Article Response: Indie Kids

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.

Influence of media - Ally, it's pointless comparing music and Maxim. A self-help book, for instance, will tend to have much lower sales than a magazine but will be more influential on those who buy it because it is directly addressing and advising them. Music tends to have no such pretension and is - overtly at least - entertainment. Mass media mags fall halfway between the two: half entertainment (look at her! read about him!) and half advice (how to be a cooler man!). So though less ppl read it, the influence may well be stronger. I personally dont have a problem with admitting that entertainment media influence society, anyway.

Female obsessives over music - nothing to do with it being a statistical minority, at least online. In the USA, 52% of surfers are women, slightly out of proportion to the population as a whole I believe. In European countries though the average is about 40% women. In the top 20 by volume posters on this board the percentage is either 10% or 15%. Napster users are (IIRC) about 65% male. That all said this board is about individuals not generalisations: leave your Hornbyesque 'observational comedy' at the door please.

EVERYthing influences people. You can listen to whatever you want and label it however you want.

Mental conditioning/brainwashing/memetics is as real as writing in E-prime is a real solution to disspelling falsehoods and "spooks" (false essences of things).

It is funny as hell when some prick tries to tell you what you are allowed to appreciate or disapprove of, however. For me, I felt gangsta rap/most rap = shitty topics that I don't want to dwell on (whether it's fighting, cheating, bling blingin', gettin' respect, getting revenge, smoking pot, or rising above these peeps in the community who act this way) and it is my choice after all, what I want to dwell on. Funny how it twisted into something else. I see that going on here, too... Hmmm, who's the culprit?

Pop is the most accessible and most instantly appreciable music of all, a fact which I think *can* be supported by sales and radio play. A self-clarification is not in and of itself automatically elitist; the fact that you think it is only suggests to me that pro-pop sentiments threaten you somehow. Which is funny because racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are obviously a threat but liking pop is just as obviously not.

I found Chris' original post funny because it coincided so perfectly with my own experience of the indie pop world - that both the guys and girls were more often than not shallow people pretending to be deep in order to pick up; that the rejection of style had turned into a fashion as cynical and sexually-motivated as the plastic, "sluttish" world of pop. Chris's behaviour proves that the guys are probably more shallow than the girls, which seems correct to me (and don't say that Chris isn't an indie kid; he goes to indie clubs and is therefore an indie kid). Of course most musical scenes are like this, but at least most of them admit it quite openly.

I'll agree that Chris's comments about girls are a bit bizarre and he's done little to disprove your charge of sexism; it worries me that I barely noticed at the time. Good on you for pointing that out then, but I can't help but feel that you were using it as simple ammunition for your original tirade.

I am also sexist. I believe that there are differences, both innate and socially constructed, between males and females. I also don't see the problem, so long as there's truth backing it up.

To go from, say, some statistical evidence on the proporionately high number of young black males in London with a criminal record (which I entirely ascribe to environmental factors, by the way, lest there be any doubt!) to an assumption that all black men are criminals is a) wrong and b) socially divisive. Agreed?

Anyway, when I meet, talk to, or hear about girls who have the same relationship with music that I do, it's exhilarating. I am in favor of girls listening to music.

Chris, let me get this straight - so to correct this grievous injustice these 'fakers' are perpetrating against your delicate sensibilties, you decide to screw them over by umm... being a FAKER? Or do you just not like yourself? Either way, it's just crystal the way that you're ALL about the integrity...

Can we have a *new* article on posers? Please?

Also Chris, what do you do when you go out with a girl who finds your indie image appealing, then she finds out what your true music taste is? Because I would probably drop you because we wouldn't have that much in common....

I'm not trying to inflame the situation, I ask merely for information.

The actual indie rockers, the ones who ought to be able to see though me the second I walk into a room, probably aren't going to date me. They might like the shoes enough drunkenly make out with me at a party, but that hole in my CD rack where the Young Marble Giants should be is just too conspicuous.

#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.