Live Review: After The Jump Festival (Night Session) @ Studio B [8.25.07]

In "The Proud" Talib Kweli once remarked "it's a hard conversation to have" in regards to the tragedy of September 11th and some of the natural questions of patriotism the event raised. Did it make Kweli less of a patriot to note the struggle of people across the world who seem to hate us? Could we all be more closely tied, even in tragedy and misunderstanding? And more importantly, could both those emotions co-exist? Defending and criticizing ones own? Patriotism without the bullshit? Being a part of something without being a party to its garbage?

So this brings us somewhere close to Studio B in Greenpoint on Saturday night at 10pm.

It's the second half of the After The Jump Festival and we're about to find out just how relevant all these bloggers are. See, this is a blog music festival. Or a music blog festival. In the spirit of Hot Freaks, the wildly successful SXSW blogger fest, the New York blog cats decided they could throw their own party. They all have sizable readership. They all consider themselves taste-makers of one variety or another. And they have been publicizing the shit out of this show.

So where is everyone? Why is Studio B the one place the hipsters wouldn't be caught dead tonight? Why can a reading by a horrible performance artist in an horrible art-space pack a room and yet 10-15 bloggers, all tapping their considerable Blogspot, Wordpress resources (not to mention write-ups in the New York Times), can't seem to get 100 people in the door?

The line-up ain't great. The Virgins kick off the night and look either bored or unimpressed by the turnout. Their lack of energy and general "fuck 'em if they want us to care" attitude goes over like a racial slur on a quiet Bed-Stuy afternoon. If sounding like The Strokes and dropping the final consonants off words is enough to make New York stand-up and pay attention, we may be worse off then we thought. It's shocking and more than played out. Casablancas wouldn't be caught dead on stage with a band like you and there still exists a huge difference between "too cool to care" and caring about looking cool.

But the bloggers love it. There are at least 15 people with cameras forcing their flashes in faces at caddy-corner angles to give the illusion of movement and dynamism. This event won't sell out and people will remember it as being poorly attended but apparently that doesn't mean we shouldn't document it to death. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? If enough people take pictures of something that no one really cared about, does that make it important?

No. It doesn't. It doesn't matter the event was for charity. It doesn't matter if this was a great banding together of writers. Because when you test your relevance, you can be proven to be irrelevant. And these people couldn't pull a crowd. They put their strongest-draw (Ra Ra Riot) during the day and left themselves with an indefensible night-time bill. No amount of pictures and blog posts fix that.

So, this is a hard conversation to have. Look at this website. Better or worse, right now, we are a blog. In the future, we will mistakenly be called a blog. Without wanting to be a part of this, we are a part of this. We even know and respect some of these people. Are we just as irrelevant without the proof of an empty showcase? Could be.

So bloggers, After The Jumpers, no penalty for trying but now you know where you stand. We all do. People just might not give as much of a shit as we all thought. So swallow that or spit it out. 'Cause like Kweli says in the first line of "The Proud," "stand tall/or don't stand at all."

And that's where we stand.