Midwest Music Summit 2006: My Take on Day One.

So we’re (myself and Joe) standing off the sidewalk, in an alley, eating gyros between sets Thursday night. As I’m wiping sauce off my mouth and trying not to get food all over my shirt, I look up and see a local band, Stereo Deluxe, papering a lightpost with flyers for their show Friday night. The dude running operations was I suppose the lead singer, and when he wasn’t running around the post with packing tape, he was talking aloud. “Shit, man, I know packing tape looks dumb, but you don’t see anyone ripping our shit down. Let’s do one more layer here, closer to the ground.” They left to walk down to the next post, and I worked on my gyro. About 15 seconds later, another band, much less chatty and with silver duct tape, did a lap around the same post, covering one ring of Stereo Deluxe’s flyers before quietly moving on. We finished our “dinner” and started walking back toward the Vogue. Stereo Deluxe was pissed, and their bile was filtered again through their leader: “I have no fucking qualms about ripping down this shit, man. I mean, they’re basically doing the same shit when they put theirs over ours, so whatever.” They drew a small crowd of onlookers when he stepped up on a trash can to remove the flyers out of his immediate reach.

Such is the Midwest Music Summit, a three-day mini-orgy of music promotion and performance currently taking place in Indianapolis. Broad Ripple, more specifically—a little arty near-Northside section of the city with strips of bars, restaurants and performance venues. The MMS is modeled on Austin’s South by Southwest Festival, which is obvious. However, the relatively miniscule size of the MMS means that face-to-face networking and conversations, the ostensible purpose of both, actually happens here, without the worry of catching Belle and Sebastian or whatever. The MMS doesn’t have huge headlining bands, mostly because it can’t afford to pay them. But also because it’s trying to keep the local promotional focus that SxSw lost while transforming into a massive drunken festival. Within the first ten minutes I was at the opening party, I had one guy tell me that it “was pretty much his festival, so welcome,” and about five more dudes introduce themselves to me randomly—not necessarily because I’m anyone of note, but more because alcohol is the networking lubricant, I’ve discovered.

The shows are what draws the people to the thing, though, and they were definitely in abundance. The opening party was soundtracked by Grand Rapids band The Tide, local Muncie spazzy-jammy collective Everything, Now (who opened their set with “welcome to the Midwest Margot Summit”), and cutey-pie lordcore folkies Page France (below, top). It was raining, sort of, and there was free PBR and vodka-based beverages. It was best to double-up, which I did. Instead of Blackface Jesus, in Indianapolis we have Santa handing out homemade first-aid kits (above). And, given that this party was “badge-only” (read: VIP, stop giggling), there were plenty of bands walking around with boxes of their CDs, handing them out to anyone with free hands. I met a dude from a band from Terre Haute named Cuba who gave me a CD that looked like a cigar box, which made me walk across the street and watched him play in the parking lot behind a tiny coffee shop (below, bottom). They weren’t my thing, but that’s not really what’s important. What’s important is that the process of meeting a dude for the first time, seeing his CD, and watching him play live is pretty much an anthropomorphized version of what happens behind the scenes online every single day, which is pretty cool.

In that same parking lot I met Miller Howell, a shy, good-looking singer-songwriter from Kansas City. He was pretty unsure about how to approach people and “pitch” himself, but we ended up having a conversation for a while, and he gave me this charming little mailing envelope with a Scotch-Taped photo on the front and a CD inside. If this were “Love Monkey,” Miller could have been my Teddy Geiger. All I gotta say is, this kid’s got moxie. Anyway, I listened to his CD on my way home that night, and while he’s not my cup of coffee, he’s pretty well destined to be someone’s. We stopped by Indy CD and Vinyl and saw a few minutes of a Boston indie pop band called the Motion Sick who had to compete with, well, people shopping for other bands’ CDs while they played. I did run into the chick from the band later—actually, she recognized me, probably because I’m nine feet tall and there were only five people there, and asked me to send her the pictures I took, which I’ll do even though they suck. The pictures, not necessarily the band (below).

After prolific amounts of alcohol, we (myself and the gaggle of bloggers I was hanging with) made our way over to the Vogue, for what was serving as the headlining showcase that evening. The first band was Hot IQ, a spritely Hot Hot Heat-ish three piece from Denver. The place got a little more packed when current local buzz band Those Young Lions took the stage. These guys are my bros, full disclosure. They also put on the best set of the evening, bar none. They play this sort of fiery, gruff punk rock that runs into the Clash before hitting hot-rod territory. Tony Beemer was stoic and sporadically enthusiastic and a good frontman and bassist Kris Messer held the whole thing together, but the thing that separated the band from the pack is their (unnamed as yet) drummer, who had remarkable chops and caulked every empty second with the sorts of fills one would expect from an accomplished jazz or funk group. Listen to “Show Down” (mp3). They were followed by the super-loud LA space-metal of Silversun Pickups, which made its affinity for pre-DGC Nirvana remarkably and loudly clear. They were fucking loud. We split to grab a gyro and watch the aforementioned post-flyering incident before going over to Rouge to catch Yep Roc band American Princes. EJ knew and recommended them (I pushed them toward the Broad Ripple Brewpub for dinner, which they liked), and we caught the last few songs they played, which included a cover of Dinosaur, Jr.’s “Feel the Pain.” Personally, I like that they covered that particular song, because it shows that they’re young and not overly concerned with the false indie cred that would make them cover “Poledo” or some shit. They’re from Arkansas, but on stage they resembled Mission of Burma, with the dueling leads bearing striking resemblances to Messrs. Conley and Miller (below).

Right now, I’m sitting at a table in the Jazz Kitchen typing this and half-listening to a panel discussion on online promotion. Me and the blogger dudes (EJ, Joe, Dodge, Duffy and Craig) just finished a panel on blogging and promotion (don’t tell anyone, but I totally printed out some shitty business cards 20 minutes before I left for this thing) that people actually attended and apparently got something from, which was rather amazing and pretty flattering. I ran into American Princes again, and they were cool enough to give me a CD, as well as a local hip-hop producer who gave me a disc for his artist Dre Young, and a dude from a Danville, Indiana band called Wolfy (sorta Keane-ish) who’d sent me an email last week and gave me a CD. The first day was a living, breathing embodiment of the behind-the-scenes promo-craziness that I see a small portion of as a blogger, and as an event, it was pretty exhausting. But as far as feeling like I’m walking through the Internet, Matrix-style, it’s pretty cool. But it’s probably safe to say that I will not be seeing Stereo Deluxe this evening.

I’ll have my thoughts on Day Two up sometime tomorrow morning, probably earlier than today.