10/02/2006

Asbury Music Awards

So I got a message from the NJ band Meets West telling us that Screaming Females is nominated for an Asbury Music Award. That was news to us. Apparently we are up for Best Indie Band. The Asbury Awards are kind of a "best of NJ" thing. They have been going on for over a decade. The people who run the Saint have something to do with it, which anyone in a NJ band knows is not the place to have a killer show. Hopefully they run better awards. Anyway, I have to say that I am kind of excited that out of the sea of NJ bands that we somehow got someone's attention at Asbury Awards. I'm kind of thinking ol' Jimmy T over at Jersey Beat had something to do with it.

Now Marissa and KingMike would argue against me here but I am a bit disappointed that we are nominated for Best Indie Band and not Best Punk Band. Marissa and I were yelling at each other earlier about this. She said that we are not punk and that I should go listen to some late 70s/ early 80s british punk bands (I forget which ones she mentioned but we will just say The Buzzcocks for now). I mean she has a point, and up until about 8 months ago I would have agreed. But I say that bands have been pushing what the definition of punk is since the beginning. From The Minutemen to Big Black to Fugazi to Beat Happening to Refused to Ghost Mice. If all those bands are punk then I don't see anyway Screaming Females isn't. We have thus far recorded and released our on CD, released our own 7 inch, learned to screen shirts, booked our own tour, denied gigs at "real" venues like The Court Tavern in favor of playing all ages basement shows, helped set up shows for touring bands, the list goes on. If that's not punk then I'm lost. It is more like I looked around at other bands taking a course similar to ours and interested in representing themselves in a particular way and they all kept calling themselves punk. Its like it just got to a point where I had to start thinking, "It sure seems as though we run this band like a Punk Rock band." I'm excited to have been able to run things on that course and still somehow be recognized by something like the Asbury Music Awards. But at the same time what does Indie even mean?

I like the fact that so many different sounds are calling themselves punk today. It's like everybody, all at the same time, got tired of post- and -core and post- post- and 20 word genre titles and said "Fuck it, lets just call it all punk again."

Up the Punks! (That one is for you Marissa, ha!)
-Jarrett D

3 comments:

Screaming Females said...

So this is me being out of the loop. I had to go look up waterboarding over at wikipedia. That shit is lovely. They should waterboard Bush until he admits he is a shit for brains.
-Jarrett D

Screaming Females said...

im so sick of punk rock
-kingmike

Anonymous said...

I think a different "Jimmy T" from a different "jersey ____ " company had something to do with it, if you know what i mean.

-zzzzzzz goatwizard