A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences

lol at 'somebody saw this coming 28 years ago' fuck is he on

the bitching on the cos thread starts here

As others have noted, he suggest that indie rockers because of "racial sensitivity" are not trying to incorporate African-American influences, but compliments Eminem, and ignores the attempts of Linkin Park and Maroon 5.

Bill Cosby defents criticism of Hip Hop...music industry "glorifies the wrong things..."

5. Lil Wayne. "Believe the hype and then multiply it by ten. You are going to feel dumb if you realize in five years that you were too cool to enjoy the dataflow."

Several groups that experienced commercial success, such as the Flaming Lips and Wilco, drew on the whiter genres of the sixties---respectively, psychedelic music and country rock...

Psychedelic rock was pretty white in terms of the players, but not the sounds: most psychedelic records in the US were totally blues based, and lots of them in the UK and elsewhere as well (we're leaving Donovan out e.g.). Ditto for country rock in the 60s: listen to the first Flying Burrito Bros record and you'll hear not just blues sounds but soul covers. So this claim is pretty blatantly false.

What the hell is Bangs to have supposed to have seen all those years ago? that a genre sfj basically limits to folkies and brian wilson fans wouldn't have much to do with rap?

have you read the Bangs article?

Dude, I first read it in high school.

You remember last year when everybody got all mad at me? If that was—to choose a physical analogy—a rowboat, on Monday we launch the QEII. All I will say is this: listen to the podcast before you write your scathing letter. But by all means—write it. Or anything.

Ok, now I actually feel bad for encouraging this guy.

and uh, no I won't listen to your podcast, your article's a pretty shitty ad for it.

have you read SFJ's article, Mr. Que? It really has nothing to do with punks being ignorant and making bad jokes.

so. . .you don't see a connection between what Bangs said and what SFJ is saying?

But by all means—write it. Or anything.

haha sfj knows he's safe with this one, most of the ppl who hate on him can't be bothered to run any deeper than one-line bitch-outs on message boards

he doesn't have a comment box, dude. and evidently i have to listen to his podcast to have an opinion he wants to hear. that's just cruel.

and this piece is so haphazard and pointless I really don't see how one can "run any deeper" on it without putting a point in his mouth.

you seem awful ticked off, dude. maybe you should try and articulate what's cheesing you off so much instead of bitching about podcasts and remembering good old high school days.

I put a link to the thread where I already did, first post on here.

x-post- Bangs cited specific examples of white punks exhibiting racist behavior. SFJ criticizes Arcade Fire and Wilco for not being rhythmic enough in his article, yet by linking to the Bangs article he is seemingly trying to suggest more. But alas, he has no quotes from Tweedy or Win Butler or whomever saying at a party, "Sasha why you playing that Lil' Wayne'. He lists his e-mail address on his blog btw.

As I watched Arcade Fire, I realized that the drummer and the bassist rarely played syncopated patterns or lingered in the low registers. If there is a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk in Arcade Fire, it must be philosophical; it certainly isn’t audible. And what I really wanted to hear, after a stretch of raucous sing-alongs, was a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies—in other words, attributes of African-American popular music.

There’s no point in faulting Arcade Fire for what it doesn’t do; what’s missing from the band’s musical DNA is missing from dozens of other popular and accomplished rock bands’ as well—most of them less entertaining than Arcade Fire. I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties. Why did so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voicelike guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century? These are the volatile elements that launched rock and roll, in the nineteen-fifties, when Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips.

Sasha used to love Arcade Fire I thought. He wrote a prior New Yorker article all about them and that show he saw over in London. As others have noted there have been indie bands since the early '80s that did not swing; blues (except for Fat Possum style, Otis Taylor, & chitlin circuit soul) has been transformed by anglos mostly into cliched barband rock; the heavy African downbeat is being kept alive by older African musicians mostly; sometimes Sasha interchanges the term "rock n roll" for indie here without examining non-indie bands; and shouldn't he have said that "African-American rappers" and not "Black musicians" "are now as visible and as influential as white ones. They are granted the same media coverage, recording contracts, and concert bookings" (Non-American black musicians who are not rap or r'n'b are not famous). In his discussion of great live performances he focusses on comparing current indie acts to long-ago African American ones-James Brown and the Meters (there's also no discussion of the muddled embrace jam bands have given to African-American music)

There's already been evidence that SFJ reads ILX threads about himself (and judging by his blog posts he's DYING to) so there's really no reason to e-mail him.

There's already been evidence that SFJ reads ILX threads about himself (and judging by his blog posts he's DYING to) s

http://www.magicdragon.com/SherlockHolmes/SherlockSmall.gif

LOL, what are you the Sherlock Holmes of the Internet?

da croupier that chip is makin' you look like you're wearing shoulderpads or something

also, just as he's ignoring all the rock bands that aren't "indie rock," he's ignoring all the indie acts that aren't "indie rock" (the stuff that tends to make his best-of lists). He's stacking the deck to a ridiculous extreme.

x-post hey mr. full disclosure feel free to actually acknowledge the complaints rather than settling for "u mad"

"All I have is one-line bitch-outs. This is the fault of the piece I am bitching out."

especially if you're gonna complain about "one-line bitchouts on message boards"

x-post!

Dude with respect it's hard to parse what your complaints are through the foam 'n' froth you're bringing here. Here, let me acknowledge this complaint:

lol at 'somebody saw this coming 28 years ago' fuck is he on

Incisive, penetrating criticism there, da croupier, aka the dude who has the nerve to accuse somebody who actually posts under his name of having disclosure issues

da croupier, if it will make you feel better go ahead and articulate your positions, or complaints. basically as far as i can tell right now your position is: "LOL SFJ Googles himself and didn't write about 311, LOL."

curmudgeon did you the favor of detailing the flaws of the piece in a full paragraph, John. Feel free to respond to it if you think there's no meat.

Mr. que, there was some thread ripping on him a year or so ago and his response-to-the-haters on his blog had some pretty direct references to it.

so?

yeah he ain't you so the line about one-line bitch-outs still sticks man, "co-sign" doesn't count as critique

lol i found ilx through sfj's blog

Dude, you said "lol what are you sherlock" when I said I didn't have to e-mail him to know he'd see the complaints here. I'm just explaining.

da croupier, aka the dude who has the nerve to accuse somebody who actually posts under his name of having disclosure issues

Hahaha your name is "John D"?

x-post I'm sorry you're disappointed with the brevity of my disses, John. Still feel free to explain what aside from that and their perceived rancor is ill-minded about them.

this thread deserves better than you, da croupier.

i'm sorry i'm interrupting your contributions to it, Mr. Que.

four-year-old thread on same subject, featuring actual thought and exchange of ideas, here:

Class, etc Pt. 2: Indie vs. Pop Culture

bonus fact: thread was started by sfj

so what do you like about the article, john?

let us exchange thoughts and ideas about it, rather than this unbecoming sniping

(The heavy bass frequencies cause car seats to vibrate, literally massaging the passengers.)

Not attempting to derail the discussion, but: how about some counter-examples in response to SFJ's argument? What are some indie acts that swing, etc.?

Just axing

Ignoring his conflation of "rock'n'roll" with "indie rock," his "best-of" lists on his site provide the names of plenty of indie acts that swing as much as the Stones did, especially if we're allowed to include indie dance acts.

you're not talking about the article yet.

I mean, if we're talking about "indie" not "rock," then you have to acknowledge groups like LCD soundsystem, unless by the very act of having a dance beat you're disqualified from the genre, which would make his point fairly moot.

x-post I'm really baffled as to how you and John can keep chastising me for not saying anything when I'm throwing a lot more effort into it than either of you.

i believe anthony's complaints are roughly mine, i.e. that even for a position i might agree with at times (that indie rock shouldn't be so scared of dr. funkenstein) this is a poorly constructed piece of rhetoric that falls apart before it gets anywhere near a finish line but that most egregiously ignores the fact that in many ways indie rock is more connected to "rhythm" than it has been in quite some time (coughcoughDFAsashayouchoadcoughcough). and that john and mr. que's weird pile-up mostly seems born out of unwilling to do the unpacking of the SEVERAL YEARS WORTH OF DISCUSSION WEVE ALREADY HAD ON THIS TOPIC including THE SAME SHIT SFJ TRIED FOISTING UPON US A FEW YEARS BACK CIRCA EMP TIME that anthony has managed to squeeze into his "one-line bitchouts" ala "basically limits to folkies and brian wilson fans" i.e. get the fuck out of here with that reductionist bullshit, to say nothing of the reductionist bullshit that automatically comes from "where has it gone, the fonky fonk of my youth," i.e. putting "black rhythms" up on a pedestal, or ignoring that the vast majority of 70s and 80s white folks music was about as funky as starland vocal band or goddamned wang chung, which also ignores that maybe wang chung and starland vocal band had something to contribute to popular music despite not sounding like either grand funk or the isley brothers.

i could kiss you all ovah

royal trux
spoon
ween

wow, strongo on fire & otm!

da croupier is anthony miccio for those keeping score at home

da croupier, it's not a question of liking or not liking it, I haven't really even thought that hard about it. I'm just sick to death of people reaching, at the earliest convenience, for dismissals as lame and phoned-in as "I'd criticize it if it were coherent!" and so on - it's the sort of thing you see on political blogs, lefties patting themselves on the back for their namecalling skills and righties spitting venom without any particular analysis of their targets, on the grounds that the targets "aren't worth" a thoughtful dismissal instead of ad-homs, nice zings, etc. It's worthless on political blogs and even more pointless when talking about music, though I would say that, since I care a good deal more about music than about politics.

Brad I'd suspect, just knowing sfj's tastes a little, and reading between the lines here (Clash reference, racially loaded words like "miscegenation"), that he's waxing a little nostalgic for stuff like Ludus or Cristina or Essential Logic even New Order: stuff that was in conversation with other genres, not always successfully but interestingly. Which is where his article doesn't go: making an "interesting" record, one that doesn't firmly place itself in one recognizable genre, is something of a risky business move; the more cross-genre an artist gets, the less likely he is to find an audience quickly, and a lot of people feel like if you don't find your audience fast, you're liable to miss the boat. I think he's lamenting how even when a band is said to be "taking risks," they seldom are, and that there was a time when more bands actually did take risks that might have alienated them from their audience but which made for exciting records.

My own position here is that I'm always very suspicious of any "it was better then" thinking. I hate eighties nostalgia with a fucking passion, even though there was a lot of music made in the eighties that I love intensely. But I also don't think it's necessarily a nostalgia trip to talk about stylistic shifts, and with respect to indie rock, it has failed/did fail to seek out the sort of musical cross-pollination that often makes music exciting. Purism's only good at extremes I think, and extreme indie rock is something of a contradiction in terms.

Just thinking aloud/onscreen here and doubt I could defend all this loose stuff but that's my first response.

haha I had no idea da croupier was anthony

the comparison with the white noise supremacists is cute but mostly seems like a lame attempt to draw unfounded connections with a rather virulent strain of direct racism on the cbgb's scene with OMG MUSICAL RACISM THE SILENT KILLER, as if win butler not being bootsy collins is somehow the same as someone writing songs about gooks or a member of teenage jesus hurling the n-bomb at an african-american kid, i.e. it seems to be suggesting that the arcade fire are somehow at some kind of <i>fault</i> for reflecting the music which interests them rather than some idealized polygot mutant sfj has in mind because his wig got flipped as a 13-yr-old to sandinista, which seems about as silly as castigating trae or ne-yo for not incorporating the majesty of born to run into their own little musical worlds. lol you ain't white enough.

i should note that i'm about five beers deep here

I have no beer and I must scream

okay okay i think he's right on the money as to why Wilco and Arcade Fire are so boring. Especially this part:

If there is a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk in Arcade Fire, it must be philosophical; it certainly isn’t audible. And what I really wanted to hear, after a stretch of raucous sing-alongs, was a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies—in other words, attributes of African-American popular music.

But then again, I'm sure he digs Spoon and LCD, and both bands certainly do these things (empty space in their songs, swing) so I don't know. He doesn't talk about either of those bands in the article, so maybe he realizes this? Also, Arcade Fire are really easy to make fun of, so i dunno.

