― Siegbran Hetteson, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
I notice nobody's mentioned Rage Against the Machine - love em or loathe em, pretty important. Skunk Anansie, Audioweb - the dubby end of indie. Or Luke Sutherland, king of tortured Scots masculinity. Or Debbie Smith of Echobelly, proving the point that BritPop wasn't all mockernee geezers and lisping girlfriends of the above.
― Lisa, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― bob snoom, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Indieholic Anonymous, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
No, it sounds like you're just mystified as to why black people by and large aren't big on indie. I don't think this is a hugely pressing question, or any more pressing than why Puerto Ricans aren't huge on country or Pakistanis aren't necessarily big on Italian opera. It only becomes problematic if you (a) for some reason think of punk-lineage indie rock as "better" or "smarter" than everything else, then (b) suspect that everyone else in the world and non-white races in particular are "lesser" or "dumber" for not liking it, then (c) get all fretty and anxious about this conclusion. Just wipe the (a) part from your thinking, and everything's fine, see?
― nabisco, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― gareth, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
I'm just going to stare at this phrase for a nice long time, in the hopes that it will somehow disappear with my withering glance.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Nick A., Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― hstencil, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Jesus, what a question! Christ, what a fuckwit!
― Venga, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kris, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Surely no-one has said anything like this? It sounds rather like an inflammatory position you've set up to attack. (Hey, an inflammatory straw man: that's apt.) I suppose it could be, though, that I've not read the thread carefully enough and have missed the bit where someone did say it.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
..oh, yeah. Mos Def. He doesn't really understand rock, does he? That song never fails to amuse and irritate me, especially since in the course of his telling us that what we like is no good he fails, himself, to rock at all. The thought of the Rolling Stones attempting to rock like...Nina Simone (give me a break, even I could find a more sensible name that rhymed) is repugnant to me. That's what he'd LIKE? Same goes for his lame arena-rock band (saw 'em, hated 'em). And Living Colour, undermixed guitar, bass and drums, overmixed Pompous Ass vocalist. Saw em THREE times, never liked 'em once (they were always openers, and deservedly so). Had a few good studio tracks. Body Count? Got better during their stay on earth, nearly approached Biohazardish-bare-competence. Funkadelic? Yup, rocked. Didn't get all uppity about it, either (none of that "look, we can rock too! In fact, we're better than you! Nyah, nyah!")Bad Brains? ROCKED effortlessly and proudlike. Does anyone here remember a Philadelphia band called Pure Hell? Had kind of a Bad Brains hype going on but I never did hear them. I think the original post here wasn't THAT bad - the question is, to me, why are so few ALL-black rock bands? Sure, there are great African-American rock artists scattered hither & yon, but overall, they seem not to embrace the rock-BAND format. Is it suspicion of a white format? Starmaking machinery that tells them only one member must be the star? I know plenty of musically openminded black folks, but they don't listen to rock. Everything else is fair game, it seems.
― Matt Riedl (veal), Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― marek, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
and back to the original point of blacks that rock, there's also danko jones.
― dyson, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― ambrose, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― fields of salmon, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Josh, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jordan, Thursday, 25 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
http://www.fallofrome.com/malted.jpg
― dave q, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr Noodles, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Ethnic minority Pavement fan contest - who can beat Mauritius?
― Lisa, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Lord Custos III, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Josh, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
No, no, Pinefox, all I meant was something like ... various groups of people and "communities" have various musical lineages, sometimes with some overlap, sometimes not. We're typically unsurprised by this; it's perfectly natural to us that a 60-year-old Alabama black woman might listen to gospel, or that a 50-year-old stockbroker in New York might like the Rolling Stones. But a lot of rock listeners -- indie listeners, in particular -- actively fret about about black people in particular not being as involved in the indie scene. My question was: why do they fret about that, and not, say, the fact that just as few (or fewer) black people are interested in Christian country? And I know that when I fretted about not seeing a lot of other black indie fans, it was because I still thought of indie as somehow better than and smarter than and "above" other musics -- which results in this sense of "disappointment" in everyone else for not getting that. As soon as I was old enough to realize that that "better" was not only subjective but culturally conditioned, this ceased to be an issue.
― nabisco, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ray M, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Isn't it natural to concern yourself with your own scene rather than one you have no interest in or knowledge of? Maybe Christian country fans do worry about the lack of blacks in their scene? (Assuming even that there is such a lack; I wouldn't know.)
― nickn, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
(Another way of putting that last bit is something like this: when you were 13 and you and your friends were discovering and "turning one another onto" the Pixies or whomever, how many black friends were you swapping those tapes with?)
