Indie Guilt: C/D

and if i ever meet any of them it'll be a hard fuckin kick in the teeth for that anti-josh bullshit

Jim's "B-b-b-but everything's indie" argument is probably the most tenable I've come across because 'indie' is such a meaningless, know- it-when-you-see-it category. He hears bootlegging as indie, I don't, who's right? Who knows! It's like Jess' argument on some previous thread that all indie is basically pop anyway (Melissa called me on my doing similar swerves once and I wish she'd posted a thread). So why still use words like "indie" and "pop"? Because these big overarching macro-genres are still things that people recognise themselves in. I reckon.

ladies and gentlemen, 300 new posts in less than 12 hours. i'm going to bed.

Yeah, the Josh stuff is bullshit. You get this whole spiel about how on their bulletin board they'd never criticise somebody for their music taste, oh goodness no, they'd spend half a day turning a thread into a nasty personal attack instead.

NOTHING CAN STOP US NOW

Never pegged you as a Moby fan.

or maybe it was SAINT ETIENNE!!!!!

Jay Z and Other Throw downs look out.
Intense. Fucking Intense. Im just glad I dont know any of that other board or folks like it irl.

dammit this is funny:

Rx@C
Re: ILM is now password protected (JOSH: please read)
Wed May 29 22:18:43 2002
65.184.16.82

Ethan (the "funny guy" of ILM) threatened to kick all of your teeth in. I think he lives in LA (where I'm headed this weekend). I think he's in a new wave band (I think Oingo Boingo covers?), will have to check this out! If it doesn't work out, I could email him my address in case he comes up to SF.

btw his next post corrected his error but i still love the idea of ethan singing oingo boingo songs!

rather than by positing an inclusive, uniting "third way" in which the virtues of good pop and good indie are

Is this an 'indie' attitude rather than a 'pop' attitude? Let me explain...

I don't think of 'indie' or 'pop' as types of music, but as attitudes to music and listening to music. Listening to something because it's 'good' = indie; listening to something because you like it = pop; having to think about whether you like something or not, or what kind of music it is, etc. = definitely indie (ie the whole point of ILM). But because I'm not sure there is such a thing as a pure unmediated reaction to music (pure instinctive liking) that would mean that there is no 'true' pop fan (especially not the infamous critical model eg. 14 yr old girls): everyone is 'indie' to some extent.

Which certainly makes *me* indie, however much I like pop music, and the same probably goes for the rest of ILM, and anyone who can even be bothered to argue about this.

There's a separate issue about the insularity of particular scenes, which is I think a misleading way of thinking about the problem. Scenes or particular groups of fans do not exist as such -- they are posited, either as the subject of a proposition ('we true fans of X') or as its object ('those bastard fans of Y'), and thus are only constituted polemically: 'which side are you on boys?'

sincerity & irony = equal affectations. // And only indiekidz care about EITHER!

Sterling said this and it is my favourite piece of this thread so far!

anna rose is 13 alex

**that would mean that there is no 'true' pop fan**

Yes there is

1) Kids under 9.

2)The vast majority of the general non-music obsessed public who just hear stuff on the radio and buy <5 CDs a year. They'll instinctively like/dislike a record without knowing if they're supposed to like it or whether listening to it will be 'good for them'. Even if people have heard that a record is meant to be good (here : good = sells a lot) they feel under pressure to like it if they don't.

Doh! **they DON'T feel under pressure to like it if they don't**

Isn't part of the issue, though, the fact that indie is the most self- depreciating of the musical genres? In all other forms of music, the guy gets the girl at the end of the song. In indie, she goes off and shags one of the school football team instead. Indie kids mock themselves, which is a pretty unique trait amongst music fans (try leafing through an issue of Rock Sound or The Source or Jockey Slut, and finding people who can take a joke there), so while it looks like indie is denigrated, it's only because it's being denigrated by its very fans.

In all other forms of music, the guy gets the girl at the end of the song.

Not a big blues fan, then? ;) (Or soul for that matter)

Ah, in blues, the girl has already gone though. Yeah, that covers up that flaw in my arguement...

What about in metal? Doesn't the devil / plague / evil corporation get both of them?

Yeah, or Gollum and the Evil One?

"sincerity & irony = equal affectations. // And only indiekidz care about EITHER!