I just read his New Yorker blog post and he basically lists all the complaints one could have with the piece and then lists ten songs he feels are truly "miscegenated" (i.e., "Custard Pie") which would lead to what John's saying, which is that he'd like to see something a lot more imaginative than what we have now. An article like this post, describing what he seeks in music, would be a lot better than the half-assed rhetoric he offers instead.

also he REALLY should find a better word that "miscegenated" to describe what he finds fascinating, unless he really wants to be Norman Mailer.

To look at the brite side, I like the way that Sasha is willing to describe his own mixed emotions about how to sing and about singing as a raced activity, I thought that was a brave move. I think his final section is interesting too in its willingness to own up to a feeling of loss about the very phenomenon that he also criticizes. Counterexamples can always crop up (showmanship oriented indie: The Make Up, Quintron & Miss Pussycat; hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie, Gravy Train!!!) but part of doing a New Yorker piece, presumably, is swiftly making a macro-scaled argument that New Yorker readers (i.e. not hipsters but the parents of hipsters) will give a shit about.

he'd be wise to slow down

earlier today and elsewhere one of my pitchfork colleagues (mr. hogan) responded to this article with what amounted to "oh hai remember jams murphy" and i kinda felt like that was all that needed to be said in response. like i wondered if that arcade fire show sfj talks about was one of the co-headlining shows with lcd soundsystem, and if so how he just completely, willfully shut out the existence of that strain of "indie" in order to make his "point." like, dude, you're the one that recently wrote the slob job over friggin vampire weekend, and i cant think of a whiter goddamn band out there despite their much vaunted "deep appreciation" of "african music." sometimes you can be head-over-heels in love with "black" music and still come out sounding like a goddamn musical j. crew ad. (as with a band like, i dunno, ui. o snap.)

royal trux
spoon
ween
and
battles (among others)
i thought when sasha went into full-disclosure, "ui was funk" mode, he was going to bring up battles

hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie

Drew what you trying to start, total war?

"oh hai remember jams murphy" and i kinda felt like that was all that needed to be said in response.

a one-line bitchout? for shame.

there's something I find really awful about the way the flaws in his pieces are forgiven BECAUSE they're in a high profile paper, like we shouldn't expect impressive work in places where it'd be readily visible, and THAT'S where the rancor comes in.

in fairness jess vampire weekend kind of make that their whole point don't they?

there's something I find really awful about the way the flaws in his pieces are forgiven BECAUSE they're in a high profile paper, like we shouldn't expect impressive work in places where it'd be readily visible

you can't expect people that read the New Yorker who are older than 35 to really know who LCD are, though, can you?

isn't that why SFJ writes for them in the first place?

haha but they should know panda bear, right?
x-post

i mean i thought the whole idea is that he was presenting a cliffs notes version of hipster culture for those that purchase mont blanc fountain pens and expensive watches

"hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie

Drew what you trying to start, total war?

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:02 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link"

see what I did there?

i guess what i'm saying is, he has to use the big easy examples (Arcade Fire, Wilco) in a piece like this, so his audience will "get" his point. . .either that or he didn't include LCD because he knew it would really undercut his point, which would really suck I guess.

indie is wicked white tho - even if there is lcd soundsystem and whatnot

but no one really cares right

see what I did there?

I kiss you so hard it leaves bruises

indie IS wicked white, but i think the point is that the "issue" deserves a better article than this

mostly he's probably just trying to figure our why so much of it is so boring

discloser: did not read article

i hestitated saying "the problem" because it strands me in the same mire sfj is in, i.e. WHY is it a problem that indie is so wicked white, i.e. the thing we never find out, other than that three hours of indie rock leaves sfj feeling tired and old

i think we should blame the arcade fire for making him write this article.

He's written a piece on LCD in the last couple of years, or at least on "Losing My Edge".

and the new yorker's fiction sucks ass

u go q

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/recordings/2007/03/26/070326gore_GOAT_recordings_frerejones

"About five years ago, indie rockers began to rediscover the pleasures of rhythm."

-SF/J

i mean of all his examples of "miscengenation" prince is the only one that really stood out for the fact that i get so many different...things from his music. rock and funk and dance-pop and whatever. as "funky" as the stones and zeppelin are, and as much as that funk contrbutes to the quality of their music, i still turn to them because they "rock," even if that funk allows them to rock in a more supple (and therefore even more rocking?) manner. i think its idiocy to start earnestly comparing them to james brown.

i stopped subscribing - i mean i love factiods but i dont really need a whole magazine full

hahaha mark for the win. lock thread. go home. nothing to see here.

who's that french chanteuse he creems his jeans over all the time?
i guess chicks can sound white in sasha's world.

lol its from march

x-post

In regards to his discussion of "racial sensitivity" I keep thinking about Yo La Tengo and others embracing avante-jazz. Is it easier to play such sounds and not have folks questioning how well you swing or sing (I think this has been discussed on ILX before), than other African-American styles or do the band members of such groups merely gravitate musically to such genres--yea I know that Ira Kaplan was a critic and djs on WFMU etc.). But on the other hand others have embraced and incorporated current popular African-American approaches with varying degrees of success apparently without worrying as much about 'racial sensitivity' (Eminem, uh Maroon 5, even, ugh, jam band Galactic).

Maybe he sees LCD more as a "Dahnce" act than one that incorporates African-American sounds. If Vampire Weekend were not based in NY would they get a quarter of the attention they've gotten?

Oops, great find Mark.

I mean, given that we all agree that indie bands such as Battles, Vampire Weekend, CocoRosie, etc do have some elements of black music, I think the question he's really pussyfooting around with this whole piece is more "Why do we STILL have boring, revisionist, funkless Leave It Beaver bullshit bands like Arcade Fire and Band Of Horses and Clap Your Hands and Hold Steady when everyone has such easy access to such diverse music?"

Splintering of the market. Each niche of music need only do one thing. It doesn't have to appeal to a huge swath of people.

It blows my mind that people still get excited by regular rock bands, but my Sandinista was Pork Soda, so what the fuck do I know?

my Sandinista was Pork Soda

worst lunchbox ever

Nitpicky point: "Grizzly Bear has no relation to black music" As evidenced by the their cover of "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" that they've been doing all year?

a sandwichnista and pork soda

I think an important thing w/ a lot of the "white" bands that he mentions is that they seem anti-technology, old-fashioned, and perhaps more authentic to some people because of that. Contemporary associations with hip-hop and r&b now are a far cry from the Isley Brothers and the Meters. People associate these genres now with technology and celebrity culture. So for people looking for something removed from that, a lot of these bands fit the bill.

No, it's because indie rockers are to intimidated to "take on Snoop, one of the most naturally gifted vocalists of the day"

i agree w/sfj that these bans are often tedious

I don't want to be a grump.

I'm really glad he's saying a lot of the stuff he's saying here, even if I disagree with a lot of his examples.

the problem is that he's tried to shoehorn what really needs to be a book into a short magazine article and so no wonder it's glib and contradictory but who's honestly gonna pay for a book blah blah

yeah, ask frank kogan ;_;

i like arcade fire :)

FUNK IT UP!
http://www.nonesuch.com/Hi_Band/DB_Images/Artist_Photo/merritt_stephin.jpg

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

I think Camus did that.

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/lawyerslit/images/camus_fall.jpg

We just wrote chapter one, bnw.

yeah, i remember the "minority" multitudes at husker du & replacement shows back in the day

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, October 15, 2007 11:31 PM (Yesterday)

Another potentially interesting thing to think about is Our Band Could Be Your Life, one take on 80s (American) underground rock. These bands were discussed:

* Black Flag
* The Minutemen
* Mission of Burma
* Minor Threat
* Hüsker Dü
* The Replacements
* Sonic Youth
* Butthole Surfers
* Big Black
* Dinosaur Jr.
* Fugazi
* Mudhoney
* Beat Happening

Was there more black music influence then? These bands were much less popular, and generally more abrasive, but I'm not sure I see a whole lot more black music influence. (I know--the Minutemen were funky, and Fugazi too sometimes I guess.)

-Minutemen loved funk and jazz for sure.
-Fugazi were all huge dub heads.
-Black Flag swung REALLY hard towards the end (see "Swinging Man" for proof) and Ginn was a huge jazz nerd.
-Minor Threat loved go-go but I don't know how much of it made it into their music. But punk rock of that era in general can get traced back to Chuck Berry fairly quickly
-Mudhoney had a blues feel whether they cared or not.

All those bands "grooved" a LOT more than the current crop of indie rockers tho for sure (with the exception of Beat Happening)

Would it be oversimplification to say that rock's black affectations just got kind of played out?

Pavement sounded fresh (albeit I came to them late) in part because they seemed like such an antidote to grunge's *soulfulness*, which by the time Eddie Vedder was doing it felt like a caricature of a caricature.

To jerks.

:P

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

so many years, i thought i was alone...

well now there's emo so chillax

(not to mention the fact that a lot of the most popular white music [way more popular than Arcade Fire] is still very miscegenated [which I guess has been pointed out upthread])

I'd say it would be an over-simplification to go with that 'played out' argument. Commercial radio in America would not accept much post-punk or other rock with black influences or affectations, and then you had the later more straightforward pop r'n'b sounding musical attempts by Scritti Politti and others (and all kindsa rap and reggae and African sounds and Chicago house happening simultaneously), so it seemed to me like there were various wells that were being drawn from but not emptied. Pavement seemed to take post-Big Black noiserock (that drew from Wire) and eventually add melody, REM jangle, and songcraft back to indie in a way that was very different from grunge's hard rock and alt rock hybrid. Although eventually Pavement lost their urgency as Malkmus embraced Brit-folk and prog. Sasha asserts on the podcast that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had a funky rhythm.

i'm not sure how one goes from saying that the indie band that most excites them right now is grizzly bear to saying that they go to indie shows and pine for rhythm.

also if there was anyone in indie who would try and unironically imitate r. kelly, it would be devandra banhart. (for all i know he already has.)

I mean, given that we all agree that indie bands such as Battles, Vampire Weekend, CocoRosie, etc do have some elements of black music, I think the question he's really pussyfooting around with this whole piece is more "Why do we STILL have boring, revisionist, funkless Leave It Beaver bullshit bands like Arcade Fire and Band Of Horses and Clap Your Hands and Hold Steady when everyone has such easy access to such diverse music?"

-- Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 03:28 (1 hour ago) Link

why does this indie music WITH 'elements of black music' still sound boring and funkless. i mean seriously, cocorosie?? im sure there are mostly-white-sounding indie rock bands that sound less bland just as there are crazy interesting genre hopping weirdos like missy elliott or whatever.

i guess im just repeating strongo but yeah, too much idealizing of 'miscegenation' as ideal. sometimes i dont like to throw all the ingredients into one pot

xpost I thought immediately of Will Oldham's cover of "Ignition", but I guess that was a couple of years ago.

was actually kind of thinking about this issue of vocals while listening to some mid period (post S&G, pre Graceland) paul simon records ... and how his voice always sounds very distinctively his own, no matter how strong the influence of zydeco ('that was your mother') or gospel or whatever on each individual song ... he really tended to avoid that pat obvious charicature of black vox but still seemed to incorporate these different musical influences

not saying its an 'ideal,' just an example of effect bouncing of genre ideas

did anyone else hear that story about the rapture talking to timbaland to produce a couple of tracks for their last album, but even with him being enthusiastic about the idea and wanting to cut them a special deal, the fee was their entire recording budget or something?

also battles has a black member whose dad is an accomplished and revered jazz musician. they're coming from a different place than basically every single band mentioned here or in sjf's article.

Even without that, Battles has gone on the record saying they basically discovered weird detours of hip-hop and electronic music via the same internet that everyone has.

strongo saying that asking arcade fire to embrace black music rather than what they like is just as retarded as asking trae to embrace springsteen is the most otm thing said here.

the same trae who rapped over 'smells like teen spirit' on his last mixtape?

whatever maybe trae is a strawman use yung joc or styles p or whoever you want.

not like rapping over 'smells like teen spirit' is embracing a whole culture of music (which is what sfj is basically asking for, tho i doubt you read this article). especially in that two/three month kitschy post-'party like a rockstar' period.

Most rap dudes already love rock though.

You've seen 'em at Arcade Fire gigs or Battles or Metallica or Mellencamp?

Metallica, sure.

it's funny that LCD are brought up as one of the ignored strands of indie getting rhythm; I wonder now how the arcade fire record would've turned out if james murphy had've produced it, as was the plan.

