kids who might have received their My First Rock Band starter kit (For Ages 15 And Up) via UPS this very morning.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the bay at St. Pete's State Theatre, 200 people who couldn't possibly care less about "the scene" gleefully shove each other around while groovecore scaries Attica radiate menace and jagged riffage from the stage. Baseball caps, strappy undershirts and big, big shorts abound tonight. Guinness and irony do not.
These teens and twentysomethings, bobbing their heads and sweating against the barricade, are not hipsters or appearance-makers. They're the average listener, the mean, the public at large. They came to see some bands that sound a little, or a lot, like the bands they hear every day on modern rock radio. They behave like they're at a concert, not like five guys who've gotta get up and go to work in the morning. They'll go home and, in most cases, won't attend another local show until another weighty, groovy, angst-y bill appears at the State.
As most of the Bay area's original-music landscape continues to suffer a dearth of receptive ears, Pinellas County nu-metal bands are drawing inordinately large crowds, in sync with heavy music's current national vogue. Comparatively long-running acts are reaping the rewards of foresight, or really good timing, and new outfits are constantly appearing in a scramble to catch up with a trend that has, by most reckoning, expended at least 12 of its allotted 15 minutes. It's an eerily accurate miniaturization.
"What we have here is a microcosm of what goes on nationally," agrees Jim Taylor, guitarist for nu-metal band Lo. "The bands, locally, their fans are kind of into them because of the national bands they most closely relate to. You could even go so far as to label some of them, say "they're the Limp Bizkit of Tampa, they're the Korn of Tampa,' if you really wanted to go out on a limb," he says with a laugh.
Naturally, the groups vary in terms of talent and individual style; however, a majority of them could be stored under the rap-core tarpaulin with a minimum of irresponsibility. To be fair, it's a big tarp. Not too many frontmen here are butchering ebonics or throwing gang signs. But neither is Jonathan Davis of Korn, whose band is inextricably associated with the genre, despite its protestations. Rip-hop is a lot like emo that way — people within the circle will draw from the genre but no one wants to own up to it.
"I don't like it, personally, I think it's just a copout, a way to easily categorize everything," says Puddin' Hogs vocalist Ryan Pasco. "We don't consider ourselves a rap-metal band, but we do have some hip-hop influence."
"I like some of it. But I would never play in a band like that," allows Balls, bassist for the semi-legendary Attica, a quintet well known for its live cover of House of Pain's "Jump Around."
While most of the acts tiptoe around or bristle at the concept of pigeonholing, everyone is perfectly willing to acknowledge the beneficial trickle-down effect aggressive music's worldwide resurgence has had on their corner of the local market.
"There are always troopers out there, people that have always been into the hardcore scene, but by getting played on the radio, it gets to the people who just like rock 'n' roll," Balls confirms. "With bands like (Miami nu-metallers) Nonpoint getting on the radio, it builds it up for local bands."
"It's definitely like that," agrees Pasco. "I've been playing for eight years, and I've watched the crowds get bigger for every heavy band. It's very obvious to me that that's exactly what's happening."
By resonating with current mass tastes, these acts are afforded a much larger potential audience than the average unsigned unit. The people buying Taproot CDs and Family Values Tour tickets are, for the most part, an entertainment-industry marketing bull's-eye — young and middle-class. They're kids with a little disposable income, for whom going out to the show is still a big deal. This throng is a far cry from the 28-year-old scene supporter who has to weigh seeing his favorite local, again, against stuff like rent and sleep deprivation. An established band such as Attica may bring out a more varied crowd because they've spent five years building one, but the younger contingent is undoubtedly the one filling the venues for the groovecore set.
"Our audience is mostly high schoolers. It ranges from 14 to 18. That's our main crowd," Pasco says.
"But it can depend on the band," counters Taylor. "At a Crossbreed show, a lot of the kids strike me as the ones who might get made fun of at school, or whatever, but they can all come to that show and get along and see a lot of people who look like them, including the band up on stage. It's the camaraderie as much as anything else."
The sudden proliferation of locals purveying syncopated lockstep rhythms and inarticulate rage isn't particularly surprising, but one can't help but wonder how many of these guys were rewriting Green Day riffs three years ago. Trend-chasing has never been a good way to become anything but frustrated. There's a line between keeping up on current events and, say, transposing the chorus from the last Deftones single down a half-step and calling it original. It's a line each band must draw for itself.
"For the bands starting off now, that might be true," says Balls. "But the bands that have been around for four or five years, if they were into the hardcore scene, they were already into their thing. It took us four years to get our style, building on each other and creating our own thing."
For Taylor of Lo, the erosion of quality in each successive wave of latecomers is enough to inspire innovation rather than imitation: "I'm really disappointed with a lot of bands that are coming out now. There's a lot of quote-unquote generic bands. And I think that, subconsciously, some of that creeps in," he admits, "but if we follow that, we're in danger of being just another rap-core band, another Disturbed or Papa Roach or whatever."
While plenty of groups here and elsewhere would like nothing more than to be just another Disturbed (God help us), others will continue to assert their own vision in a genre overrun by really, really bad music. And they'll keep doing it after the pendulum swings back, and the hype moves on to Gothic swing, or something, like it always does. It's inevitable, isn't it?
"I hope not, but I've seen things come and go so much that I know everything goes in cycles," says Pasco. "It could last 10 years, it could last two years. I'm just glad it's happening right now, and I'm trying to take advantage of it." Attica's third release, a self-titled CD-EP, is out now; the band appears at Citylights on June 22. Lo is wrapping up their second disc; they'll be at Joey's Lounge on June 23. Puddin' Hogs next headline the State Theatre July 21.
Contact music critic Scott Harrell at weakfish@compuserve.com
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2001.