Member Since: 16/04/2008
Band Website: www.sessionsatseventythreesaintpaul.blogspot.com
Band Members: the producers of sessions at 73 are michelle bellerose (canada) and steph vicat (france)
Influences: THE SESSIONS MANDATE ... to produce live music events that give audiences a snapshop of music action at the community level, not according to the dictates of coolness values. This attitude is struck not just for its anthropological value... there's a lot of great music and important experiences to be discovered when we take our bias of personal likes and dislikes and stand it aside. . . . . . Too often in art enterprises the notion of selecting and booking content according to criterion of perceived quality and trend-setting has led programmers into the bloated terrain of prejudiced networking. Worse, when individuals fancy themselves sentries at the portal of some desired context that only the few and the worthy can transit, popularity-schemes, bullying and tyranny of local institutions naturally follows suit. Monopolies of clique power organize to keep a minor and limited elite in position, while actively pursuing the wank of fancying itself worthy of judging (and finding lacking) artists or ideas that threaten hegemony. This is the dynamic of schoolyard politics and its twelve-year-old worldviews. . . . . .The mandate here at Sessions is to offer an alternative to the fear-mongering of popularity schemes. Instead, the programming here is designed to offer a realtime reflection of who's out there taking the initiative to create and perform music, no matter the style or degree of experience. Period. The value of such a stance is twofold.... it gives people who are driven by the muse a chance to develop and hone their craft in front of an audience, a chance to expose their wares to new ears and eyes, and it gives the community a chance to hear what artists are speaking to and choosing as forms of expression. . . . . . One of the advantages of being on the other side of the excess of the 90s and 00s is that its no longer enough to get up in front of a crowd to demo how clever and dexterous one's musical skills are. Audiences now want to ask the question, "What does it serve?". . . . .With our times awash in pictures of self-involved fashion slaves striking the VIP posture of staring off into the distance; with hack copy writers imagining themselves barometers of cultural content but instead dumbing-down reportage to myspace and press release rebooting as a substitute for actual journalism, its impossible not to feel disenfranchised by the fascist monopoly of cool-kid elites. . . . . . This project is an attempt to formulate a natural antidote to this kind of narcissism and distraction propaganda.
Sounds Like: progressive music in a self-serve hangout
Record Label: None
Type of Label: Major