Article Response: Indie Kids

i.e. not Mrs. Spears, but Jessica Simpson

Anyway, Shed 7 are a poor example because they were shit before they were hip, they were shit while they were hip, and they're shit now. It'd be like me using J Lo to defend pop, or something.

I chose Shed 7 because it's such a popular band to put down (and I still do like them). I could have put any well-known indie band - the Bluetones maybe. It doesn't matter which one I put because, as I expected you said the equivalent of 'Ohmigod, do you like Shed 7.'

And yes, I have talked to indie kids. A lot of them are lovely - this is why there is a nice big caveat on the side of the article saying we don't really hate them. Most of them dabble in musics other than indie, which is great: some genuinely do have as narrow taste as is being painted, and those ones often end up becoming prominent in the 'scene' and hence being judged unfairly by relative outsiders like myself.

Meanwhile yes I gave the obvious answer to Shed Seven, but I don't see that it proves much of a point other than that a lot of people ENTIRELY CORRECTLY hate Shed Seven. It'd be like saying, you're a film snob, you don't like Battlefield Earth, and me saying no because it's rubbish, and you saying a-ha! Told you so!

the thing about the article is that it hit a few tender points about the amount of conformity in the scene. But I'm happy with the music I listen to and the way I look and I felt I ought to defend it.

I still like Shed 7...

VIVA THE REAL REVOLUTION OF ROCK AND ROLL THAT WILL ONE DAY TAKE YOUR SOUL AND SPIT OUT THE SHIT THAT IS WHINY LITTLE BOY MUSIC! VIVA THE TIME OF TRUE REDEMPTION, THE TIME OF TRUE MUSIC! ONE DAY YOULL SEE AS I SIT IN MY THRONE AND JUDGE YE THAT WORE BLACK FRAMED GLASSES AND CLAIMED TO LIKE BOTH AT THE DRIVE IN AND THE SPICE GIRLS!

-heidi

I myself decided to dress in a generic indie rock fashion, with the "ironic" t-shirts, the tight courdoroy pants, the repulsive late- 70s tennis shoes, et cetera. I couldn't bring myself to wear the buddy holly glasses, but that's immaterial. The point is, I've never gotten more action in my life. I didn't realize that "hey man, I love your shoes" is what passes for a pick-up line among the bed-head indie tarts.

I don't even listen to indie rock, I hate it, I listen to rap. Not even that college "hip-hop" turntablist snooze crap, but real shoot- em-up die-nigga RAP rap. But so long as I wear my little tight shirts and maintain the perfect slouch, it's all indie. Rap can be indie, reggae can be indie, and god knows disco can be indie. It's about looks, it's about sex, and that's all it's about.

Girls don't like music anyway. They're buying those $200 7-inches because they're cute, and they think of them as a lifestyle accessory more than a vehicle for music. It's girls that fuel emo and any other type of music made by crying pussies in red Saucony shoes.

And with God as my witness, I swear that when I'm able to perfect my indie rock style, I'll be able to do anything I like. I will masturbate and poop in the middle of the road with complete impunity. Hey, it's all indie.

Hip-hop snob complain that hip-hop became hip-pop (as if that's a bad thing) sometime between Young MC and Mase. It was always pop. All the sacred cows, Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash, A Tribe Called Quest, made music that was undeniably and unapologetically pop music. Sometimes it was even materialistic, bling bling, shoot em up, coke snorting, hard-rocking pop music. Nothing has changed.

sure, talib's album isn't good, same for jt money, same for trick daddy, who cares? being a top 40 gangsta doesn't automatically make an album listenable same way that being intelligent and speaking honestly doesn't. equating big balla clichés with an 'exciting' artist that 'has life' is just sophmoric. admittedly, the indie-hiphop template is rapidly getting tired, but so is your revered mainstream hiphop 'shoot- em-up die-nigga' template (and the former is far more enjoyable to begin with). when artists work to make original works that rise above stagnation or cliché, that is when you have music that is exciting. i see the roots doing this, i see jay-z doing this. they're not mutually exclusive. i have no problem with rap being pop, that's exactly what it has always been and what it will always be, just as rock is pop and country is pop. it's music and it's art.

