Hey and welcome to our fledgling project’s ramshackle newsletter. This is JM and I’m part of a small collective of folks running and operating STANDARDS, a new music publication dedicated to documenting and celebrating Vancouver’s DIY music scene. The primary way we’re going about our mission is by filming and recording an ongoing series of intimate and informal live performances with local musicians and artists, and publishing them under the name STANDARDS Field Sessions - if you haven’t seen these yet just go here. We’re rather proud of how they’re turning out.
So you may be wondering why and how we’re doing this, and what does any of it have to do with this newsletter? The short answer to the first part of that question is that, quite simply, we thought we might be able to pull it off and it seemed really fun. With the lot of us being musicians and with Vancouver being in something of a DIY music boom, it felt right to try and create a high quality document of some of the cool stuff going on here. Of course, we were inspired by things like Audiotree, KEXP’s live sessions and NPR’s Tiny Desk videos, but we thought we could put our own spin on it with the (admittedly limited) resources and skills at our disposal. Thankfully, we also had a few incredibly talented and generous artists ready to go on this journey with us and allow us to fumble around with cameras and mics while they made beautiful noise. We can’t wait to make more, and to keep getting better at making this stuff.
Which brings us to this newsletter. Recording live performances and making videos is a severely time and labour intensive project, and so we wanted to have a means of keeping in touch with our audience and building community in between video releases. It also felt vital to have an outlet that could potentially feature a diverse array of voices doing the work of documenting and celebrating a larger indie scene. So that’s the dream. A little dispatch with a rotating cast of writers publishing short pieces about stuff going on in the wider world of independent music, some interviews, a consistent recommendation corner where we talk about what we’ve been listening to, and hopefully, thoughtful personal essays about trying to make/consume art in a culture that systematically devalues and attempts to exploit creative work.
But not today. This is just an introduction. We’ll start with a modest version of that dream in two weeks time with the first official STANDARDS newsletter where I’ll hopefully be introducing one or two contributors. Maybe I’ll think of a catchier name by then too. Next Friday, June 23rd we’ll be publishing our first full Field Sessions set featuring the wonderful folk artist Clara Sanchez. Her single video for her song “Gabriela” is already on our channel, and it’s a song I’m particularly fond of with a melody that’s consistently rattling around my head.
Thank you for reading this far and for joining us. We look forward to seeing this grow into something meaningful and supportive of the community that’s so-far allowed it to exist. Oh and if you think you’d like to contribute to what we do in some way, feel free to send us a message on our fancy website or on Instagram.
JM, on behalf of the STANDARDS crew, June 16 2023