This is Tim. Tim is a friend of mine, and one of the people (my old roommate being the other) who really got my into music and local music in particular. One of the nicest, most genuine people you will every meet. He has Stage 3 cancer, which sucks, right?

Everybody came together. Bands who started local and now tour internationally (Joywave), nationally (Maybird and Mikaela Davis) and all the other locals...700 person venue, sold out. All for one man. Look at this lineup.

http://imgur.com/a/LvGOS

bfx where the fuck are you going with this?

Yeah, good question. That is a community, that is music and people where everything is about people, not politics, not anything else. That's how it's always felt back there and in Boston for that matter, and other places in the Northeast (granted, I haven't spent much time in, say, Philly or NYC). The songs we write and the places we go are centered around stories and they're centered around people, and sometimes a bad thing happens to a good person and you do what you can to help out.

It does not feel that way in the northwest to me, (and here's the part where kb comes and smacks me down for doing this for the fifteenth time since moving out here). Maybe I haven't discovered it yet, and there are benefit shows for things like Standing Rock, Shout Your Abortion, etc...but everything is so politicized out here. Going to pull up a recent Odder comment and focus on the political correctness and "teaching moments". That bleeds over so much into the music here, where everything seems like it has to be a statement and to quote another person from Seattle "everything turns into a crew and posturing". That's not a community, that's self-serving, and I just can't see anything like Roc4Tim happening out here.

A community is about the people in it and being able to come together, not about your personal politics.

/rant