The Making of an ‘It’ Music City

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  07.07.08 | 11:03 AM ET

seattlePhoto by mandj98 via Flickr (Creative Commons)

There’s an interesting tidbit in this Maisonneuve article about the second wave of Montreal indie rock, explaining how the music industry’s spin machine creates the latest “it” city. “Here’s how ‘it’ works,” Michael Chadwick writes. “Every three or four years, the music press comes to a consensus on a city. Magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin assemble a few bands from that city and classify them to a rigid ‘sound,’ no matter how accurate that designation is. The press, in conjunction with the labels, market them ad nauseum until there is an inevitable backlash, at which point they report on the backlash. They then move on to a new city. Rinse, repeat.”

What Chadwick doesn’t mention is what sometimes comes after the backlash subsides. In the most extreme cases, the ex-“it” city begins to be seen as an important musical landmark, and successfully markets itself as a cultural heritage hot spot—and then come the tourists.

Tags: Music, Pop Culture Travel, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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