Is Eau Claire last year's #1 indie hit maker?
Last week, big thinker Richard Florida (an “urban studies theorist” and author of the very -much-quoted book The Rise of the Creative Class) mentioned Eau Claire in a blog post titled “The Geography of the Year in Music.” It’s not a huge mention, and it’s based on someone else’s research, but the mere fact that Richard Florida typed “Eau Claire” into a computer is pretty sweet in our book.
He applied data to each band and then, as the Gods of Rock have always intended, he created a bar graph charting hits per city.
Florida is talking about the work of an urban planning student who took Pitchfork.com’s picks for last year’s 100 best music singles and applied data to the winners, assigning a "base of operations" or city to each band. Then, as the Gods of Rock* have always intended, he created a bar graph charting hits per city.
New York City (a city in the state of New York) did quite well, as over one in four of Pitchfiork’s picks are based there. Then you’ve got your Londons and your LAs and your Torontos and your Seattles. Then, down at #10 bam-ka-zam it’s Eau Claire. We’re above Portland, Austin, Memphis, Detroit, and freaking Oslo (a city in the country of Norway).
However. If you control for population, ranking singles per 100,000 people, then little ol' Eau Claire takes the number one spot (with 1.2 hits per 100,000 people).
It’s a total mystery to me how Eau Claire even got on this list, let alone broke the top ten on a bar graph. You wouldn’t think a massively popular, snobby music site like Pitchfork would even know about our little music scene. I mean, where are our 1.2 hits coming from? At any rate, I guess we’ll take it.
