The Local Music Issue 2017
Our annual offering to the local music gods.
By Randy Harward, Brian Staker @stakerized and Zac Smith
It gets tiring, hearing how some people still think Salt Lake City is a cultural Salton Sea—barren, cracked and dry due to an oppressive ball of hot gas. We know better. We live here. We have all four seasons, each clearly doin' its own thing, which is to say, we're a diverse and variously inspired city—nay, valley—and so are our neighbors to the north and south. Ogden has always been secretly, and now not-so-secretly, cool. Even Provo's learning to party some. And the denizens of all three towns, among others, are making more and better music.
Not that we've had a shortage of good music, especially in SLC where, yes, we locals have rightly felt encumbered—but also inspired—by the prevailing culture. There's just more of it. You can't throw a rock without hitting a rock—or blues, country, funk, jazz, jam or hip-hop—musician in this town. There are more venues, too; from clubs to well-curated perennials like the eagerly anticipated Red Butte Garden Outdoor Concert Series and Twilight Concert Series, and festivals like CrucialFest and the burgeoning Utah Arts Festival. City Weekly is a proud co-sponsor of the inaugural Utah Music Festival, an ambitious event focused on promoting our embarrassment of musical riches.
Wouldn't it be good to see some of these hardworking musicians get their national—or global—due? Don't you want to see Baby Gurl on the cover of Rolling Stone? Sculpture Club on Juxtapoz? Dine Krew on Rachael Ray Every Day? Or how about Thunderfist on Hustler? For now, we'll have to settle for giving them mostly interior shots in our regular music section, and this lone yearly whopper dedicated to all things local music. It's our way of telling our resident tune-pushers to roll those amp dials to 11 and—kerrrrr-annnnng!
More by Randy Harward
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Live Music Picks: April 19-25
MC Chris, Talia Keys & the Love, Nick Passey, Brian Wilson and more.
- Apr 18, 2018
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Rock-It Fuel
Local musicians dish on the grub that puts the bomp in their bomp-bah-bomp-bah-bomp.
- Apr 11, 2018
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Live Music Picks: April 12-18
Judas Priest, The Residents, Clownvis Presley, The Breeders and more.
- Apr 11, 2018
- More »
More by Brian Staker
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Live Music Picks: April 12-18
Judas Priest, The Residents, Clownvis Presley, The Breeders and more.
- Apr 11, 2018
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Loving the Alienation
Helios Creed and Chrome continue making iconoclastic music for outcasts.
- Mar 28, 2018
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Live Music Picks: March 22-28
U.S. Girls, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, Hell’s Belles, Columbia Jones and more.
- Mar 21, 2018
- More »
More by Zac Smith
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True Grit
Kickin' back with Ogden's funky hip-hop band, Grits Green.
- Aug 17, 2016
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Live: Music Picks Aug 11-17
Women's Redrock Music Festival, God's Revolver, Zakk Wylde and More
- Aug 10, 2016
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Something for Everyone
DJ Sneeky Long mixes hip eclectica with cheap mainstream-ery.
- Aug 3, 2016
- More »