I wonder now how the arcade fire record would've turned out if james murphy had've produced it, as was the plan.

lol what.

ok wait don't answer that i don't feel like derailing this thread over some brooklyn vegan rumor.

xxx-post

Swizz Beats worked with Metallica, Joe Budden raps over Metallica, Lil Jon sites Metallica as in influence for the new record.

where does hot chip fit into this?

hey, i'm just going off an interview i read. they're definitely getting remixed by him, i know that much. (xxp)

The heavily compressed frequencies of indie rock cause iPod headphones to vibrate, literally massaging Nick Southall's writing career.

yeah hot chip.

um white stripes?

this is really easy backseat driving for us, as we don't have a "point" to make, and we've had a night to think about it.

and sfj didn't 3 years?

didn't have*

ant dude give me some time, i only just clicked on this thread

um

uh

okay i got nothing

and sfj didn't 3 years?

I assumed this was written in a Bangsian fit of spontaneous inspiration

oh maybe. i was just referring to the ilm thead started by sfj (linked here by john d.) that basically introduces the idea brought up in the article.

from 4 years ago actually.

"About five years ago, indie rockers began to rediscover the pleasures of rhythm."

-SF/J

bears repeating

whatever maybe trae is a strawman use yung joc or styles p or whoever you want.

-- Jordan Sargent, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 05:02 (45 minutes ago) Link

the same yung joc who said on the radio he listens to gnarles barkley & my chemical romance and that his fav album is tougher than leather? the same styles p who gives props to the ramones & ended his last album with 3 rock remixes? etc etc big surprise ol' j sargent not knowing wtf hes talking bout as usual

haha okay ethan, yung joc really listens to my chemical romance.

and again, ending your album w/ 'rock remixes' does not equal the ideas brought up in the article.

You hafta keep in mind that since at least the mid 90s, contemporary rap & r&b is processed and packaged and mtved etc right next to / in the midst of the hated 'alternative rock' and pop-punk and assorted jock-rock etc which is all anathema to alienated pre-indie-kids. It doesn't help that then the jock types embrace both sets of icons - rappers and rock stars - as equal expressions of unadulterated power and whatever, sexual potency, enjoyment. It isn't the blackness which our hopeless boring white indie heroes retreat from; instead its just power--incarnated as the chosen representatives of a dominant culture which sells sexiness (not sex) as potency (both male and female) wrapped in a suffocating corporate marketing gauze. etc.

The problem is that the alternatives turned to are so reactionary; authenticity, purity, solitude, etc.-- I don't have any answers from this point, and I'm tired, but I think it looks more promising to start here than from like, 'um why don't white indie pplz like black music.' Anyways all of this was just a restatement of someones point up above but there have been a lot of intervening posts and people are still ignoring this so there

im sure he was just pretending to like my chemical romance in order to impress famous internet music critic sasha frere jones, indie pop musician john darnielle, and noted gay porn star jordan sargent

though it did impress venerable city paper writer ethan padgett.

Which Celebs would you invite to a circle jerk/gang bang

what an embarrassment of an article
the lame white guilt, the "i have black friends and/or musical influences!" middle eight, the arbitrary binary construction and segregation of 'white' music and 'black' music, the misconceptions of what it means for music to 'have rhythm', the ignorance/omission of the numerous bands who show musical diversity in all sorts of ways, etc.
painful to read

also indie types are crap at playing their instruments

Once again, Pavement.

sleepingbag OTM

sleepingbag OTM

Exactly what is the problem here? Is there a rule that says R&B or funk elements have to be incorporated in every single song written today?

this has been a simon reynolds meme since forever and it's sorta racisty.

I also wonder what is this guy doing at all those indie gigs? It seems he is expecting stuff that the rest of the audience prefer not to hear at all.

the smiths had some funky jams.

(there's a quote for the ban max r thread)

didn't dance music make all these sort of arguments redundant anyway?

black guys influenced by kraftwerk and new order, black and white producers developing jungle, raves having racially mixed crowds, etc...

not so easy to tag certain styles as "black" or "white" now.

great work, keep it up.

Ban ILX.

Rap is obviously the "blackets" genre ever. Sampling doesn't count as "influence".

Oh for fuck's sake.

my street name is now "blackets".

Good name for an indie band

Boy, this is what I missed last night when I chose to listen to Style Council records!

Dear Robin
Hope you dont mind me writing, its just that theres more than one thing I
need to ask you. If youre so anti-fashion, why not wear flares, instead of
dressing down all the same. Its just that looking like that I can express
my dissatisfaction.

Dear Robin
Let me explain, though you'd never see in a million years. Keep quoting
Cabaret, Berlin, Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Duchamp, Beauvoir, Kerouac,
Kierkegaard, Michael Rennie. I dont believe you really like Frank Sinatra.

Dear Robin
Youre always so happy, how the hell do you get your inspiration? Youre
like a dumb patriot. If youre supposed to be so angry, why dont you fight
and let me benefit from your right? Dont you know the only way to change
things is to shoot men who arrange things, Dear Robin
I would explain but youd never see in a million years. Well, youve made
your rules, but we dont know that game, perhaps Id listen to your records
but your logics far too lame and Id only waste three valuable minutes of
my life with your insincerity.

You see Robin, Im just searching for the young soul rebels, and I cant
find them anywhere. Where have you hidden them?

Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision.

Sasha used to love Arcade Fire I thought. He wrote a prior New Yorker article all about them and that show he saw over in London

haha he also wrote about Spoon a few months ago.

The heavily compressed frequencies of indie rock cause iPod headphones to vibrate, literally massaging Nick Southall's writing career.

-- Curt1s Stephens

lol!

º_@ at this bewildering timewarp of a thread.

His e-mail address is on his website and he solicited comments. Will we see another followup on his New Yorker blog, or his own blog, or will he just leave it be.

this has been a simon reynolds meme since forever

Didn't Reynolds actually write a fairly similarly themed, and equally selective, essay a couple years ago, about the diminishing "dialogue" between black and white music? (I tried googling it last night, but I couldn't track it down. I'm pretty sure it led to similar discussion on an ILM thread though.)

It's also been a me meme for forever -- for 20 years, at least. But in the last few years, ever since all those indie bands started wanting to sound like the Cramps and/or the Gang of Four again, and ever since fucking electroclash for crissakes, I've stopped complaining about indie's rhythmic stiffness so much, since it's seemed to become so much more a moot point. (Maybe it was always a moot point, if I'd paid attention to the right indie.) So what I find most curious about Sasha's argument is the timing of it -- Why now? Why not in 1990, when it would've actually maybe been news, in some way?

And yeah, there are tons of exceptions. Battles bore the heck out of me (if Hold Steady are a "regular rock band," which they're not, I'll take regular rock anyday), but in the last couple years, haven't plenty of bands like Mahjongg and Measles Mumps Rubella been incorporating all kinds of dub space? And I don't hear any particular lack of swing in, I dunno, albums by Black Lips, Gore Gore Girls, the Sirens, Gogol Bordello, A.R.E. Weapons, Tiger Army, and the Birthday Massacre I've heard this year. (Not to mention lots of regular rock bands, who can still be way more exciting than art-schlock bands.) And those are just some ones I like -- doesn't a shitty new band who wish they were the Rapture or Franz Ferdinand still come out every week now? Or did that stop? Hell, don't people even claim that Of Montreal is influenced by Prince these days? I can't stand that stuff, but kids do dance to it.

Reynolds approaches it differently from Frere-Jones. Less liberal guilt, no interest in old-school American soul and 50s rock, plus Reynolds later turned on hiphop and just started with his grime and prog themes.

xp...And then there's all the crossover between indie rock and undie rap, which I assume is still plentiful. And if Sasha wants dub space, he might consider listening to indie metal -- Dalek and Jesu (neither of whom I'm particularly crazy about myself) aren't that far apart these days. Though of course metal can sometimes sound even whiter than indie rock, in its own way. And sometimes it finds jig and humpa rhythms from the middle of Europe and manages to swing them anyway.

And I'm not even going to mention country.

The Reynold's piece was in Frieze. It is on their website I think.

im sure he was just pretending to like my chemical romance in order to impress famous internet music critic sasha frere jones, indie pop musician john darnielle, and noted gay porn star jordan sargent

oh do fuck off ethan, when did I ever say rap dudes didn't listen to rock music

what about limp bizkit? greatest act of the last 15 years and this sasha woman doesn't even give them props.

FFS

Should I lock my doors so SFJ can't break in and drag me to the Syncopation Re-education camp?

By virtue of the piece being for TNYer, it spends a lot of precious space retreading r'n'r miscegenation. I know it must be tough for Sasha to get press access to actually directly ask a few of the musicians in question, but that would've been nice, or maybe a little more investigation into why those '90s Indie bands decided to shy away from the trad. blues-tinged rock sound and rhythms. The bits of the essay that weren't history lessons come off as too LOL HOW CAN YOU LIKE YHF IT HAS GUITARS BUT LACKS THE BACKBEAT OF MY YOOF?!?

Little MTV History question-- how long did it take for MTV to play an MJ video after the H&O vid?

I guess what I find most aggravating about this episode is the whole 'Bring It On!' sentiment on S/FJ's blog, as tho there are no valid criticisms of the piece.

I keep thinking about Yo La Tengo and others embracing avante-jazz. Is it easier to play such sounds and not have folks questioning how well you swing or sing (I think this has been discussed on ILX before), than other African-American styles or do the band members of such groups merely gravitate musically to such genres--yea I know that Ira Kaplan was a critic and djs on WFMU etc.).

This brings up an interesting point (one probably for another thread, but I'm here now), because the free jazz pioneers got it from all sides: some accused them of being "not Black enough", and the Europeans they influenced went to (sometimes disturbingly) great lengths to distance themselves from Black music ("No, THEY play Free Jazz; WE play Free Improvisation").

-Minutemen loved funk and jazz for sure.
-Fugazi were all huge dub heads.
-Black Flag swung REALLY hard towards the end (see "Swinging Man" for proof) and Ginn was a huge jazz nerd.
-Minor Threat loved go-go but I don't know how much of it made it into their music. But punk rock of that era in general can get traced back to Chuck Berry fairly quickly
-Mudhoney had a blues feel whether they cared or not.

With regard to Minor Threat (otm about Chuck Berry, btw), there was this band once called the Bad Brains...

As for Sonic Youth and Husker Du, the Hendrix influence is pretty overwhelming.

The article is somewhat of a viscous dollop of wank.

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

OTM to kind of a monstrous degree.

How exactly did Pavement "whiten up the landscape irreparably" all on their own? Fer cryin' out loud.

tellingly sfj cites none of the bands sara correctly mentions but instead his own band (ahem) despite the faux-modest disclaimer about his singing maybe that's a little self-serving? along with everything else reinvigorating the old cliche "critics are frustrated musicians"

otherwise pretty lame attempt to push buttons/stir controversy etc. slow news week, I guess.

Meanwhile, back to SFJ...

There’s no point in faulting Arcade Fire for what it doesn’t do;

Then why did he spend three paragraphs doing just that?

"...they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing."

moved? sheesh.

I thought it was Miles Davis who did that?

The only movement Pavement prompted in me was towards the exit with all speed!

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

Uuuuugh no no no no DO NOT WANT. And is this try referencing Pavement/Malkmus live or what? And if I look hard enough will I find critics shaking their fists at the sky about this? Seems like there's room enough in this world for blues-guitar rock and janglified kind.

SELL-SERVED SHOCKAH!

lol at the idea Pavement had any lasting effect on indie except the Teen Beat-ification of frontmen looking to get major labelled

x-post

Yep to Miles.

Those shoegaze bands were so much more exciting to look at.

Is Sasha gonna give out copies of the article to the bands (and fans) in NYC this week for the CMJ Fest...Or perhaps appear on street corners outside the clubs and halls reading aloud from it. Bring the New Yorker to the people.

I thought it was Miles Davis who did that?

Do you mean his squinting, his bending-sideways, or his bending-backwards?

Unlike Pavement, Miles never looked like he just came in from mowing the lawn. Or like he'd rather be mowing the lawn.

(The "irreparably Whitened The Corners" thing, yeah, that's actually seriously tenuous. Didn't mean to otm that)

Didn't Christgau catch a ton of shit for saying some white rock band wasn't African enough some years ago?

