amie Gadette is no Lester Bangs. The 22-year-old English major’s career as a budding music critic spans a total of four years and has thus far played out in relative calm. She is not the Hunter Thompson of rock journalism, stringing together chains of highly charged descriptors in pieces about legendary punk fixtures tearing up a gritty New York City. In fact, the subjects of her articles in RED have been primarily restricted to the movers and shakers of a much smaller Salt Lake City scene.

Yet the unassuming town inspires an ethic similar to that of Bangs—the relentless support of lesser-known bands. While the more established critic hailed such acts as The Troggs and The Stooges (both of which received soggy reviews), Gadette praised Redd Tape, Starmy and Form of Rocket (bands more or less ignored by the general public).

“I am amazed at the number of quality groups emerging from the underground,” she says. A Utah native, Gadette relocated to Los Angeles for four years and spent most of her time seeking out new sounds. She returned to her hometown expecting the music scene to pale in comparison to the nonstop action of the Sunset Strip. Instead, Gadette discovered an active community of motivated musicians generating innovative material. Her first concert at Kilby Court fueled an impulse to broadcast the tremendous talent to a wider audience.

“The energy at that show—the group, Still Breaking Hearts, has since dissolved—was simply intense,” Gadette said. “While people in Hollywood came across as jaded, the crowd here seemed elated, as if they knew that something special was happening.”

SLUG Magazine’s Rebecca Vernon agrees that the scene has matured at an exponential rate. “It’s all just grown, like a virus or a particularly fertile strain of moss, over the last four years,” she says. Vernon also shares a desire to inform the masses of exciting developments. SLUG recently released Death By Salt, a three-disc compilation featuring 59 local bands. The album is a statement to the magazine’s intensified efforts in supporting Salt Lake City’s promising musicians. Vernon’s personal motivations in promoting DBS involved the need to “spread the word to those people outside of Utah who are looking for something inspiring in the music world” and give hope to those “sick of all the same-old homogenized goo that has been spewing out of the dehumanizing commercial machine in the higher echelons of the music industry for 10 years now.”

Most “buzz” bands currently enjoying heavy rotation on airwaves across the country have nothing on Salt Lake City’s homegrown heroes. Unfortunately, national attention is fairly absent. Besides the rare exceptions—The Used, Form of Rocket and New Transit Direction, for example—local groups never get the chance to strut their stuff in front of audiences outside of the small-scale club circuit. The talent is there, but opportunities to branch out are seriously lacking. Still, a minor faction of influential renegades including Vernon, Gadette and Salt Lake City Weekly’s Bill Frost and Randy Harward continue to fight for the lesser-knowns.

“Freebie street rags are your only hope to find out about good local music,” Frost says. “I’d recommend reading them all, not just one—they are free, after all.” Surveying a range of publications decreases the chance that readers will get boxed into following one genre.

“There was a time when I swore that RED Mag was going to change its name to Redd Tape Mag,” Frost says, referring to the magazine’s apparent obsession with the lovable indie rockers.

Gadette concurs with Frost’s observation, but explains that “those kids have more creative potential than can be contained in one act or article.” The group has already spilt off into various side projects—Delicatto, Will Sartain’s solo work—just as impressive as their mother ship. Of course, Gadette has made it a point to increase the scope of her coverage. She has highlighted experimental duos (Smashy Smashy, Beard of Solitude), straight-edge hardcore (Cherum), hip-hop (Motivational Speakers, Fokeknowledge), jazz maestros (SLAJO, Quadraphonic), garage rockers (Tolchock Trio, Red Bennies, The Wolfs), technical spazz-core (Form of Rocket) and ethereal rock (Alchemy).

“I’m confident that with the right resources and connections, each and every one of those groups could easily make it big,” Gadette says. Like “American Idol” big? Frost hopes not. Vernon also expresses apprehension about bands breaking out of obscurity. She fears that once bands are picked up by national radar, “a lot of bands will be approached by labels and slimy A&R types in order to be exploited and commercialized, dragged through the mud, ruined.” Vernon cautions local upstarts to be careful, guarding their material with iron fists.

“They’ll count on Utah bands being naive—so don’t be,” she says.

Good advice. Similar words of wisdom apply to critics covering local bands. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t wait until a band presents itself (or throws itself down your throat via overly anxious publicists)—seek out talent seeping its way through the cracks in your own backyard. The discovery of obscure gems is just as thrilling as fighting for position among elitists. Maybe Gadette isn’t so far off from Bangs after all.
jamie@red-mag.com