The Fast Lane and the Middle of the Road
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

C'est moi, your darling, Your Diva, your one true love.

It was a tough sell. "No, really, lovey, come see this band. You'll adore it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll regard faulty ventilation with newfound respect." For weeks, Your Diva cajoled and persuaded, pouted and blackmailed (Your Diva is not above flashing the negatives when she wants something). Finally, the night of the show arrived, and skeptical friends arrived in unexpected droves. Prosolar Mechanics played a brilliant show. No one was disappointed and Your Diva accepted apologies and praise for the heads-up with all the humility one might expect from - say - Charles Barkley.

You see, Your Diva's twentysomething friends grew up watching MTV. They believe that no show held outside a stadium could be worth the ticket price. If the band or bands, they reason, were decent, some supermegaultra record conglomerate would snap them up in a heartbeat, and the show simulcast on 500 channels. Suddenly, Your Diva feels lucky to have grown up with folk singers who believed everybody should sing, sing, sing, and her closest friends harbor similar feelings.

Pookie, that's not how the music industry works. A quick websearch provides dozens of eerily similar descriptions of how the music industry does work, so there's no reason for Your Diva to describe this invading Panzer Unit. Instead, let's talk about unknown bands playing shows in dank bar basements, and why you should be there.

Music is music, one might say, and the radio's on. What in glamorous tarnation does My Diva want?

She wants, which is to say: I want, you to open the newspaper on Friday afternoons and stare intently at what almost no one notices. It's like a magic spell, concealing from you the object of your desire: bars and clubs coffeehouses and parties and benefits and festivals in your city or town hire bands. (It's not just for kids, Your Diva promises, should you be more mature and wondering where music went.) Go and listen, dance if you like. You may like them or hate them, but either way, bar bands are real and you're not sitting at home waiting for N'Sync's latest video on MTV with the terrible itchy feeling that you're missing some genuine thing. After a few tries at different venues, you'll find something kinda cool, kinda now, kinda Charlie, and there's no going back. Your eyes are wide and the spell's broken, beloved. You may admire lighting design in TV videos, but you'll never mistake the pre-fab programming for anything cool.

You don't have to believe Your Diva, but you'll be glad you did.

©2001 Robin Pastorio-Newman