Fuck I hate the scene. It’s full of emaciated 20-something kids, with skinny black jeans and vintage Reeboks and giant neon t-shirts, with elitist but narrow-minded musical tastes. The bands all play synth-heavy dance rock with inane lyrics, none of the people will even look in your direction if you aren’t wearing the right shade of fluoro green mascara, the crowds spend every gig screaming in-jokes at each other and dancing like epileptic patients, and I never get invited to their parties.
Sound familiar? We’ve heard complaints like this time and again, in media and from the people around us. ‘The scene’, ‘scene kids’, ‘scenesters’ – the terms get thrown around as if we all know who and what they refer to, as if ‘the scene’ in Wellington was a singular, tangible entity with clearly defined boundaries.
But from my experience of being in bands and socialising at gigs, I’ve detected a peculiar feature of the supposed ‘scene’: those people who are inside it don’t seem to think that it exists. They protest that they aren’t scene kids, that they and their friends are not exclusive or elitist and that there aren’t any particular sounds or fashion trends that you can pin down as being ‘scene’, and to an extent they’re right.
The true ‘scene kid’ is a rare beast, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever met a bona fide specimen. I’m not saying they genuinely don’t exist – but there are far fewer of them out there than is commonly supposed. And the above description of a typical scene event is rarely, if ever, accurate. But this isn’t to say that there is no such thing as a scene.
To outsiders at scene gigs, it’s blatantly apparent that something’s going on that doesn’t include them. The problem is in the ambiguity of the word itself. In one sense people talk about ‘the scene’, in another people refer to ‘a scene’. ‘The scene’ is often used to condemn a group of perceived wankers and posers in one convenient stroke; ‘A scene’ is a more benign way of dividing up sectors of the broader music world for the sake of clarity of communication.
The term ‘scene’ originated from the 1950s jazz and beat poets, and basically refers to a group of people glued together by practically any mutual characteristic; in music these are commonly fashion, music taste, the style and genre of the bands, and the socio-economic situation of those included. Most importantly, scenes need a geographical space to exist, whether it be The Mighty Mighty, East London or the USA’s Deep South. Influential historical scenes include the Seattle scene of the late 80s/early 90s, the punk scene in late 70s London, and the Dunedin scene of the 80s.
‘Scenes’ can be used to loosely connect the dots; to make sense of the confusing maelstrom of bands, sounds and people involved in music. It’s used in a way similar to ‘-isms’ in political science and history: it doesn’t describe anything particularly concrete, but it’s helpful for building up a rough picture of the layout of the music world. Like just about anything else in the universe, a spectrum exists – some bands fit easily within a scene, others straddle boundaries – but without categorising the spectrum, conversations about music would be virtually impossible.
But we shouldn’t take these rough categorisations too far. Scenes, after all, are only made up of people, and while the music within a scene may be fairly similar it would be absurd to suppose that all the people within it adhere to the same personality type. There’s as much variation within a scene as there is in any other sphere of culture. And, of course, the boundaries are very blurry – particularly in Wellington. With our high level of cultural activity and low population, it’s possible to link bands of completely different scenes by fewer than four degrees of separation, in most cases.
As for ‘the scene’ in the singular sense, and ‘scene kids’, I reckon they’re something of a myth. My hypothesis is that we’ve welded together a bunch of irritating personality traits and fashion trends that we observe around us, to create an imagined community of super-bitchable people that we can criticise without ever having to confront. In other words, they’re your typical scapegoats. We see the expensive clothes, the adherence to trends and smell the whiff of elitism, but the rest is largely fabricated to give us something to hate.
It’s easy to fall in to the trap of labelling a band as a scene band and instantly dismissing it because ‘you’re just not in to it’. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been guilty of this, only to realise, yet again, that good music transcends categories. Considering bands based solely on the way they sound rather than the people and fashions they’re associated with can turn up some gems in surprising places.
Come, guys, let’s not be hating on people for wearing neon or playing Casiotone keyboards – or, for that matter, sporting long, greasy locks and black t-shirts. While there are some shallow twits behind the trendy sunglasses, there are also some brilliant musical minds. Keep an open mind and you’ll be surprised at the kind of music you can learn to enjoy.