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The New York Times‘ Travel section this week ran its music issue, which had polite descriptions of festivals in Mali and Morocco, as well as rundowns of the music scenes in Stockholm and Istanbul. More local exoticism can be found in the podunk town of Denton, Texas. Seems that beneath the country bumpkin facade of “Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops” lies a thriving and eclectic music scene! How did that happen? Maybe it’s because of the University of North Texas’ music school, or the presence of the largest state-funded women’s college in America, or the city’s population of over 100k. Wouldn’t it be more shocking if Denton didn’t have a band like Midlake living there?
With its Piggly Wiggly markets and dusty pawnshops, the Texas college town of Denton does not look the part of a Woodstock in waiting. A Romanesque courthouse juts out of the central square, as in that fictional town in “Back to the Future.” And whenever the local college football team plays at Fouts Field, the entire town seems to put on Mean Green T-shirts.
…At last count, more than 100 bands were polishing their sound in the city’s dive bars, rooftop spaces and fraternity basements. Even the local record store, a converted opera house called Recycled, has a section devoted to Denton bands. The bin dividers read like a Lollapalooza T-shirt: Lift to Experience, Centro-matic, Jetscreamer, Vortexas, Robert Gomez, Stanton Meadowdale, Mom, Mandarin, and Matthew and the Arrogant Sea, to name just a few.
Not bad for a college town of 110,000, prompting more than a few music industry insiders to call Denton the next Austin.
“There’s this combination of artistic fervor and small town naïveté,” said David Sims, a music columnist for The Dallas Observer. “Artists here don’t know they’re not supposed to be Bob Dylan so when they start a band, they shoot for the moon.”
…Much of the musical genius can be traced back to the University of North Texas’s College of Music. Walk through the college’s leafy campus and you can eavesdrop on any number of lab bands polishing their chops, or pianists pounding away on a Steinway in the racquetball-court-like rehearsal studios.
Denton is also one of the fastest growing cities in America. Here’s hoping that “small town naïveté” that allows bands like Lift To Experience and Jetscreamer to “shoot for the moon” won’t be lost when the Piggly Wiggly gets replaced with a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Oh wait, there are already two in town.
An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton [NYT]
No love for Baboon?!
the best ever death metal band out of denton were a couple of guys who’d been friends since grade school.
Charles Wallace in “A Wrinkle in Time” is wearing Dr Dentons at the beginning.
shocking! americans outside of new york listen to indie rock too!
Denton’s scene is actually rather renowned, so this article is a little confusing.
@iantenna: I heard they never decided on a name though.
Fry Street in downtown Denton gained renown in the 90s as the easiest place in America to score drugs.
Recycled is one of the sweetest book/ record stores I’ve ever encountered. The music students always sold amazing stuff and I found way OOP Moondog, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Scott Walker, This Heat, and Tim Buckley items there all the time.
perhaps the former informs the latter?
Standard issue for the Times. They cannot write about the Flaming Lips without referencing the Dust Bowl, either.
[blog.newsok.com]
@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee: because chuck norris hates baboon.
but glad they picked up on the scene a good decade after everyone else. maybe someone found their old brutal juice tape.
Midlake owns.
Ugh. The NYT’s coverage of Essouria festival is hardly less patronizing – espeically when the reporter wonders if he should lie and tell Moroccoans he’s a Canadian and not an American. Please. I’ve been to the Essouaria and Fes festivals on more than one occasion, and the locals couldn’t be more welcoming – because the Moroccan tourist police and secret police are out in force, ready to beat the shit out of any poor Moroccan who looks crosseyed at a tourist.
Did I just read an article referencing Denton music without a single mention of Slobberbone,or The Drams?
Inexcusable.
Nick Denton has a town?
Did you know that the best ever death metal band out of Denton never settled on a name but the top three contenders, after weeks of debate, were Satan’s Fingers, the Killers and the Hospital Bombers?
@fakehardcore: “It’s terrible, but I guess you gotta have that kind of music, too.”
In other news, I think I might love you, Fakehardcore.
What’s next? Backwater hicks starting bands in so-called “towns” like Athens GA and Omaha NE?
What’s next? Backwater hicks starting bands in so-called “towns” like Athens GA and Omaha NE?
Jeff and Cyrus believed in their hearts that they were destined for stage lights, and lear jets, and fortune and fame. So, in script that made prominent use of a pentagram, they stenciled their drum heads and guitars with their names.
i completely forgot about midlake.
I like the blend of incredulity and overstatement. “The bin dividers read like a Lollapalooza T-shirt.” Yeah, I don’t know if the lineup that follows would really pack Grant Park.
They left out so many bands. Calla started there, 2 of the 3 guys in
Secret Machines did time there, Mazinga Phaser, crappy Deep Blue
Something, Edie Brickell…
oh, this answers my question about buying drugs on Fry Street:
“It didn’t help things when a developer last year bulldozed much of historic Fry Street, the former epicenter of Denton’s live music scene, to make way for a CVS (a plan since stalled by a permit issue). All that remains today of the Haight-Ashburyesque strip is a mosquito-infested mud pit and a graveyard of frat bars and head shops.”
Sadly, Denton is about 10 years away from being swallowed up by the DFW megalopolis.
Agreed on the local exoticism. People also choose what to see and document. I've only ever gone once into that Piggly Wiggly in four years of living in Denton and the same article features and image of a man in a Cowboy at Dan's Silverleaf. Until a country show they had there last year, I had never seen anyone wear a cowboy hat inside of the very “Denton” venues.
I have to laugh because I'm very much from Texas but currently live in Hong Kong and everyone here thinks I'm from California or New York. Even New Yorkers think I'm from New York. Texas is not the podunk state people make it out to be. It's awesome!
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