Class, etc Pt. 2: Indie vs. Pop Culture

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/g/gravy-train/hello-doctor.shtml

If only it didn't make me think of Survivor.

m.

[Also Arch I'm tempted to post anonymously to admit this but: I've actually always had a soft spot for 311. They seem like pleasant kids.]

Okay, but do you want to create music along the lines of theirs? (anonymous posts in the affirmative accepted--no, encouraged--if you can explain why).

Yeah, but why they won still makes for interesting conversation.

Thank you thank you Kerry. This is totally the greatest revision that went on post-Nirvana: how many untold thousands of punk-funk, goth, reggae, wimpy-synth, Brit-jangle, industrial-soul, and folk bands got cut loose from the accepted history of college radio in 1991? The biggest casualties were the M.O.R. rock bands, all of a sudden resurrected as "bland pop" in the form of Third Eye Blind or whomever: it's this dirty little indie secret that as of 1988 and even a way after that, those bands would have been all over college radio, just like Del Amitri, Ghost of an American Airman, and Trip Shakespeare -- later to feed into "bland pop" Semisonic -- were. And all the variety got cut loose. On the college radio station I was listening to at the time, Nirvana almost single-handedly wiped out Erasure, Marshall Crenshaw, 10,000 Maniacs, the Pet Shop Boys, Black Uhuru, Fishbone, and plenty of the other stuff that lent this great all-over-the-map urgency to what I then thought of as "alternative."

For the record, I've always thought "Held" by Smog to be a great example of an "undanceable" "indie" musician's stab at a "danceable" song.

shouldn't some discussion concerning the 'influence' of the (now about 5 year old i guess) file-sharing revolution intersect with q's about sub-cultures and (the near-impossibility of maintaining) genre fanaticism in 03? 'sampling' music and modes of fandom has never been easier - maybe the humanist in me hopes that the reaction of now-marginal "white kids with angular guitars/laptops" culture to being allowed to find out how they get on with the Other in safety of the same bedroom they compose their songs from would be JOY, not increased insularity. in other words, i think, yeah, things are getting better - i think there's a real possibility of p2p filesharing(/the internet in general) acting as the rosetta stone to hiphop's codes upon codes.

another thought: the writing around the (few? maybe not really) acts eager to eat up music from non-proscribed sources seems to place a lot of emphasis on 'getting it right'. any indie-centric music eager to nibble from the neptunes (majesticons?) is going to start out sounding a little clumsy - i'm not sure that clumsiness is something we should be trying to avoid. surely the eagerness with which many people toss the rappropriation of cex, har-mar [who i haven't heard so..] etc into the 'parody'/borderline-racist 'point-and-laugh' bin while applauding how roll deep crew'll rub shoulders with mike skinner says something (something worth discussing) about race relations in US as opposed to elsewhere?

Anyway, if you look at it beatwise, I'm not sure there isn't more continuity from the '80s to the '90s than discontinuity. American hardcore and alt-rock didn't have much swing except in the most abstract sense. Steve Shelley and Grant Hart, for example, are both great drummers in their own way, but there's not a lot of funk in their trunks. The Minutemen played around with jazz, but in a "cerebral" post-bop sense.

And yeah, you can dance to anything if you like it enough -- the difference is between music that identifies itself as dance music, advertises itself as such, and music that doesn't. Not much post-1980 Amerindie has really identified itself as music for dancing. Right, there was Fishbone, but the very fact that Fishbone was the de facto black band of choice for '80s college rockers tells you how relatively isolated a phenomenon they were.

is the difference that, to indiecentrics, hip hop is the other in america, while dance is the other in britain. and that techno/house/jungle clubs are not seen as exclusionary or intimidating as hip hop clubs? inclusivity and all that (though this is not necessarily the case?). but yet the state of indie music in britain is possibly even more parlous than that in america?

(erm, also, surely stereolab are a danceable indie band of the last 10 years, but again not in an american way i guess)

lowercase: c or d? easier!

free jazz is a thorny one. the thumbnail theory repeated by musicians and club owners is: free jazz = black people on stage and white people in the audience. true or not? discuss.

Not true, jess. There's plenty of "firey black nationalist" free jazz recs that Thurston's endorsed, for better or for worse. And New York Art Quartet has played with SY, y'know, the group with the man that embodies "firey black nationalist" for most people (at least in New Jersey): Amiri Baraka.

SFJ, hear hear on Minutemen. I personally can't understand why they would be classified as "non-dance." You can wiggle to that shit!

But then again, a lot of the stuff being classified on here as "non-dance" doesn't feel that way to me. I dance to it, but then again maybe I'm the exception to the rule.

from: http://www.pataphysics-lab.com/journal/archives/002146.html

rewind 10 back to 1993... spin sampler "shit this 4"... er..."spin this 4"...how has spin changed? most of these bands fell off the face of the earth. see:

a tracklisting:

Connells - Slackjawed

generic indie rock. hooky to a degree. bland.

Cords - Eat Your Heart Out

reminds me quicksand a lot. that nyc hardcore sound. loud. angry.

KMFDM - A Drug Against War

hehe... industrial hadn't fully OD'ed yet. nice noodly guitar samples. very hessian and i find that pretty funny now.

Jester - I Remember The Night

a weird mix of hip-hop, industrial, and big guitars. it's like proto nu metal. samples of horns ringing out.

Def Threat - Baby Bubba

a completely awesome hip-hop song. samples some classic soul... bob and earl perhaps? why this song didn't blow up is hard to fathom. amazing how well some hip-hop ages.

