Wish You Were Here…but I Kind of Wish You Weren’t

Leslie Simon, co-author of Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture, branched out this year and penned her own book, Wish You Were Here: An Essential Guide to Your Favorite Music Scenes-from Punk to Indie and Everything in Between, a lengthy title for a not so lengthy book. It’s 240 pages, spanning scenes from West Coast to East Coast and even covering us lonesome No-Coasters here in the big MW (that’s Midwest if you’re not lucky enough to live in the Heartland).

Simon discusses the history of each major music scene across the country, from the emo surge coming out of Omaha, Lawrence, and the Twin Cities, to the forefathers of punk and hardcore in New York City, Washington D.C., and the Bay Area.  She does a great job of escorting the reader through each scene’s musical history and current state of being.  She even acknowledges the pop-punk movement of suburban Florida where New Found Glory, Yellowcard, and Dashboard Confessional all got their start.  It is an extensive and yet quick history that manages to explain where things started and where things are now for most of the cities Simon discusses.

My one major issue with this book though, is in the last few chapters.  Where her portrayal of the scenes I know best, including my own hometown Chicago, are portrayed as arrogant and downright not fun scenes to be in.  Perhaps as a Chicago-scenester, I have a bit of pretension when it comes to discussing my particular music scene, but it was a bit off-putting reading about those last few cities, especially after the rest of the scenes covered were fairly unbiased, including her final chapter on the Twin Cities.

Simon has painted a less than pretty picture of what the Chicago, Omaha, and even New York City scenes have offered up to the indie music world.  Not necessarily discrediting the music from every scene but more or less discrediting those that helped to create it and put it on the map.  It’s almost as if she’s let the pretensions of certain scene-kings and scene-queens overshadow the music each city has offered the rest of the music world.

Simon spends a good portion discussing the Chicago scene as if the über-rich white kids from the surrounding affluent suburbs of Chicago created it.  I can fully attest to the pompousness and pretension Chicago-scenesters have but I can also say we take full pride in our scene and the music that has given us such great bands to listen to.  It seems Simon also paints the New York City scene in a similar light, and though I know NYC only by distant admiration, I know their music scene has far more to offer than upper east-siders flaunting money and a potential eating disorder.  The same is the story for Omaha.  Though Omaha’s scene was explosive and quick, there is a significant reason.  Saddle Creek helped to spawn a music movement that has yet to be seen from anywhere else in the country.

Had Simon’s book been available to me when I was 14 or 15 and just starting to sift through the bands and musicians creating indie music, it would have been more than useful.  Her depiction of each music scene is different and rightly so.  The history of each place is intriguing and she puts the pieces together easier than I could ever explain, but it seems almost a bit lazy and slightly vindictive toward the end.

If you are looking to brush up on a quick history of the all-encompassing indie music world, or find a great, hip, vacation spot, than I would definitely recommend this book.  If you’re slightly more versed than the average-Joe in what makes the scene a scene, and reside in Chicago, New York City, or Omaha, than I fear you’ll find this book more than disappointing.

*By Karen, who is wicked pumped for New Year’s Eve

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