And that's important, Carter believes, because shows with a critical mass of nothing other than music fanatics can be utterly dreary. "I was just talking to Larry Pirkle and he said he was DJing downtown and the people there didn't know what song he was playing, but those people were on the dance floor dancing and having fun," he says. "They weren't sitting by the turntable trying to see which pressing of the 12-inch he had like a bunch of indie rockers would, and not dancing. As a DJ you've got your regular people and your regular music scene people, and the regular people are actually a lot more fun."
Which speaks to another concern. Sure, our local bands, venues and sound men are not the greatest, true enough, and cliques can be off-putting to newcomers and less trendy music fans. And perhaps the smoking ban has taken a bite out of the draw too, and other factors to consider include Houston's ridiculous sprawl, woeful nocturnal public transit and relative shortage of traditional college students. And then there is the puzzling culture some clubs have here of starting weeknight shows at 11 with an interminable sound-check and one or two opening bands.
Maybe the problem goes deeper than that — to the heart of Houston's multiethnic soul. In 2006, Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam, the author of 2000's well-received cultural study Bowling Alone, published a paper called "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in 21st Century America." Putnam examined 41 American sites, ranging from rural areas in Washington state and North Dakota to big cities such as Los Angeles and Houston, on the benefits and drawbacks of cultural diversity. Putnam's findings were disheartening to all lovers of diversity, Putnam included. People in diverse communities, he found, lose trust in everybody, not just people from other racial groups but also from within their own kind. They disbelieve their local newspapers, the mayor, their neighbors, everybody.
Putnam contended that diverse cities like Houston were not marred by anything so dramatic as outright ethnic hostility. Instead, "inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television...Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us."
Despite his gloom, Putnam believes that over time, these distinctions disappear, noting that in the 1960s, a wedding of an Irish American and an Italian American was thought of as "a mixed marriage," and that even now in rural North Dakota, it's the height of cosmopolitanism to invite the Swedes to a Norwegian picnic.
"What we shouldn't do is to say that they should be more like us," Putnam later told the Financial Times. "We should construct a new us."
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Sure, there are diverse cities with thriving music scenes — London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. But with the exception of sprawling L.A., which also just happens to be the world headquarters of the entertainment business, few of those cities heap on the rest of Houston's drawbacks: mediocre bands, terrible radio, second-rate venues, poor public transportation, killer sprawl and a diverse populace of mildly paranoid, cynical souls. Houston could be doing worse. Every show that has a good draw is a testament to the dedication of those who do turn up. And there are some shows that go off really, really well. Those are where the "new us" is being forged.
These would include the Starbucks Mixed Media series of concerts at the Museum of Fine Arts. The 2005 kickoff of this event, which featured Grandmaster Flash spinning records in front of the Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings his music helped inspire, hit Houston's indie scene like a double-jolt of espresso. Upwards of a thousand hip kids were dancing the night away in some of Houston's most well-appointed and cosmopolitan surroundings, dancing and drinking in cutting-edge sounds. This and the succeeding events in the still-running summer series give people the feeling that Houston can approach a New York State of Vibe.
"It works because it's an event," says Chavez. "It's something different — it's not just another show at another fucking bar."
Maybe that "same old shows in the same old bars" paradigm is dying alongside the rest of the old-school music business model. If people aren't willing to pay for recorded music, wouldn't it follow that many of them would turn up their noses at live music in its most humdrum form too, even if the live experience is, at least theoretically, much more visceral? In a day and age when far too many bands eschew showmanship, is it any wonder that the answer is yes?
