Maybe you went to one of these shows yourself. You could watch a band take off across the blogs, then see them booking bigger venues and drawing bigger crowds. departments, the new radio, the new Seattle, a tool for wriggling free of the bias and influence of stodgy old gatekeepers. And it was free! Optimistic thinking about the disruptive, democratizing potential of the Internet was everywhere, and it seemed like blogs had become––at least for fans of certain faddish strains of indie rock––the new A. It was exciting, hopping from blog to blog as though you were reading a large, collectively authored, and constantly updated zine, with samples of the gushed-over music just a click away. Streaming hadn’t yet taken over our listening habits, but Web connections were speedy enough that, if a blog posted an MP3, a reader could be hearing the song a few minutes later. The recordings had a rough-and-ready patina that evoked the experience of hearing the band next door playing in the basement but having the best rehearsal of all time.Ĭounterfactual history is tricky, but it feels safe to say that Voxtrot found a bigger audience––or found its audience faster––than it would have otherwise thanks to the Internet phenomenon referred to as “blog rock.” By the mid-aughts, starting a blog was easier than ever. A typical Voxtrot song held several normal pop tunes’ worth of ingredients, smushed together by enthusiasm, dense but simultaneously jaunty. These early releases sounded as if they’d been made by eager students of the Smiths and Belle and Sebastian who were bursting with ideas––lyrics, hooks, buildups, climaxes––and eager to use them, quickly. In 20, the band, based out of Austin, released two five-song EPs on its own record label Srivastava’s dad lent them money for some of their earliest recordings. Voxtrot formed in 2002, while its members were still in college. “We’ve been away for a long time!” he said, sounding happy and slightly mystified. Stepping onto the stage, the band’s front man, singer, and songwriter, Ramesh Srivastava, peered out into the crowd. I caught the tour in Chicago, on a Friday in October. For some of us, the nostalgia had another layer: Voxtrot’s songs summoned memories of an online musical ecosystem, a way of finding and relating to bands online, that vanished long ago. The music carried us back to 2007: to our twenties, to college, to crushes and heartbreak, and, perhaps most of all, to the desire to have those tumultuous feelings captured, stoked, and soothed by song. For the older folks in the crowds––the demographic in which, at thirty-eight, I am forced to count myself––the thrill came from seeing history resurrected. Because the band hasn’t toured or released new music for the past twelve years, younger fans got the thrill of watching an act they’ve only ever known in the past tense. On the band Voxtrot’s recent reunion tour, the experience of the audience members was shaped, more than usual, by age.
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