Urge for going Can Providence be a greener pasture? BY BOB GULLA

I recently spent some time with music just released by the Slip, some acoustic and electric cuts from a new pair of albums, plus a new offshoot of the band called Surprise Me Mr. Davis. The latter is the Slip — Andrew and Brad Barr and Marc Friedman — accompanied by poet/songwriter/troubadour Nathan Moore, the Slip’s own Robert Hunter. So, obviously, with all this new material out, there’s a sizable demand for the band out there. Somewhere. But not here.

The Slip have slipped outside the borders of the local scene and succeeded there. The band is now firmly in the embrace of a bigger, more welcoming, more rewarding national scene. They belong to a new home, one quite frequently far from the place in which they grew up and started playing. But, clearly, it’s a peaceful place for the jam-happy trio.

This all brings up something symptomatic of a much larger situation in the local music scene. Does a band have to leave the area to succeed? Is the state of Providence music such that a band has to ditch it to make anything of itself? Now, I’m not insinuating bands here aren’t talented, of course. I’m talking strictly about the fact that certain cities and regions have better reputations as musical hotbeds than others. Right now, Providence not only fails to qualify as a hotbed, from what I hear — or more directly, don’t hear — it has no reputation at all. Harsh, yes, but for those of us who have seen things actually happen here for bands over the last 20 years, we’ve experienced an ebb tide for some time. Providence is quite a distance out of the public eye.

Does this mean you have to leave to get noticed? Maybe. Maybe not. It could mean that given the current drab state of the industry, music labels simply aren’t reaching out like they used to. This could be just a temporary phase; the ship will right as soon as the industry does, and Providence and other small music cities will come back into favor. But if it’s permanent, moving out to succeed may very well be the only option.

Spogga did it. Freakshow did it. Donnybrook is back, forth, in, and out, searching. Sage Francis exited to find his audience and received a national rep in the process. Zox is zigzagging the country like a drunken housefly. Lightning Bolt is seeking out simpatico noise cults and finding them around the world. Wheat managed to escape the Providence label early on, signed with Aware/Sony, and is in the process of breaking nationally. The Midnight Creeps, Daughters, Chinese Stars, Monty’s Fan Club, M-80, and other punks of various stripes have sought and discovered pockets of life outside of Providence, as far away as mainland Europe and the UK. Thee Wylde Card DJs have even been successful finding audiences for their 45s beyond the pale of our city. The Iditarod now wows audiences in Scandinavia, Britain, and elsewhere. Mike Dinallo and the Mercy Brothers have become stars in Scandinavia. And then there’s the matter of the Slip, now one of the major young players on the jam scene.

Often, in places like London and Paris, Providence is better known as the home to hip bands like Throwing Muses, Six Finger Satellite, Velvet Crush, the Crowns, and Roomful of Blues, beloved bands that introduced the world to our city. In most cases, people in the States don’t care about the reputation of Providence right here and now, having quickly forgotten the great bands our city has produced. But folks around the world remember us more fondly for our musical contributions. Providence is a fresh place. Not New York, LA, even Boston. Just ask Lightning Bolt. Mojo magazine, based in London, recently wrote of them, "The sheer visceral power of this super-loud, jazz-metal tumult is jaw-dropping . . . Sell your souls to see them."

It’s a plain fact that label folks aren’t looking here in Providence. These days, bands are going out to find them. With dwindling A&R budgets, fewer signings, and the industry malaise that’s bordering on self-destruction, that might be the way you need to do things.

So what’s the moral here? At least in the near term, I guess it’s don’t expect to be discovered here at home. There won’t be any stories about Providence becoming the hip scene on the east coast, especially considering the current inertia and the demise of the mill scene.

What does that mean to local bands? It means that if you really want to make something happen, if you want to create a stir, you’ve got to leave: cut ties, quit jobs, say goodbye to friends, and shed the creature comforts of home. It means you have to stop bemoaning the state of rock here in Providence and go somewhere that you can really do something to help yourself out. To some, that news might suck; it might be exactly the kind of tidings they’ve been dreading, a death sentence. To others, however, making that decision to get up and go might be the one thing that’ll change their lives forever.

E-mail me with your music news at big.daddy1@cox.net.