(as i side note, i'm also very disturbed by the misogyny in your lengthy indie post as well but it's too late to address that meaningfully, and so let me just point it out for now. mr.herbert's 'mission statement's instant embracement by the other members of the forum is a close-up example of how howard stern/rush limbaugh/that guy from fox news 'tell-it-like-it-is' assholes create huge cults around their deplorable statements and awful generalisations. it's super-funny to say that girls don't really like music and are just buying records as fashion accessories if you have the mentality of an antisocial ten year-old boy, but otherwise it's just sexist)

'no i get it, i doubt very much that this guy seriously believes that rap isn't good unless it's 'die-nigga' and women don't REALLY like music, it's done in the same smarmy 'we're playing with the idea of male chauvinist asshole rants, we don't actually believe it' that maxim and all those sorts of things are and it becomes such a muddled self- referential joke that the 'fans' of such a thing just believe what it's saying. you think the wife-beating morons who love maxim because it's about man stuff and shows girls in bikinis actually get the usually defensive ironic double-meaning of most of the stuff? they're just assholes. i don't like the idea of a guy who says this should be picked up as any sort of object of appreciation. what if i decided to play with the idea of political correctness and say that 'black people don't really listen to music' or 'i don't like pussy emo, i listen to real die- jew skinhead hardcore'? not so funny and agreeable then. anyway i'm done with this.'

And THAT is the last line on this because I'm not bringing up that goddamned gangsta rap discussion again, other than to say YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE. Now start a new thread already if you want to go on about "die nigga" rap or whatever you are on about.

Very quickly, yes I'm probably being a misogynist, and definitely generalizing when I say that girls "don't like music." But I think that's there's some, maybe just little tiny bit of truth to that. If syaing it makes me a tell-it-like-it-is asshole, in the mode of Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh (though who listens to them anymore? G Gordon Liddy is the king), so be it. And of course I was trying to be provocative, and only half-believe what I'm said.

I'm not trying to exacerbate things, but I for one was offended by the same generalizations - especially the 'boys club' tone of Chris Herbert's post, yet somehow it was the 'yeah, right on brother' reinforcements that came just after that seemed far worse. So joke or no, it makes no difference at that point. Damage done. I'm a girl. I love music, for real. Why should I have to read that shit in a supposedly enlightened place like this? It's also a really disturbing social phenomenon that whenever anyone, anywhere, ever has the courage to stand up and call someone out (with good reason) there is always a legion of 'smoother overers' that start pressuring that person to let things be. Apparently conflict makes people uncomfortable. Is it really better if those feeling discomfort to begin with, just shut up seethe silently beneath the status quo? And yes, I CAN leave if I don't want to read it.

ethan, you rock.

I just have to say that the brutal truth contained in the orginal indie kids article intoxicated me, and made me go perhaps a little further than I should have.

I don't even care if saying that gets me yelled at. I still fail to see - NEWSFLASH I AM A GIRL - what was so offensive about Chris's original post. It was glib and sarcastic and definitely in poor taste - so fuckin' what? As I said, people need to go reread all that jumping down the throat done to necromancer (yes, Ethan, this means you) when he went off on rap music being a bad influence on popular society - ie a FAR BETTER SELLING FORM OF POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT THAN A MAGAZINE (just ask Fred Solinger about magazine sales) - yet you're all going to claim Maxim is going to negatively influence people? It's going to negatively influence people just as much as rap music will.

Mind you, I'm not someone who thinks rap music is going to influence any sane person to do anything different from what they would've done otherwise, so I'm saying magazines are not a major influence either. Obviously, anyone stating Maxim is a major influence would be a hypocrite to claim that music, a more popular form of entertainment, isn't an influence on people's behavior. A popular magazine has a sales base of a few million around the world. A popular rap album has a sales base of a few million in the United States alone. Do the statistics.

And I'm ticked off at Chris for even apologizing. Don't bow to the pressure of the board, it's not worth it. Piss them off. Music obsessive IS by and large the male of the species. Which isn't to say girls aren't music obsessives - my favorite band seems to appeal only to females, from my non-internet experience - but rather that the majority share (ie more than 50%) of music obsessives are males. This is an oft stated, oft studied fact. If you don't like it, tough. Try to get more of your female friends to buy music. Just look at the proportion of men to women on this very board. Don't give me the "this is the internet, computers are for men" bullshit either (which is so hypocritically sexist it's not even funny anyhow - music is for everyone but computers aren't? Fuggedaboudit) because recent studies (and no I don't have them but one of them was cited to me by Tom Ewing himself) show that the internet is nearing the 50/50 mark more and more every day and the disparity is nearly non-existant. You can probably look this up in the technology section of Yahoo! news, which I believe had a story on it recently. Yet music sites are around 75% male. Why do you think this is if you believe what I'm saying right now is offensive? This goes out to anyone, not someone in particular...