I'm always surprised that SFJ is a musician. Most people who play music don't seem to be this hung up on what is "black" or "white."

there were loads of drippy black-influence-free indie rock bands before pavement, why blame them. plus, lack of affect in music is a good thing.

Yeah, but Miles didn't do it because he didn't care, he did it because he wanted you to know he had complete disdain for you. (xpost)

Haha lol @ ILM defending indie rock.

Didn't Christgau catch a ton of shit for saying some white rock band wasn't African enough some years ago?

Probably. And called Hendrix at Monterey a "psychedelic Uncle Tom" still comes back to haunt him every once in a while.

This article is like reading an Oberlin senior thesis.

Miles famously turned his back to the audience. There were other rock bands before Pavement that looked indifferent onstage or "looked like (they) just came in from mowing the lawn." Pavement did do a good job of it though, I will agree.

The Shins and The Decemberists are interesting examples, because I always think of them as white English major homesick tea-and-fuzzy-sweater music. It's very safe and non-threatening, and I wonder if that's related to it being the antithesis of *dangerous* black or black-influenced music (which is itself partly a creation of the record industry).

How can Pavement have ruined rock for a generation when barely anyone listened to them?

x-post to Hurting2
What is partly a creation of the record industry?

Sorry, I mean the idea that black music has to mean danger is partly a creation of the record industry.

And also partly a creation of the white American cultural imagination.

Unlike Pavement, Miles never looked like he just came in from mowing the lawn.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL zing zing

Hurting, where is your evidence for that claim? Danger has been an appealing element of all forms of entertainment from the get-go, any storyteller knows that.

The future that SFJ has foretold

And OMG LOOK HOW INDIFFERENT PAVEMENT LOOKS ON STAGE LuLZ!. Indifferent Pavement is one of the sillier strawmen to march out of the indierawk haystack.

And dally Oberlin-essay sadly OTM.

I didn't mean to say danger is exclusively associated with black music - I just meant blackness is often saddled with the idea of danger. (xpost to dally_

pavement were pretty boring live, though

And here I feel a bit like SFJ is really lamenting the lack of danger in rock music and automatically tying that to a lack of "miscegenation" (a term that itself once meant something seen as very dangerous)

So my local alt-weekly's music picks are nearly 99.9% indie-rock these days, the npr all songs considered website runs mostly only concerts from rockers (though they're getting better), and a couple of local websites are similarly indie-rock focussed in their previews despite containing non-music copy aimed at the general public---so is this ok because you can see rappers on MTV and everywhere, and find African, Latino, and jazz and reggae and whatever else approaches on internet blogs and elsewhere. I say it's not ok for general interest publications and sites.

Here's the Christgau (non-)scandal I alluded to, kind of similar:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=18618

shit I suck at the internets:

Radiohead In Not-A-Bunch-Of-Black-Guys Shocker!

There were other rock bands before Pavement that looked indifferent onstage or "looked like (they) just came in from mowing the lawn."

http://www.pinkflag.com/assets/look/gallery/live/1978-cbgb-5.jpg

Who is that Tony Potato guy playing the cymbal in the Pavement video?

i think some critics are confused in thinking that indie-rock is as important or popular or progressive as the rock music that influenced it. (classic 60s stuff, punk, etc) it's a trad genre like folk now, has its conventions and isn't going anywhere fast.

hahaha pavement. good one america.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anything by Pavement

http://www.adweek.com/aw/images/best_spots/best_spots_90s/ad_pic(dockers).jpg
nice pants

one problem with the article is that it's talking about certain strains of indie -- and has some true, if kinda muddled, things to say about them -- but letting them stand in for all of indie is (as he sort of acknowledges) reductionist.

never mind jams murphy, i don't think the article even mentions jack white -- who's sold a lot more records then arcade fire, last i checked. (and ok you can argue the blackness or whiteness or minstrelsy of jack white, but you can't argue a lack of blues or soul or r&b grounding).

than arcade fire...

Yeah, I immediately thought of Jack White.

Also, what about Deerhoof? Not the singing obviously, but the guitar and drums are syncopated as fuck, and there's plenty of funk, afro-pop, dance music, and who knows what else in there.

one problem with the article is that it's talking about certain strains of indie -- and has some true, if kinda muddled, things to say about them -- but letting them stand in for all of indie is (as he sort of acknowledges) reductionist.

We need a new genre name to assign to the middling indie rock bands he's clearly talking about. I mean when he says "Indie rock," i know what he's TRYING to say, but the fact that indie, in reality, is so far-reaching, it makes it complicated.

Get on it, ILX!

Mindie rock?

1-10 of 16 for " mindie rock " (About) - 0.02 sec

"This album has better legs than, hell, most mindie rock albums of the day."

http://www.sashafrerejones.com/2004/05/youve_tried_the_rest_now_try_t.html
Maybe dude is way ahead of me

I'd say "schmindie" but he spends more time talking about groups way artier than Death Cab.

And Idolator used it once or twice last year. Catch the fever!

Unlike Pavement, Miles never looked like he just came in from mowing the lawn.

So is a "carrot rope" a new kind of weed-whacker?

Schmindie I get, indie + schmaltz, but is the m in "mindie" for middling? not as good. "art-rock"'s worked for decades, stick with that.

i like 'cubicle indie', which i got from ilx

or "art-schlock" as Chuck used up thread, if you're really offended

x-post but hot chip is cubicle indie, right?

cubicle indie is perfect

cubikindie.

mia is cubicle indie

Schmindie I get, indie + schmaltz, but is the m in "mindie" for middling? not as good. "art-rock"'s worked for decades, stick with that.

-- da croupier, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:59 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Art-rock is Battles and Liars and TV On The Radio, which he's clearly not talking about.

tv on the radio is pretty cubicle indie in my experience

arcade fire, fiery furnaces, devendra, panda bear all qualify as art-rock too, just the lighter side rather than the king crimson side

i dont know if most dudes who listen to rock music thats influenced by black music really even know or care about that

Are black guys who hang out with white hipsters required to have large retro afros?

ban dally

in h.s. my friends gf got kicked out of the house & had to move into the projects w/ this redneck dude (this is SC ok) and whenever we listened to rap (just, like, biggie or tribe) he would bust out the racist that-aint-music bullshit but his favorite shit ever was kid rock

I like SFJ articles on average, but this really reads like several unrelated takes on race and music thrown together with a healthy dose of weird race guilt.

What's the end result supposed to be, from all of this? Wilco figure out syncopation? Arcade Fire get some soul? New bands are formed that are into "miscegenation?" And why is it popular black music that indie white musicians are supposed to engage with, anyway?

The only real argument he throws out, among mentioning the diversity of influences that hip hop picks up on, bickering about the lack of rhythmic variation in indie rock, and going on with some sort of unrelated history lesson, is the "lassitude and monotony" that indie rock apparently gets stuck in.

Has he not realized that this is a genre with a lot of anal-retentive individuals thinking there's some purity of form to conform to, and a fanbase that writes about every move without any sense of levity? It's like SFJ fell for the indie trap by even making an argument.

That's not to say that every indie band is out there churning out music that's trying to reach some perfect indie rock formula or whittle their own aesthetic to a fine point, but there sure are quite a few who seem to do that sort of thing.

i worked at this store last summer & there was this white metal dude, real nerd type heavy into his celtic heritage & drinking guiness & listening to kmfdm, bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet

all that "commercial, but generally unappealing" stuff

(btw, you gotta love a construction that contradictory)

"appealing to a general audience, but generally unappealing"

x-post to and what

some people really can't handle the full breadth of music, they need artistic reinterpretations done by contemporary artists from their social and economic class

where is the indie pat boone?

by social & economic class you mean ethnicity right? i dont think kid rock was any more in this dudes 'social & economic' class than biggie smalls was

Indie Pat Boone is Magnetic Fields

indie pat boone is living in the heart of every ironic rap cover

Nitpicky point: "Grizzly Bear has no relation to black music" As evidenced by the their cover of "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" that they've been doing all year?

This was the exact same thought I had when I read that sentence.

I'm still kind of happy that, whatever issues I ended up having with them, the friends I would go to lunch with in mid-high school were into playing wilson pickett and sam & dave tapes when we were driving to taco john's. That and the cassette single for "all about the benjamins" which somehow got into rotation.

x-post yeah, I guess I mean ethnicity

post-funk

"bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet"

Ouch

SFJ basically spends the whole article trying to be a reverse-Geir, asserting the vague idea that there's some straight line out of Africa from which all rhythm is derived, and that all white musicians should either bow down to this awesome force and incorporate it into their music as faithfully as possible, or get out of the way and let black people make all the music. He not only laments (in reference to Michael Jackson) that "he alone could not alter pop music’s racial power balance," but puts forth the idea that Dr. Dre did tip the scales in the 'right' direction.

Are black guys who hang out with white hipsters required to have large retro afros?

-- dally, den 16 oktober 2007 15:03 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

No, but it’s an acute observation.

"bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet"

maybe, like SFJ, he more interested in miscegenation.

he WAS more

but puts forth the idea that Dr. Dre did tip the scales in the 'right' direction.

Snoop's hair tipped the scale in the right direction.

in london we lived w/ these two white anarchists who only listened to white rappers, from such diverse subgenres that was clear the only thing they prized was whiteness - eminem, sage francis, el-p, necro, paul barman, aesop rock, edan.... what the fuck does any of these dudes music have in common besides being made by white dudes??? the only non-white rapper they liked was immortal technique, who is some kind of south american dude or something

SFJ basically spends the whole article trying to be a reverse-Geir,

haha when I read the essay last night I envisioned a Richard Roeper-esque Geir response.

xxxp the craziest thing in that whole article to me was when he says hall & oates were on the same level of talent as mj

Are black guys who hang out with white hipsters required to have large retro afros?

-- dally, den 16 oktober 2007 15:03 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

You forgot tight sweater/shirt combo.

Pitchfork has yet to spearhead a H&O revival.

in london we lived w/ these two white anarchists who only listened to white rappers, from such diverse subgenres that was clear the only thing they prized was whiteness - eminem, sage francis, el-p, necro, paul barman, aesop rock, edan.... what the fuck does any of these dudes music have in common besides being made by white dudes??? the only non-white rapper they liked was immortal technique, who is some kind of south american dude or something

-- and what, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 16:17

yeah, this is weird. you sometimes meet undie rap guys that listen to mostly white rappers and hate mainstream black pop, but still rate the odd successful rock band.

"bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet"

Haha, reminds me of how the lead singer of my cubicle-indie band said the other night how Rage Against the Machine and 311 were both huge musical epiphanies for him in college because they combined the metal he loved in high school with a hip-hop influence.

