The Music Issue

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STORIES FROM MUSIC SCENE BLOOMINGTON’S

There would literally be just hundreds and hundreds of kids milling about on the streets and getting away with lots of things they wouldn’t normally [laughs]. They would have a bunch of bands play and it was a rad time.”

Kenny Childers reminisces fondly on these pre-noise ordinance gath erings – “streetdances” of decades past. A frequent streetdance location was the intersection of Fourth Street and Indiana Avenue, where traffic would be blocked off and the music

cians after starting college at IU.

“It was the days where you would tear the little phone number off flyers. I tore off one of those and tried out for a band. It was an original band, but we ended up playing cover songs. I played like 80s covers for several years but then went on my way into the original music scene.”

While there was a definite house show and basement scene at the time — Kupersmith named one venue called the Roach Motel that was across from Dunn Meadow — he and Childers both cite Second Story Nightclub as the prime venue for acts performing their own music. Located on the second floor of the building that currently houses the Serendipity Martini Bar, Second Story was “the club for weirdos which was right where I belonged,” according to Childers. “It became my home venue and that’s where I spent way too much of my time. Second Story was really the home base for bands that were writing their own songs and it forced all kinds of eclectic bands to have to play together because there was only one venue for that.” Kuper smith adds that it showcased a lot of up-and-coming national acts in the time he and Childers were in the mu sic scene. “There’s often a town that’s the hot music town — in America it was Athens because R.E.M. was from there, then it was Boston, Seattle for grunge… They kept trying to see if Bloomington was that, and there ac tually was a time in the mid- to later 90s when a bunch of bands started getting signed on major labels here.”

The 90s marked a heavy focus on the music “scene”: as Childers saw it, “I think that because there had been this Seattle explosion with Nirvana, all the sudden everything became about scenes — different scenes in different cities and towns. I think

that we became very protective of it and very conscious of the fact that we had one and that made it feel more special… It made us not just protec tive of what we ourselves were doing, but what our friends were doing too. It was a good feeling.”

The signed bands out of Bloomington included Antenna, Old Pike, El Niño, and Childer’s band The Mysteries of Life. Kupersmith finds this surge in teresting to look back on in the age of online music-streaming services such as Spotify and Soundcloud; before these sites, artists shared their music through cassette releases without the Internet to aid in their exposure.

Tapes, cassettes, CDs, word of mouth, and flyers were the primary source of spreading what Bloomington’s music scene had to offer. While today’s fly ers for shows are commonly created and shared digitally, physical flyers were a central aspect of the 90s scene. As Childers puts it, “The flyer game was hot. People put so much work into them — you would go to your friend that was the artist and have them make something cool… You’d have these terribly photocopied piec es, but the original art was so beauti ful.” Word of mouth was also key in band formation.

Kupersmith met one of his band mates as he passed him playing acoustic guitar on the street, and it was common for musicians to meet each other while living in the same apartment building or at shows.

Childers and Kupersmith both share the sentiment of a certain angst being present at the time.

“I do think there’s some

thing to the fact that people talk about a ‘Midwestern sadness.’ I do think that’s part of what intersects for all the different bands that were clawing away during that time.”

“I’m in Generation X, and the idea that we’re supposed to be nihilistic is kind of true. It was pretty hardcore… It wasn’t a bad scene, but it was a ma jor crazy party scene. I’ve definitely noticed that when I’ve gone to shows over time, it’s become a little tamer and not as insane.”

But what has endured through the decades is the sense of belonging the music scene has provided for many in Bloomington. Childers shares, “I felt so at home, probably like the most at home I’ve ever felt was in that set of peers. That’s something that I prob ably didn’t appreciate enough at the time. It was just such a neat place to feel connected.”

As hundreds of musicians come and go through the scene, it embraces those within its bubble with a sense of shelter from the Midwestern sad ness that Childers describes.

