Why the analogue ephemera of the music scene still matters in a digital age
Reporting brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
A Smudged Flyer Stapled To A Pole Tells You More Than Any Algorithm Ever Could
Dear diary, I want to sing the praises of an unlikely hero of the London music scene: the badly photocopied flyer, the smudged and crooked sheet of paper stapled to a lamp post advertising a gig at a venue you have never heard of by a band you do not know. In an age of algorithms and digital everything, the badly photocopied flyer endures, and I love it, because it tells you more about the real music scene than any algorithm ever could. The flyer is analogue, ephemeral, handmade, and human, and in its smudged imperfection lies the soul of the DIY music culture I love. I saw one this morning so gloriously crooked it could have been a satirical send-up of a gig poster, except it was real, and the gig is tonight.
The Honesty Of The Handmade
There is an honesty to the badly photocopied flyer that the slick digital advert lacks. The flyer is handmade, often crudely, by people who care about the gig more than about the design, who photocopied it themselves and stapled it up themselves and put real effort into spreading the word. Its imperfection is honest, the mark of real people doing real work to promote real music, without the slick mediation of algorithms and digital platforms. The handmade flyer is honest in a way that the polished digital advert is not, the genuine effort of real people rather than the smooth output of a marketing machine.
This honesty is part of why the flyer matters, why it tells you more than the algorithm. The flyer represents genuine human effort, real people promoting music they care about, the DIY ethic of the scene made visible in smudged photocopied paper. The algorithm, by contrast, represents the smooth mediation of platforms, the impersonal calculation of engagement, the absence of genuine human effort. The flyer is honest, handmade, human; the algorithm is smooth, calculated, impersonal. And in the honesty of the handmade flyer lies the soul of the DIY scene, the genuine human effort that the algorithm can never replicate.
The Ephemera Of A Living Scene
The flyer is ephemeral, temporary, destined to be rained on and torn down and replaced, and this ephemerality is part of its meaning. The flyer exists for a moment, advertising a gig that will happen and then be over, a temporary marker of a living, ongoing scene. The accumulation of flyers on a lamp post, layer upon layer, is a record of the scene’s ongoing life, the temporary ephemera of a living culture, each flyer a marker of a gig, a band, a moment in the scene’s continuing existence. The ephemera of the flyers is the visible trace of a living scene, its ongoing life made momentarily visible in smudged paper.
This ephemera matters because it is the trace of real, ongoing cultural life, the visible sign that the scene is alive, that gigs are happening, that bands are playing, that the DIY culture continues. The lamp post layered with flyers is a record of the scene’s life, the accumulated ephemera of an ongoing culture, the visible proof that the music is happening. In an age that records everything digitally and permanently, the temporary, ephemeral flyer is a different kind of record, the trace of a living scene made momentarily visible before it is rained away and replaced by the next, the ongoing ephemera of a culture that lives in the moment.
Why The Analogue Still Matters
In a digital age, the persistence of the analogue flyer is a small act of defiance, a refusal to let the scene be entirely absorbed into the algorithms and platforms. The flyer insists on the handmade, the human, the analogue, on a way of promoting music that predates and resists the digital mediation of everything. The analogue still matters because it represents an alternative, a way of doing things that is human and direct and unmediated by algorithms, a small space of genuine human culture in a digital world. The badly photocopied flyer is a small piece of analogue defiance, insisting that the scene is human, handmade, real.
And so I treasure the badly photocopied flyer, the smudged and crooked herald of the DIY scene, the analogue ephemera of a living culture. It tells me more than any algorithm could, because it represents genuine human effort, the real ongoing life of the scene, the handmade honesty of a culture that refuses to be entirely digital. In its smudged imperfection lies the soul of the music I love, the DIY ethic, the human effort, the living scene. The badly photocopied flyer endures, and I am glad of it, for it is the visible sign that the real, human, analogue scene continues, stapled to a lamp post, advertising a gig at a venue you have never heard of by a band you are about to love. If you want the straight version, the Victoria and Albert Museum has it, and Arts Council England fills in the rest. Long may the smudged flyers endure, layer upon layer on the lamp posts, the honest handmade ephemera of a scene that refuses to be reduced to an algorithm.
More from the desk of Siobhan O’Donnell, and further wit at The Poke.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
