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

Unfortunately, it isn't the most white-friendly of genres

My favorites are Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective, Modest Mouse, and Arcade Fire. I'm pretty sure all of these bands are completely white, so you should check them out

"The band's second LP, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, released in 1998, is notable as a critically acclaimed work and a widely popular recording. It is a spiritually motivated work conceptually based on the beauty to be found in the horrific fate of Anne Frank."

oh snap

looooooooool @ sieg heil

In The Arado Ar 234 Over The Sea

# "Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling [Started by BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, last updated Sunday, October 21, 2007 1:49 PM] 53 new answers

JK Rowling outs Dumbledore as gay
WeisserSieg

Today 01:28 AM

big hoos aka the siegheiler

haha i was gonna say that but it seemed a bit mean

either way, inventing nazi overtones in Neutral Milk Hotel records is way more fun than rehashing how Phil Anselmo is a dick.

I can't even remember, but has anyone bothered to point out that from the 90s on the "alternative to what" question would generally be answered with top 40 pop that does nothing BUT incorporate African-American influences hi dere Backstreet/'N Sync/BritBrit/Xtina/Justin?

i don't know about "nothing but" -- i mean what about Max Martin? he's sort of continuing the work of ABBA in a lot of ways, and although it incorporates beats and stuff like that from contemporary R&B, there's a hell of a lot of more tin pan alley tradition stuff there (which in itself i guess was probably a miscegenated music anyway), but hell Geir like Max Martin, you know.

Haha! I called HOOS a whitey!

-- The Reverend, Friday, October 5, 2007 9:36 PM (Friday, October 5, 2007 9:36 PM) Bookmark Link

lol

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, October 5, 2007 10:05 PM (Friday, October 5, 2007 10:05 PM) Bookmark Link

Haha! I called HOOS a whitey!

-- The Reverend, Friday, October 5, 2007 9:36 PM (Friday, October 5, 2007 9:36 PM) Bookmark Link

^^^this

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, October 5, 2007 10:05 PM (Friday, October 5, 2007 10:05 PM) Bookmark Link

Dear De Capo, plz publish zing portion of thread.

dear De Capo, plz publish SFJ article in first "worst" anthology

who wants odds that it ends up in 'best'

the wilson response should be!

Wowee zowee: if Sasha wants more Africa in his indie, I hope he has "The Wolf Put His Mouth on Me," from the new His Name Is Alive album, on endless repeat.

sort of continuing the work of ABBA in a lot of ways, and although it incorporates beats and stuff like that from contemporary R&B, there's a hell of a lot of more tin pan alley tradition stuff there

But Max Martin only did the same thing that Sam Cooke, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Phil Spector, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, ABBA, Bee Gees, Commodores, Lionel Richie, Earth Wind & Fire, Hall & Oates, Madness, Specials, UB40, Culture Club, Haircut 100, ABC, Soft Cell, Yazoo, Michael Jackson, Billy Ocean, Pet Shop Boys, Scritti Politti, Seal and Saint Etienne had all done before better before him: Proved that "black" and "white" musical values are completely possible to combine in a great way without having to sacrifice the latter.

XTC, "That's Really Super, Supergirl": funky

http://www.lakewoodconferences.com/direct/dbimage/50166068/Toaster.jpg

PUT YOUR COCK IN IT XPOST

Geir, is that a quote from the white supremacist site?

Shut the fuck up because disliking so-called "black" music has nothing to do with white supremacy or racism. There is no such thing as "black" or "white" music which is why I am using these marks when writing about those stupid terms. Music - by definition - builds on Tin Pan Alley values. Regardless on whether the performer/writer is black or white.

Music - by definition - builds on Tin Pan Alley values.

Haha, what? By definition, really?

Yes, because Tin Pan Alley values are the same values that music had always built on before it: Melody and harmony and rhythm together, with the former two being slightly more important than rhythm.

Yes, because Little Rascals values are the same values that movies had always built on before them: image and sound and editing together, with the former to being slightly more important than editing.

also, was it not Ira and George Gerswhin themselves who noted the necessity of rhythm before the necessity of music?

Ira and George Gerswhin = insufficiently Aryan

I Got Melody, Who Could Ask For Anything More?

I think I touched a nervy-nerve.

