It really is easy enough to have a musical metropolis that doesn't involve having a 'scene'. My personal experience on this is Los Angeles. I spent the better part of late '98 and all of '99 traveling back and forth between Kansas City and Studio City, and lemme tell ya, it ain't pretty.

At first, I was the classic case: green Midwestern girl dreams of fame, fortune, and that magical record deal. She packs up her guitar, a few catchy tunes, and a bottle of blue hair dye and travels west to the promised land of the music industry.

The climate makes it at least feel like paradise, but it doesn't take long to figure out that it's not the real thing. Sure, there are guitar stores, CD duplicators, print shops, and all the other tools of the trade on every corner, making the convenience factor for being a musician in LA an A+, but there are also two struggling bands for every model/actress/whatever.

It doesn't help that there are about 500 genres of music happening, further separating LA from a musical identity. You've still got a lot of hard rock/metal bands that probably WERE part of the scene that sort of existed in the late '80s. A good number of powerpop bands were still guaranteeing that sales on bowling shirts weren't going to decline anytime soon. My overall favorite was the spark/mod scene. Quaint little clubs, oldschool rockstar attitude, and vintage duds made this at least feel a little like a scene, until you realized all it was created from was some guy going over and seeing what they were doing in London, a scene that is probably uglier than LA, then coming back here and trying to create a bastardized version of it that no one in America is going to associate with California.

(this is the part of the tale that probably gets too introspective)

What I realized, as I would sit on my Econolodge bed, being cursed in Spanish by the lady that wanted me to leave so she could clean my room, is that I really, desperately wanted to be home. The ocean did not inspire me. The big Hollywood sign did not inspire me. I wrote more songs in my ninth grade printing class than I was ever able to do out there, and it seemed ridiculous to me. Here I was being stimulated by this whirlwind atmosphere, where everything was fast paced and music was 24/7, and I couldn't reflect on any of it. I felt no damn peace.

So I came home, for good (almost). After '99 I vowed 'no more trips'. Besides tiring of it, it's not like that shit is free. I wanted to be part of THIS. I really love Kansas City, more than even I knew at the time, and I wanted to make my music HERE. I started working on new stuff with Paul (the partner/soulmate/husband guy that will be referred to in this column often), and we started doing less than glamourous performances around town, but being very happy. My fear of screwing up in front of people I might run into at the grocery store dwindled.

I've gone to LA one more time since then. In February I had my swan song meetup with my old band, and I got Paul and I involved in a project called "MusicMakers" that puts on monthly acoustic showcases/benefits. It wasn't as bittersweet as some of my other trips out there, because for the first time I wasn't trying to connect with something that I couldn't find.

(end trip into Dana's psyche)

This is why, when it comes to Kansas City music, I am a Pollyanna. I think it's the greatest damn thing on the planet, maybe because I'm 'starting over' with it and it's to a certain extent something new to me. I'm sure I have the potential to become just as jaded by it as I was by LA, but I don't think it will happen. There's something else that I see that's going on here that isn't going on everywhere, which is the point of this column. At least here you can feel like you're a part of something that is unique to this place, and that other bands aren't just your competition.

Dana Detrick-Clark
dana@thezone.org

Respond to this column.

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