|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Vengeful Vinnie Vegan Greetings, smalltown rockers! Since my last column, I have moved. Goodbye smalltown Pennsylvania; hello, college So I know this guy here in Newark. We’ll call him Vinnie the Vegan. At first meeting, Vinnie the Vegan seems like an okay guy. He’s not terribly tall or threatening, dressed in the typical thrift-store gear of indie hardcore kids, and he likes to take pictures at the shows he puts on. Vinnie is one of the officers of the University of Delaware’s organization that brings independent bands to town for shows. The club has brought in Q and not U, My Chemical Romance, Murder by Death, Thursday, and Boy Sets Fire, but they really specialize in bringing DIY bands to the university, attracting acts like Stop It!!, The Assistant, Alison Ranger, Wolves, and An Albatross. Vinnie the Vegan is all about the shows, and he’s been having them in his basement most recently. Vinnie the Vegan is all about the music, which is great, on the surface. The big problem is Vinnie is a complete elitist jerk sometimes. Indie music elitists can be even worse in small towns than in big cities, I think. In Philadelphia, the Vinnie the Vegan bitches about how The Locust really sold out when they signed to a tiny, tiny offshoot of Epitaph Records, that they’re going SOOO mainstream. He grew up somewhere that had a great underground punk and hardcore scene, which is why it’s so hard to talk about music with him. He just assumes that everyone grew up where there were shows, and if we This is what I really want to say: Dear Vinnie the Vegan, Just because my first punk album was Green Day’s Dookie doesn’t make me some kind of
Hannah Basically, the lesson we can all learn from this is that if some asshole is on your back for admitting you really love Blink 182, just tell them that you’re from a small town where people think Creed is the epitome of hard rock. And if they don’t understand…well…they probably never will. I will keep going to Vinnie the Vegan’s shows, but unless I want to suffer the pain of being chastised about my love for Weezer, I will continue to keep my mouth closed. For now. Am I a sellout, too, Vinnie? Great! Now where’s my hard lemonade and cheeseburger? Awww, Vinnie, what do you mean you don’t want any...? Hannah Renk
Go Back. |
Error 404 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
town in Delaware. (Newark, home to the University of Delaware.) I love my new home because there’s actually a music scene that interests me here, there’s a poetry reading I like to attend, and there are lots of good, interesting, artsy people for me to spend my time with.
elitists at one of the many record stores on South Street simply turned up their nose at me. Vinnie the Vegan has a nasty habit of calling you out if you enjoy any sort of mainstream music. Or if you’re not a vegetarian. Or a vegan. Or straight edge. Or a socialist. Catching Vinnie the Vegan on a bad day tends to make some people feel like going out for the biggest steak they can find while guzzling a gallon of beer and singing the praises of good ol’ American democracy. 
didn’t grow up near any, we’d have known where to find them. And then we would have gone to them. It’s just that punker/indier-than-thou attitude that makes him so hard to deal with. 
poser. Where I come from, there is no modern rock radio station when the college station is on hiatus. Where I come from, New Found Glory is still pretty much considered an independent band because no one really plays them on the radio. The same goes for Brand New and maybe even Jimmy Eat World. In my hometown, the best place to meet punks is to talk to the kid who works at Hot Topic. So back off, you Socialist prick.
Love,