Melody Of Certain Damaged Norwegians

"In The Arado Ar 234 Over The Sea"

Impressive knowledge of nazi aircraft there. Most people would have gone for the Me109.

There's a great thread on "I Love Aircraft" about the lack of African-American influences on the design of the Spitfire, btw.

You can tell whitey-designed planes. they don't loop and roll as well. too much emphasis on climb-rate and wing-loading.

if you must know, i pretty much searched wiki for german aircraft and picked the first one i saw that would work in place of "aeroplane," but thanks, haha. actually one side of my family is the kind of German-Americans that really suppressed/abandoned those roots for obvious reasons, my granddad was in WWII on the US side but there used to be a weird cringey family in-joke about him being a U-boat captain.

had no idea there was even an "I Love Aircraft" board, although that's one of those things that works as a great joke whether it's real or not (see also: Diplo saying "Gully is my mother's maiden name")

Will Oldham Covers R. Kelly, Bjork, Danzig on New LP
Sure, you knew he'd been hanging out with the guy. But did you ever think you'd hear Will Oldham's take on R. Kelly's triumphant "The World's Greatest"?

I suppose it's a little hard to say just what Oldham's gonna do next, but-- for now, at least-- we've got a notion: Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Ask Forgiveness, eight covers ably tackled in all their nimble glory by Oldham, Espers' Meg Baird and Greg Weeks, and cellist Maggie Wienk, due in the UK November 19 thanks to Domino Records (no word quite yet on a U.S. release).

SFJ from his New Yorker blog

October 23, 2007
Ultra Brite
Soon, I will post responses to the e-mails I’ve received in reference to my article on musical miscegenation. This will probably go on all week, with a short break for an elaborated review of “In Rainbows.” (This one-(link)- was written after only brief exposure to the album and cannot stand as my review of record.) The discussion will end on Friday with some good-natured, articulate, and exacting e-mails I received from a member of one of the bands discussed in the piece.

SWLABR

More discussion on blogs and in comments on blogs. More post-Slate column comments from Carl Wilson, and Wayne Marshall has weighed in:

http://www.zoilus.com/

I am not yet convinced by Wilson's theory that today's indie-rock is more upperclass than earlier generations of indie, and that hardcore punk was more class mixing (I think punk and indie has always mainly been middle and upper middle class with little to no change).

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=205
October 24th, 2007
Global Ghettotech vs. Indie Rock: The Contempo Cartography of Hip

You can tell whitey-designed planes. they don't loop and roll as well. too much emphasis on climb-rate and wing-loading.

african planes got syncopated propellers
have a hard time keepin track of the fellers

With this piece Frere-Jones has demonstrated himself every bit the racist—for buying into this pathetically regressive set of ideas—as any 1950s Southern preacher who decried white interest in animalistic, vulgar race music. That Frere-Jones’ delineates and fetishizes the other—this carnal, black backbeat, this jungle sexuality he insists on placing in contradiction to cerebral, “oblique,” “flat-footed,” white rock—should damn him alongside those who delineate and vilify the other; both visions assign the same traits to blackness.
http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/10/paint-it-black-1.html

snap

Perhaps this new book will help lead ILM out of the wilderness on this confusing issue.

ok, THAT, of all the responses, is the one I most want SFJ to publicly address. (xpost)

For real though.

HOOS

Dave Allen (Gang of Four) responds:

http://www.pampelmoose.com/mspeaks/?p=1094

I guess.

http://infinity.cos.edu/art/strong/module/apprec/unit4/livalb4c/photo6.jpg
L.H.O.O.S.

You know one thing I was thinking about, since re-reading this thing in the actual print new yorker, was how he had to stop singing because he couldn't uhmm... find a style of singing that was informed by both black and white music but wholly unique, which is something Mick Jagger and Prince were both able to do.

And I wondered if this had anything to do with him not at all being attached to his sexuality, or expressing anything from his gut, or his entire band maybe being some intellectual sort of affair, all about putting together all his influences in some way that would be "interesting"

For some reason this sort of bothered me the most

Yeah, it's a cliché, but the appropriate lament is not "I couldn't sound black" or "I couldn't sound white" or "I couldn't sound like Elvis" or "I couldn't sing like Smokey" but "I couldn't make it sound good, I couldn't sing convincingly, I couldn't find my voice."