Art & Creativity Quote by Kathy Valentine

What sounds like a casual observation is really a musician’s antidote to the lazy myth of the “scene” as a marketing plan. Kathy Valentine is pointing at a pattern anyone who’s lived through a wave can recognize: clusters of similar bands don’t always form because someone greenlit a trend; they form because the conditions suddenly make a particular sound feel inevitable.

“Every now and then” is doing quiet work here. It frames these bursts as cyclical, almost seasonal, not as proof of progress or decline. Then she chooses “organically sprout,” a metaphor that rejects the industry’s usual language of manufacturing. Sprouting suggests local nutrients: cheap rent, all-ages venues, a college radio signal that reaches the right bedrooms, a few shared practice spaces, a charismatic club booker, a new piece of gear becoming affordable, a political mood that demands a certain volume. It’s ecology, not destiny.

The subtext is also defensive in a useful way. When critics reduce a movement to sameness, artists hear “unoriginal.” Valentine reframes sameness as simultaneous problem-solving: different people, responding to the same cultural pressure points, arriving at similar answers. Think of how punk, grunge, or indie-pop “revivals” seem to appear out of nowhere, then get retroactively narrated as a coordinated uprising.

As a Go-Go’s veteran, Valentine knows how quickly a genuine cluster gets packaged into a headline, then sold back to the public as a brand. Her line insists on the messier truth: scenes are less like press releases than like weather systems - the kind you can feel building before anyone can name it.