Which, incidentally, describes the other source of fretting over the racial crossover of hip-hop, apart from the top-level issue of mainstream America having to sort out its images of and relationships with black people: note that hip-hop was, up until its big pop crossover, equally horizontal, equally reliant upon a peer to "introduce" you to it. Hip-hop has gradually conquered that and made itself pop, in this reciprocal circle of white kids buying more and more of it. Indie rejects conquering it, and thus can't really make inroads beyond the "peers" of current indie listeners. The only way it will pick up bigger black listenership in the US is as white kids start hanging out more with black kids -- and not just the white kids who are already disposed to pick up on the black musical samizdat, as opposed to the other way around.
― DeRayMi, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
"but it's true that most people refuse to acknowledge that "rock and roll", 1963-forward, is a predominantly white musical form. i hate to bring him up, but that was the worst thing about klosterman's nyt garbage- this unquestioned, ingrained belief that rock and roll is a _black_ art form. this, just wall of white delusion and denial."
yep. regardless of racists trying to ignore the black strands, and weird liberals over emphasising the black roots ('IT IS *ALL* BLACK MUSIC!'), regardless of how it happened, the fact is just that most of the innovations have been from white artists. yes i know hendrix is towering, but even as he was bringing his R&B training to what he was doing (and the genre), he was playing in what was already a white rock style. it basically stopped being 'black music' a long time ago.
― StillAdvance, Friday, 8 July 2016 16:22 (seven years ago) link
yeah I'm not disagreeing, I think his point that rock was at least fundamentally different after '59 is correct. Which is why Sly, when he came along, was seen as a welcome exception rather than the rule.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 8 July 2016 16:33 (seven years ago) link
And of course circa 63 Brit acts were all covering material by Black musicians
― curmudgeon, Friday, 8 July 2016 18:09 (seven years ago) link
You'd have to do a detailed check on this to be sure, but my guess is that, starting with the British Invasion bands, white covers of black hits are substantially better by the mid-'60s than in the '55-57 era. I like the original "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" (Exciters) and "Go Now" (Bessie Banks) and "I'm Into Somethin' Good" (Earl-Jean) even better than the more famous covers, but the covers are pretty great too (and probably most people would go with Manfred Mann). The Beatles and Rolling Stones were generally fantastic covering girl group and Motown and Chuck Berry. Compare that with the horrifying Pat Boone-type cover from the '50s. (Exception: the Diamonds' "Little Darlin'.")
― clemenza, Friday, 8 July 2016 18:21 (seven years ago) link
That the first three covers I listed were still the bigger hits remained...troublesome? complicated? grossly unfair? Manfred Mann and the Moody Blues and Herman's Hermits all did an excellent job.
― clemenza, Friday, 8 July 2016 18:26 (seven years ago) link
― clemenza
so white people got better at "cultural appropriation"? :)
― the event dynamics of power asynchrony (rushomancy), Friday, 8 July 2016 21:05 (seven years ago) link
I brought this point up in this in another thread, but it's probably more relevant to this discussion: It's interesting to look at the R&B chart of 1963 and consider the fact that there was so much overlap with the pop chart at that moment that Billboard stopped publishing an R&B chart for over a year, including all of 1964. In '63 people like Elvis, Roy Orbison, Bobby Darin, and the Beach Boys were placing records on the R&B chart. What was going on then? Were "black music" and "white music" converging? In early '65 the R&B chart comes back but it appears that white acts are seldom on it from that point forward - until the disco period when things get shaken up a little.
― Josefa, Friday, 8 July 2016 22:57 (seven years ago) link
various guesses online--
http://www.discomusic.com/forums/showthread.php/42201-The-Missing-Billboard-Soul-Charts-1964-answer-and-Cash-Box-charts-here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_R%26B/Hip-Hop_SongsFrom November 30, 1963, to January 23, 1965, there were no Billboard R&B singles charts. The chart was discontinued in late 1963 when Billboard determined it unnecessary due to so much crossover of titles between the R&B and pop charts in light of the rise of Motown.[5] The chart was reinstated with the issue dated January 30, 1965, as "Hot Rhythm and Blues Singles" when differences in musical tastes of the two audiences, caused in part by the British Invasion in 1964, were deemed sufficient to revive it.[citation needed]
― curmudgeon, Sunday, 10 July 2016 00:19 (seven years ago) link
^^^ I see one guy in the discomusic thread asking the question but no one takes him up on it (unless I'm missing something)
― Josefa, Sunday, 10 July 2016 02:07 (seven years ago) link
Down to it, it's a good naive question to ask. And the last points I've just skimmed over are very sensible.Cultural / race divide is its own answer, as music is closely linked to education, heritage, identity. There hasn't been much white presence in some genres that retain a strong black majority even to this day. You just have to ask black artists what they were listening and admiring to as kids. There's already been much talk elsewhere about the woman side of the history of music (how many listeners even approach 'equality' there ?), which is a similar social question.
― Nabozo, Sunday, 10 July 2016 08:34 (seven years ago) link
hell hath no whining like the whining of an entitled dude who believes in “real rock” pic.twitter.com/E583DZ692E— maura 🎙 johnston (@maura) December 12, 2017
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 12 December 2017 22:59 (six years ago) link