why lou? why?

[shiptain]

why is MMJ always mentioned being from Louisville, KY? its like it has some significance to the music. but i don't really see how it does.

i read about other bands and occasionally an article will mention where they are from, but every article about MMJ mentions louisville.

anyone else wonder why?

[wellfleet]

prolly to explain the band's massiv bourbon-soaked flava. every writer out there with zero imagination will use the band's hometown to corrolate their locale to their southern-influenced music. so they can make a lot of bourbon-bluegrass-rolling hills-country allusions. it's pretty much just laziness. also, perhaps not too many nationally-recognized bands came from the loo-uh-ville so the reporter wants to put it on the map. maybe the loo is the new seattle or something.

[MMJ_fanatic]

why is MMJ always mentioned being from Louisville, KY? its like it has some significance to the music. but i don't really see how it does.

i read about other bands and occasionally an article will mention where they are from, but every article about MMJ mentions louisville.

anyone else wonder why?

not sure if this is the actual case or not--I do see pieces on other bands that mention their hometown ("bad boys of Boston" anyone?).  maybe its a conspiracy with the Louisville chamber of commerce greasing writers' palms  :o

[Jellyfish]

Because it's such a fun word to say...kinda rolls off yer tongue.  ;D

[wmjbryan]

Loo-uh-vul

[MickeyReds]

I'd say its because mmj has grown to be a big band,and are still some what of a mystery to anyone who doesnt listen to them.The writers need to talk about somthing.They probably think they are digging up a fact that everyone doesnt already know.

[Buzzard]

Ali was from Louisville, and so are the Cardinals.

[danilove]

It may also have something to do with Jim's pure love of the town...Like all of us from the Ville, he's a proud son of Louisville and Kentucky - God love him.   ::)

[ycartrob]

It may also have something to do with Jim's pure love of the town...Like all of us from the Ville, he's a proud son of Louisville and Kentucky - God love him.   ::)

I'd agree with that. My wife and I have travelled from Nashville to Louisville for 3 different shows (MMJ-Headliner's '03/Wilco-MMJ-The Palace/Built To Spill-Headliners) and have planned our stay each time to explore "da ville" (did I say that right?). Each time we have found new and fantastic things to do (last time it was Zen Garden and Genny's Diner on Frankfort) and we encounter so much civic pride. People are friendly and cordial. and down to earth. A co-worker of mine from Louisville says I am not going to the "real" parts of Louisville, however, I have rarely encountered such an  always welcome feeling in all my years of travel.

I think it's karma and pride and a certain "settledness".

[boredwithlouisville]

genny's diner?!?  oh yeah, that's a "real" part of louisville.  have yerself a fourteen pound burger and some god awful fried pickles.  yuuuuuuummmmy.

seriously though-you can find anything you want about the "real" louisville on the internet.  your coworker is full of shit-there's plenty of homogenization here just like everywhere else.  fourth street live, anyone?  the "real" louisville died in the 90's and was reborn as a yuppie cesspool, full of chuckleheaded, SUV drivin', flag waving nimrod numbskulls who go to southeast christian on sunday, cheat on their wives on saturday night rolling a few frames at lucky strikes with their side action, and spend the rest of the week working in their shite jobs as middle managers for Kinko's.  hell, these morons don't even live in the "real" louisville, they live in Jtown or somewhere off of US 42 in the east end or somewhere else where black people don't live.

MMJ and Louisvillle get mentioned in every story because music writers are lazy fucks who can't come up with anything else noteworthy to say about them.

[ycartrob]

 bored, when we talked to Patrick after the Nashvile show, told him we went to Genny's 2 days before, he raved about Genny's Diner...I guess it's a matter of taste.

funny how when I actually go to Louisville I have a postitve experience, but on the internet, I get some poor pissed off soul. Maybe I have found the real Louisville on the internet, like you said.

You could always move, bored. If you're that miserable, I hope you do.

[boredwithzycartrobz]

soooooooooooooooooooooooo....Patrick is now the harbinger of what is the "real" Louisville?  I think not.  

