When someone embraces the scene selflessly, and for non aggrandizing reasons, they are a true local music supporter. David de Young has taken on the task of reviewing live local music and posting on his website. He doesn’t do it as a critic, being a musician himself he understands the complexities of bringing music to the stage. De Young and his staff have compiled tons of reviews on his site, and are keeping it up to date with new reviews posted every few days. I had a chance to ask him some questions about his site and how he does it.

Horton: Why did you start the site? When?

de Young: Howwastheshow.com started by accident just over two years ago. I was writing emails describing national shows to friends who had missed them, the first of which was a review of the Craig David show on Valentine’s Day 2002 at First Avenue. One friend recommended I start publishing my reviews in a blog. Within a few months, I had so many reviews that I needed a better way of organizing them online; and put up a full-fledged site at the howwastheshow.com domain. The obvious next step was to start writing about local music, which is where I’ve tried to keep a majority of the focus ever since.

Horton: What do you feel is the most important part of a live show? Is it the music? Is it the showmanship?

de Young: A great live show is a combination of sound, vision and vibe. It’s funny that you ask that on a night when I’m heading out to see Mark Mallman, who is a perfect combination of great music and awesome showmanship. 12 Rods and the Melismatics are two more local bands that come to mind with that combination.

Horton: How do feel about the local live scene? Could there more done, or do more people need to get out?

de Young: The Twin Cities has a tremendous local live music scene that is surely the envy of many similar-sized, and even larger towns. The bands here are part of a community that really talks itself up. I get some of my best tips about bands from local bands themselves. To get people to shows, the clubs in town should
emphasize keeping covers and drink prices low enough so that people can afford to go out. I’m also glad to hear of the startup of Rift Magazine, as more local indie press will surely help. It would also be great to see more local music shows like KQ’s Homegrown and Cities 97’s Minnesota Music; and I wish someone would clone Radio K.

Horton: Locally, who are your favorite live bands? Are they necessarily the same bands whose CDs you like? Or is a band sometimes better live than on CD, or vice versa?

de Young: It’s hard to answer that question without leaving a lot of great bands out. But I am currently very excited about a new band called The Vestals who will have released their first CD by the time you go to press. Some of my other favorites include the Beatifics, Friends Like These, Big Ditch Road, and Ben Connelly, just to name a few. Generally, bands that end up being my favorite have great CDs and put on live shows worth seeing again and again.

Horton: What does the future look like for the site? Any big changes?

de Young: This Spring I’ll be working with Karen Kopacz of designforthearts.com to make howwastehshow.com database driven. Currently the site is comprised of hundreds of static pages, and I need a way to cross reference the reviews, make the site easier to update and easier for the user to navigate. I’m also restructuring because after two years, the site is busy enough that it’s time to start selling ads.

Horton: If you could do one more thing for the local scene, what would you do?

de Young: Actually, I plan on doing it. I don’t feel that writing a rock review is really that difficult. I hope to get more people involved in writing by publishing a set of instructions for writing about music, in a way that proves interesting to the reader. I think the two most important qualities a person writing about music should have are
passion and taste. Skill at writing is a close third, but without the first two, I often feel like I’m reading something that was written to be included with an application to “rock writer school” when all I really want to know is howwastheshow?

howwastheshow.com

Filed under: Issue #1