h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A place you could go to get some great information is www.tcpunk.com

It was a bulletin board based out of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Which is coincidently the home of both Husker Du and the Replacements. It would be a great resource to look at for this article as many of the older members of the bulletin board are/were music industry insiders. The site is searchable and it deals almost exclusively with punk music. You can even try contacting some of the people from the site, as they know a lot of people, have great stories and a wealth of information pertinent to this subject. Felix von Havoc (the owner of a tiny label called Havoc Records) is considered a punk historian of sorts by those who have gotten to talk to, whose specialites include swedish and japanese hardcore.

Unfortunately the site is closed, so you can longer post to the board, but you can still search it and review it. How long it will remain I'm not sure though.

If you're going to mention SST records, you should really talk about L.A. based Black Flag. It was one of their members that started SST records, with Black Flag being their first band. They toured the country relentlessly, finding the local punk scene and playing shows. This was also where Henry Rollins, the guy who's always commenting on VH1 but never had a hit song, got his start.

Another name worth mentioning would be Steve Albini. He's a musician/producer. He's always been a very independent artist with his first band being Big Black. Big Black was one of the very first of the industrial rock and roll bands, which was followed by such bands as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. Steve's current band is Shellac. He's also produced albums for some fairly influental bands, such as Nirvana.

In my opinion though, indie music actually does fairly well in America. It's just more localized and doesn't spread across the entire country. Underground music doesn't travel fast and not many indie groups can't afford to tour non-stop across the entire country fast enough to make a name for themselves. You will often find bands who have had good success at home, but fail to do well across the whole country, such as Seattle's Fastbacks, who have been an independently minded group since around '83 I believe.

Also a genre that you came close to mentioning was rap music. Rap music started out as underground music, broadcasting illegal radio stations and producing independent records. While I personnaly don't like the music at all, I do like to recognize what they're doing and what they've done with it. They've been highly successful, but are ignored even more than their rock'n'roll counterparts.

Good article though, I liked it. You can probably tell it's a topic of interest for me so I usually have something I try to add, but so far what you have is well written and decently researched. Hope the info I've given is helpful.

That's brilliant - thank you very much! Will get to work adding some of this stuff in when I get the chance.

Cheers,
Number Six

No problem. I forgot one other resource, www.allmusic.com

Great site, you can usually find at least something on any musical artist you can think of. Includes write ups on genre's and musical maps. Tells you key artists for genre's, key albums, similar artists and artists who followed. Very hoopy site.

If you need any help or idea's for this one I'd be happy to help. I'm definitely no expert, but I enjoy the topic of music history and am more than willing to learn more.