Hartford! It's Gotcha Covered!
Anyone who lives in the central Connecticut area is probably used to driving out of state to see any decent shows. Well...that is non-punk or ska shows. There used to be a pretty thriving punk and ska scene around here though it never seemed to really get any real coverage in the Hartford area. None of the bands seemed to actually be from Hartford and the Hartford Advocate never wrote about the scene much at all. The city has not exactly been a hotbed of indie music and it's become the joke that every band here is a cover band; if there's a popular band somewhere they probably have a cover band living in Hartford area.
Well...I guess Hartford's finally admitted defeat altogether with this year's Advocate Snow Slam being completely dedicated to cover bands. You think things can't get any more pathetic and they do. I've never understood why people here only want to hear covers. Don't people realize that if nobody ever wrote songs there would BE no beloved cover tunes to PLAY? It's not a scene for original bands to even try to play shows...if they fall in the indie category especially. How can a city this size have no indie scene at all and worse be ruled by cover bands? In other places cover bands are sort of kitsch at least right? What's the point of being in a cover band? Why do people want to go see cover bands? If you're going out to hear music that's too loud to talk over, wouldn't you rather hear something original?
Anywhere that's tried to have original music pretty much goes out of business. The Hartford Brewery...The Municipal Cafe...even Studio 158 which was a DIY punk club ended up closing and not re-opening in Manchester as planned. I've always felt that nothing cool can happen here because everyone up and moves as soon as they can. It's kind of sad. Even the hipper area of New Haven where some decent bands HAVE come from has trouble keeping clubs open. Now there's very few places for bands to play there too. Nonetheless, I wonder if anywhere in the world has a worse music scene than Hartford...The town's musical claim to fame is that The guy from Dashboard Confessional lived in West Hartford till like sixth grade...I guess it's no wonder why the Hartford area can't support an independent record store. Maybe if one sold tapes of cover bands...
That said, Integrity 'n Music (specializing in jazz) and Records And Things (random used lp's and a few cd's) are still plugging away in Wethersfield. Go east of there and there's NOTHING............You have to go to Mystic to find an independent store (Mystic Disc) and beyond there to Rhode Island or Boston. Why does Waterbury have the two best stores (Phoenix and Brass City) east of Danbury (whose Trash American Style is the anchor of the Danbury scene: probably the healthiest indie scene in the state over the past 15 years). Between Waterbury and Mystic there isn't any place to buy indie cd's that aren't stocked at Borders or Best Buy and indie vinyl...HA! It's pretty sad that touring bands have had to play for donations (for legal reasons) at Brass City over the years since there are NO FRIGGIN' CLUBS. Thomas Pizzola has clearly tried to help the scene out by writing about non-cover bands in the Local Motion column in the Hartford Advocate but one has to wonder what the point is when the paper itself is stooping to a cover band celebration for it's Snow Slam. It's just WEAK. Thanks Advocate.
7:03:59 PM 
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