Indie Guilt: C/D

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.

Wait, dad?

No one gets by him folx!

Wait, folx?

DeRayMi, hope you weren't offended by me using you as an example upthread.

No, not at all.

my post was a bit clumsy, partly because this entire thread is an exercise in clumsyness (particularly my own posts)

Apparently my post was clumsy too, if it left you thinking I might have been offended. (And you are right about the thread in general.) I guess I was just trying to sort through to what extent I am or have ever been an "indie" listener. At one point I kind of was in an eltitist sense (though my listening wasn't particularly focused on rock), and at another point I listened to a lot of indie, though I was open to other things. Now I hardly listen to any indie. That's all. If anything, at times I have fallen back on the indie stuff I've listened to in order to justify the pop things I've listened to. ("It's okay for me to listen to Dionne Warwick, I also listen to Coil.") I think I'm finally arriving at a place where I almost never think that way. Still, something similar creeps in: it's okay that I like some salsa romantica, since I also like salsa dura out of Colombia. But in a way I would worry if I only listened to soft/easy listening music and not anything with an edge to it. But that's a different issue. I just hope I don't feel that listening to Sun Ra's "Other Planes of There" somehow atones (a/tones) for listening to Frankie Ruiz.

I think it converges more on the US charts -- This is dead true. And possibly non-coincidentally indie diverges a lot more in the US sense; to the point, really, where "pop" things off of the UK charts often fall under the "indie" umbrella here.

in other words we're back to songwriting vs production hooray - - I suppose this is sort of true, but what I was trying to get at is the North-American chart phenomenon where the same sort of power- ballad mode is at the heart of big singles from any genre: a "country" Shania Twain hit is a "Latin" Shakira hit is a "rock" Incubus hit is an "r&b" Ginuwine ballad. Possibly bad examples, but in a whole lot of cases I don't think of it as "production" so much as ... well, something like artists covering one another in different genres. The same cake, different frosting: thankfully this only applies to a certain type of hit, and the new modes of actual production for hip-hop and r&b have cut through it pretty drastically.

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. -- Err Death Cab for Cutie do do that quite a bit (although I've always liked to think well, as they are apparently the last and most conventional indie band in my head to surpass their own conventionality by executing the conventions really, really, really effectively). It's the (post) post- rock thing: they want to be all loose and mercurial. Actually Tom if you are still up for "comfort-indie" We Have the Facts... should be where it's at.

"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."

No I don't think it is, N*tsuh. You were comparing liking indie as a style to liking other styles. I'm comparing using indie as a framework to listen to all types of music versus using pop - where indie and pop are basically the *only* frameworks. I have consciously and unconsciously tried v. hard to use dance music as a framework to listen to all types of music but it's a) very hard and b) very rare, not least because there's less of a sense of universality to dance's qualities and values. In that sense we're talking about pop and indie as modes of reception vs pop and indie as styles. It would be cool if we *could* talk about dance music and heavy metal and country as modes of reception, quite apart from the value of breaking the binary opposition (Sterling is this sort of thing what you're referring to?).

My question, N*tsuh, was more: is there a concrete reason why trying to listen for "pop" values in anything is better than trying to listen for "indie" values. I think there *is*. I just can't articulate it yet (i know i know, no approval before delivery).

"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?"

Yes, but I don't think listening for one Quality, or a v. small jumble of connected Qualities, is a good thing. Perhaps the reason why a POP mode of reception is better is that it's open to a multiplicity of Qualities, open even to inventing new ones on the spot.

nabisco: you are so very very dead wrong about Shakira & shania & ginuwine having much in common. I see ginuwine as modern r&b at its most dissolute and textural (not to mention which his 1st two were timbaland productions and rhyhthmically their own thang anyway -- I mean.. "Pony" as prototypical of anything?).

Everytime I hear the Shakira single I first think its a celine production, but shania has what I'd consider the closest to tight conventional pop of any of the artists, all hook and chorus and mechanical precision of delivery, and at the same time maintains her own image & character as an authentic performer -- in the great American tradition its all show.

