Ra Ra Riot, an addictive Indie Pop outfit from Syracuse, N.Y., plays the Mad Hatter in Covington Saturday night. (Local heroes Pomegranates open the show.) I talked to RRR bassist Mathieu Santos for a feature that appeared in this week's print edition. We had to edit the interview because of space constraints, but I thought I'd post this interesting back-and-forth about how rapidly evolving technologies have impacted musicians and the lack of mystery in today's perpetually plugged-in, social-media-fed culture. —-
CityBeat: I think the first time I heard you guys was a live version of “Can You Tell” (from the band's debut full-length The Rhumb Line) on YouTube. It’s interesting that the Internet is clearly more of a gateway for audiences to find bands than radio or MTV had been in the past. I’m in my thirties, and I remember a time when you couldn’t find anything about a new band initially. The only thing you had was the album. Or, if they came to town, you could see them live. Now it’s almost instantaneous — as soon as a band forms, every one of its shows is documented on YouTube. It’s good in the sense that bands can get themselves out there more easily than ever before, but I also thing there’s less mystery about music now, which to me is an important and often overlooked aspect of the experience.
Mathieu Santos: I definitely agree. I remember that, too. I’m 25, and I remember when I first started getting into music it was really exciting because you would hear a song on the radio and it was like, “Oh, who is that?” and you would have to do a lot of detective work and go to the record store and have them order the record if it wasn’t in stock. It was like a big mystery and put the pieces together. It was really fun and now you don’t have that anymore. It’s great that bands can get themselves out there, but I think in a lot of cases bands aren’t ready to get put out there and before you know it these bands that have been around for like two months are blowing up and doing huge tours and doing all these things that they’re not ready to do. And then they start to collapse under the weight a little bit and then there is a huge backlash and then they have to break up.
We’ve been really lucky because we had a bit of a following online. Within our first year we played CMJ, and there was a ton of positive blog coverage and lot of people starting hearing about us, but it wasn’t too much where it was crippling. I did help us grow, but it’s definitely a delicate balance. We’re already seeing so many bands who formed after we did and who got way bigger than us that don’t exist anymore.
CB: Well, I think that kind of instant broad exposure can have a corrosively self-conscious impact on a lot of bands. They don’t have time to grow and evolve organically.
MS: That’s absolutely true. A lot of times you don’t get a chance to develop and people are already judging every single thing you do. It can be hard if you’re not ready for that and all the sudden you’re seeing things written about you online.
