Is the Guardian's music coverage getting good?

Ugh, that comment. Don't see the fuss over the picture myself - it's standard when showing a T-shirt image/slogan to focus/crop like that so your eye is drawn to the T-shirt rather than the face of the wearer, regardless of gender. "Fragmenting her personhood"? Really?

http://www.omgmod.org/wiki/images/e/eb/YA_RLY.jpg

Yeah, really. Obviously there are times when it's fairly unimportant, but juxtaposed with an article that is explicitly attempting to address problematic gender issues completely undermines any point you might be trying to make.

(Should have said 'fairly unimportant to me', rather than 'fairly unimportant'. I don't often get riled - I'm fairly inured to my gender being portrayed badly, but it's the self-contradiction, blatant idiocy and sheer laziness of imagery that really gets to me here.)

She's not faceless; only half of her face is missing.

See, this is one of the biggest problems with imagery like that attached to articles like that - and why I think it's a derrailing tactic. Because we then get bogged down with people pointing fingers at the "feminists" telling them they really don't have a reason to be bothered by these things (while comments like *that* really do show that we have a bit of a point?) It then completely bypasses the point of anything good that might have been accomplished by opening up a debate about these things (becase we're, you know, "oversensitive" - or oversensitised?)

It's all a bit one step forward, two steps back.

I still don't see that this image derails or occludes the point of the article unintentionally let alone as a deliberate "tactic". But I don't want to be calling anybody oversensitive or deciding what other people should be irritated by so I'll sit this one out.

Alex Trebek: crowd surfer, misogynist.

Yeah, that jumped out at me, too. I wonder what the context was? It doesn't sound like his style at all.

My eyes were drawn straight to the chips tbh. Goddamn it don't show me that when I'm hungry.

― Neggin' you crapative (NickB), Thursday, September 2, 2010 11:59 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

"What's Yr Take On Alex Trebek?"

"I'll take Genius/Misogynist for $1,000 please."
"It's the Daily Double!"
"That's misogynist!"

I think the problem with the article was that it attributed gender enlightenment on 'indie' as a whole. This maybe true for the bands (which were strangely quoted due to them having girls in them) but ignored the actual listeners of 'indie' or what is purported to be 'indie' in the modern age. With the mainstream aspects of such music and especially the kind of people who go to festivals that often end in 'groping' (didn't one of the American festivals end up in numerous rapes?) are the general public en masse. My point being that you can still love the xx and be a fucking idiot.

not that that was particularly grammatically correct but whatevs. Rant

Wasn't it the Latitude festival there was 2 rapes? I think B&S played that iirc

think I was thinking of Woodstock 99. Had no idea that it happened at latitude, my mum went there last year!

yeah it just goes to show it can happen anywhere.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-10676193

true. I don't imagine mother going to festivals will quell rape statistics.

Which is why it's very strange that the "indie professor" thinks indie is more enlightened than other genres.

I'll bet there's less groping at Shostakovich recitals.

This is from an earlier "indie professor" blog

This may be a dumb question, but what criteria are you using for "indie" here – musical/hairstyle, or artists who aren't signed to a major?
Simianbaffin

Not a dumb question, and one that lots of people asked in one form or another. I'll try and tackle the question that takes 57 pages to answer in my book in the shortest way possible. "What is indie" is the issue that is most contested, dissected, and passionately debated by journalists and fans alike. For me, indie is found in the arguments people have. For example, no one argues about ownership in hip-hop and nobody worries about who wrote the music to decide if you are "jazz" or not. For indie, there are five major arguments. I like to think about them as teams. First is "Team Independent Label/Distribution". For people who use this definition, it doesn't matter what you sound like or your practices. You just need the label (US) or distribution (UK) of the artist to be not owned by one of the four major international record corporations. The ideal is that independent labels interfere less, are more ethical, are "small" and reflect a local scene. However, no one seems to worry about the ownership of artists' publishing companies or booking agencies. This tells you independent ownership is more about perception of autonomy rather than actual autonomy. Second is "Team Attitude". For "Team Attitude" it is about the spirit of independence, the most punk criterion. This would include artists with creative control, DIY practices, egalitarian non-conformists who value individualism. Third is "Team Aesthetics/Genre". This is the one that creates the most exasperation for purists. Here, indie would be stylish four-piece beat combos with skinny guys and skinny girls in skinny jeans wearing their everyday clothes on stage, a twee, retro, or lo-fi sound, simple songs with intelligent, nostalgic, escapist, or depressing lyrics. This team allows audience members to be indie as well. Fourth is "Team Taste". These elitists claim to recognise the most authentic and quality music, it's just that the best music is the music that they like. It's a question of "artistic merit" and it is why Mr Tomfoolery "indie kids pretend to like rap music". They are the aesthetically elect. They are also the objects of collective ire.

