Opening Riff - Bruce Warren's Music Blog

Philadelphia Weekly
August 29, 2007

Opening Riff

by Joshua Valocchi

When did Philadelphia become the new Montreal? More important, when are people outside the local press and music intelligentsia circles going to take more than a casual notice of this brewing situation?

Perhaps Montreal is a bit of an exaggeration. After all, Dr. Dog isn’t yet in Arcade Fire’s league, and the Swimmers haven’t quite reached Broken Social Scene status. Nonetheless, there’s gold in them thar hills. The question is, who’s gonna mine it?

Enter Bruce Warren, program director at WXPN, blogger extraordinaire, and most important, ad-hoc curator of Philly’s local music library. Warren, who’s been rockin’ the online casbah for years with his tasteful yet daring music site Some Velvet Blog (somevelvetblog.blogspot.com), logged another entry into the blogosphere earlier this month with his ode to the locals Philadelphia Freedom (blogadelphonic.blogspot.com).

Considering Philadelphia’s rich musical tradition, it’s a wonder this was a niche that had yet to be filled. In Warren’s eyes, though, local music is criminally underrepresented on the Web.

“In reality, there’s not much out there as far as music blogs focused primarily on Philadelphia,” notes Warren. “As a local music fan, I saw this as an opportunity to fill an inexcusable void.”

Apparently, singing the praises of Philly rockers has been on Warren’s to-do list for quite some time, but it took a recent convergence of scene status and scheduling to push Warren to finally make his cyberdream a reality.

“I’ve been wanting to do this [local blog] for years now but I just couldn’t find the time,” explains Warren. “Finally, I was on vacation at the start of the month and decided now is the perfect time to do this.”

Along with the convenience of free time, the recent spike in local awesomeness on the music front nudged Warren deeper into the Internet.

“Now is an amazing time for Philadelphia music,” gushes Warren. “I can’t think of a time when the local scene was more creative or relevant—even back in the ’80s, when everyone was drunk on Hootermania.”