When discussing the history of rock bands mining black music for inspiration, it's important to ignore all acts that reach shooting range of gold.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:13 (sixteen years ago) link
x-post
I see that he's now calling his own old group Ui, a funk band. Did he always do that--I seem to recall them being considered a postrock band or some such. Parts of the article make sense to me, but then elsewhere he 's got unsupported statements that I strongly disagree with. Am not sure what Bill Cosby would think. Sasha's been warning on his blog that he was gonna post or write something that would get attention. I guess this it it (it's a followup of something he presented at the EMP a few years back, isn't it?).
― curmudgeon, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:14 (sixteen years ago) link
the real question: would Cliff, Claire, and Sandra Huxtable have gone to a Ui concert?
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:15 (sixteen years ago) link
relax people there's always been honky music, it's not a crime
― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:16 (sixteen years ago) link
indie musicians making shitty music bcuz of cowardly indecision = new yorker article
― deej, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:17 (sixteen years ago) link
I think that article's pretty good - cringeworthy references to own music and debatable cherrypicking of history aside - certainly it articulates a dynamic that seems readily apparent to me, and has been for quite some time (at least, as he notes, since the early 90s and Pavement)
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:18 (sixteen years ago) link
um, college rock in the 80s was plenty white too
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:19 (sixteen years ago) link
and the entire history of the British charts in the 1980's.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:20 (sixteen years ago) link
i miss the ass shakin' beats of dino jr. and throwing muses
― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:20 (sixteen years ago) link
i mean if we're gonna focus solely on art-rock, we can take this much further back than Pavement.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:21 (sixteen years ago) link
Whatever -- it's an article in the goddamn New Yorker! I don't expect its audience to understand the distinctions between a Style Council record and Panda Bear's attempts to studiously avoid sounding like a Style Council record.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:22 (sixteen years ago) link
hahaha
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:23 (sixteen years ago) link
i never really got why it was so bad that some indie rock wasn't danceable or sounded white or whatever, excepting like douchebags that think indie is inherently superior, like i dunno there's got to be music for dancing, there's got to be music for being unemployed and sitting around at 2 in the afternoon feeling sorry for yourself and smoking schwag.
― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:24 (sixteen years ago) link
ew!
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:24 (sixteen years ago) link
nobody said it's bad, we're just laughing at the idea that this is news or has anything to do with a decrease in "miscegenation" in popular music.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:25 (sixteen years ago) link
i wish he would finish upending the canon and just stop talking about bad indie bands altogether.
― deej, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:25 (sixteen years ago) link
its weird - one thing he doesn't get into at all is how the Rock Music Industry(tm) basically ruined the blues as source material with its endless parade of cheesy white guitarists trying to bee authentic (see: Blueshammer by way of Clapton). White guys appropriating blues became such a bad, egregious aesthetic and political error that it basically sped an entire generation (punk generation, cf. Talking Heads' "no blues rule", Greg Ginn, etc.) in the opposite direction.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
but then he'd have to deal with the commercial if generally unappealing, deej!
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
the real horrifying idea would be IF arcade fire decided to incorporate hip hop influences
― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:27 (sixteen years ago) link
One shouldn't be forced to think about tacky things like popular rock bands when discussing rock history
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:27 (sixteen years ago) link
history is written by the losers
― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:30 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.publispain.com/posters/revenge_of_the_nerds.jpg
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:30 (sixteen years ago) link
I'd have been more comfortable with a reactionary but worthy-of-discussion-in-a-mainstream-liberal-publication essay on the twentysomething music fans who want to talk to you about Of Montreal's album over Ciara's -- who'll privilege the former over the latter for reasons they can't even articulate.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:31 (sixteen years ago) link
I believe the New Yorker would consider that killing the goose, better to sing "Everybody's beautiful" and pretend 311 doesn't STILL sell more than the Flaming Lips.
― da croupier, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:33 (sixteen years ago) link
goddamn it I'm drunk and I'm going to listen to the Style Council.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:35 (sixteen years ago) link
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, October 15, 2007 11:31 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
would you seriously want to read that article??
