By Jonathan Madsen
Over the past 10 years, Provo music style has been anything but static.
“There is no one definable type. It”s all over the place right now,” said Bill Frost, arts and entertainment editor at Salt Lake City Weekly.
In the early ”90s, ska music was a solid Provo style. Bands like Swim Herschel Swim catered to the Provo ska void left open since the last resurgence in the early ”80s in England.
After Swim Herschel Swim called it quits, another ska group, Stretch Armstrong, took chief control of the Provo ska scene into the mid-90”s. “It was third wave ska — sort of California style,” Allred, 23, a BYU alum from Philadelphia said.
Ska wasn”t the only music genre Provo accommodated in the ”90s. “There were 9 million a cappella groups,” said Eric Snider, entertainment writer for the Daily Herald, speaking of his early years at BYU.
“Vocal Point started in 1992, and were later officially sponsored by the BYU School of Music. When they graduated, they formed Extempo and other bands followed,” Snider said.
Aside from a natural burn out, other factors contributed to the decline of such styles. “Venues started going down. The Wrapsody and Mama”s Caf? closed,” Snider said. Allred also remarked that he used to frequent cozy venues such as Mama”s Caf?.
If the lack of venue didn”t kill a band in Provo, the transient nature of the town itself did. Charlotte Petersen, 22, a junior from Paris, Texas majoring in recreation management, said that her favorite band as a freshman was Ethyl Blue. “They were in my ward. They all went on missions and that was the end of that,” Petersen said.
The short-lived nature of Provo bands are only half of the equation. “Because I moved out, there was no audience,” said Allred referring to the demise of his favorite music scene. Between the bands leaving town and the fans leaving town, the proper symbiosis was rarely met.
With the passing of the ”90s, the makeup of local bands appeared to have lost the specific Provo-type stereotype. “Now Utah bands get better at national trends instead of being five years behind,” Frost said. “But the better ones don”t do that. Clover put on their own concerts, they sold albums and did it their own way, which is very impressive.” Towards the end of the decade, Clover enjoyed enviable local radio airplay.
The current status of local music is both good and bad Frost said. “Ten years ago we had better support, but bands weren”t as good. Now we have less support, but the bands are better,” he said.
As for the future of the scene, Frost said that the bands that do it their own way, without succumbing to trends, have the chance to make the lasting impressions. He cited as an example a Provo group called The Numbs — a group that specializes in rap, a style usually unheard of in Utah Valley.