Psykosonik - Silicon Jesus

trancy hardcore house... of course at the time it probably more fit in with wax trax scene. 808 is all over. boring, yet bumping drum machine. depeche mode meets ministry feeling vocal accompaniment. again, funny.

90 North - Arkman

there's an element of this that's really good heartfelt indierock. the sound isn't the kind of thing you hear much these days. i like his voice a lot. the chorusy parts are sucky jangle groove though. (see: spin doctors)

Mazzy Star - Fade Into You

of course, a classic tune that hit. a beautifully moody western ballad.

Verve - Slide Away

verve... another band that would be. this is a lot more psychedelic. it's on that post stone roses, mbv, ride kick. walls of noise. but more accessible and poppy. one of the more tolerable tracks on this cd. whistful and explosive.

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Delicate Terror

thrill kill was breaking out into a more sample dance thing. the guitar is cliche. distorted vox. seinfeld poppy bass. deviant in a very commercially viable way. industrial for gen x yuppies.

Plan B - Life's A Beat

groovy dance stuff. distorted vox lure and lurch. very world soul. close to painful. something played during the credits of a bad hollywood movie.

Boneclub - Native Son

hard rock .... kid rock with no so much hip-hop?

Engines Of Aggression - Illusion Is Real

ministry jr. same drum machine on overload. same political samples. same distorted voice. velveeta outrage.

Zappa's Universe - Jazz Discharge Party Hats

funny shit. a story about wearing the panties of some stuck up annoying college girls. song meanders in a nice formless way with zappa's story. mildy amusing.

Gavin Bryars with Tom Waits - Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

a great tune... tom waits on a gospel tip. quite artsy to a tee.

The Cranes - Jewel

classic, beautiful folk. childlike vocals that elevate the tune. the cranes didn't exactly disappear. a little wash of guitar here and there to add to the whistle.

also...

jessefox,

I mean, name an indie band of the last 10 years with a great rhythm section

what? are you crazy?

just a few bigger names... stereolab, tortoise, shellac, june of 44/shipping news/etc, the make up, fugazi...

am i misunderstanding your intention?
m.

Tuff Titty Rap [Thurston]

we've been asked to participate
in a Ma-donna rocker that can reactivate
we're ciccone youth from new york city
get the pizza connection cos it's a tuff titty

now I know my rhyme ain't bustin' no time
cos my rap be crying like a homeboy sigh
his name's mike watt, he's gonna get cut
some knuckle head defines to the group on new alliance

fuck yeah, fuck yea

[end lyrics]

I'm not sure how they could not see it as "black". They certainly are quite vocal about their admiration for the black artists in this vein, cf. Thurston's essay on his favorite free jazz albums, posted somewhere on the Interweb. Thurston has also done numerous collaborations with black free jazz musicians. Yes, it's true that he doesn't espouse black nationalist politics, at least to my knowledge, but wouldn't it be a bit inappropriate if he did?

the thumbnail theory repeated by musicians and club owners is: free jazz = black people on stage and white people in the audience. true or not? discuss

At most free jazz concerts I've been to there is usually a mix of black and white people in the audience.

free jazz != free improv, which certainly seems to be where a large number of indie bands are taking their inspiration (the chicago duo-trio-orchestra axis notwithstanding) from, whether initially inspired by thurston's curatorship or not. (and c'mon...let's not try and deny the influence the guy's name dropping ability has had in bringing "marginalized" music to the attention of the indie massive.) free improv - with it's imagined radical "full stop" break with jazz history - is much more conducive to making your instruments make all kindsa funny noises and tossing structure out the window, while not having to wrestle with the "burden" of over a century of jazz history. (ironic that the free improv guys are keenly aware of their relation to "jazz proper" at all times, whether antagonistic or not.) the macro-view of free jazz as a "black thing (you wouldn't understand?)" - as proposed by something like as serious as your life - goes beyond the rhetoric into the way the musicians just lived as black people, so yeah that was a bit of a paper tiger. you certainly don't hear sonic youth - or many or most indie bands - referencing old spirituals or new orleans funeral marches in their music.

and, for the last time "rhythm section" != derived from a funk base!

But I remember Q101 (Chicago's "modern rock" station) when it first started broadcasting in 1992: You had R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Suzanne Vega, and assorted British stuff like The Cure or Eugenius or Love Spit Love. The best example I know of "rewriting the alt-rock canon" is Q101's two broadcasts of the "Top 500 Alternative Songs of All Time" -- the first played at year-end 1996 and the second at year-end 1999. The 1996 version included loads of new-wave like B-52s and even INXS: in three short years, most of the poppier 80's stuff had been discarded in favor of more Smashing Pumpkins, more Pearl Jam, and a half-dozen Metallica (!!) songs (none of which appeared on the first list).

C'mon, Matos, that's still way too flip. Is it really so inconceivable that indie rockers might actually find something exciting in the radical vision of freedom that free jazz posits? Is there really no substance in free jazz that a musician could latch onto, or does it have to be a matter of surface and appearances?

Is the Moore-and-like-minds' injection of more chaotic free "whatever" into indie rock the reason so many retreated back towards bland Beach Boys-isms?

I dunno, but why not ask?

free jazz & free improv = abstract expressionism
"free" indie = neo-geo

hstencil that's why i made a point to distinguish that the free improv guys are keenly aware of their position to free jazz - or jazz in general - whereas the indie guys seem to have inherited derek bailey's (among others) ideas as a "get out of jail free" card.

stencil you've turned into chuck eddy! (well, i doubt chuck would admit to listening to spiderland.)