Indie Guilt: C/D

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tim in calling anthony a mentalist shockah!

― jess, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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.

― nabisco%%, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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.

― Phil, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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.

― alext, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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.

― alext, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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.

― Tom, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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

― DeRayMi, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

god how did this thread get so BORING