Sterling said this and it is my favourite piece of this thread so far!

Why? it's just a stupid kiss-off, and not a particularly clever one at that.

Cos it fits with Alex's conception of indie as original sin, Dare - "pop" listening in his system is a prelapsarian state of innocence, and all listening from the moment self-awareness as a listener begins is "indie". Sincerity and Irony are equal affectations because they're both fig-leaves according to Alex's model, assumed positions which conceal the same condition. The problem with his system is - what use is it, given that as he admits the "pop" listener cannot exist (i.e. we are all Fallen)?

Brilliantly put, Tom. So: "pop" is therefore "what you like without thinking about it" under this conception...which is a hopelessly romanticized vision of listening, as all response to art passes through several filters before the listener/reader/viewer responds...ain't it so? And therefore pop=the Loch Ness Monster

Oh, I can see that. Guess I was thinking too literally this morning, 'sincerity' and 'irony' in general rather than applied to music & listeners.

yes I know this is the case -- hence I wrote "I'm not sure there is such a thing as a pure unmediated reaction to music". So *pure* pop is an impossibility. Which doesn't mean pop isn't a useful term, especially since we're stuck with it. So on the model I was pondering, indie and pop become not entities ('I like pop, you like indie') but poles towards which people's consumption of music tends. I would be very wary of positing 'pop' as a natural condition of music consumption, which is why I totally disagree with Dr C.

So you can consume Destiny's Child in an indie way. eg. Simon Reynolds claiming that 'Writing on the Wall' is better than 'Survivor' even though he appears to be liking it in a pop way, since the reason is mass-produced machine pop vs. auteur theory rockism: Beyonce produces too much of 'Survivor' for his taste. At the same time we can consume Piano Magic in a pop way as well.

I think I wanted to suggest that there is a genuine tension between pop and indie ways of listening to music, since one is evaluative and tends to dismiss other music (not necessarily on genre grounds) while the other is more open and doesn't necessarily categorize at all (caring about whether something is pop or dance or metal or not = indie.)

Listening to something because it's 'good' = indie; listening to something because you like it = pop; having to think about whether you like something or not, or what kind of music it is, etc. = definitely indie

Yahoo Serious Festival.

("I know those words, but that sign doesn't make sense.")

i.e.

1) Setting up "pop" and "indie" as the two poles just doesn't make any sense to me, especially because indie is NOT at all the ultimate example of "Listening to something because it's 'good'";

2) "caring about whether something is pop or dance or metal or not = indie" -- this sentence bewilders me because it has so little to do with how I listen to/think about music, though that depends on what you mean by caring, i.e. I care if it helps me better understand the piece of music and how it relates to other pieces of music and what its primary signifiers are, inasmuch as a genre label can be handy shorthand for identifying a completely different mindset/mode of listening you need to adopt to be receptive to that which is being communicated by the work.

Anyway, in my original. statement, for "good pop and good indie" read "good music"; the terms of the equation were dictated by the topic of discussion, not by any belief on my part that those constitute poles of musical discourse.

mark s said on his le Tigre thread: 'i am sure i will enjoy it becuz i like everything'. This is what I mean by pop.

We all make decisions about what we listen to and what we don't. The distinction I'm attempting to play with is between a) consuming music in a pop fashion; b) consuming it in an indie fashion. In each case the kinds of criteria for the decision are different:

a) 'because I hear it'

b) 'because it's good'

Are these different enough to make the point?

NB I'm not trying to have a go at *anyone*. I'm only playing with the conceptual distinction to see if I can make something useful out of it. But this doesn't seem that far from the issue raised by the original poster, however, insofar as his problem was: what are your criteria for choosing what you listen to (or claim to listen to): honest liking vs. ironic posturing.

"And once again what the hell is wrong with that? I mean, why wouldn't people who like indie like music from other genres that has affinities with indie?"

The beef I've had for a while with the indie press (and due to their efforts to be like them, some indie fans) is that it takes its liking of other genres as an indication of the universality and objectivity of its gaze. Perhaps part of the problem is caused by the vagueness of the term "indie", which in many people's minds is a qualitative tag as much as a stylistic one.

