1/12/07, 5:45 pm EST

Assignment One Finalist: Anna Kalivas on Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

by Anna Kalivas
Age: 18

There are few things on Cape Cod that local teens can truly call their own. The prime months to be on Cape are the summer ones, and of course by that time tourists swamp the famous beaches and fill the parking lots before townies can roll out of bed and get there themselves. And of course, Winter on Cape Cod brings frigid air, blizzards, and months of boredom. Enter music. Reggae, progressive rock, pop-punk, emo, hardcore, and the refreshing riffs of ska have all found die-hard followings throughout Cape Cod. Every few months another band comes out with a self-recorded, packaged, and produced EP to sell at local shows and teens gobble them up. Through this hard work and emptying of wallets, many bands have begun the migration towards state-wide recognition, and even regional recognition. Some of these bands, such as the pop-punk act 3 Feet Short use the opportunity to forget their Cape Cod roots and cease playing shows here, while others, such as the local favorite Ska outfit !n-Discretion, equiped with a 4 piece horn section, never miss an opportunity to play both on and off-Cape. The one persisting problem is the lack of venues. Tourism reared its ugly head this year as the hated-by-locals-chain Cuffy’s bought the beloved Juice Bar, a former hot spot found in Orleans, forcing bands that can’t make the cut off-Cape to resign themselves to High School talent shows and private birthday parties. When I asked Seth Torres of !n-Discretion about the Cape music scene, he acknowledged that the big genres played here, -hardcore, reggae, ska- will probably never achieve recogntion beyond a regional level. The flaw in this is the fact that most of these bands have the talent and drive to make it big, but lack the opportunity to showcase themselves.