Ian Port, Late of the SF Weekly, Sums Up the Local Scene, Leaves Town

 He tells me many things I didn't know.

Before the internet, "national culture" largely meant whatever was happening in L.A. or New York, or whatever those cities were obsessed with. If a regional act didn't sell enough records or play enough good shows to be deemed important by the people there, it had a diminished voice. Its sounds and biography and lifestyle didn't enter the larger consciousness, or at least didn't enter it through the front door. And I think that's really why music fans express happiness about a local band or local event making it: It means that the ideas, lifestyles, and politics of a place, reflected in this creative work, are influencing the way people elsewhere live and think.