Pitchfork has yet to spearhead a H&O revival.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/44913-interview-daryl-hall

that's pretty lame, the New Yorker piece. you'd need someone on the level of Albert Murray to sort this shit out, and I wouldn't think indie folk have ever heard of him nor read him on the real values blues culture embraces. White people hear "transgression" and "menace" in blues; people in actual blues culture hear something far different--joy, swing, defiance, maybe, and that joy in improvisatory living brought on by difficult circumstances that Murray explains far better than I ever could, in Stompin' the Blues and other works. In my opinion, it's just the typical white American half-assed sense of history, and blues culture is difficult to get because whites look at thru all this guilt. You know, when you go to the typical blues show in Memphis or somewhere, where white people are, they're all really into it and trying to show their blues cred, and of course, it's funny as hell to watch. I'm white and I've done it myself, so I know what I'm talking about, and I read Lester Bangs years ago. He's right, and he was courageous enough to try to come to grips with all this. And of course, human nature being what it is, there is certainly an attraction to the bad-ass nigger aspect of everything, which is a joke to intelligent black people, and a trope in everything from early rock 'n' roll (the Clovers, Wynonie Harris, etc.) to Funkadelic or Mer-Da (one song of theirs is about killing the friend who was fucking his wife, my goodness! has Will Oldham ever written one like that?!!?). So it's all just ridiculous, in my opinion, the New Yorker getting all worked up over some middle-class white people with no soul and no funk and no sense of space. Any indie-rock scene is full of people whose primary influences are like Gal Costa and Pavement and John Fahey and stuff like that, try talking to them about the virtues of Mer-Da or Bobby Bland on MCA or whatever--they might know about all that black music but they are not going to play that way. Because they don't have the discipline to do it, nor would their audiences know what to think if some indie group suddenly came out and started up on the Meters' "Pungee." This is not to say that there aren't plenty of indie people who don't appreciate it. And as above, jam bands do attempt to play like this, except they just don't get it, they're far too ropey to ever understand the understatement and the rigor of the playing of the Hi Rhythm section or Booker T. or James Brown or...name it. Of course, many indie folk are into Sharon Jones and Bettye LaVette, and they go out for good money these days. The aesthetics are different; to swing like Basie's rhythm section requires listening to Basie, and indie people are gonna sit around listening to John Fahey or M. Ward or some of those No Depression people, if they're a bit older and into roots music. Too, jazz, blues and soul presupposed an apprenticeship of sorts--you went on the road, you learned the standards, you learned way more shit than the typical indie person who got in a band and learned some rock songs or stuff from his older brother's '70s record collection. A generation of people who think irony is all there is and rock and roll the answer to everything--and it's not even good rock and roll, a lot of the time. I keep coming back to Fahey and the worship of someone like him, or of Lee Hazelwood (interesting guy but I mean come on, this is what it's come down to?), just seems funny to me, and sad. There's a lot more out there and it ain't all about texture and that post-folkie shit, is it? It isn't, in my world. This isn't to say that Fahey or Lee don't have value, and of course, expansion of canon is valuable. But that canon does not include Bobby Bland on Malaco, and that's a shame. What I've always like about black music isn't "transgression" but the humor and ease of it, the discipline mixed with the ability to get out there. I also love indie stuff, as far as it goes, listen to plenty of Swedish pop influenced by Nancy Sinatra and Caetano Veloso, you know, that kind of thing. And to Wilco. Who are obviously not going to play like the Dramatics or Al Green. Also, remember that plenty of black artists listened to the Beatles and went, hmm, those guys are into something. So we could talk about how black music could be really conservative and how indie or rock music helped shake them up. It works both ways, and I'd be remiss to not note that.

Finally, the comment about Pavement ruining music is absurd. They did their best to swing, and sometimes did it, and they were an honest attempt to play classic rock.

This sentence is pretty mind-boggling, by the way (if we assume he not only says it could be argued, but actually, you know, argues it):

You could argue that Dr. Dre and Snoop were the most important pop musicians since Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

Snoop Dogg’s UK Top 40 History:

20 Snoop Doggy Dogg What's My Name Dec 1993
39 Snoop Doggy Dogg Gin And Juice Feb 1994
32 Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggy Dogg World Aug 1994
12 Snoop Doggy Dogg Snoop's Upside Your Head Dec 1996
18 Snoop Doggy Dogg Vapors May 1997
21 Snoop Doggy Dogg featuring JD We Just Wanna Party With You Sep 1997
36 Snoop Doggy Dogg Tha Doggfather Jan 1998
13 Snoop Dogg Snoop Dogg Apr 2001
27 Snoop Dogg From Tha Chuuuch To Da Palace Nov 2002
23 Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Beautiful Apr 2003
10 Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Drop It Like It's Hot Dec 2004
13 Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Let's Get Blown Mar 2005
2 Snoop Dogg featuring Charlie Wilson & Justin Timberlake Signs May 2005
39 Snoop Dogg featuring Charlie Wilson & Justin Timberlake Signs (re-entry) Jul 2005
36 Snoop Dogg Ups And Downs Aug 2005
38 Snoop Dogg featuring R Kelly That's That Dec 2006

Dr Dre’s UK Top 40 History (as a solo artist — yeah, I know, “one of the most successful producers ever,” but there are many claimants to that throne):

31 Dr Dre Nuthin But A G Thang / Let Me Ride Jan 1994
25 Dr Dre Keep Their Heads Ringin Jun 1995
15 Dr Dre & LL Cool J Zoom Jul 1998
6 Dr Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg Still D.R.E. Mar 2000
7 Dr Dre featuring Eminem Forgot About Dre Jun 2000
3 Dr Dre featuring Snoop Dogg The Next Episode Feb 2001
4 Dr Dre featuring Knoc-Turn'al Bad Intentions Jan 2002

US music critics ignorant of non-US chart trends, story at 10.

"Daryl Hall" is not "H&O," alex, and the focus, as I wrote elsewhere, was on his Fripp collab.

It works both ways, and I'd be remiss to not note that.

KRAFTWERK

sorry, Alfred, I just figured you hadn't seen that interview based on your question. but there's been a big "H&O was better than you think" re-evaluation in indie/critic circles for years and years now.

I think that all of this bitching about musical artists is a bullshit cover for SFJ's annoyance at a fanbase that he has a distaste for.

the craziest thing in that whole article to me was when he says hall & oates were on the same level of talent as mj

I had a hard time getting past that. I thought, "He must live in that alternate universe where Lawrence Welk and Duke Ellington are neck-and-neck."

Can the term "classic rock" be banned.

how bout "wrinkle rock" instead?

and really, one could say the exact same thing about the "Americana" movement, right? Americana extols someone like Guy Clark (whom I like fine) over Kid Creole and the Coconuts (whom I love). Who's really more "American"? I mean, I guess you could put Townes Van Zandt on a Whitman sampler kind of thing, but August Darnell, who had far more to say about what American culture is really about, is just gonna scare people. You are not ever going to convince me that some Townes Van Zandt song is better than "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy." A sense of humor always helps, I guess, and also getting shushed by people in Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, when you're just in a club like the ones you've been going to in Memphis or Jackson, Miss., where you can cut up like you're supposed to in a club and not view it as a church for songwriters, and you're bored by Steve Forbert playing his songs on four strings up there to people too dumb to know it's a shuck, helps too. So it's not just indie; it's the perception that rhythm and danceable stuff equals something less profound than Guy Clark or some of those singer-songwriters getting dusty in Texas and Nashville. It's just plain funny.

so glad I'm not "into music" anymore. "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin" is still a vital query next to this crap.

"the craziest thing in that whole article to me was when he says hall & oates were on the same level of talent as mj"

In the podcast or on the New Yorker blog he says he was just trying to be provocative, or something like that. Still seems dumb.

Weren’t Hall & Oates reassessed at least ten years ago? I know my friends and I have always prized them unapologeticly, anyway.

I think curmudgeon's point is

Hall And Oates are pretty great, but COME THE FUCK ON IT'S MICHAEL JACKSON

SFJ blog post from when that stupid EMP paper about white DJs playing black music and "minstrelsy":

PS: Let me be clear—if this piece feels like some kind of "calling people out" routine, you've got the wrong end of the stick. I would gladly include myself or Ui in the representative sample I am using Shadow and Diplo to outline, except for two things: 1) I've DJ'd less than ten times in my life; and 2) not very many people bought Ui records. We weren't part of the popular conversation, so it would be silly to insert me or Ui just to sound "honest." But if you insist on reading guilt into this formulation (which is not its intent in any way, shape or form—pop isn't like that), then please make me more guilty than anyone.

did a bunch of people buy Ui records in the past 2 years or something?

lol

Too, jazz, blues and soul presupposed an apprenticeship of sorts--you went on the road, you learned the standards, you learned way more shit than the typical indie person who got in a band and learned some rock songs or stuff from his older brother's '70s record collection. A generation of people who think irony is all there is and rock and roll the answer to everything--and it's not even good rock and roll, a lot of the time.

Good point. And it's like, in the 40s, if you wanted to play bebop, you knew you had to have your shit together or you would get, at the very least, laughed off the stage. And Wayne Kramer talks about the "Kick out the jams or get off the stage!" culture of 60s Detroit. Neither of those things seem to exist in (ok, loosely defined) "indie rock culture." We're left with this terminally lazy acceptance of terminal laziness.

My strategy of cutting back most of my posting to RJG-style non sequiturs and letting eddshurt handle the thorny questions has been working out pretty well for me so far.

And Wayne Kramer talks about the "Kick out the jams or get off the stage!" culture of 60s Detroit

The Stooges could barely tune their guitars in 1968!

Road-hardened veterans they were not!

But they knew how to kick out the jams. Ultimate Spinach could tune their guitars and were road-hardened veterans, and got laughed out of town.

Ok Sara Sara Sara, we get that you want bash all indie rockers for being lazy and how they look onstage, and just praise your heroes from the past.

The Stooges is kind of an interesting example, since Iggy actually went to Chicago to learn how to be a blues drummer and then realized he wasn't going to make it and went back to Michigan to start the Stooges.

the problem with all these kinds of articles in general to me, is that they just invite vast oversimplifications, most people i know don't fit in to little neat boxes of "music fan types" people talk about on the internet

the only other thing I'd say is that I'm SO SICK of people acting like the Clash were some kind of crazy funky polygot prophets...I mean jesus christ, they are closer to Bruce Springsteen than the Meters at the end of the day and the Stones were a better dance band on "Miss You" than the Clash ever were.

"miss you"=any damn song the stones did

yeah that too

I'm SO SICK of people acting like the Clash were some kind of crazy funky polygot prophets

That's for sure.

And to think I bought into that Book of Rock Lists "Ten Bands That Lee Perry Says Play Reggae Properly" that included the Clash.

the clash were pretty funky, not that i trust ned raggett to be a judge of that anywayz

"Ten Bands That Have Paid Lee Perry A Lot of Money to Produce One of Their Records Who He Subsequently Says Play Reggae Properly" more like

Ok Sara Sara Sara, we get that you want bash all indie rockers for being lazy and how they look onstage, and just praise your heroes from the past.

Ah yes, my heroes from the past, like Fat Worm Of Error, and Thrillpillow. That was, what, 3 weeks ago?

(I feel like the Hulk..."ME WANT BASH!")

"Ten Bands That Have Paid Lee Perry A Lot of Money to Produce One of Their Records Who He Subsequently Says Play Reggae Properly" more like
Yeah, I think they updated the heading in the later editions.

the clash were pretty funky, not that i trust ned raggett to be a judge of that anywayz

Cubicle funky, even.

BASH

does a ned raggett smoke ganj

His sound system alter ego is Trent D. Gage.

What is the yardstick for measuring whether a band has been influenced by African-American music, and why does SFJ think he has one? And what privileges African-American music, other than the fact that it's the largest minority? Why aren't we complaining about indie's inability to absorb latino culture as we go into the 21st century?

mh, if anyone's questions/comments should be forwarded directly to SFJ's e-mail for him to respond to, they're yours, seriously.

I guess you haven't read any of the prior pazz and jop threads or various other ones on these subjects.

my, you are aptly named.

I have, though, and I don't think that ruminating on this stuff for years really makes you an expert at it, or that the arguments are getting any better or even more coherent.

Why aren't we complaining about indie's inability to absorb latino culture as we go into the 21st century?

I'm waiting for the follow-up where SFJ criticizes the Arcade Fire for playing out of clave.

Why aren't we complaining about indie's inability to absorb latino culture as we go into the 21st century?

I won't even hum the rock-en-español number on the new Rilo Kiley.

And what privileges African-American music, other than the fact that it's the largest minority?

Cultural impact, history

As for the Latino influence, I am sure Ned Sublette's writing was discussed somewhere, and you can post on that thread.

What is the yardstick for measuring whether a band has been influenced by African-American music, and why does SFJ think he has one? And what privileges African-American music, other than the fact that it's the largest minority? Why aren't we complaining about indie's inability to absorb latino culture as we go into the 21st century?

xpost
OTM, i dont get it at all. Why African music? Why=blues=african...even. I know. Long time ago...etc etc...but the blues surely ain't your typical African music anymore, or is it

Why aren't we complaining about indie's inability to absorb latino culture as we go into the 21st century?

http://www.dailyreckless.co.uk/fall/images/marquischacha.jpg

What does history have to do with bunch of white kids making music they want to make. It's not relevant at all

Maybe Bobby Sanabria can come and school some people.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/5101Z9FE6DL._AA280_.jpg

I wonder how these guys fit in?

i mean the clash could be kind of funky but jeez it's like people forget that 75 percent of their recorded catalog is white rock as white rock gets. some people act like they were the fucking JBs or something.

i like the clash. for real. good band.

i like lee perry too, but he's also like crazy as fuck.

i dont really give a fuck about the clash & the punk rock stuff bores me to tears but casbah & magnificent seven are srsly funky

yeah totally they are. but that's not typical of them really.