The indie scene IN MY EXPERIENCE is particularly bad because the girls do put more thought into their clothes. I used to hang out with a pile of them in Arizona and they knew jack all about music. As I said, this is my experience and gladly this board proves to me it's not necessarily a common thing, but I can see how Chris's experience led him to the same conclusion.

Maxim RULES. End of story to me. And I don't even read it. I'm just giving them props for using Photoshop to blow up the breasts of every flat chested actress they ever have on their cover. Rock on with your fantasy world, rock on with making these women look ridiculous because everyone knows they don't really look like that. It's all hilarious to me, and I quite frankly hope someone from Maxim is reading this and offers me a dirty spread in the mag for propping them.

This has fuck all to do with Indie Kids, mind you.

This is just daft.

I grew up in a suburb of Georgia and removed completely from any scene at all, until high school when i made the periodic trips to Athens to see Olivia Tremor Control or Elf Power and started making pseudo-Flaming Lips songs on my 4-track at home. I had read alot about my parents' 60s revolution and was in love with the music; the way people dressed at these shows felt good, Mr. Roger sweaters and all, like a cheerier, more fun version of Nirvana. At school i wore ties and blazers and t-shirts cos I saw a picture of Syd Barrett and he looked so dandy and experimental at the same time. My parents thought I was crazy and/or on drugs, and asked me several times in fact.

Around this time I started hanging out with people in Atlanta, who had impeccable thrift store post-Grunge fashions and were making improvizational music with old synthesizers and cheap guitars and stuff. They referred to each other as 'kids' and this was the first time I ever heard the term. It seemed to ecompass a lot of the musical/stylistic ideas i was pursuing at the time.

My little brother was into hardcore and screamo and i would drive him around to all these shows and i looked weird enough to fit in and get into the pit and all that. I moved into a punk rock house with some kids that were members of a band that is now A Small Victory, and they were nice guys, we stayed up late nights dumpster diving and listening to Bjork and all that. I met and fell in love with a goth girl and died my hair black, which has since then morphed from a shaggy-haired George Harrison '68 look to an Oliver Twist look to a Classical Greek cherub look. I never thought that i should imitate others but i did like the look of black and ran with it.

I tried to listen to At the Drive In and couldn't get into it. My roommates also had a lot of non-ironic pop around like the Dirty Pop of N*Sync and Britney Spears and all that. Anyways, over the years I bounced between hanging out with different scenes (mostly the local punk scene), becoming increasingly conscious of the Stylism that worked its way into them.

It's funny cos today maybe I would be a stereotypical indie kid; last week my mom called me up to say that she went to a department store and all the styles looked exactly the way i dressed in high school.

Nowadays I go to school for art and live with two private art-school kids, and they constantly look like models. It seems like that whole group kind of stems from the indie kid elitist model (especially since they're all at the right age) but more elegant and self-defined. Sorry for the long post.

Oh, and I do love The Smiths and The Cure (go ahead, cruxify me).

#15 (plus 16 and 17) articulates something I've been sensing for some time. This shrinking of the genepool is progressive, such that you can't possibly have too many more generations of some of these strains of indie before the perpetual inbreeding between simplicity and amateurism results in collapse into demented whimpers. It's like generation 0 offered a refreshing DIY reaction to the most ornate popular music of the 70's. But by generation 23 or whatever those living in the self-referencing cave so long without allowing themselves to appreciate a truly swinging brass arrangement first hand or, I dunno, even a genuinely driving or complex or funky rhythm, are going to have too few tools to construct even the most rudimentary pop song. Presumably most have broader tastes, it sounds like it in fewer and fewer cases, and I can feel my brain cells dying.

When did the cool kids (who usually are considered to have ample spending money) start copping the style? How can two stereotypes at opposite ends of the social spectrum be so similar?

or are indie kids the popular kids in high school now, like the jocks? I'm confused...maybe things have changed....I would think the popular kids all listen to rap and play sports, etc....or maybe Dave Matthews band or something....

Man....I guess maybe the indie folks I know are different or something but the people in bands I know pride themselves on being able to play....good drummers are revered....every "indie" type person I know loves James Brown and Miles Davis...I guess I know more people that are punks not indie or something...but it seems like "indie" on this thread is becoming some kind of wierd catch-all for everything people hate or something....

what the fuck are crumpets anyway?

I think that kid Chris Herbert upthread was pretty funny, and misogynistic, but i think the big tymers are funny too so whatever.

Really? That sounds like a character from Dickens almost....or something....that's an awesome name.

-- M@tt He1geson

OTM

genius.