That's one way in which Pitchfork or NME's music coverage differs from, say, The Source or Mixmag or Boomkat - there's a heavy connotation that what's been covered is "the good stuff" rather than any particular style. So when they branch outside indie-proper, it's always to the other "good stuff" - but what that quality is exactly is left largely undefined, so the perhaps unintended implication is that the non-indie music being covered is the best stuff on its own genre's terms, as well as on indie's terms.

The "indie = the center" image works well here: rather than simply exploring the borders of adjacent styles (whose very proximity causes their characteristics to blur with indie's) as per N*tsuh's formulation, the indie press imagine indie as a sun around which other styles orbit, lit up only when their faces are turned towards indie, and cold and dark when facing away. Without indie, these styles are shapeless forms of rock, and it is only indie's energy (or, rather, its values and qualities) which gives them life, growth, meaning. Some stylistic planets are further away than others and thus receive less light overall ("chart-pop" = Pluto), but nonetheless each planet receives light on a portion of its face, and therefore its artists can be rated from one to ten in terms of indiefication (eg. Missy beats nu-Shakira; Basement Jaxx beats Todd Terry).

On a related note, the only time I've been really, genuinely pissed off with Pitchfork is when I read its "The Best Records of 2000" list - which made no effort whatsoever to admit either a) its subjectivity or b) the fact that 95% of the records were indie. Whereas while dance magazine album lists are invariably shitty, at least there's acknowledgement that, yes, it's a list of dance albums.

Of course you could very well make a parallel and equally damning "pop = the center" formulation. I haven't come up with a good reason why doing it with indie is worse. Someone come to my rescue.

There isn't really a good answer, Tim. I am probably a pop = the center person. It depends whether "indie" is something you notice musically or something you notice socially - this is what the Indiephilia thread was meant to be about, an attempt to define what's good about indie beyond the fact of its independence.

**So on the model I was pondering, indie and pop become not entities ('I like pop, you like indie') but poles towards which people's consumption of music tends**

Yes, that's clear. But..

** would be very wary of positing 'pop' as a natural condition of music consumption, which is why I totally disagree with Dr C**

Then, I'm not sure I understand why you disagree. (I'm prob. being fick)

Unless.... you mean that the 'general public' that I described cannot be considered as *fans*. But surely they listen in a 'pop' or 'close to pop' way?

I only disagreed because I thought you meant that 9 yr olds and the 5CD/yr buyers were 'true' pop fans.

If you meant 'close to pop' then probably we agree (but I think the difference between 'true' and 'close to' is vital which => over- reaction, poss.).

The problem I'm caught in here is that I'm not happy with any of the terms: I was playing with them to try to find out what I thought they meant, or if they could be made more useful. In a piece I wrote for the last FT birthday collection, I argued for a way of thinking about music which I called 'pop' and defined 'against the logic of the record collector, the Mojo reader and the indie-kid, the connoisseur.' So clearly indie is an arbitrary target, determined by the context we're in -- 'ie why does ILM pretend not to like indie'.

Example: In a couple of places in _The Differend_ Lyotard proclaims himself to be pro 'philosophy' and against 'intellectuals'. By intellectuals he means those who assert the hegemony of one phrase regime (roughly: way of thinking about the world) over all the others. Philosophy would be finding ways of thinking which don't do this. Lyotard does not claim to be a philosopher, though the implication may be that his book is an attempt at philosophy. Elsewhere he compares the way of thinking he's looking for with a child's way of looking at the world. He doesn't mean let's do away with adult thought etc., but take on what we (adults) think of as children's responses, even though they may bear little relation to how a child actually responds. (I'm elaborating slightly uncertainly at this point.)

I'm not attacking indie ways of listening -- and certainly not claiming to be anything other than an indie listener myself -- but wondering if there are other ways we can think about, by pushing the terms beyond the way they seem to have been being used so far on the thread. Whatever kind of way of thinking about music leads to the original post, I can do without

This thread sucks. How can so many people say so little?

That's what's so great about it. All style and no substance hurrah.

What, no "ILM? More like IL-LAME!"? 'Cause considering some of the comments here and on that other bored that's what I keep expecting to see.

i've decided the reason i like pop music is because it's free. huzzah radio!

(also, if they played indie on the radio, it would likely make me sad and not listen to it. although i could just turn it off, which is another joy of pop, hurrah!)

nicole, you might also be interested to know that rap is just crap, minus a c.