M@tt, don't go all gabbneb on us!

i feel you tho it does kinda feel like critics like to use those couple jams as an excuse for being into all the dorky punk rock stuff... its like the 'gang starr thanked co flow in the moment of truth liner notes' legitimizer for nerd-rap heads

doobie brothers were funkier than the clash but i dont see sfj calling for a return to the golden age of 1973

Didn't George Clinton have something to say about that?

like people forget that 75 percent of their recorded catalog is white rock as white rock gets.

o_O

If you can't hear the reggae and soul influence in the regular punk rock Clash stuff then stop talking about music.

If Sasha had said "People can make whatever kind of music they like. For reasons x,y, and z I like bands that meld genres, and emphasize rhythm, and have chops, and can entertain. Unfortunately, alot of schmindie bands like a,b, and c do not include those elements yet are still beloved in some circles." Then he could explain the insularity,the popularity, the reasons for it, and its causes, and how he thinks those bands should change...

That might win over a few more people, but it might also be ignored.

<i>If you can't hear the reggae and soul influence in the regular punk rock Clash stuff then stop talking about music.

-- Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 5:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link</i>

yeah but it's not more than the soul influences in all kinds of rock! i'm just saying they are not particularly unique in that respect most of the time...hell the police had reggae influences, as did shittons of bands around that time.

but yeah is should have said white as white gets, just regular

shouldn't

white riot, a riot of their own

For reasons x,y, and z I like bands that meld genres, and emphasize rhythm, and have chops, and can entertain. Unfortunately, alot of schmindie bands like a,b, and c do not include those elements yet are still beloved in some circles.

Yeah, that's still bullshit though because he doesn't say that he exclusively likes bands that do those things, nor does he make a case for this straw man that only likes indie bands that have no African-American influence.

is SFJ a big fan of hip hop producers incorporating white influences into their music?

f you can't hear the reggae and soul influence in the regular punk rock Clash stuff then stop talking about music

OTM.

How much "regular punk rock" stuff did the Clash even do? Like, three-quarters of their debut album? (Which was the most of the best music they ever made, incidentally.)

Their reggae ("White Man in Hammersmith Palais," "Police and Thieves," "Police On My Back." "Pressure Drop," "Armagiden Time," less literal dub-influenced stuff like "Clampdown" and "London Calling," a whole side of Sandinista!) was usually better than the Police's, too. (And way better than any reggae the Bad Brains ever did.) And they also worked in rhythms from New Orleans, Motown, rockabilly (which has r&b in it), lots of places.

But yeah, lots of punk and new wave acts around that time (Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Generation X, Specials, English Beat, the Slits, Killing Joke) were incorporating dub and reggae, in a way that not many "indie" acts have since. I'm pretty sure that was part of Sasha's point. (I disagree with plenty of his essay, like I said above, but this argument strikes me as pretty airtight.)

straw man that only likes indie bands that have no African-American influence.

Mh, you don't think there are actual people who like Band of Horses but not LCD Soundsystem.

What I keep getting stuck on is the use of "miscegination," which is a totally sexualized term that is generally more applicable to, like, Faulkner novels than friggin' music. The impulse to treat music like it's a bunch of race-coded test tubes that you can mix together is keeping people from moving beyond these questions which aren't even particularly interesting in 2007. I may think the Arcade Fire is boring and that might be in part because they don't swing, but what am I supposed to do? Demand that they be a different band? This is the first piece of criticism I've ever read that makes me want to throw up my hands and ask why people can't just make the music they like.

It's also funny that the the circle is completed to the point that Led Zep and the Stones now get credit for ripping off "black music" because at least they were acknowledging it. Would this argument ever have been made 20 years ago?

xp (And again, I named recent indie acts who are trying to work in dub space above, so I know there are exceptions. I just can't think of many who are as good at incorporating the reggae stuff into actual, memorable, energetic songs the way those late '70s acts were. Though if there are some, somebody should name names.)

lol: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=179751350

that one says it's a "tribute" myspace. but the official myspace for the band linked on there lists genre as "Breakbeat / 2-step / Afro-beat"

thought that was gonna be luna's myspace

lol

x-post to curmudgeon

Sure, those people exist. But I really don't see SFJ communicating with them at all here, or even trying to understand their perspective. I think the unstated theme of the article is that he wishes these bands, which are doing pretty well doing what they're doing (and he may even like them), are going to be some sort of musical pied piper or be better in some way if they pick up this influence he has deemed necessary.

I mean, isn't it possible Arcade Fire fans are also Talking Heads fans, or at least looked into David Byrne & co. after reading comparisons? While that's not a band that's currently extant, it's one that.. oh hell, you know where this is going.

I think that we need to re-examine how cliched this terminology is, too, because the thread is jumping into dub/reggae territory and isn't that music primarily not American? So the African-American nomenclature is pretty much bs.

weird that he ends the piece on a technological/business note: that it may not be the "fault" of dorky coward shmindie types, but that all music, and therefore all black music, is always and everywhere available now. "we don't need a stones in 07 because muddy waters is inescapable." if THAT state of affairs has some culturally determining logic to it -- if that's the conclusion SFJ thinks has to be drawn from looking at the evidence, then what's the solution? it seems like he gets to a better line of questioning right at the end.

whoever said it (xhuck?), it's true: ALL music has become more rhythmically boring over the past several years, i think. why that is, i don't know either.

because no one's codified a new rhythmic template in almost 30 years.

because no one's codified a new rhythmic template in almost 30 years.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 1:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

reggaeton

Listening to the podcast now. Pretty incredible. Basically, indie music from the last ten years "just bugs him."

"Soulja Boy needs to work with the Fiery Furnaces."

like i said upthread, if it bugs him so much he should stfu and talk about shit that matters. he's got this high profile podium and all he does is wax on and on about indie rock, even when he's hating

could be naivete, could be "progress" but i have a really hard time imagining an MTV that wouldn't play any black music. that seems really really crazy and klanny to me, and hard to justify by any kind of business logic of 80's cable-viewers' taboos or anything.

also, i have an equally hard time hearing the blues as anything other than friendly, classy music you could listen to with a picnic basket a festival in duluth. i can read about how things were way back when but it's a big imaginative leap.

xp soulja boy's album is incredibly boring.

the that crazy skittering hyper drum n bass shit i guess was kind of new, or maybe just funky drummer on meth

SFJ is irritated by music where people play badly. If I wasn't at work I'd be breaking out a huge picture of like King Crimson or something.

i wish i was picnicking in duluth ;_;

Other problem is that all of that artists he picks as meeting his standard of miscegenation are like some of the most basic "intelligent" yet canonical choices ever--Dylan, Prince, OutKast, where the songwriting was so good that it didn't matter what race they were.

^^ anyway, the point of my last post is that (if i've thought this through right) the relative lack of 'white funk' is a side effect of an unquestionably good thing: a much more egalitarian and open media culture than it was in the 60s and 70s. there's not that much emotional charge in straight up mimicry anymore, bcz nothing is hidden and everyone can hear everything.

i think we missed the colors Matt :(

OK, I'll give up and bite here since it's what I see friends and coworkers my age having some interest in:

As much as I think it's partially cultural tourism, how does the route of late 90s DJ culture, that coexisted with and led into kid 606, dj/rupture, and diplo which has a partial overlap with mash-up culture fix into this? I mean, I'm not going to throw Girl Talk out as an example of a 'band,' but isn't this the miscegenation (or as I'd put it, selective adoption of some sounds or a "just the hooks, please" attitude) that he's not finding because he's wandering the wrong territory? When there's someone who's appropriating not just the cadence or the rhythms, but in fact entire parts of songs, who's doing reasonably well in the indie sphere? I'm pretty sure that his beloved Grizzly Bear may have even appeared on stage with him.

There are different ways to say "this is our music too," and it doesn't just mean you jack the low-key smoothness of R. Kelly and stick it in your indie songs.

reggaeton's an interesting hybrid case, but I don't know enough of it to comment, really. Whether or not it has a rhythmic structure that's as unique and flexible (yet as instantly identifiable) as the standard swing or reggae or funk beats I don't really know.

There have been a lot of dance music subgenres that differentiate themselves by beats but yeah Matt I think they basically add up to other beats (funky drummer, samba, etc.) sped up really fast (or slowed down).

Unique and specific rhythms seem to be at the root of all the different genres that sprung up in the 20th century - but now that we can make/reproduce any beat combination imaginable, the pattern of musical development has kind of shifted.

x-post

I'm also dropping my constant rhetorical question style after this because it's driving me crazy

rather than some idealized polygot mutant sfj has in mind

This really annoyed me about the article, it's so Louis Jagger!

"Soulja Boy needs to work with the Fiery Furnaces."

-- call all destroyer, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11:37 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Judgment Night 2, where are you?

ted leo just read this thread and ate his own tongue

In a way, I think the only point SFJ makes that has any weight with me is the one in the last paragraph ("Thirty years ago, Banhart might have attempted to imitate R. Kelly’s perverse and feather-light soul. Now he’s just a fan."). I do think there is something to the idea that now that people can trumpet their tastes in a lot of different ways (blogging, DJing, lastfm type shit), they don't feel as much of a need to make music that reflects all the things they like. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that: as a musician, I'd rather figure out what I'm good at doing or really enjoy doing and focus on that, instead of trying to use every single artist in my CD collection as an audible influence. And although it's hard to second guess the intentions of the musicians I'm listening to, I'm guessing I prefer to listen to the stuff by people who focus on what they're good at instead of trying to accomodate a billion conflicting influences.

("Thirty years ago, Banhart might have attempted to imitate R. Kelly’s perverse and feather-light soul. Now banhart could drop an ironic cover mp3 at any moment.")

^^^ehhh i dunno about this, lots of times the best tracks are the kind of happy accidents that only happen when folks take risks or whatever

uh xp

x-post

MH, the dj culture thing is a touchy subject as well, and fits into the dialogue (although as noted above, SFJ's main thrust here is why indie rock's been bugging him). "Wandering the wrong territory"? Nah, Sasha's got Rupture on his top albums of 2007 list, and he's an MIA fan. For whatever reasons, not enough space or conscious decision, he chose not to get into this. Dj Rupture and Diplo are trying to do two different things.

Many musicians seem to focus on what they think they're good at, and don't take chances for better or worse.

^^^ehhh i dunno about this, lots of times the best tracks are the kind of happy accidents that only happen when folks take risks or whatever

-- deej, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I'm not talking about musicians staying in their lane/focusing on the strengths at the expense of taking risks or experimentings. I'm saying that if someone's in a perfectly good rock band and hears an afrobeat or hip hop or bossa nova record they like, they shouldn't feel obligated to reflect that influence on their next album, unless they feel a natural artistic impulse to do so.

i.e. none of the bands mentioned in the article would benefit from being called out in SFJ's article and deciding to make their next album "funky"

guys:

is UI banned from discussion here? huge elephant in the room imo...

Here's my take on the SFJ article titled "Sasha Frere-Jones Asks: "Why Can't We All Just Get Along in 4/4 Time?"

http://planetofsoundandsight.blogspot.com/2007/10/music-sasha-frere-jones-asks-why-cant.html

x-post
Of course they are, dj/rupture, as much as I love the guy (and have shelled out money for his stuff) really lives in the same art rock Wire magazine/Ui/DJ Spooky/east coast intellectual fortress that SFJ is sitting in. dj/rupture and Diplo are coming from two different standpoints and the mixing style is obviously a lot different, with Diplo's being a lot more pop-oriented and rupture's being a lot more noise/art oriented, but they both put out solo albums in 2004 that showed the earmarks of the dj mixes, but tended toward song-oriented work, and featured dancehall vocalists. They are two different things if you look at the dialog, but if you listen to the music there are fewer differences.

I own a Ui album, I don't think it's an elephant per se, but it's pretty indicative of the politics of crowds.

Ui's been brought up at least 3 or 4 times already, albeit mostly in passing. Don't think it's off-limits. (xp)

talking about dj rupture or diplo or whatever is such a sideline. DJs have been mixing genres for years

Diplo's effect has been, for the most part, exposing bmore club and caroica funk to the press. i dont think you can really give him any credit, unless you wanted to make an article about some sort of weird conglomerate 'indie culture' that sounds like most terrible subject for an article

seriously before i even heard of diplo we were throwing college parties where i would play rap music that i liked in between smiths songs that college dorks liked so that i could keep enough hipster girls on the dancefloor to hopefully get lucky, this wasn't like some brand new formula or something even tho it might have seemed like it to some of us at the time.

ps i am a college dork who likes the smiths but not really at parties

Well, we're already pretending indie rock exists in a vacuum, and the only thing outside that vacuum is african-american music (whatever the hell that is), and that the only way from part A to get to part B is by "miscegenation."

