These cities may change/ But there always remains/ My obsession.
— Roxy Music, "A Song for Europe"
Sounds like a yearbook quote, doesn't it? Well, in a way, for me, it is. I've often referred to my time here in Tampa as an extended sojourn in high school, and now I'm leaving. Tampa has supplied me, in many ways, with the adolescence I never had — meeting boys, getting fucked up, being popular, making enemies, etc. At my actual high school, in Long Beach, N.Y., I went unnoticed, stayed sober and rarely got action from the opposite sex. Perhaps this explains the wide-eyed uncool of my real yearbook quote:
Catch the blue train/ places never been before/ Look for me/ somewhere down the crazy river.
—Robbie Robertson
Of course, it hasn't been quite like high school, since, for one thing, I've been here for 12 years. And though I'm moving to the San Francisco area in a month, graduating high school denotes outgrowing something, moving onwards and upwards, and I've never been one of those people who claim that "Tampa's a great place to get your shit together till you're ready for the real world." I believe that every place has its own resonance, and you fit where you fit, at different times in your life. Halfway through my dozen years here, I left, moved to San Diego. That temperate sprawl did not resonate with me at 24, and I came back.
And boy, am I glad I did.
If I hadn't, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to try turning the Tampa Bay area on to some great music. I also would have missed Melt Banana peeling the walls off The Oak Barrel, and Trans Am and The Lonesome Organist playing in that very same bar; The Blacks seducing The New World Brewery; The Blue Rags and The Boats turning everyone into hippies everywhere they played; The Dismemberment Plan dismantling the Cuban Club Cantina at Heatwave 2000; Richard Thompson at Tampa Theatre; all those great Rubb concerts — Mad Professor, Pavement, DJ Spooky; Son Volt at the State Theatre; The Waco Brothers and Sally Timms at Skipper's; Crash Mitchell, Flat Stanley and others at The Hub's 50th anniversary; Moby, Wilco and David Lee Roth at Jannus Landing (not together, but wouldn't that have been great?); November Foxtrot Whiskey, period; FunkRuze's first show at Atomic Age and The American General's last; Red Tide dragging the Monday night old-wavers into the hip-hop 21st century in the Castle courtyard; scratching my smiling head to Matmos and getting saved by the Make Up and deafened by Jucifer at The Orpheum; and a hundred other things that could only take place in a pair of cities where the attitude quotient is low and the front of the stage can be reached with very little effort.
But for all its friendliness, its egalitarianism, music Tampa Bay-style is not without flaws. Vital new artists, both local and national, have very little means of support. Even our Grand Old Alternative Dame, WMNF, plays to the people with money, an older crowd that doesn't go out to see live music as much. As a result, the audiences at local shows have become woefully small, limited to the "three f's" of the unsigned music world: Friends, family and fucks. Less than 10 years ago, when the Stone Lounge was in full swing, other bands would at least go check out their peers, accompanied by their own entourage of f's. Five years before that, a bill featuring three local hardcore acts could sell out the Cuban Club. So what's happened?
Well, there's always that all-encompassing, millennial bogeyman, the Internet, to blame. Who cares about a radio station that allows us to all tune in and feel like a community, when there's Napster, streaming radio, mp3.com and a thousand other places to go and cyberpersonalize your playlist?
But let's concentrate here on what we can change. For one thing, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have become alarmingly polarized. Because we have no real public transportation system, driving across a bridge to a show — where you're likely to have a few drinks and stay till closing time — is tedious and unsafe. Tampanians won't cross the Howard Frankland to hang out at The Emerald to see local bands they've never heard of, and the kind folks of Pinellas don't want to pay $8 to park for a $5 multi-band bill in Ybor.
Rereading the above paragraph, I see two fixes. One is fairly Tampacentric: Clearwater's got Club More, St. Pete's got the State Theatre, but in Tampa the only venues where you can see challenging, original local and national acts are in Ybor City. And Ybor is no longer hospitable to anything challenging. It's overrun by commerce, losing the attractive architectural face of its ancestors but becoming increasingly haunted by the commercial, factory culture that spawned it. As a local musician recently commented, "Why should I have to pay $10 to park every time my band plays?" And that goes for employees of Ybor businesses, as well.
It's fun and exciting to go somewhere and lay down a Lincoln to see three bands you know nothing about — but not when you have to pony up twice that to park, and risk getting puked on by a bank teller drunk on breakbeat and Purple Hooters. With the chain business blitzkrieg, very little public transportation and nowhere to park cheaply, the urban blood of Ybor is being flushed out. So I propose that some forward-thinking individual with networking savvy and a clean credit report open up a space somewhere outside Ybor City. Don't worry about booking bands — there are friendly local promoters who'd love to help you out on that end. But a venue is needed, most likely in downtown Tampa, where parking is plentiful and location is central.
The other fix is already in effect. That would be the — ahem — choosing of my successor. Writing this column as of next week will be a devout St. Petersburger, Scott Harrell. As he's got his feets in both counties, he will hopefully foster, if not a sense of musical community in the area (he's not Mother Teresa, for cry-eye), at least a healthier curiosity as to how the other half lives. I've known Scott since he stepped off the plane from Texas a decade ago, and though I did see Spinal Tap for the very first time ever at his apartment, I think he got the joke. He has the talent, knowledge, chops and humility (yeah, humility) to keep the Planet's music pages fresh, funny and weird.
Johnny my love, get out of the business/ It makes me wanna rough you up so badly/ Makes me wanna roll you up in plastic/ Toss you up and pump you full of lead.
—Liz Phair
And finally, the question remains: If I love this town and this job so much, and know so much about what Tampa Bay needs to make it better, than why am I leaving? Because my work here is done. I have written this column for nearly three years, and I've become overwhelmed. Burnt out. Like Tommy said …
I hate music/ It's got too many notes.
—The Replacements
Or rather, there's too much music out there. It's starting to sound like static to me. Music is, as I've written before, the most subjective of arts. And I still don't really think I have the right to tell people pumping their fists to a Creed cover band that they should know better than to be enjoying themselves. But I am a little weary of trying to get them to go see acts like Carl Craig and Sweep the Leg Johnny. I'm ready to take the time to sit down somewhere and get to know an artist or a band, buy their whole catalog, become an expert and a fan — as opposed to crash-coursing on a band a week. And I'm ready to do it somewhere else, because after working with the most consistently gifted, kind and eccentric staff in the area, there's nowhere to go but out.
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2001.