The Untimely Death of Flyering

"Man, now how am I gonna find out about shows?!?? The Neus isn't around anymore!!!"

How many times have you heard that lately? Or thought it yourself? Well, you're not alone. A lot of people I run into have been saying that and I was, as well. But then I realized something.

WHERE ARE ALL THE FUCKING SHOW FLYERS???

With a few notable exceptions (i.e. Kaleb and Hank from Fucked for Life, Scott from Beneath Oblivion, Chris Lee at Dirty Jack's, and some others I can't think of at after 3am...), few people really flyer shows that well. And even less do it outside of Bogart's, Mad Hatter, or the Madison Theater. Part of the reason for this, I feel, is how heavily people in the area relied on the Neus Subjex Message Bored (RIP) for the past 10+ years to find out about shows. A laziness came over people, where there started to be an attitude of "Oh, I'll just post about it... and run a couple bulletins on Myspace... that should be good...". Now we the local music scene (outside of Cincypunk, Citybeat's music board, and maybe somewhere else) is in a position where if you want to find out about a local show, you need to still use your Myspace account or be friends with the right people on Facebook (where people still look at their invites...). This isn't good. Especially in a metropolitan area where so many people live 30+ minutes from the areas and stores that get flyered, rarely leave their neighborhoods to begin with, don't necessarily get Citybeat every week, and don't go to record stores weekly to find out what's going on.

So what's the solution to this?

D.I.Y.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, if you want something done around here in the local underground music scene, then you have to do it your fucking self. Don't rely on someone else to make a new Neus Subjex for you... get your ass out and flyer for shows. Make a shows listing site and keep up on it. And if at some point, there's more than one site doing that, what's to say that we only need one? Two can do the job better than one, some will submit to one and not the other, and if one goes out, the others are still there. Given how hostile the local culture is to anything to do with the arts (unless it's listed in Christian Happenings...), there is a definite need for a network of local outlets keeping people informed. Message boards, Myspace, Facebook, Citybeat, Cin Weekly (ugh), WAIF 88.3 FM radio shows (why don't more people submit shows listings to shows on there?), and the local rock shows on WEBN and whatever one of the 314507823409 adult alternative FM stations on there are vital to getting the word out on what happens in this city. If one of them were to go down one day (like the Neus has), we'd all be affected. So get off your ass and start flyering (especially in the 'burbs and between here and Dayton), make print zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and what-the-fuck-ever. And don't stop doing it until you can't anymore.