The first post...

     Greetings all!  As you can see, this is my first post.  I will use this blog to talk about my life as the guitarist in a punk rock band in Indianapolis. It can be a pretty boring little settlement, especially if drinking in bars full of frat boys and Jersey Shore looking dudes isn't your thing.

      It's a town that prides itself on the way it's downtown looks. There's always something new going on, or being built. If you were airlifted directly to downtown Indy, you'd probably be pretty impressed. Take a cab 10 minutes in ANY direction, however and you would be disgusted. We think we're pretty cool in Indy and don't put much into anything outside the major framework of activities. I.E. The Colts, The Indy 500, The Brickyard 400, concerts at Conseco Fieldhouse, Lucas Oil Stadium, and the White River Lawn. This is where all the advertising dollars go, this is what we care about here. It's a somewhat wealthy town that is set up so you don't have to encounter the dirty parts if you don't want to... and you are in the proper tax bracket.

This is Fall Creek Road. It runs from downtown to the northeast side, namely Geist Reservoir. Everyone knows Geist. It's a very waelthy community built around a large reservoir. This is where Mellencamp rides jet skis, and where the Colts players build their homes. Fall Creek Road is a beautiful, scenic, curvy route that takes you to and from Geist. It even has lane control that allows you to turn onto, but not off of it during certain hours. Its ALWAYS moving quickly, even at 5pm on a Friday. It's one of the best maintained roads in the city, and you never, ever have to drive on it unless you are between downtown and Geist. It is for the rich folks, so they don't have to drive with the rest of us ruffians. I bring it up because it's such a fine example of how Indianapolis is set up, and who it aims to please. We have LCS (Little City Syndrome) which is very much like LMS (Little Man Syndrome)... think Gary Coleman as a security guard. We try so hard to compete with New York and LA, but we'll never be as interesting or expansive as Chicago, let alone NY. So you can imagine trying to gain momentum as a punk rock musician in such a Toby Keith kind of town, it isn't easy, or cheap.

Despite this obvious lack of attention to the true, independent music scene, there are countless local bands. Hundreds of original acts, and even more cover band type groups.  The only press we have is NUVO, the local indie art/music rag. It's a good publication, I enjoy it, but there's just not enough room for them to talk about everyone. The result is way too many bands all scratching around in the same sandbox, fighting over the same toys.  It's not easy to stand out.  I feel like our band has done a decent job of it though.

We've recently played with The Queers, The Cobra Skulls (of Fat Wreck Chords), and we closed for Doug Stanhope, the comic. We've also won Punk Rock Night awards two years in a row. Last year's for best new band and this year's for best new album. So it's not that bad, but you really have to work, practice, write cleverly, and gig like it's going out of style.

Anyway, this has been my exposition post. Setting the scene if you will. Hopefully you found it interesting and wish to read my future posts. Thanks for checking it out and have a pleasant tomorrow.