Grotty Rock City

From the new Esquire….

The story is called "Cities That Rock"
subtitled A Guide to the 10 best cities for seeing and hearing music.

1. Pittsburgh
2. Denver
3. Minneapolis
4. Raleigh, NC
5. Gainesville, FL
6. Fresno, CA
7. Cincinnati
8. New Orleans
9. Phoenix/Tempe
10. San Fran

Iron City bands and places mentioned Rusted Root, Modey Lemon, The Clarks, Dave's Music Mine, Mr. Smalls and Jo Jo's.

And before the snide remarks about reading Esquire fly… The cover has a picture of Rachel Weisz and a strategically place snake :eek:

I would NOT want to live in Gainesville, don't care how good the music scene is.

I'm surprised at Pitt, especially at #1, and Denver, Gainesville and Cincinnati are all interesting –never would have thunk it.

That's shocking. No one here would believe it.

There was a large article in last week's city paper about the lack of a local 'scene' and how very few bands break out to make any sort of national impact. And of those that do - often (The Clarks), they are embarrassing.

Since I've been here 3 GREAT venues have closed. Most shows have to be all ages just to get a decent crowd. It's a weird place - I remember just after having moved here reading an article in the WSJ about Pitt called "If You Can Stand the Loneliness, You Can Live Like a King." Mostly about the relative lack of young (and young thinking) people. You rarely have problems getting show tix, dinner reservations, etc. It's the second oldest county in the US after Dade Cty FL!

All that said. It's not as bad as I feared (after living in DC). We get a decent shot at seeing bands and have a very good NPR station, that probably deserves most of the credit for even keeping Pitt on the music map.

Hey Grotty, how was the Mavericks/BR549 show?

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
10. San Fran

Word. Lots of venues, lots of options….

Austin not even in the top ten? Who the hell compiled this list??

I'll admit to reading Esquire. I think it's an excellent magazine.

They must have included factors besides live music. We all now know that DC/Baltimore lost major points if record stores and radio were contributing factors regardless of how many good live venues we have. We don't even have any real quality college radio of any wattage.

Kind of funny that anyplace in Florida was listed as I'm always hearing about the lack of touring anywhere in that state.

i read that esquire didn't include nyc and austin because they wanted to look at other cities in the u.s., not the usual cities.