I'm oh so glad you have a "positive" experience here in Louisville.  Nice.  I'm sure that counts towards a cookie or at least a Poptart.  Not everyone is as homespun or whiskey soaked or whatever horseshit you've read about Louisville, and I hardly think the 4-5 times you've been here actually counts towards something meaningful.  Try being a person of color in this town-you'd feel just as pissed off as I am.  Or better yet, try watching your beloved city turn into the same shitty burg as everywhere else, thanks to the powers that be that insist on homogenizing my city into a "positive" experience for out of towners like yourself.

and keep your advice on moving.  hey, why don't you move?  why doesn't everyone move??  let 's just let the fuckers with the money ruin everything here in America.  nice.

[ycartrob]

Happy New Year bored!

I hope things get better for you.

[wellfleet]

Hey, isn't thumbing your nose at SUV-driving, yellow-ribbon-sticker-toting, cellphone-armed yuppies like, so 2005? Being pissed at the upwardly mobile is rooted in the assumption that wealth is finite, like a cherry pie. But wealth and the creation of wealth is limitless. Just because the douchebag in the Chevy Blazer makes more money than you do doesn't mean that you are therefore forced to earn less.
Does gentrification sometime suck? Does it sometimes sap the lifeblood from a city? Yep... It happened in Montreal, where I'm from, and it's happening everywhere where there are young professionals eager to make a good life for themselves.
So start a petition, run for city council, vote in municipal elections, write to your newspaper's editorial board.
Being a person of colour is difficult everywhere, not just in da ville. But some people make do with what they've been dealt. I'm stuck in Arkansas. I'm not crazy about it, but I'm making the best of it.
It's ok to be happy, you know. Just because that english-lit degree didn't pan out doesn't mean you have to hate on the business school grads. check out our fascinating exposition of coffee-shop snobs for inspiration.  ;D

[boredwithmyself]

nice sloganeering, by both of y'all.  must be nice to live by such high and mighty platitudes.  back here in realtiy, the sugar plum fairies don't feed my kids, nor do the opportunities that used to exist for everyone.  

is this what it's come to?  just pretend everything will be okay and it will??  i'm not going to see the wizard of oz, thank you very much.  pie in the sky ain't for everyone.

oh, btw:  i am making the best of it.  but it's entertaining to read your replies to my vitrol...

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

while I can see your points of view, maybe you need some counseling.  email me.

[DD]

this is actually a VERY common phenomenon in musical journalism.  i read lots of articles about lots of bands and 9 times out of 10 the article mentions where the band is from.

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

this is actually a VERY common phenomenon in musical journalism.  i read lots of articles about lots of bands and 9 times out of 10 the article mentions where the band is from.

having spent a few years pretending I'm a music journalist, I feel like I can be snobbish about this oh so common trait of so called real journalists who just can't stop saying "bourbon flavored" or "southern fried" or some other banality about Louisville.  some of these guys/gals haven't even been here, yet conjecture that da Ville is in the South, when it's mostly in the Midwest.  You can see Indiana from Louisville....

[wellfleet]

having spent sometime pretending i'm a music journalist myself, i would like to thank john for repeating my earliest post about laziness...  ;D
but also... journalists from the North tend to look down on the South. obviously this is not a blanket statement but there is definitely a New York/L.A. bias and denying that is just silly. thus... when something really awesome comes from the South, it's almost inspite of itself. there's mention of kentucky as if to say, aaawww, look at what these backwood hicks managed to produce. or... aaaawww MMJ rocks despite coming from such a BFnowhere town.
stating where the band is from is not necessarily lazy. i'm interested in musical geopolitics. but i hate it when the geography is forced to absolutely correlate to the music. does this make sense?

[TheBigDonger]

 
Northern city with best bands- Boston
Worst musical city- LA
Doors and Motley Cure, HAHAHA!  pure crap.
well, so was Aerosmith, but that Evan Dando could sure rock.
Gotta love those Southern Fried midwesterners.
I needs to go visit Bored and drink us some whiskey.  Hope things get better for ya. :-/