GRAMMY NIGHT CONTEMPLATION: HOW CAN WE SAVE THE KANSAS CITY MUSIC SCENE?!?

They say that music soothes the savage beast, so tonight let's talk tunes in hopes that some of the more feisty denizens of our blog community will calm down amid all of today's culture war silliness.

Something to consider on this Grammy Night amid the ongoing implosion of the music industry . . . Believe it or not, in the late 80s and 90s Kansas City actually had a somewhat respectable music scene that served as a launching pad for indie bands and artists . . .

Now . . .

THE KANSAS CITY MUSIC SCENE IS ON LIFE SUPPORT THANKS TO THE MEDDLING OF BIG MONEY MAINSTREAM INSTITUTIONS WHO HAVE BEEN HORRIBLE AT PLAYING LOCAL TASTE MAKER!!!

Just a bit of explanation and a few examples . . .

P&L District Helped Kill Local Music


By far, the mega-club and its horrible fare has decimated just about all creativity in and around Downtown. The bar scene juggernaut is the home of national C-list acts to attract party people who shouldn't both listening to each other speak. Mission accomplished.

Kansas City Public Radio Endorsed Music Is Mostly Pretty Boring


Chris Haghirian does a hell of a good job but he can't program 24 hours of a station that has struggled to find an audience. Moreover, the format is limiting and there are just too many restrictions on upstart bands that need the freedom to be weirder than what the FCC allows

Facebook Friends FAIL To Help People Find Good Local Music And Kansas City Venues


The death of Myspace was partly due to band spam and FB has avoided that fate by way of algorithms that keep local promotional efforts at arms length. Like it or not, social media simply isn't a great place to find new, local music given the constant hateration, digital production advancement making it nearly impossible to distinguish betwixt quality and crap along with easier access to much better sounds across the planet.

And so . . .

The Internets hasn't quite killed the Kansas City music scene but it has decimated the foundations of the local industry that helped bring the best to prominence.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule but for the most part Kansas City's music scene has been trending downward since David Cook was the toast of the town. We can only hope that a new generation of local entrepreneurs and sonic hustlers will help to bring more life back to an exceptional pool of talent across all genres.

And so, this is an appropriate place to take a pause for this evening and watch more a more successful community of artists show us how its done. Hopefully, more for the morning update . . . STAY TUNED!!!