(post-college dork, d'oh)

x-post

Ha, now we can go back to talking about Lester Bangs playing Otis Redding records at a party.

The issue with Diplo is that some folks think he's appropriating the culture of others and taking credit for it; while others think he's doing what Deej said--just spreading the word. Then there's the whole Cocorosie parties thing...

But there are people who choose to live in an indie-rock vacuum. That's their choice (I just wish some of 'em were not editors at general interest publications)

oh i think he's doing lots of different things, i just mean that his net impact on 'the world of music' amounts to basically turning the press on to a few regional sounds ... his parties, his mixes, everything else pretty much fades into the background.

yeah, even a lot of hip-hop is rhythmically boring these days. indie rock is so godawfully dreadful, though - what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

and i do think he is getting lots of credit for shit he hasn't actually done, but he would probably argue that it isn't really something he has control over. which is partly true and i think the press takes a lot of blame for the way he has been presented

on the other hand, if he had been presented accurately he wd probably be more like a curator-type and thats not as glamorous or endorsement-enducing

yeah, even a lot of hip-hop is rhythmically boring these days.

-- burt_stanton, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:48 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

what does this really mean?? 'rhythmically boring' i mean. i dont get what it is he wants from 'black music', its so damn nebulous

what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

i don't ever want to see this, ever. i'm perfectly happy with bland indie rock if it means this doesn't ever happen. (ps i don't even listen to a whole lot of indie rock)

The more I think about it, the more I think that all the things he's looking for are happening, just not in "indie rock" which now means white people sounding like past indie icons of the 80s/90s and dudes trying to be Brian Wilson.

it's bruce springsteen now, do keep up

what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

http://www.zulurecords.com/discorder/graphics/oct2003/linkpics/peaches.jpg

the exception that proves the glory of the rule

lolz

the article is awful and part of the problem with talking about it is that you gotta tease out the arguments he didn't succeed (or try really) at making. its all over the place w/so many generalizations and red herrings and straw people. and to me its prob a bigger a deal that indie has retreated from anything feminine since the 90s.

i mean, the thread i guess i see tying the classic bangs piece and whatever sfj thinks is going on now is that punk was in some ways about removing blackness from r and r and/or going back to a time when r and r's "blackness" had to do less w/technical proficiency, smoothness and/or streching out than cranking out things quick catchy and dirty ala chuck berry. but even if punk's players and indies are/were privlged white hipsters indie is more a class thing whereas even if there isn't any AFRICA innit the strains and influences to draw from are huge and in no way purposely eliminative. that hipsters no longer draw/borrow from black sources is a potentially big and interesting story given that thats what hipsters used to do BY DEFINITION.

(i didn't go back and reread that before posting so it might not make much sense)

what does "feminine" music sound like?

The Cramps? Stereolab? Boris? Belle and Sebastian? The Donnas?

it might also just be that good rhythm sections are hard to come by.

feminine music does have to sound like anything, but record collector rock is dudetastic

(doesn't)

er i didn't ever want to use the term "feminine music"

shakey i guess a part of what i mean is that indie is often w/o sensuality just as much as syncopation (though the two often go hand in hand)

sensuality is feminine?

who's more sensual Antony and the Johnsons or Peaches

yep

i've never heard antony and the johnsons and i try not to talk or thinnk about peaches.

if you dont know what i mean thats cool. i dont think ill bother fleshing it out on sfjs thread!

perhaps it calls for its own 400-post-long thread

i hope not

i do have to say the comment was partly inspired by me just finishing rob sheffield's love is a mixtape.

if only indie rock could be more like sfj blog posts. to wit:

"BIG TINGS GWAN

The magazine I work for is having a barbecue this weekend. I will be manning the grill at three events. Please come along and dance at the Catchdubs and Diplo dance party, listen to me talk about rappers and their rapping, or watch Fiona Apple talk and sing."

good god

big, big tings

poppin

little tings stoppin

indie rock is not an option

I know I’m very late to the discussion, but I just had a chance to read the article. It seems like a lot of bogus rationales designed to support th highly debatable notion that there’s less appropriation of “black music” in indie rock today than there was pre-1990 (“rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties”). I’m highly suspicious of at least two major points made in the article:

• First, the notion that there was much more appropriation of “black music” prior to 1990. Modern underground/indie rock developed at college radio stations (and on MTV) in the 80s, and many of the biggest indie acts from that era – The Smiths, R.E.M., U2, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, Husker Du, The Replacements – don’t appear to me to be heavily influenced by “black music” (with some exceptions). Obviously, this is my first impression on the topic, but the bands listed above leapt to mind when I thought about indie music prior to 1990. I’m sure there are counterexamples, but setting forth some anecdotal counterexamples doesn’t undermine the basic point.

• Second, the reasons the author claims are the cause of this trend – that (a) white musicians fear competing with black vocalists, especially rappers (“the potential for embarrassment had become a major deterrent for white musicians tempted to emulate their black heroes. Who would take on Snoop, one of the most naturally gifted vocalists of the day?”), (b) white artists stayed away from “black music” to avoid being charged with “appropriation, minstrelsy, or co-optation,” and (c) “social progress,” e.g., the Internet, has “made individual genres less significant,” and thus whites stay with “white music” and blacks stay with “black music” – seem highly dubious to me. As to (a), there’s virtually no support offered for the notion that whites “feared” taking on rappers in the 90s any more than whites “feared” taking on compelling black funk, soul or blues singers from the 80s (one rap/rock collaboration – Walk This Way – from the mid-80s hardly proves otherwise). And I’d guess that white artists who wanted to appropriate Michael Jackson or Prince in the 80s had every bit as much to fear in terms of being embarrassed as a white artist who wanted to appropriate Snoop Dog in the 90s. As to (b), I just don’t buy it. It would take another post to go into all the reasons why I disagree with the author, but as one example: how does the author’s rationale square with this horrible genre, which “seeks to fuse the most aggressive elements of hardcore rap and heavy metal, and became an extremely popular variation of alternative metal during the late '90s”? As to (c), I don’t understand why the technology revolution the author describes causes such separations. It seems to me that it could create a melting pot of styles that artists are now exposed to, which might just as easily lead to genre-experiments and cross-pollination.

Sorry for the longwinded post. It’s an intriguing article, whether or not you agree with it.

I gonna go to a polka jam at the local Sons of Poland lodge and complain about how the band doesn't drone like (eastern) Indians.

i feel like looking for black influences in indie rock is just a category mistake. ie if thats what a white person wants to do w/their music they aren't indie rock.

(that gets back to the what about Maroon 5 etc comments way upthread)

if only indie rock could be more like sfj blog posts. to wit:

"BIG TINGS GWAN

The magazine I work for is having a barbecue this weekend. I will be manning the grill at three events. Please come along and dance at the Catchdubs and Diplo dance party, listen to me talk about rappers and their rapping, or watch Fiona Apple talk and sing."

-- artdamages, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:43 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lemon-red?

It may have been mentioned already, but the article's glaring omission is the 90s/00s indie blues strain, from Jon Spencer/Trux through to White Stripes/Black Keys etc. Especially weird when he remarks so much on Jagger and Zeppelin's blues influence.

If some right-wing commentator wrote that "black music" (i.e. rap, RnB, etc) was "anti-intellectual" because of its abandonment of the best characteristics of "white music" (i.e. melody, general musical sophistication, etc) and would be all the better for acting "whiter" I can't imagine ILM doing anything different than dismissing it out of hand and seeing it's main idea to be pretty funny. Why do we take this idea so seriously and take it so axiomatic that music that's made largely for and by white people would be better should it incorporate "blacker" sounds?

I I remember the prominent general music critic Henry Pleasants made this very complaint about "loss of black influences" when he first heard the Velvet Underground. What a surprise that bands that follow in their footsteps should not break away from the trend!

Here's an excerpt from my posting on this for those of you who don't feel like jumping off this thread to look:

"On the surface the argument appears to be a bold attack on a very early nineties music-crit trope: white people stole rock from black people (see Public Enemy's "Who Stole the Soul", Living Colour's "Elvis is Dead" etc., ) While carefully acknowledging the material and profile disparities between white and black artists Frere-Jones posits that this sort of musical mixing is a Good Thing (though terming it miscegenation is the sort of attention grabbing move that hints at the real purpose of the piece).

Whether or not you think cultural mixing is a Good Thing (I do), the argument that he puts forth goes further by suggesting that "indie rock" has undergone a racial purification that has systematically cleansed "black" music from the musical melting pot. Leave aside the lack of black musicians in indie rock, is this true? And how does one prove it? Brian Wilson, an acknowledged latter-day indie touchstone, is invoked as a touchstone of all things white, but how white can a guy be when his band steals their first hit from Chuck Berry? Arcade Fire is exhibit A in the articles first paragraph but can't the argument be made that "My Body is a Cage" is a descendant of blues dirges from the 20's and 30's.

No, says Frere-Jones, the beat isn't right. And here we come to the real nub of this piece: He doesn't like the way indie rockers drum. They don't swing, the bass players don't groove, etc. Which may be true (though not in the case of Spoon say, or Afghan Whigs) but so what? Is this a racial thing or just a mode of expression? Even one of Frere-Jones chosen whipping boys (to trade in another charged term) Pavement, fail to hold up under close examination. While pointlessly mocking the lyrics to "Grave Architecture" he fails to note the very swinging section of the song that occurs right before the final rave-up -- a section that could be described as jazzy.

Really what the article strives for is to make a splash and that it has done. Frere-Jones does a bit of extra-credit overreaching on his own blog, where he links the article to Lester Bangs incendiary piece on white supremacy and punk , which is a bit like appending an article on Grizzly Man to a piece on Winnie The Pooh."

If some right-wing commentator wrote that "black music" (i.e. rap, RnB, etc) was "anti-intellectual" because of its abandonment of the best characteristics of "white music" (i.e. melody, general musical sophistication, etc) and would be all the better for acting "whiter" I can't imagine ILM doing anything different than dismissing it out of hand and seeing it's main idea to be pretty funny.

or they might just start a lot of silly "Ask Geir" threads

x-post

rock artists dont take from new black music cos rock is dead and theyre too busy regurgitating old rock.

hollertronix-type artists are the guys doing what old white rock artists used to do.

"He doesn't like the way indie rockers drum. They don't swing, the bass players don't groove, etc."

basically sasha is annoyed that new white rock artists dont take from OLD black music, but then most new black music doesnt take much from old black music either.

" basically sasha is annoyed that new white rock artists dont take from OLD black music, but then most new black music doesnt take much from old black music either."

Interesting point...isn't Timbaland more Kraftwerk than James Brown? Or is it "black" because it's Timbaland?

these are not interesting points

I only speak for myself here...

Brian Wilson, an acknowledged latter-day indie touchstone, is invoked as a touchstone of all things white, but how white can a guy be when his band steals their first hit from Chuck Berry?

true BUT when people say "brian wilson" in recent indie context it almost always means "god only knows" and not "help me rhonda." (why people would rather sound like "god only knows" than "help me rhonda" is a mystery to me, fwiw.) i.e., it's wilson's diaphonous symphonic side that is most often referenced, not his 8-bar/12-bar side.

yes, only deej makes interesting points.

(argh, diaphanous. need ilx spellcheck.)

correct. lock thread xp

interesting point

when people say "brian wilson" in recent indie context it almost always means "god only knows" and not "help me rhonda." (why people would rather sound like "god only knows" than "help me rhonda" is a mystery to me, fwiw.)

Unless they are The Queers. (But yeah, I agree with the parentheses.)

"correct. lock thread xp"

mods, please delete all other replies in this thread barring this one.

Why did so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voicelike guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century? These are the volatile elements that launched rock and roll, in the nineteen-fifties, when Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips.

What is he implying by saying that Elvis (Who is presumably supposed to represent Black Music© as discovered by White America©) was all about sex and Boone (representative of stale white America), by association of previous white music, was all about the head? (which is to say thoughtful pop music)

Sfj seems to be one of those authors that knows what would make for an interesting and controversial subject for a writing piece (in this case the implications of race on pop music) but without knowing how to actually deliver on the promise of the idea.

stealing black musical ideas vs. reveling in whiteness ... which is more white????