On Tim's point, I think ppl do turn metal and country into centers, viz Rock and the Pop Narcotic for exmple but its probably just a much harder mentality for those of this board to connect to.

"On Tim's point, I think ppl do turn metal and country into centers, viz Rock and the Pop Narcotic for exmple but its probably just a much harder mentality for those of this board to connect to."

Could we get away with expanding "those of this board" to "the broader critical dialogue"? I think you're right, but I also think that Carducci is quite a ways from the front-and-center critically for a very clear reason.

Which critics? Have you read CMW (country music weekly)? I have.

Of course not Sterling I am not a mentalist remember.

tim in calling anthony a mentalist shockah!

Is there a concrete reason why trying to listen for "pop" values in anything is better than trying to listen for "indie" values? I think there *is*.

But the only "pop values" anyone's suggested on the receptive end are that you're not "trying" or "listening" for anything at all. Also I completely reject the assertion that "pop" listening isn't searching for a set of particular Qualities just as much as "indie" listening is, either in reception or in style. In fact I might even reject the idea that there is any difference between pop listening and indie listening -- difference in the rhetoric used to talk about it, and differences in the flows of the two cultures that lead people to value different things at different times, but not differences in the listening itself.

The differences between the way most people listen to pop and the way they listen to indie is MUCH MUCH SMALLER than the way they'd listen to pop vs. classical, or indie vs. straight-ahead jazz, etc., etc. Even if we talk about the lowest-common-denominator listener, I think this is still true.

And what's with this "using [x] as a framework to view all music"? I simply don't buy the things that are being said about "indie listening". Most people I know who are deeply into classical music have most of the traits ascribed to the mythical indie listener in far larger quantities. (If anything, my initial experiences with indie gave me the impression that it seemed less discriminating and more omnivorous.)

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

Yep, pretty much.

Re: stretching the meaning of 'indie'

On the one hand, yes, I agree that 'indie' is an arbitrary label for these -- fetishistic? rockist? -- tendencies.

But it is also as good a label as any other.

And it certainly carries some of the associations in question: ie. implied set of valued traits including authenticity, innovation, experimentation, reverence for tradition, artistic expression, resistance to the hegemony of the mainstream, etc.

And please don't anyone feel defensive. I for one am not trying to attribute the 'indie' tendency to each and every person who listens to indie music. I'm interested in it as a phenomenon in music as such, which could be ascribed to classical fans, hip-hop fans, metalheads etc... We could switch the terms and talk about indie kids listening to their music in a hip-hop purist kind of way and it would make no difference to the argument.

But the use of the term was prescribed in advance by the original post which implies that people on ILM are ashamed to be into indie and therefore pretent to like other forms of music.

Yeah the words "indie" and "pop" have become labels for what Alex and Tim are talking about, rather than the things theyre talking about being actual descriptions of "indie" and "pop". This is why all these big spectacular ILM theory threads wear me out in the end - because the actual experiences of people listening to indie and not-indie music get lost in the fog.

I didn't get the impression that the original poster was using "indie" in this broad sense. I kind of give up though.

god how did this thread get so BORING

have you noticed its always about 370 posts in when threads begin to lose their zest

It's only boring because you haven't used the wigga tag for quite some time now. That'll get things going again.

oh shit i forgot this thread contains THE WIGGA TAG! BEST THREAD EVER!!!

da wigga tag is da bomb diggy y0!!

whatz up homes ya digging on my wigga tag itz off da heezy!!

ITZ DA SHIZNIT!!

are we at 400 yet??

i mean uh 'iz we?' /wigga

oh will THIS stop the out of control wigga??

END WIGGA

sorry for html fuckups

dammit i mean FOULups /wigga /wigga / wigga

Freaky Wigga

FMMB > Faked My Moronick Boringness

nath my wigga whats up!!

Dude, I went to this Belle & Sebastian show and all I got was this pink cardigan.

Do you like my tight weatah, ethan?

youre just spittin wicked randomness now

sorry i'm listening to the jungle bros record and stuff, does anybody wanna buy this cd off me because i hate it

j beez wit the remedy i mean