UNCLE RON

Thanksgiving night 2020. I stumbled to the kitchen in a drunken stupor, filled to the brim with turkey, cranberry sauce, and my world-famous secret stuffing. The secret is stuffing. Daylight savings long passed, the house was nighttime dark and my family was chambered away in separate rooms, sleeping off a day of merriment. I fumbled in the darkness looking for the light switch. I heard a noise coming from the dark but I thought nothing of it. I finished my search for the switch, and flicked it on to see my Uncle Ron, naked and eating a dry roll, resting his junk on the counter. I flicked the lights back off and then back on, and then back off once more, hoping to create a flashbang effect on myself to create temporary blindness, but the damage was done. The image of Uncle Ron was seared into my brain and I am afraid it will never leave. I could feel my neurons creating a new pathway in that moment and I knew that for the rest of my life, I would walk carrying the burden of seeing Uncle Ron’s flaccid penis resting on the island in my kitchen.

“Ope,” I said, like an idiot. “Sorry about that.”

But there were worries. There was the opposite of no worries. I have thought about that moment every single day. And now, I have to face him tomorrow. I have to look him in the eyes and know that I know what his penis looks like, and I know that he permanently ruined a $10,000 kitchen remodel.

By Jonathan Zapf

By Natalie Ingalls

Art by Sarah Cassidy

The Calendar Madison Cox

baby, you can have it all…

The guy you’re interviewing beat you out for that open programming board position you applied for a little while back. You applied for another position on next year’s board, but for the rest of this one, you were out of luck. For now, you want to scope out the competition you didn’t even know you had. Of course you looked him up when you found out you lost, and of course he had to be cute.

April, year one

The cherry blossom you sit beneath is in full bloom. You had no idea there were any on campus, but now it’s one of your secret shared spots.

You sit next to where he lay, adjusting the corners of the blanket beneath you. Petals blow over the two of you, getting stuck in his hair and yours. You stand and pull a few flowers from the tree, leaning over him to nestle them in his curls before returning to your seat. He reaches around your back and latches his fingers into one of your belt loops, holding you gently.

I’ve never seen a room light up like that, and I never felt time stand still…

He closes his eyes, letting the wind and the petals wash over him.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone so beautiful.

October, year zero

You have an interview over Zoom tomorrow with someone for your news reporting class about the weather, which is a lot nicer today than it has been in the past couple weeks. As you walk through campus, the trees glitter with sunlight and wind-blown leaves. The bangs you gave yourself over the weekend tickle your eyelashes, and your skin prickles at the air that squeezes through the holes in your sweater’s knit. You turn your volume up and push your earbuds in further, knowing it will never bring you as close to the music as you wish it could.

If you want, want my love, take it baby, if you want, want my heart, take it

And of course, when your professor assigned you a story where you had to interview campus organizations, he was the first person you asked.

February, year one

He’s come into the office a lot this week, even during times he normally doesn’t come in. He sits there and talks with you until the pay lot opens at 9 PM, and for the past week he’s either given you a ride or walked you home. Even though there’s eight inches of snow across campus. Even though your apartment is out of the way for him.

Tonight after the weekly board meeting, you ask for another ride, teasing as he approaches your apartment that the night is young, neither of you have classes the next day, maybe you could go somewhere — but you’d never outright ask.

He slows in the parking lot and asks what you want to do, and you say, simply, “Surprise me.”

He keeps driving.

Eventually you stop somewhere dark, just sitting and talking and listening to music. After who knows how long, you figure you should probably try getting home at a reasonable hour. The parking lot is covered in white, and even more snow is coming down.

And we’re glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife…

His car doesn’t move, trapped in the snow. “Well,” he says. He leans across the center console, face coming closer to yours, hand moving up to your cheek: “If we’re gonna be stuck here a while…”

November, year one

You don’t know why he still agrees to give you rides when you ask for them. You don’t know why he agreed to keep the plans you made in August to go to the airport together for Thanksgiving break, even after you told him he didn’t have to, even after every ugly word you’ve said to him in the past month, even after all the ways you’ve made a fool of yourself.

The drive is only an hour, but it feels like an eternity. Sometimes, you’re able to talk and laugh with each other just like you used to.

You don’t talk about the pregnancy test. You don’t talk about the argument you got into just two days before this drive over it. You don’t talk about how terrified you still are that it was a false negative. You don’t talk about what you would do if that was the case.

I ask the traffic lights if it’ll be alright, and they say, “I don’t know…”

When you finally arrive at the airport, the sky is awash in color. It almost makes you cry, but you’re sure he’s tired of seeing you cry.

