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SOUNDCHECK INTRODUCTION ISSUE 36
Riverboat Gamblers on a Riverboat in Jacksonville! Yeah, that is crazy!
I
was just thinking to myself that it was either over, or just about ready to happen again.
What? The music side of the whole “Florida as the butt of America’s cultural jokes” thing. Sure, there are always gonna be newspaper stories about glazed-eyed miscreants getting eaten by alligators as they jump naked from a dock to escape the police, or shooting their neighbors over ... something, or mistakenly tossing their babies into Dumpsters while cleaning out their cars high on toad-sweat. This is Florida, after all, home to every thirdgeneration illiterate whose thought process idles in the gray area between “southern” and “developmentally disabled,” and final promised-land destination of every freak or felon too mean-tempered for Asheville, North Carolina and too lazy to try to make it to Texas or California. But it’s been a while since we’ve been embarrassed by some seriously lowestcommon-denominator band or solo act PAGE 8 • REAX MUSIC MAGAZINE • MAY 2009
making it really big. Sure, we’ve got our share of flashy yet insubstantial rap out there, but who the hell doesn’t these days? We’re just not cranking out the really bad, plodding, one-dimensional arena-ready modern rock like we used to; apparently, that’s Canada’s job now. And that’s a good thing for Florida. I’ll bitch and make fun, but I’m a Floridian, and I love it here. We’ve got tons of great Gainesville bands on tour, we’ve got thoughtful hip-hop and daring noise coming out of Jacksonville, and tons of quality Central Florida Americana and art-rock acts. Things are percolating. I thought maybe we were out of the woods for good. Then Limp Bizkit announced a reunion. Then, just yesterday, so did Creed. Apparently, we can’t even come up with new bad rock to serve up to the rest of the nation for mockery; all we can do is recycle our most successful old bad rock. Get on it, good bands. - Scott Harrell