I've done a lot of pondering about what my first column for the Zone should be about. I mean, I could concentrate on my thoughts on the local scene, babble incessantly about my own projects, or go off on a complete and total tangent that probably has little baring on anything in particular. I'm thinking that I picked the last one.

Let me tell you a story. Picture it: 1978, a little girl sits in front of 'Solid Gold' and dreams of someday being as famous as Samantha Sang (don't interject with 'who?', it'll disrupt my flow here). She develops into a preteen in the 1980's obsessed with British new wave and owns way too many high fashion crucifixes she bought at Christy's at Indian Springs. She hones herself to be just as Star Hits worthy as Bananarama. A few years later she starts writing folk songs on her cheap acoustic guitar ala Tracy Chapman (you didn't expect her to discover Joni Mitchell yet, did you?) and thinks of herself as somehow being bound for relevance. Jump ahead ten years and she's running her own indie label, listening to way too much Frank Zappa, and being ready for pop stardom! But wait, where did rock stardom go? What, you mean that doesn't happen anymore?

See, this is my theory. The 1950's and 1960's set the standards that we would base rock legendhood on. The 1970's was the decade of pop idoldom without admitting anybody was on heroin, yet still expecting some level of musical aptitude. In the 1980's, you only needed skill if you were shredding like a demon, everybody else just needed lip gloss and coke to be pop stars. By the 1990's, we were all beginning to learn that ok, maybe record contracts DIDN'T solve all of your problems, maybe they actually gave you a few. So now what do we do? The harsh reality (as spelled out on Behind the Music at least) is that it's not worth the trouble to try to attain success the old way. Sign to an indie or release stuff on your own, because if you're over 17 and/or have a blemish, nobody cares. Staying power? Not if you made a major label record post-1992 ( I KNOW I'm gonna get slammed for that, and I could well deserve it...).

Is there anything we can do about it, as the music making/listening public? Is there any hope at all? God I hope so. As cool as it is to be an 'internet superstar' (at least in my own mind), I really want to be on Solid Gold dammit.

Dana Detrick-Clark
dana@thezone.org

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For more on Dana, check out her band (Post Orgasmic Trauma) and record label (Serious Vanity).