Nashville Cream

Screw your coffee!  How do you take your cream?

I take mine daily and I like it sour, snarky and utterly too impressed with itself.  Hell yeah.  I LOVE that blog!

The Nashville Cream is the local indie music blog which is run by writers of our local indie paper.  I don’t know the politics, I don’t know the infrastructure and I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time; but that simply doesn’t matter.  Our little local blog has a great readership and they flock to us from all over the world.

I came upon the cream a few years back and I have to say… I was underwhelmed.  Are these guys frigging kidding?  Possibly… But then I read further.  Whether you agree with them or not, there is simply something to be said for a bunch of people getting together and rapping about music, ya dig me?

NO ONE on this site agrees with one another–not even close; but it’s not a saber-rattling fest either.  It’s… Complicated.

The people who comment are damn near as entertaining as the writers themselves and sometimes more so.  They welcome everyone, equally, with a shrug and proceed to ignore them.  They know their shit and they absolutely love the smell of their own.  It’s like hipster, music snob, troglodyte heaven.  I absolutely adore it over there.

Now I myself, dear reader, am absolutely not a hipster.  Nor am I a music snob.  I’m only a troglodyte when a new season of something like Rome, Deadwood, Spartacus: blood and sand, etc comes out.  Even then, it usually doesn’t take more than a day or three to finish said series.  But the funny thing is this… Neither REALLY are the people over at the cream or their readership.  Oh, I’m sure some probably are; but it’s really a symbiotic sort of thing.  Like I said, complicated.

If you wanted a more accessible Pitchfork or something… I’m not sure.  Complicated.

So anyway, one of the few unifying themes with these cats is “local.”  Of course, they get the vapors when some band from Seattle or Atlanta or something comes along; but hey… Who doesn’t, right?

…

SWEET!  I WAS JUST SNARKY!!!

Sorry, it was my first bit of snark.  I may have the vapors myself.

Back to it.  So these cats love bands like Pavement and … Pavement… I think they like Pavement too; but how the hell should I know?  Okay, alright… you got me.  I’m a bad blogger because I don’t research when I write this crap; but you know what..?  Me neither.

I’m a musician and I’m only writing blogs so people can find me and buy my music.  So shut up and keep reading.  Then go buy some shit.  T-shirts are coming soon…

I can’t really explain what makes this blog so great–Nashville Cream I mean.  They’re fiercely loyal to Nashville; yet take a dump on 3/4 of the bands actually in/from Nashville unless they ……..

That was not unintentional (leaving it blank, I mean).  That’s the thing.  There is no rhyme or reason why they pull out the knee pads for some bands and then castrate others.  They’re critics!  What they hell ELSE are they supposed to do, am I right?

Now here’s the funny thing.  Be honest.  Have you ever gone to a Pitchfork or a Allmusicguide or something like that and just been completely lost?  Are you one of those types that laments the crap on top 40; but haven’t nary a freaking clue where the hell to go catch some tunes you may dig?  Yeah, me neither; but you know… For those OTHER people…

Well, the Nashville Cream sometimes helps with that!

I know, nuts, but it’s true.  I’ve actually found a few bands through them.  I wouldn’t say that I dug them as much as bands I found on my own–but there you go.

It’s also really interesting because the people who comment rarely agree with the writers.  It’s like constantly writing to a hostile audience.  I find that fascinating because many times as a musician–especially in a place like Nashville with 15,000 bands (probably NOT an exaggeration)–you almost always play to people who are, at best, indifferent.  You’re always winning over the crowd.  I guess it’s just nice to see writers having to do the same.

The final verdict is this:  The Nashville Cream blog is definitely a good read if you’re interested in music and you aren’t a miss nancy-pants that faints at the site of the word “bum.”  If you are, this shit must have been hard to read!