Profile: Benjamin Hoste, This Ain't a Scene

by Kathryn Pinto
(Photos by Benjamin Hoste)

Ben Hoste is the kind of guy who will stop you mid-flip through a vinyl bin and say, “Wait. Stop. You really need to buy this record. Do you know these guys?” and then launch into a genealogy of all current and previous members going back four band generations. Hoste needs you to know this band, and he doesn’t reserve his enthusiasm just for the ladies. (Although when I observed him at the opening of SNAP, his photography show at Origami Vinyl, last Sunday the particular girl browsing the record bin was very easy on the eyes.)

Recently Hoste launched one of the freshest additions to the LA music blog lineup, This Ain’t a Scene. “Interviewing singers from some of the best bands in the Silver lake music scene,” Volume One is composed of twelve issues, each devoted to a band member interviewed and photographed by Hoste in the singer’s home, most recently Corinne Dinner of the Hectors.

This Ain’t a Scene is visually striking. Hoste, a photographer RFSL profiled last year, takes his design cues from print, alluding visually to thick magazines, the slicks you read on a Sunday with the good coffee. As well as he uses images, sometimes you just want to hear what the artist sounds like. TAAS answers this challenge by posting a selection of the band’s songs, which open in an inline media player, in the sidebar alongside each article.

Upcoming interviews for This Ain’t a Scene are Josiah Mazzaschi of Light FM, Adeline Danti, Hunter Curra of Walking Sleep, Joey Siara of The Henry Clay People and Avi Buffalo. Volume 2, twelve more interviews is in the works.

SNAP, an exhibition of Benjamin Hoste’s rock photography continues at Origami Vinyl through March 28, 2010.

Comments

[John Girgus]

This Ain't A Scene, and its main contributor Benjamin Hoste ran an actual, legally definable, slanderous piece pertaining to me through an ex bandmate, with no research nor fact checking, that cost me relationships, friendships and maybe even a little money but nothing any court would be interested in.

He has never disputed or displayed the document since its original form, and did take parts of it at a time down when urged but the law of too little, too late, could easily apply.

I could be accused of too long holding a grudge, as it's been over a year, but I think given the action I am taking, I feel pretty good. This blog aired my dirty laundry, I will continue to air its.

I don't even think I ever got an apology.
This Ain't No Professional.