The City

Burlington, VT is kind of like Jack Palance in City Slickers: laid back, in control, lively when it needs to be, but you better not give it any shit for being anything less than the best "little city" east of the Mississippi.

Burlington is a city of about 41,000 people on the shores of Lake Champlain, the largest freshwater lake on the eastern seaboard. The state it is located in has always been full of free-thinking dreamers with a do-it-yourself ethic (call it Yankee ingenuity) and Burlington reflects this. It is a city with humble and liberal undertones, where people in suits and people in t-shirts can be seen having lunch together. Occasionally trendy, always colorful, and never intimidating, Burlington is definitely a place where business and politics play for the same team as music, dance, and visual art.

Oftentimes one needs to ignore the passing fashion crazes that fall somewhere between Manhattan-style sleek, black pants and J. Crew's earth-tone sweaters. More often than not, the perpetuators of trendiness are the more than 14,000 college students from four area schools (UVM, St. Michaels College, Trinity College, and Champlain College). The rest of the people just go about their daily and nightly business trying to understand why "partying at the bars" is so much more fun than going to a VT Expos baseball game or watching a movie at a local theater. Burlington is definitely a college town seven months out of the year and recent incidents between area residents and college students has widened a generational rift that will be hard to repair.

The Arts Scene

One thing everyone can agree on is that Burlington has a lot going on. For visual art, there are many fledgling art galleries such as the Exquisite Corpse and the Firehouse Gallery which are attempting to bolster support for a division of the arts struggling to keep up with the music and performing arts scenes.

The Flynn Theatre is Burlington's bastion of legitimate performing arts and entertainment. Over the many years it has been around, the Flynn has pulled in such acts as Doc Watson, Mandy Patinkin, The Montana Repertory and Mikhail Baryshnikov, as well as great Shakespearean theatre companies and dance companies. UVM's Royal Tyler Theatre and the St. Michael's Playhouse also put on multiple plays per year to add to the mix.

The Music Scene

The Burlington music scene is currently going through some growing pains after about four years of vigorous activity and prosperity (once even dubbed America's "next Seattle").

The "wisemen on the hill" are Burlington's own Phish, the nationally renowned groove/improv rock band who's yearly summer concert draws upwards of 100,000 people yet who started out playing for crowds of two and three at Nectar's Restaurant down on Main Street. No other band from Burlington has ever even come close to Phish's success, but the fact that one band "made it" seems to be in the back of many bands' minds as they work hard and play gigs throughout the year.

The Venues

For commercially successful bands, there is Memorial Auditorium, which mainly caters to the teenage/college age crowds with acts like Green Day, Tori Amos, Primus, and Marilyn Manson. UVM's Patrick Gym up the hill a ways has also housed the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and James Brown, among others.

Large venues aside, what has made Burlington's music scene so great over the years has been its smaller venues where local bands can play along with regional and lesser known national acts.

Club Metronome has consistently brought a fairly diverse array of blues, jazz, funk, and folky music to the area but it definitely caters to the grad school/middle-age folks, rarely having all-ages shows.

Higher Ground in nearby Winooski is the Burlington area's newest music venue. It also tends to book more broadly acceptable bands in the blues and rock areas and shies away from heavier stuff. But its future seems bright. It is by far the largest club in the area, dwarfing the other clubs by almost a factor of three, and often has all-ages shows. This is the place to see national acts who haven't made it to the "arena rock" stage yet or to see regional and local bands too. Acts who have come through recently include Soul Coughing, Koko Taylor, and members of Parliament.

So where do the kids go if they want to see some louder bands? Here's where the part about growing pains comes in. Burlington's mecca for music-louder-than-Pearl-Jam, Club Toast, closed this past year on Dec. 31st, 1998. It was a place for local rock and ska bands to share the stage with nationally recognized bands such as The Melvins, Clutch, The Cramps, Pavement, The Dropkick Murphies, and Spring Heeled Jack. Club Toast was also a place where regional bands came or sometimes just a handful of local bands would play. In addition to being THE premier place for hard rock, ska, and occasional hardcore/metal, it also brought in great reggae and hip-hop acts like Burning Spear and Mix Master Mike.

No matter what, Club Toast was a place that brought groups to Burlington that parents had never heard of, but kids always had ("kids" meaning anyone from about 13 to 45). What area venue will fill this void?

Enter 242 Main. This originally was and still is a community funded teen center, but it has never closed its doors to anyone, no matter what their age. It is by far the smallest club in the area and is always 100% drug and alcohol free. Over the years, it had molded into a place for teens and pre-teens to play in and watch great hardcore, metal, and industrial bands from all over the Northeast and occasionally from all over the country. 242 was the place to go for hardcore bands like Converge, Shai Hulud, and Indecision. And always along on the bill was local and regional hardcore bands trying to make their mark.

After a few years of shaky management and a tiny budget, 242 closed for a few months at the end of 1998. It reopened January 1st, 1999 with a newly renovated floor space, solid backing from the community, a huge $50,000 annual budget, and a new mission: to house ALL types of music, not just hardcore. In the wake of Club Toast's untimely demise, 242 Main has now shouldered the responsibility to bring in not only hardcore, but rock, hip- hop, reggae, techno, and industrial.

