Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

Well then they were around -- the point, though, when I originally mentioned that, was decent turnover in the smallish World/Africa section there

lol bell_labs

bellolabs

at this point I'd guess they've made it their business to know a bit about it, even just to avoid looking dumb in interviews.
-- nabisco

The post, "I Hate Blogging," is about a Harlem hiphop gear shop (it's near Marcus Garvey Memorial Park), and offers us a way to understand the surging popularity of Vampire Weekend. Out of all the baggy and sporty items in the hiphop store, this is what amazes Koenig: The jackets that have logos of Ivy League universities. Hanging between two fluted, Doric pillars are jackets for Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia (the school attended by the four members of Vampire Weekend). "What's going on here?" asks Koenig. "Is this Bill Cosby's dream come true? Academic snobbery supplanting 'bling' culture as the pinnacle of prestige for the young hiphop listener? I truly have no idea."

Mudede's Stranger article

Then again, maybe that's been discussed to death. I've been away...

Is The Stranger dude too dumb to understand that the presence of the Ivy League items in the store might be the most interesting item to an Ivy Leaguer writing for Ivy Leaguers, or that the non-Ivy League items in the store (presumably for non-Division-I-AA teams) are more, you know, obvious and not worth comment? No, he just wants to tell himself he's better than the Ivy League dude wiht the blowing-up band. Though he probably doesn't actually know where 'Marcus Garvey Memorial Park' is.

- Haha I just ran out to grab coffee and they were playing this in the cafe
- Bell is funny but also dead on: the way I enjoy these guys' songs is not particularly different from the way I enjoy various blippy synth-pop acts with Casio-preset sounds (see above re: tidiness and simplicity)
- Haha Contenderizer you don't see anything at all interesting in what he's pointing out in that post? It's kinda all the more fascinating coming from someone with the opposite set of blinders (i.e., the luxury of considering such things "academic snobbery")

I would put $$$ on the proposition that bell labs has heard a fraction of the 'afropop' that Ko3nig has

gabbneb - I don't think Stranger dude is suffering from anything like dumbness. I think he's genuinely amazed at what he perceives to be the irony-blindness of VW dude.

nabisco - I do think the original post is interesting. But I also see some discontinuous tension between VW's African appropriations and Koenig's wide-eyed surprise at the idea that black kids might be borrowing Ivy League status symbols. In other words, I empathize with Mudede's distaste, even if I don't exactly share it.

This not to condemn VW weekend or anything.

I think he's genuinely amazed at what he perceives to be the irony-blindness of VW dude.

yeah, I get that; I think that if it isn't faux-naivete, it's just stupidity

I wonder if he's met the former Columbia Daily Spectator editor who does, you know, real reporting for the Stranger

This is a whole other issue, but (a) I'm not entirely convinced Koenig's being irony-blind there, plus (b) I mostly find it fascinating because the blinkers he is definitely wearing are tied VERY closely to half of the reasons people would later have for hating his band

I'm not entirely convinced Koenig's being irony-blind there

the blinkers he is definitely wearing are tied VERY closely to half of the reasons people would later have for hating his band

Anyway, I'd be surprised if "rich kids" complaints had much traction here. The Strokes got a lot of that cuz their privilege seemed incongruous with the rock/punk ethos they superficially projected. But I'd figure VW kind of immunized themselves, A) by not positioning themselves as rockers and, B) by making privilege a big part of their identity.

what is his background?

we've been here before

what are these blinkers, pray tell, nabisco?

I might get jumped on for this, and it's a bit of a vague idea, but the blinders I do think he's wearing would seem to be based on the following (and this is talking strictly socially, leaving aside the issue of money/education -- and note that that particular "leaving aside" is another related blinder here):

- the annoying sense shared by lots of young, middle-class white Americans (including LOADS of ILXors, annoyingly, all the TIME) that the pop-culture / social cachet of black Americans is higher/cooler/better/"realer" than theirs (as often expressed in, e.g., calling things "white" in a pejorative sense)

- a related surprise that anyone with that cultural placement would possibly aspire to one of HIS social signifiers as a "nerdy" college kid who will one day get called a smug preppy dork by people on the internet who'd probably identify the Harlemite as cooler/better/"realer"

- the (basically noble) egalitarianism upper-middle-class people are raised with where they learn and believe that distinctions about whether you went to an Ivy or not are snobbish and unrelated to your intelligence or value as a human being

The main irony in this that interests me is that his blindness/confusion on the issue is based on the EXACT same precepts that animate lots of the people who call him a smug, privileged rich kid! In fact, one would assume that it's overexposure to those arguments -- coming, as they almost always do, from young, middle-class white men -- that could lead someone to walk into a Harlem clothing store and be surprised that there's any social cachet being put on Ivy League paraphernalia.

