No Mod no mo'

I'm fed up with XXXX, my usual Friday night destination. This past weekend was a mob scene that strongly resembled a night at any one of this town's many
other establishments. In short, it was douchebagpalooza, complete with a line up, an asshole doorman, bad tattoos, cocked ball caps and Dieselwear everywhere. The only difference was the music.

Now, I recognize how juvenile it is to get pissy and territorial about a stupid bar, but I've been going there on a regular basis since this night started a year ago. I was going when the place was drawing under 100 people a night and struggling. I was there. Then, all of a sudden, Franz Ferdinand and the Killers got on the radio and the tourists started trickling in. Now, that trickle has become a flood which is washing away most of the old guard. I'm not alone in not wanting to fight my way through a crowd just to get a drink, or stand on a dancefloor that's too packed to even move.

I guess, in a way, you cold look at it as a triumph of musical democracy: there's no scenes anymore. The brown girl with the 50 Cent CD in her car stereo is now rocking out to Bloc Party. And that'd be great if it were true. But it's not. Music is like fashion in that it operates through trickle down. You got yer tastemakers* and yer followers: the former sets the tone and the latter pick up the scraps. That's what's happening at XXXX. Last year, the only people who were on the scene were the music nerds, the fashonistas and the hipsters. Their tastes have gradually filtered down through the masses, which means the people infesting the dancefloor now are not the products of a digital downloading revolution that has swept aside musical barriers, but bandwagon jumpers and poseurs.

Where does that leave me? On the sidelines. If I'm gonna wade through the lower end of the clubland gene pool, I'll head back to the strip where there's at least one bar playing good music that manages to keep the twats at bay.


*I can see how someone reading this would think I'm an insufferable cock with delusions of cooldom. That's not the case. I know I'm a dork. I'm no trendsetter. I don't even own a fucking iPod. I follow the trends as much as anyone. My tastes happen to be just slightly more left field than most is all. That and I grew up in the suburbs: having spent my formativ eyears hating evrything about the 'burbs, I've no desire to have my evenings on the town marred by the weekend warrior set.