We Didn't Get Famous: the Story of the Southern Music Underground, 1978-1990
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis examines the emergence of the Southern indie music scene in the 1980s as both a rejection of the broader punk scene that had swept America and the UK in the 1970s and the blues and country inflected Southern Rock that preceded it in the 1970s. I first had the idea of doing a project on this musical era while I was living in New York City. I had loved the jangly sounds of 1980s Southern indie bands for a very long time, and I had just begun to develop a very deep interest and love of the South, which had been my home for eighteen years, but whose culture and meaning I had somewhat ignored and taken for granted growing up. The Southern underground bands of 1980s represented what I loved about the South and I wanted to figure out how to write about that, as a way to both re-introduce these great bands who were largely unknown today and to explore a faction of Southern culture not commonly thought about, providing a picture of the South that is not the one so comically and falsely portrayed in pop culture and society. When I discovered a passion for documentary filmmaking, and how powerful it could be, it was clear to me that was the perfect tool for my project and this thesis began to take shape. Over the course of about a year, I talked to countless people who had in one way or another been involved in the Southern underground music scene during the 1980s, who had been in bands or started record labels or knew those who had. Everyone had opinions and advice about who I should include in my film, and who I should get in touch with. In my head, I had a long list of people I wanted to interview, made up mostly of those musicians I admired the most and felt had not been given the coverage they deserved. Logistics also played a large part in who I eventually interviewed, especially where they were located geographically, and simply whether I could get in touch with them. Finally, I began to e-mail the people on my shortened list, responses rolled in, and trips …
abstract: This thesis examines the emergence of the Southern indie music scene in the 1980s as both a rejection of the broader punk scene that had swept America and the UK in the 1970s and the blues and country inflected Southern Rock that preceded it in the 1970s. I first had the idea of doing a project on this musical era while I was living in New York City. I had loved the jangly sounds of 1980s Southern indie bands for a very long time, and I had just begun to develop a very deep interest and love of the South, which had been my home for eighteen years, but whose culture and meaning I had somewhat ignored and taken for granted growing up. The Southern underground bands of 1980s represented what I loved about the South and I wanted to figure out how to write about that, as a way to both re-introduce these great bands who were largely unknown today and to explore a faction of Southern culture not commonly thought about, providing a picture of the South that is not the one so comically and falsely portrayed in pop culture and society. When I discovered a passion for documentary filmmaking, and how powerful it could be, it was clear to me that was the perfect tool for my project and this thesis began to take shape. Over the course of about a year, I talked to countless people who had in one way or another been involved in the Southern underground music scene during the 1980s, who had been in bands or started record labels or knew those who had. Everyone had opinions and advice about who I should include in my film, and who I should get in touch with. In my head, I had a long list of people I wanted to interview, made up mostly of those musicians I admired the most and felt had not been given the coverage they deserved. Logistics also played a large part in who I eventually interviewed, especially where they were located geographically, and simply whether I could get in touch with them. Finally, I began to e-mail the people on my shortened list, responses rolled in, and trips …
author: Aikin, Camilla Ann
keywords: 1980s Music Scenes, Independent Music, Modern Music History, Recent Southern History, Regional Identity, Southern Culture, Music
date published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:05:07Z
provider: University of Mississippi
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Mississippi