The only time I really preferred, or tried to prefer, music because it was not commercially oriented, was during a period in junior high and high school. I still have respect for artists who works independently, outside of the more capital intensive music world, but I feel under no obligation to support them, to like their music, or to not prefer more commercial music. If I do like the music, then I may offer them extra support.

I don't think listening to music because it's good should be equated with indie. This word is really being stretched unmercifully.

DeRayMi, hope you weren't offended by me using you as an example upthread. the idea was to pick someone who very clearly enjoys types of music outside of 'indie' (whatever that is), the idea of people pretending to like other types of music over indie was bizarre in the extreme, and your music interests made this even more clear. my post was a bit clumsy, partly because this entire thread is an exercise in clumsyness (particularly my own posts)

we should contract it, like jess's pronunciation key: to "ND"

because, as all know, i am ilx's epitome of pith.

I haven't come up with a good reason why doing it with indie is worse

Err okay this is the only thing I was trying to get at above. Not that the complaints aren't worth discussing -- it's just that I don't see these complaints applying to indie any more than they do to any other genres. In fact I see them applying less to indie. In fact I think two things are in operation: (a) we're all just more annoyed with it coming from indie, because talking-about-music-online means exposure to lots of indie-kid posturing, and (b) indie is the primary genre that rhetorically tries or even just pretends to look out to other genres, so it's the only hand reaching out to be slapped back and criticized for doing it wrong.

What's being criticized is what Tim points out above: the indie rhetorical stance that indie fans are critical and discerning listeners who "like what's good," as opposed to just people who happen to like indie. Obviously that's not true. But I don't see anyone offering a very good argument that it's not closer to true of indie -- which in my U.S. conceptions of it, in terms of what the full-on "indie kids"* around me actually listen to, is a wide and stylistically varied territory -- than most other genres.

My point is that the discernment stuff - cherrypicking each genre - isn't very important compared to just listening to lots of different stuff (since people disagree on 'what's best' anyway). And so I still think my cousin-Leila-and-the-NOW-album argument holds perfectly well.

* Full-on meaning not the normalish twentysomethings who quite like Wilco and the Flaming Lips, but people who actually self-identify as indie and "care" about indie: these people will talk mercilessly on and on about Kelly Hogan for as long as they will about Aphex Twin, Os Mutantes as much as Fugazi, and I don't see as wide of a net being cast by fans of many other genres. The only difference here is that the indie pickings from any given genre are united by a particular Quality, which as I'm saying above: does that not actually reinforce the "I like what's good" indie rhetoric that the listening is pulling from a relatively wide net of genres in its search for this Quality? This indie Quality that's really what the indie kids mean when they say "good," even if they don't always realize that?

Granted, Tom, chart-pop does basically the same thing -- it draws from different genres things that are usually connected by a "pop" Quality. (Although I might nitpick that things tend to converge as they hit the charts: songwise things get more and more reduced to a particular type of pop ballad, only with the arrangements and the intensity of the beats varying.)

indie discourse = bad, because it is defined by what it leaves out rather than what it includes.

pop discourse = bad, because it is defined by what it leaves out rather than what it includes.

avant discourse = dad.

I think it converges more on the US charts - my point was only that listening to lots of different things is dead easy. I can't remember why this point needed to be made really, this thread is getting a bit unwieldy now.

"the arrangements and the intensity of the beats" - in other words we're back to songwriting vs production hooray! (Actually N///tsuh I listened to a Death Cab For Cutie song for the first time today and was reminded of how indie songwriting's seemingly-arbitrary tempo changes were one of the things that really put me off it in the first place.)

To answer Tim's query: I think that the real point here is 1st that not everybody does this. Some people say "I like this, here are my reasons for doing so, I understand other people like other things for other reasons" (viz in the extreme, Ned) and therefore might have a particular band of tastes for particular reasons but don't pretend otherwise.

2nd choice of genre is choice of attitude/worldview/ethos and sometimes choice to INVESTIGATE a particular a/w/e. There needs to be some recognition that the charts aren't everything, but are an inescapable natural center of social consensus and contentestation.

I think that both my Hannah Marcus and Tiffany articles for f/t were attempts to grapple with this, and that my Tweet article was by way of dealing with associated concerns of "authenticity" in art.