― s1ocki, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:45 (sixteen years ago) link
hell yeah! The Great Big World Outside ILM doesn't understand the problem. (And before anyone jumps in to say, "Well, Of Montreal's album is better than Ciara's," understand that the college-age twentysomething to whom SFJ is indirectly addressing his essay won't even consider buying the Ciara album; at most they'll buy a song.)
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:50 (sixteen years ago) link
the problem that some college students prefer indie rock to r&b?
― s1ocki, Monday, 15 October 2007 23:55 (sixteen years ago) link
YES
― J0hn D., Monday, 15 October 2007 23:59 (sixteen years ago) link
THE UNACCEPTABLE FACE OF YOUTH
― J0hn D., Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:00 (sixteen years ago) link
but the vast majority of college students are like jocks and normal people and shit and don't give a crap about indie rock just like the majority of high school students and, um, people in general
― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:00 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.mymusic.com/DI5/graphics/elvis_costello.jpg
"Hi, I'm Elvis Costello, here to talk to you a problem facing the young intellectuals of today. Would you be surprised to know that I am a fan of Lil Wayne? That my favorite album of 2006 was B'Day? Rap and R&B are rich genres that continue to provide us with classic music that reward just as much as indie rock, maybe even more. Increasingly, white music fans do not seem willing to give modern black artists the respect they deserve. Join me, and the good people at Rhapsody, in our fight against this ignorance."
― da croupier, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:01 (sixteen years ago) link
plus nerdy dudes need to get laid...the trim status at a lot of these indie shows is off the hook these days
― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:02 (sixteen years ago) link
all we need is EC in a brownshirt acting out "Oliver's Army" in a college-radio setting.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:03 (sixteen years ago) link
The tastes of nerdy white college guys are of vast importance to nerdy white music writers.
― bnw, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:12 (sixteen years ago) link
"Hi, I'm Elvis Costello,etc."
Are those real quotes or jokes quotes?
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:14 (sixteen years ago) link
see for yourself
www.blacktiewhitenoise.com/costello
― da croupier, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:16 (sixteen years ago) link
ibowiebyrnecostellodarnielletweedy-wnbtpressconference.jpg
― da croupier, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:21 (sixteen years ago) link
woops, fucked up the link
ihttp://blacktiewhitenoise.com/bowiebyrnecostellodarnielletweedy-btwnpressconference.jpg
― da croupier, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:22 (sixteen years ago) link
fuck, just type it in.
This is either really funny and over my head or you're getting the url wrong.
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:29 (sixteen years ago) link
...I fudged, splitting the difference between singing, chanting, and rapping, each time with diminishing returns. (I can hardly stand to listen to these tracks now.)
i couldn't hardly stand to listen to those tracks then!
lol, yeah, ui was a "funk" band. sure.
― hstencil, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 00:31 (sixteen years ago) link
-- kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:29 AM (
^^^^^
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 01:12 (sixteen years ago) link
A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences SFJ discussion moved over here
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 03:23 (sixteen years ago) link
college rock in the 80s was plenty white too
-- da croupier, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:19 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Link
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:20 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Link
yeah coz hip-hop and house really found it hard breaking here, in comparison with the US.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 10:38 (sixteen years ago) link
vvvvv
-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, October 15, 2007 9:12 PM (Yesterday)
― am0n, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 14:38 (sixteen years ago) link
“You can’t land a plane in Rome saying, ‘Whassup?’ to the control tower. You can’t be a doctor telling your nurse, ‘Dat tumor be nasty.’ ” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/opinion/16herbert.html?th&emc=th
― kamerad, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 15:43 (sixteen years ago) link
So I went out and picked up a copy of B'Day based on Elvis Costello's recommendation.
― kingkongvsgodzilla, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 01:18 (sixteen years ago) link
omg @ "dat tumor be nasty"
jesus christ
― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 18:39 (sixteen years ago) link
You know, if someone went through 10 years of medical school and had the proper training to remove my tumor, I could really give a fuck how they said it.
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 18:56 (sixteen years ago) link