Chico: Rock City? Why God Hates Chico

So. I am led to believe that I reside at some sort of apex of modern culture. Chico: the town that brought you Deathstar, The iMPS, Abominable Iron Sloth, Mother Hips...all years ago, and all of which were only received with praises outside of the mile markers of sick and dying Butte County. Some connoisseurs of the ubiquitously hip may lay mention to newer local acts (your La Fin du Mondes, your Makais) as being essentially the honey on an otherwise sugarless biscuit of musical side dishes. And we are almost always bombarded with who and what is the new art, the fresh face, the pissed and the wounded souls who fling scathing diatribes from the pits of their own boiling stomachs, or the unflinching, rogue, quasi-happy-despite-being-a-seventh-year-senior-at-Chico-State-but-there's-good-weed-here-and-the-booze-is-cheap-so-I'm-gonna-sing-like-I'm-not-really-depressed-and-suicidal troop; they occupy the dimmest taverns and most rustic haunts in town, and they usually stink and don college football sports caps and Birkenstocks. But in spite of it all - the surface hostility (which doesn't exist) between the punks, the Hessians, the ravers, the mods, the backpack hip-hop kids, the dirt-twirlers, the jammers, the Americana revivalists or the world music loadies - there is almost always the underlying dilemma of this being a jumping-off point for artists, not the peak of it by far. We are privy to the seedling, not the tree. And even the best bands are negated by an overbearing media resistance to anything even remotely associated to any god at all. And sure, there's a legitimate market for most semi-talented bands who may even have a fleeting, passing interest in a god (and especially the God, of which I don't believe in, but that's neither here nor there). And I realize that the whole "success equals sell-out" argument has been blasted to death many times over, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a shame in the largest sense of the word. Regardless of how many malls or how many heavy metal radio stations this city acquires, the hippies will always have control, and that is why I will almost always hate the hippies. Their hearts are in the right place, but their processes are old, old, old. Their circuitry is wired to feign opposition to corporate thuggery, yet wholly invites competitive awards programs for local artists (a horrendous and vulgar disregard for art in its truest sense) and limits or flat out extinguishes the already flickering flame of creativity within a new revolution as a direct result. If I see one more band campaigning to win an award for its music, I'm moving.
I try to help, but I usually end up catching an Americas show instead. Ah, The Americas! Bridgers of every music gap in town! Friend to the Christian and the cold Satanist! Beleaguered and well-traveled duo of embrace! If Chico were more like The Americas, we'd be Omaha in one year. The concert series I book bands and promote for can't even showcase hip-hop or metal bands because our insurance company deems those genres dangerous and harmful to public image. Chico Rock City? This is only a test.