everyone who they look up to: their parents, Dan Baggarly
of Trash Boy, bandmate Missy Pidgeon, good how are you?
performer Kat Hamilton, King Pizza Records in Brooklyn,
and a slew of others. Basically, if you’ve met Matty Klauser,
then consider yourself thanked. And if you’re an artist in the
city of Philadelphia, consider yourself lucky.
“I think it’s a really good place to be and…I think a
lot of people come to visit and I hear a year later, they’re
moving. But who knows? Maybe if that keeps happening it’ll
change and it’ll just be New York and we’re all going to run
to…another city that isn’t so overpriced and there’s space.
Will we just keep doing it? Maybe.” It’s all about the
fluctuation; if Philly becomes too regulated, then the DIY
artists that have made it their home may have to say goodbye.
But if there is no regulation—no Matty Klausers—then the
scene runs the risk of falling back into seedy times as it did
several years ago, when the abusive behavior of several
DIY-leaders was put out into the open.
“Right now is a good moment. I’m not taking it for
granted. I know it could change at any moment, but I have a
lot of pride in this city and the people in it. I’m very proud to
be making music here. I don’t know if I could say the same if
I was still living in New York, you know?” BY LILLY MILMAN
say ‘good, how are you?’” as a greeting. The phrase caught on with other
friends and one night during a show, Klauser recalled how “Andy gets up
on the microphone and is like ‘good, how are you?’ And the whole room,
like a church, was like “good, how are you?’” The rest is, as you say, history.
A lot of necessary tweaking has happened between then and now
(Klauser said “it still kind of blows [their] mind that [they] could make
[shows] happen” in the basement of the Tralf,) and the event has grown
larger with each installment. This year, it was a three-day long,
three-venue affair with performances by over twenty artists—including
two of Klauser’s own bands, Blushed and Secret Nudist Friends.
One of the main reasons that Paper Scissors Media and good how are
you? continue to thrive, according to Klauser, is the need for community.
Paper Scissors Media is a reaction to the competitiveness and loneliness
Klauser experienced both in New York, specifically, and in classical
music in general. They called the collective “the opposite of competitive
bullshit,” explaining very passionately that since the life of an artist (“and
not just musicians—poets, and performers, and spoken word and
performance art”) is typically neither high-paying nor easy, “we need to
help each other out so we can survive and don’t go broke trying to find the
resources that we need.”
This air of community engulfs Klauser—something that’s noticeable
about them even over the phone—as they name-dropped just about
“we need to help
each other out so
we can survive and
don’t go broke trying
to find the resources
that we need.”