"without knowing how to actually deliver on the promise of the idea."

the basic idea of the piece is pretty much the same as the basis of simon reynolds' most recent book, that black and white musicians have stopped 'talking to each other'. i think sfj could have made clearer points, but its as though he stopped himself from making them, instead relying on safer ideas that sound like the stuff keith richards has been saying for decades, that modern rock doesnt have soul, blues, funk etc etc.

"which is more white????"

revelling in whiteness based on stealing black musical ideas.

The Beach Boys made fantastic soul music -- Wild Honey.

"Wild Honey" is by far the worst Beach Boys album ever. Even worse than the throwaway early Mike Love rock'n'roll stuff.

(OK, I withdraw that - being that they continued releasing awful albums into the 80s)

the king's back.

prepare for the pearls of wisdom

Sasha is apparently a fan of acts mixing "white" and "black" elements, blurring the notion of race. I guess he's a huge fan of Lionel Richie, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Lenny Kravitz and Seal then. Or maybe not.......???

"Wild Honey" is by far the worst Beach Boys album ever. Even worse than the throwaway early Mike Love rock'n'roll stuff.

In that case, let me state my love for the drunken beach funk of Dennis Wilson. Even the man's sandy chest hair had soul.

brian wilson said pet sounds was meant to be his attempt at a sort of 'white gospel music' i think.

can somebody start a beach boys albums poll and move this shit the fuck over there.

MORE RACE TALK PLZ.

(seriously tho this thread was kinda on a roll)

SFJ listed Neon Bible as one of his 2007 faves sometime back. Keep the Car Running is in is top tracks of the year and he wrote a long piece about them from that time. Sort of don't get that, but oh well:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2007/02/19/070219crmu_music_frerejones

In any case, I feel the author limits his views on what it means to be 'soulful' in music, and is limiting what modes of expression are suitable for his taste. Keith Richards and Simon Reynolds say similar things, too.

I also don't think " so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voice like guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century" as he suggests. Again, music is an ‘expression’ and there is no definition of what is proper. Music should unify and get people excited, and on common ground. It does not have to have 'funk' to be soulful. A 'white' band does not need to collaborate with a 'black' band to be 'soulful'. It should be passionate, as well. The songs, need to be great enough for people to care. I think some of the bands he mentions in his thread do that in spades, which is more then I can say for UI back in the day.

theres something kinda essentialist about this whole thread - im pretty sure alot of white artists are boring & stiff for the same reason lots of black artists are, not because either of them are consciously rejecting blackness or sitting down & deciding to sound 'white'... same for black & white artists who sound vibrant/funky/soulful/whatever

Who cares if indie rock is bad or has boring beats or whatever? There is so much funky and interesting (and yes rhythmically-influenced by the African diaspora)(<---said with dorky white guy voice) music out there, just listen to that.

So piling on someone misquoting a musician by inferring they're racist is a "rowboat" while attempting an analysis of how a handful of indie bands aren't especially rhythmic is "the QEII." This has me more confused than anything in the New Yorker article. (Well, except "a funk band called Ui," which hit me the same way as reading someone call Sarah Vowell a "humorist" a few years back: not necessarily wrong, per se, but not something I'd have even imagined to be the case beforehand.)

so where is sasha to defend himself anyway

cashing the bonus check he was promised by the New Yorker if he was able to successfully stir shit with a fake controversy and beef up the hit count on their blog/podcast pages.

cha-CHING

haha when I first heard Wild Honey in '94 I was like, "this is an indie rock album!"

As long as they don't clap on the one and the three, Jordan, it's all cool with me.

wild honey is my favorite beach boys

sure, but isn't part of white indie the attempt to consciously sound like artists in the white indie canon? (moreso than other musics) and that over time NOT borrowing from other sources creates an even "paler shade of white" (xpost)

is this thread about...INDIE GUILT???

the podcast is a real laugh..."here let me illustrate my point about 'soulful' black-influenced music by playing you the same clips of Elvis Presley and 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' you've heard a billion times before"

SFJ listed Neon Bible as one of his 2007 faves sometime back. Keep the Car Running is in is top tracks of the year and he wrote a long piece about them from that time. Sort of don't get that, but oh well

see this is where some stuff gets pretty confused.. He's not saying he doesn't like the Arcade Fire. People are real eager to reduce any discussion to "I'm positing this, and also this, and therefore this music is bad!" but that's some freshman-year-of-high-school shit. He's saying that where once he found them compelling live, he didn't last time he saw them, and he has an idea about why that might be, and here it is. He is not saying "their music isn't like this other music I like, and therefore it sucks, fuck those guys." He's saying "it seems that this music is a certain way, let me describe it." Lots of people on this thread do great work parrying the description itself w/counterexamples and so on. But again, he's not saying "music that isn't funky sucks balls." He's describing - correctly or incorrectly. But avoiding doing the whole ridiculous "well, it's like this: so fuck that!"

oh god...I just got to the part where the interviewer presses him to name 90s/post-90s examples of indie acts that transcend the whole black/white divide and soulless, badly sung or badly played indie and one of his first examples? LIZ PHAIR.

and he just trotted the old "country music and hip hop actually have a lot in common" chestnut.

i'm not even mad at this guy or anything, but jesus, what a clown.

J0hn OTM.

Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips.

I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties.

J0hn is indeed bang on the mark.

anthony is going to give himself a stroke

this article sucks donkey dick

I don't get too many OTMs owing to being wrong so often so everybody let me just enjoy the moment k

John OTM.

for real lols check out breihan v harvilla meeting of the minds on sfj

anyone read this? pretty good. manages to make the point that american music was made via all kinds of mixtures and recombinations of white and black music (and culture)
http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060528184.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

for real lols check out breihan v harvilla meeting of the minds on sfj

ok here comes that stroke

I think Harvilla is pretty much right in that thing, even if he's being way too polite about just how ridiculous the article is.

I'm perfectly prepared to accept his ambivalence about Arcade Fire (or, hell, just Arcade Fire live) if he'd alluded to his earlier enthusiasm. All we get are a few half-hearted kudos ("ragged but full of brio," "what’s missing from the band’s musical DNA is missing from dozens of other popular and accomplished rock bands’ as well—most of them less entertaining than Arcade Fire," "a stretch of raucous sing-alongs").

Whenever I get a new issue of The New Yorker in the mail, I fear there might be a article by Frere-Jones, and moreover that it'll be about someone like Justin Timberlake or 50 Cent or some other artist the equivalent of that hideous fake New-Urbanist subdivision that's being built across the street from where I work. But you see all sort of publications that have a "general" audience having horrible writing on music. On the Internet, Salon is probably the worst, but Slate's are pretty bad too. It sucks, but I don't care.

For a much more subtle (to say the least) take on this issue (sort of) Greil Marcus wrote about the tendency of commentators/radio/etc. not to include black artists when defining Rock, back in the '70s. I've noticed that Soul and Funk and Motown artists will not receive the kind of retrospective attention, close listening (esp. when it comes to appreciating albums instead of singles) that white artists get, even when they certainly deserve it. But this is beginning to change: e.g., one of the few things I've ever enjoyed reading at Pitchfork was their lists of the best albums of the '70s - not the finalized one, but where they showed what each critic contributed. I'm not sure if they're available anymore.

Frere-Jones is a hack. The use of Arcade Fire as some sort of exemplar of contemporary Indie Rock is ridiculous. Though perhaps not much so, considering that the prerequisite for an Indie Rock band getting any sort of press attention these days seems to be that they must suck hard. Arcade Fire's blandness rhythmically speaking is because they suck the hardest, that's all.

And the Clash as the counter-example? He certainly opens up a big can of worms by picking only a decent example from that period of UK popular music; not mentioning Dub - which has a much different kind of influence than this rhythmic one he is divining out of rotten old stereotypes; and seemingly not understanding how this trend, to the extent to which it has a inkling of truth to it, goes back farther. I point to what Daniel, Esq., said about '80s Indie acts, e.g. Either way, from reading this article and other by Frere-Jones, he's obviously in a headspace I don't understand. I will hazard a guess and say that in the end it's probably the same old sociological BS, wherein the critic will say something like, as he does here, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg are the most important artists of recent history blahblahblah, not based on his experiences as a listener but as some attempt to pin down the tastes and habits of, essentiallly, hundreds of millions of people.

Greil Marcus wrote about the tendency of commentators/radio/etc. not to include black artists when defining Rock, back in the '70s.

Now we have sfj not including rock artists when defining rock.

another thing that bothers me is that it ignores free jazz which pretty much influences everything noisy that's been done since.

Can't believe I'm going to jump into this, having read about a 20th of this thread (I did read his piece, tho'). A few random thoughts:

Didn't mind the piece at all but I found it odd that after
acknowledging Eminem (who's way more seeped in black music than the Stones or Zeppelin ever were--the same emotional and physical distance just doesn't apply at all), he doesn't (I don't think) mention Justin Timberlake or Pink or Gwen Stefani (just for instance). Good or bad, they all seem quite comfortable, from what I can tell, working within (and to a possibly unprecedented degree, it IS within) what are essentially black idioms. I guess I'm just repeating what others have said about his glaring selectivity, and merely pointing out different sorts of examples. I mean, sure, I want 1981 back as well--trust me on that--but indie has not--ever since the original post-punk moment--been the first place I'd think to look for whatever it is he's looking for. You generally have better luck looking to the pop charts for this sort of thing, and to all those funny 80s examples above like Black Flag and the Minutemen, two words come to mind immediately: George Michael.

Also, the whole Cream and Zeppelin thing--I don't know. Obviously, they did the blues thing explicitly, and there was a whole "blues boom" moment that can't be ignored, but the closer most of those Brit guys actually got to doing blues homages, the more horrifically boring their music was, at least to my ears (and Zeppelin are just about my favourite 70s band--except for those interminably long, slow blues jams).

the whole thing about how SFJ describes seeing them in London--you know, they were cool back when a cat could catch 'em full of brio in London--and backing it up with his "finally catching the Clash in '81 (when, of course, SFJ was all of 14 years old) was hilarious in ways he never intended. The article was brimming with mediocrity.

Cosign artdamages rec of that Leland book.

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060528184.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg/

BIG HOOS aka the librarian

I think I agree with his underlying argument, though: possibilities that once seemed present in punk--that seemed like the driving force behind much of it--are now just occasional glitches. I jumped ship on most punk in the late 80s for that very reason.

two words come to mind immediately: George Michael

I need to think about it, but this makes sense. I'd love for you to develop this.

arcade fire is punk now?

x-post

Sasha's got more comments on his New Yorker blog now (he quotes comments and responds to them briefly). He leads with one praising him, before getting to some slightly critical ones. He ends in part with this response:

I was simply trying to outline the pop landscape against which indie rock is working, and trying, without breaking too many eggs, to restrain the discussion to whatever we can pin down as indie rock. Not narrowing it down would lead toward a soggy blend of averages—you can see significant miscegenation in major-label artists like Amy Winehouse, or indie acts like Spoon and LCD Soundsystem, but I don’t think that they affect the larger change I perceive: that miscegenation no longer happens in the same way, and indie rock is Exhibit A.

Anyway. More later.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones

I am still not sure how this corresponds with his March 26, 2007 pop note statement--"About five years ago, indie rockers began to rediscover the pleasures of rhythm."

You know, there already is a contemporary genre where rock bands incorporate funk influences, and it is called jambands. Be careful what you wish for.

xp (alfred) - I'm just citing George Michael as a counter-example to all the "so-and-so had a song with dub influences on their third album" examples above of someone who you didn't need to bend your ear towards the speaker for to detect traces of "blackness." And I don't think he's the only example, but maybe the first from the '80s that comes to mind.

that was horribly worded, but hopefully it makes some sense...

ok "restraining the discussion to whatever we can pin down as indie rock" kinda makes your point moot when you define indie rock as not having what you're looking for.

i mean how the hell do the Clash count as "indie rock" if Spoon doesn't

<i>Why did so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voicelike guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century?</i>

Because critics routinely dogpiled on Jon Spencer and Greg Dulli for trying to appropriate this model of blackness.

haha Eppy.

one thing an old punkster told me about the early 80s in NYC was how people used to dance a lot at gigs. Do people dance at indie rock shows anymore?