He lets you hug him before you part ways to go to your respective gates. He texts you when he lands, just like you asked him to.

Maybe there is love in all the ways he lets you continue to love him, even though you both know you shouldn’t.

March, year two

You cross paths with him for the first time since last year, since you last made a fool of yourself begging for him to love you back.

He grins at you and passes through the doorway, holding the door for you as you enter.

He grins at you as if you didn’t text him for the first time all year a couple weeks ago, asking to catch up with him before he graduates.

And I know it’s quite heartbreaking we won’t speak like this again.

He grins at you as if he responded to the message, rather than ignored it.

He grins at you as if, a few hours later, he doesn’t finally tell you he doesn’t think it’s a good idea with a consoling apology.

He grins at you as if he’s sorry.

He grins at you as if one day, maybe, you’ll be able to catch up and tell each other about all the adventures you’ve been on in the time away. He grins at you as if that’s wishful thinking.

He grins at you as if he knows this is the last time you’ll ever see each other, and he knows that it destroys you more than it will ever destroy him.

May, year one

He pours himself a pint of beer in his kitchen back home while you watch from your bed at your home. You wish you could be there in person, but you’re glad you still get to celebrate his 21st birthday with him in some way.

You’ve settled on watching Adventure Time tonight, instead of your usual Scrubs. He loads the video and settles into his bed, propping you in his lap and raising his glass to you. You raise your cup back and take a sip, setting it down next to your laptop propped in your chair. Your sheets curl around you, and you pretend they make an adequate substitute.

But I am home wherever you are near, there’s no life in anything when you’re not here…

He watches the show, but you watch him. You feel like you could cry. You miss him and you adore him and you can’t wait to see him again. You wipe your eyes and turn your attention to the show instead. August can’t come soon enough.

September, year one

You’re still sobbing when he begins the drive home. He turns on the radio, and you realize as it sings that it’s the playlist you made for him all those months ago. The radio croons.

It doesn’t have to be like this, it doesn’t have to be like this, it doesn’t have to be like this…

You think back to how you got here. Just a few hours ago, coming back from brunch with one of your friends, sitting in your apartment, then

driving to his to feed his roommate’s pet while she’s out of town for the weekend before you two go to the park. He parks and you ask to go inside to visit the bunny, which you haven’t seen since the first — and last — time you came over, just a couple months ago. You laid together on the couch watching one of your TV shows. He made you potato soup for dinner because he knew it was your favorite. You made fun of his grey jersey sheets, but slept comfortably with him in them all the same.

You ask to go inside, and he says no. You probe a little, expecting an answer about the apartment being messy, but he says simply, “you just can’t come in.”

In the ten minutes he’s gone, you crumble and pull yourself just back together enough to go to the park, but you crumble there, too. You can’t stop hearing the words in your head, hearing the words he said to you a month ago about her “having an issue with you.” You sit on the swing and sob and want him to look at you and ask what’s wrong, but you also hope you can pull yourself back together before he sees. It takes him ten minutes to notice, which is longer than you hoped. He asks if you want to go home, and you nod. You walk ahead of him, hoping the parents with their children don’t see you cry.

You can feel his eyes on you in the car, silent and unmoving. You won’t look at him, but you ask if the rule, the rule you can’t stop hearing in your head like a haunted record, only applies to you. He says quietly, “Yes.”

The music he plays for you is supposed to be an olive branch, but it feels like a consolation prize instead.

You turn it off and spend the rest of the drive home in silence.

May, year two

“Hi again. I've been thinking a lot over the last few months, and I've realized something: I probably wouldn't still be on board today if it wasn't for your support. Sometimes last year it felt like you were the only person who was there for and believed in me, and I'll never be able to describe how important that was and still is to me. You were such a large and important part of my first year with this organization that means everything to me, and I will always be grateful for you. I mean that, and I still mean everything I said about you after our last board meeting — you really did make an impact on us, and I hope you know that. I hope you believe that. I hope one day you'll share what you thought of me as a director and as a friend too.

I think I’ll start a new life, I think I’ll start it over, where no one knows my name…

“You were a lot of things to me in the time we knew each other, but more than anything, you were a friend. I hope we can call each other that again someday, and I hope you let me check up on you once you've settled down in Boston, just to see how you're doing. Maybe one day when I've finally moved into my little shoebox apartment in Manhattan and started writing for the New Yorker, we can get together for coffee and just get to know the people we've become.