It will be a tough transition. For years, the local community has seen nothing but hardcore and metal bands playing at 242. Will people make the effort to walk up the hill instead of going to the ever-familiar Club Toast for live music other than hardcore? What about the space issue? 242 Main is tiny, smaller than half the size of Club Toast. Finally, and most importantly, will the management of 242 (steadfastly entrenched in the hardcore scene) make a genuine effort to book other types of music? It can happen, if people in the area make the effort and go see the shows that go on there.

For dance and hip-hop, the best places to go are 135 Pearl and Club Metronome. Multiple time per week, live DJ's spin music at either of these venues. In addition to venues, new stores like Max Mix Imports are helping to increase techno and hip-hop exposure in the area.

In addition to the actual CLUBS mentioned above, there are numerous other restaurants and coffeehouses where acts play. Nectar's, The Red Square, and Vermont Pub & Brewery cater to the 21 and over crowd with a lot of blues, jazz, and rock, while the Burlington Coffeehouse, Sai-Gon cafe and occasionally Muddy Waters give acoustic acts in the more folky realm. Lastly, bars like Manhattan Pizza, Rasputin's, and RJ's give nightly chances to either go out dancing or sit down and have a beer listening to a local band.

The Bands

It's impossible to quickly breeze over all the bands in Burlington without offending someone without leaving out so-and-so or only mentioning so-and-so. One's best bet to get an idea of the amazing breadth of local music we have here is to visit Big Heavy World's Burlington Band Guide. It is, by far, the most comprehensive and complete list of Burlington music ANYWHERE. We've got everything here in this little town: hardcore, ska, punk, blues, folk, emo, the list goes WAY on. Just check out that friggin' list. You'll be amazed.

Radio Stations

Where would an article about Burlington music be without mentioning radio stations? Of course, this being a biased report, we will start with Your Better Alternative: WRUV 90.1 FM. WRUV is one of the last free-format radio stations in the country, meaning you can hear anything from folk to zydeco to metal to swing in any given time period. Local music? Of course! We play as much local music as we want, whenever we want! Here is a fairly comprehensive list of the types of music we play: folk, zydeco, hip-hop, emo-core, breaks, grindcore, post-modern, industrial, techno, garage, happy hardcore, jazz, blues, metal, hardcore, house, darkwave, punk, drum & bass, indie rock, experimental, international, noise, spoken word, riot grrrl, world, gabber, ska, reggae, trip hop, progressive rock, twee, bluegrass, swing, oi!, Celtic, RPM, acid jazz, free jazz, electronic, death metal, funk, Indian, classical, cuddlecore, hop-core, country, avante-garde, rockabilly, black metal, roots, film music, ambient, goth, surf, trance, rap, dancehall, Acid, Electro...

The other college radio station in the area out of St. Michael's College is WWPV 88.7 FM. The DJ's there also play whatever they want, and even include commercial music in their shows. WWPV has an entire show devoted to local music called Burlington and Beyond, which includes live, in-studio performances.

WBTZ 99.9 FM, commonly known as The Buzz, is Burlington's commercial radio answer to MTV. For the latest in popular, nationally known music, tune here. Unfortunately, The Buzz is not free-format and must cater to the latest trends in popular music. The Buzz also has a local music show called the Buzz Homebrew Show. It's a full two hours of local music, every weekend.

106.7 FM and 101.3 FM are the area's "rock" stations. 106.7 plays mostly classic rock, but sometimes delves into new stuff like Blues Traveler and Pearl Jam. Expect to hear Led Zeppelin at least once an hour over here. 101.3 is 100% classic rock, and expect to hear Led Zeppelin upwards of twice an hour.

WEZF 92.9 FM plays "all of your soft rock favorites from the 70's, 80's, and today". Translated: your parents and really cool grandparents listen to this station. Everything from the Backstreet Boys to Bonnie Raitt to Richard Marx can be heard here.

WOKO 98.9 FM is the monster of all area country stations, and one of the most popular stations in Vermont.

105.1 FM plays music from about 1960 to 1980, to be VERY approximate. Sometimes it sounds like an Oldies station, and then you'll hear some cool Beatles tunes, and you'll think it's all right. And then, next thing you know, they're playing The Four Tops, and you start thinking it's time to change the station... Overall, a quirky mix of songs on the verge of Oldies.

WXXX 95.5 FM is kind of like Yo! MTV Raps, MTV Jams, and a pinch of 99.9 the Buzz combined. Much more dance and R&B, and less modern "alternative" rock, but altogether a typical commercial station. Expect to hear at least one surname-less female artist per hour.

Finally, when you just want to kick back and listen to a little Beethoven or learn about how to plant marigolds, there's always 107.9, Vermont Public Radio. Most of the day you'll hear classical music, but oftentimes at night and on weekends, there are call-in shows and nationally syndicated informative shows.

Conclusion

Well, there's a fairly complete overview of what Burlington, VT has to offer. It's a quaint city, and one that deserves all the recognition it gets. Feel free to come by anytime, we'd love to have you. And, as you're coming down the highway from wherever you are, try tuning into 90.1 FM. Eventually, you'll receive us loud and clear. Then just sit back, relax, and listen to the unique sound of Independent Radio: WRUV!

-Ben Keeler, PR Director Jan. 13, 1999