Ah, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Just head east out of Chicago, skirt around the lake through Indiana, slingshot up West Michigan on I-94 for a couple hours and you're there — the winding Oak-lined drives, the cobblestone rumble of Eastown, the pervasive Dutch Christian conservatism.
My beloved blip of a hometown made a splash in the national music press this week when Calvin College, a local higher education institution founded by the Christian Reformed Church, canceled a scheduled gig from The New Pornographers — and they did so due to the band's name. That would be the same name the band performed under when Calvin, y'know, booked them in the first place. Apparently, the din of religious idiocy over the coming onslaught of Pornographers slowly mounted until Calvin officials could no longer ignore the squall. Per the college's official statement:
"After weeks of discussion and consideration, the irony of the band's name was impossible to explain to many. The band's name, to some, is mistakenly associated with pornography. Consequently, Calvin, to some, was mistakenly associated with pornography. Neither the college nor the band endorses pornography."
I'd like to note a second irony in the fact that the power-poppy Pornographers, beyond their name, produce some of the most aw-shucks, PG-rated indie rock around. If the Pornos became a film, they'd be WALL-E. They're among the most mild-mannered of modern bands who still manage to produce successful art, and even their more subversive qualities require a heavy dose of close reading and a brainy sense of humor before they come into focus. Clearly, none of the band's critics at Calvin took a single spin of a New Pornographers track before they jerked their knees into decision-making mode.
Only Grand Rapids residents, however, truly appreciate the setback this mess creates for their town's local music scene. Noteworthy G.R. concerts generally come in two flavors: mid-size stadium acts who play at the town's sole arena, and metal. Calvin College provides one of the city's only venues that can comfortably host a higher-profile indie band, and they're responsible for most of the memorable concerts of my late adolescence: Death Cab For Cutie, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Jenny Lewis.
Put simply, we don't really get top-shelf indie shows in Grand Rapids. We don't get Spoon, we don't get Animal Collective and we (obviously) don't get The New Pornographers. As a 20-year resident of Grand Rapids, believe me when I say that if Calvin College starts pulling crap like this on a regular basis, Michigan's second-largest city will effectively drop off the independent music radar entirely.
Before this debacle, Grand Rapids had mostly been making headlines for the runaway success of its ArtPrize contest, a 2009 populist art competition where local residents voted on works of art from around the world in order to award an eye-popping $250,000 first prize and a number of sizeable runner-up endowments. The Chicago Reader recently made note of the way that ArtPrize, currently the world's biggest contest of its kind, rejuvenated the town's arts scene and triumphantly slapped Grand Rapids' name on the cultural map of the Midwest. Local music fans surely hoped this would spill over to the town's concert scene as well, and they got a big boost when ArtPrize organizers announced they'd booked Surfer Blood to play the first night of a new concert series as part of this year's ArtPrize.
Since many of my twentysomething friends have spent almost half their lives working to elevate Grand Rapids as a cultural hub in beleaguered Michigan, I find it massively disappointing to see Calvin College deal a blow to the local music scene in the midst of so much positivity for the city. Calvin maintains that an important part of their Christian mission involves "faithfully engaging popular culture," so I'm going to hand the college a letter grade on this particular assignment in popular culture engagement: EF, for Epic Fail.
I encourage RFC readers, whether you give a damn about Grand Rapids or not, to do Michigan music fans a favor: e-mail Calvin College at info@calvin.edu and let them know what you think of this shining example of reactionary curmudgeonism and outright music censorship.
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