“I've said sorry a lot for a lot of things I said and did to you last semester, and I'm still sorry for them, but this time, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for letting me interview you and listening to me and being patient for me and standing up for me and trusting me and making me feel like I was doing something good here. I really do hope we can be friends again someday — or I at least hope, if you have any last words for me, you'll say them and you won't overthink yourself out of it. But for now, these are my last words to you. Just, thank you. Congrats grad.”

March, year one

He’s sitting on the floor, flipping through your records. You lay on your bed, looking at him admire your collection. He asks if he can play one.

“Of course,” you say.

He stands, accompanied by your old Revolver, delicately removing the black disc from its sleeve and placing it on the turntable. The needle clicks with static as you make room for him to lay beside you. You giggle about records and movies and other little things.

There, running my hands through her hair, both of us thinking how good it can be…

You’ve never been kissed so softly before. You look at him, and he glows.

October, year one

“So it’s over?” you ask, quiet and broken. You can’t look at him anymore.

“I think it has to be,” he responds. He can’t look at you either.

This is the second time you’ve ever seen him cry, but the first time where it really mattered.

You realize now that he was never going to choose you over her. You realize that all the begging and compromising was all for nothing. You realize it was always going to end like this.

You’ve never felt so empty and alone, even with someone sitting right next to you. He holds you as you cry, or maybe he just lets you hold him. You curl into him and cling on for dear life, as if holding on tighter will make him stay.

You think about all the times in the past month where you looked at him and all you could think was, “I love you, I love you, I don’t know how I know but I do, I don’t know how to tell you but I will.” You look at him now, and it’s still all you can think.

And, for the first time, you tell him you love him — and that you mean it, even though right now you wish you didn’t, even though you know he won’t say it back.

And hey, I can’t believe I captured your heart…

He doesn’t say it back, because he doesn’t love you back, but he holds you tighter and lets you sob into his chest like he does.

August, year one

He told you before getting back to town that he wouldn’t go anywhere near you because he didn’t want to get you sick, but that didn’t last very long. He made a fuss about banishing himself to odd corners of your apartment, forbidding you from coming near him but making his way closer and closer to the bed until you finally pulled him on, laid him down, brought him home.

You sit in your bed now, his head resting in your lap as you play with his hair, and there’s that feeling again. Like you could cry.

When you love somebody and bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood…

You look at him, and you think about Boston. You think about how he graduates in nine months and how that feels both far away and just around the corner. You think about how you have another year of school left after he’s already moved out and settled into the city. You think about all the friends he’ll make in his first year away from you, all the friends he’ll have to introduce you to whenever you fly out to visit.

You think about how terrifying it all is, but it doesn’t actually feel that scary when you think about how you’ll be together. Being together is all that matters. Being together feels like something you could do for the rest of your life.

He opens his eyes and looks up at you, and you smile. The words fill your mouth, but they don’t overflow and fall out just yet.

You’ll know when the right time will be. You know you won’t hold back.

whatever you are now. You want to feel like it meant something, like it still means something.

Telephone line, give me some time, I’m living in twilight…

“Hey, I hope everything’s going well for you so far in the new city. I might be touring some colleges for grad school up there over winter break and could use some restaurant recommendations, and I’d love to catch up if you’re available. Just let me know.”

You don’t send it. You want to believe you never will, but you and he both know that’s not true. For now, the words sit there in the bubble, the type cursor continuing to blink, the last message you ever sent him still shining blue above it.

When you inevitably send it, the time won’t be right. The time will never be right. You will sit in agony for days, weeks, months, waiting for him to respond. You will go through phases of convincing yourself whether he will or won’t. You will talk about it with old mutual friends and laugh as if it doesn’t hurt anymore, hoping they don’t hear in your voice all the ways it clearly still does.

October, year two

He got new glasses. You know this because his face is the first thing you see when you open Instagram for the first time that day.

Your first time seeing him in his cap and gown. He stands among the crowd of other graduates, smiling at his parents who you assume took the photos. His face is rounder now, fuller. Then you see him on the water, overlooking the Boston skyline, sitting on the pier with a drink in hand, with that same small smile he always had.

