The modern music scene is a tough one to grasp. There is a myriad of digital outlets today to suggest what you should be listening to. You no longer have to rely on your friends, your most trustworthy music advocates to suggest new bands. Blogs are an endless resource where you don’t have to look hard to find a free song to sample each day. From the blogs, to commercials to ringtones we are constantly bombarded by fragmented bits of music. Somewhere along the way the line turned hazy between an appropriate way to digest music and a way we just brush with it, hearing without listening.
After all these years though there is still one way to enjoy your favorite band in a consequence-free environment, which is of course, the rock show. In just a few weeks Steve LaBate and Scott Sloan will trek the country scouring forty rock shows in forty days in search of…well they’ll be making a documentary so we’ll just have to wait and see!
But there must be a reason behind launching this expedition. Why you ask? To quote Chazz Darvey, “ROCK AND ROLL!” It’s what this great country was founded on. I think there was a rock ‘n roll amendment to the constitution sometime around the bicentennial.
LaBate (senior contributing writer at Paste Magazine) and Sloan (Denver-based filmmaker) will hit the road May 1st in the most American way possible, in a van. They will be seeing every kind of show this great county has to offer, from a DIY church basement concert to an amphitheater festival. Confirmed stop offs along the way include performances with the Shout Out Louds , Drive-By Truckers, Torche, Rev. Horton Heat, Subhumans, Capgun Coup, Young Dubliners, Josiah Wolf (of WHY?), The Moaners, Tendaberry, Ümlaüt, and Shotgun Lover.
The scenes and experiences of their travels will then be released as the documentary, titled 40 Nights of Rock & Roll. LaBate and Sloan will also document their travels on Tumblr and Twitter.
Consider this a state of the union on the US rock ‘n roll scene. It’s gut check time for America.