Finally, there is "Team Non-Mainstream" (whatever the mainstream is, I am not). The mainstream is seen as a bloated centralised authority run by corrupt bureaucrats more concerned with sales than artistic expression. Therefore, indie would be anything that is the opposite of what we perceive as mainstream: diminutive, intimate, local, personalised, modest, original, intelligent, raw, austere, and substantive. I'm not privileging any of these teams. People want you to choose a side. Yet, if you take these premises together, you'll find out that they have more in common than you might initially think.

iirc...

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2010/09/340x_pastebig.jpg

(the answer was yes)

has anyone read her book that she mentioned?

However, even in 2006, when Pitchfork reviewed my book on the culture of indie music, the writer actually talked about my cleavage!

matos said it was the most intelligent book ever written on music

but what did he think of the cleavage?

he said it was one of the smartest in years, to be accurate

I read the book a little after my college years. It was one of my ethnomusicology professor's favorite book. For an anthropology book it was an accessible read. Which is a hard feat concerning the academic field. After reading it I got some sense of indie culture (I guess...) but it has opened my mind to listening to it more often. However, I don't remember seeing boobies.

no one argues about ownership in hip-hop and nobody worries about who wrote the music to decide if you are "jazz" or not

Either I'm missing her point here or this is bullshit.

it's just bullshit

okay, the whole thing is bullshit on lots of levels. first the breaking of things into "teams" is achingly foolish, and worse, it's simplistic and doesn't speak honestly to how most fans conceptualize the music. rather than there being some dedicated group of people who unthinkingly reduce the genre to any music that happens to exist on an independent label, and another opposing group countering that it's all about "indie attitude," these tend to be complementary and less reductive understandings. same goes for the hostility to some presumed mainstream, which exists primarily as a political/aesthetic justification for the former two. and most of us, i think, can see that indie aesthetics (as codified in the pop genre she smirkingly reduces to "stylish four-piece beat combos with skinny guys and skinny girls in skinny jeans...") arose out of that conceptual background, but eventually eventually began to separate themselves from it.

so much half-baked, snarky nonsense in that quote. "However, no one seems to worry about the ownership of artists' publishing companies or booking agencies. This tells you independent ownership is more about perception of autonomy rather than actual autonomy." bullshit. it only tells us that the writer is proud of her own perspicacity and has no idea how important book your own fucking life has been to the development of indie music.

I get the impression that it's written for its audience even more than the rest of the paper's bloggy stuff - if you hold your nose and jump into the c*mment s*ction it's largely a load of yahoos writing "lol indie sux and is gay" over and over, and the skinny jeans chestnuts she drops in seem to be as much in pre-emptive defence as anything, not that that makes it any more exciting to wade through.

There's a kernel of truth in the "perception of autonomy rather than actual autonomy" thing, insofar as you have to be fairly deep in the DIY punk rabbithole to find ppl talking about blacklisting or otherwise disliking booking agents, but more or less everyone has an idea of a shitty label - it's more of a surface level part of a band's identity. But yeah your last sentence is otm

i thought you was "great British wagemann" and lold

scary thought

For example, no one argues about ownership in hip-hop

i lol'd

ha ha ha. I do like the book, though, esp. the way she breaks down the way a concert audience's positions from the stage make up specific zones.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/interactive/2011/jun/11/history-modern-music-timeline

I've already spotted one mistake in it, but I think that particular article was written by an ILX0r!

the r&b and hip-hop section seems a bit light on R&B

the indie section sort of peters out about 1992 which seems accurate

spiral scratch ep a stunning omission from indie

wow there are as many as four genres now?

lol surprise I have several issues with the hardcore punk article (written by our own Stevie) as well...

(although that's just a matter of opinion, not a factual error like the other one)

this one? http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/14/ian-makaye-bad-brains-hardcore

don't have any issues w/ anything in the main text, guessing he didn't write the section headline

Ah, well if that's the case then that was what I was mainly objecting to, and how that colours the rest of the article.

Like if it was Ian MacKaye and Bad Brains popularise hardcore then fine (but I'm picking nits).

xpost Spiral Scratch is mentioned in Morley's piece about the Lesser Free Trade Hall gig.

very much a potted history - ie what do our writers know about - than a definitive one. just another way for the site to get more visitors/to sell more papers through a not exactly essential supplement.

Yep, a potted history. But what do people expect in a series of 24-page supplements?

In the interests of honesty, I ought to confess to those who don't know that I edited the indie one and the rock one.

Pretty sure the ILM hip-hop poll is a more useful resource/archive for any possible purpose than the Guardian hip-hop timeline.