You dream about him that night. You don’t remember any of it, but you wake up crying. You don’t understand why it still hurts like this, but maybe you do. Maybe you know the wound left by the words he never said will never fully heal.

It’s that time of year where everything happened. The beginning and the end. The leaves changing reminds you of him. Every new song you discover reminds you of him. The office reminds you of him.

You still see his shadow next to you sometimes, when you’re lying in bed at night.

You don’t want him back. You know you can never go back.

The type cursor blinks at you inside the text bubble. You delete and rewrite the sentence over and over again, trying to perfect the words while telling yourself you’re not going to pour your heart out here again — you’ve done that more than enough times.

You want to ask him about work, about the new friends he’s made, about all the corners of the city he’s made his own. You want to tell him about Paris, about graduate school applications, about the magazine you’ve founded.

You want to be like old friends, instead of

You will send the message, regardless of all of the outcomes you’ve played over and over again in your head and all the friends who will say you shouldn’t, and you will hold onto the hope that one day, years from now, when you’re reuniting with old friends and remembering your old days, you can look at each other and smile that fond knowing smile that only exists in movies, and this time, when you cry while telling your stories, it’s because you’re laughing.

The unrestricted internet access playlist

tWords and design by Katy Szpak

Long gone are the days of the early internet, aimlessly scrolling YouTube’s primitive explore page or your fave mutual’s Tumblr to stumble across a hidden music gem. These songs were not made in the ‘00s, but they take me back to those simpler times. Here’s some recent obscure electronic music from the depths of my Spotify playlists (Use the link! You can scan it with your phone and everything). I listened to all of these artists in my awkward middle school era, and maybe I still listen to these artists as a way to cope with the changes of growing up. Regardless, if you have heard any of these songs before, you win The Internet™️.

“Fire” - TheFatRat

This song is a part of TheFatRat’s 2021 album “Parallax.” This song takes me back to a memory of my high school friends and I circled around a piano with our trumpets (we all played trumpet) trying to play TheFatRat’s music by ear. Lots of good memories for me, as this song harkens back to the good old days of this guy’s music. If you’re looking for one of his good-old-days songs, my favorite is “Dancing Naked.”

“Sunburn” - The Living Tombstone, Chi-Chi, Odyssey Eurobeat

The Living Tombstone is known online for their songs referencing nearly every corner of fandom culture. Their songs are also frequently trending on TikTok, the most notable one being “My Ordinary Life,” with more than 390,000 videos using the original song audio. This song is a Eurobeat remix of a song from their 2020 original concept album “Zero One.” If you like this song, you should listen to “Running in the 90s” by Cement City, a spin on a Eurobeat classic.

Elisabeth Moss

“Ooedo Junia Night (feat. Hatsune Miku and KAITO)” - Mitchie M

u and stan. M, techno of Miku’s you Miku.

If you know this one, you’re definitely a Miku stan. According to producer Mitchie M, this song was created for the 10 year anniversary of the creation of Hatsune Miku, combining traditional Japanese and ‘90s techno sounds. It’s wonderful to see that even after 10 years of releasing new hits every month, Miku’s robot voice hasn’t aged a day. If you like this song, you should listen to more Hatsune Miku. I recommend one of the classics, “Rollin’ Girl” by wowaka.

“Snailchan Adventure” - Snail’s House

I heard that we bring a part of where we’re from to every place we go, that our starting point was never stationary but shapes our every movement.

Like a ripple in the water, everything that follows has echoes of its origin.

The midwestern breeze still lingers in my exhales; my mother’s mannerisms rest on my cocked hip.

This adorable song is a wild and chaotic listen, clicking in at around 175 beats per minute. Trust me, you’re going to want to see the YouTube video for this one. If you like this song, you should also listen to “Wigglecore” by Floor Baba or “Dog Bus” by Metaroom and Telemist.

in Trust you

Listen to the playlist here if you want to be cool

Every hand that I shake meets the sternness that my father spoke into me, and every city I inhabit is seen through the fog of that hometown skyline.

Memories are fractured to fit in a suitcase, and fragments of past live on in our pockets, but maybe our hearts were meant to be in motion