Clarification: Yes, I'm saying that particular egalitarianism is a blinder, if you walk around thinking of it as a self-evident truth, and not realizing that the egalitarianism is a corrective to the fact that such things still DO matter in ways they probably shouldn't

(Same as if -- by analogy -- you walked around being surprised by racism because you'd been nobly taught to think of all people as equals)

man luckily we didn't have any of these complicated race/class issues at nyu!

barnard? more like BARNYARD OINK OINK AMIRITE

Anyone who 'calls things "white" in a pejorative sense' is an idiot, at best.

the annoying sense shared by lots of young, middle-class white Americans (including LOADS of ILXors, annoyingly, all the TIME) that the pop-culture / social cachet of black Americans is higher/cooler/better/"realer" than theirs

hunh?!

I think the problem here is you're envisioning a different store than I am. I see just yr average sporting goods store, which if it has paraphernalia for any college, has stuff for schools you see playing sports on tv. No social cachet of any kind involved.

and I think the source of the confusion is The presumably Seattleite Stranger dude's game of telephone where he transmogrifies a store in exotic Harlem into a cool hiphop store. He's the one doing the social cachet-ing (along with the 'Marcus Garvey park' reference), not Koenig.

No one sees Harvard playing sports on TV. That's not what Harvard is or means. Harvard means wealth and academic/intellectual accomplishment. To wear a Harvard jacket is to claim association with those things. Especially if one didn't, you know, actually go to Harvard.

Plus, the average sporting goods stores in NY don't (or didn't, in 2006) carry Harvard jackets. "Hip-hop gear shops" are a totally different animal, though there's a lot of crossover.

jesus god this awful thread

Remember that Koenig himself describes the store not as a sporting goods place, but an "urban wear" store (quotes his). "They sell the usual assortment of Roc-a-wear, Girbaud, Akademiks, Enyce, etc. In addition, they also sell a complete line of Ivy League varsity-style jackets."

i can't tell if you're contending with me, but you're saying the same thing i am, xxp

- the (basically noble) egalitarianism upper-middle-class people are raised with where they learn and believe that distinctions about whether you went to an Ivy or not are snobbish and unrelated to your intelligence or value as a human being

how is this (completely basic truth) a "blinder"? you think ivy-leaguers are better human beings?

xxp, ok, but I still think the Seattleite dude is imagining a different sort of store/social cachet than Koenig is

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/guan/files/2007/12/30rock.jpg

"I got a squeezer from an Indian girl on a bunk bed, so I think I got the whole Harvard experience."

'the Ivy League' is something you learn about from tv, yes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NyzQwwO4Os

Umm hi banriquit, I just said:

Yes, I'm saying that particular egalitarianism is a blinder, if you walk around thinking of it as a self-evident truth, and not realizing that the egalitarianism is a corrective to the fact that such things still DO matter in ways they probably shouldn't

(Same as if -- by analogy -- you walked around being surprised by racism because you'd been nobly taught to think of all people as equals)

Yes, it is a basic truth, but if you're so comfortable with that truth that you're surprised by any kind of aspirationalism or social status being placed on such things, then you are missing part of the picture. (That's what blinders do to horses: keep them focused on where they're headed by keeping them from seeing what's off to the sides of it)

i'm not surprised by aspirationalism at all, and i don't think it's wrongheaded exactly. but you're talking about 'social status', and implicitly wealth there, rather than value as a human being or intelligence. i think a bigger blinder here would be the idea the ivy league stands for human virtue and the disinterested play of intelligence. but this is off-topic of VW's fundamental averageness.

again, I didn't read him as necessarily being surprised at cachet being placed on such things (status and aspirationalism are also separate concepts - you can wear a team jacket without aspiring to be part of the team), but at the inclusion of an ivy league 'vibe' within the roc-a-wear, e.g.-vibed store

how many dudes in Harlem wearing North Face jackets in the late 90s were into mountain-climbing?

jesus god this awful thread band

-- banriquit, Monday, April 28, 2008 5:39 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

mountain climbing, electric guitar, etc...

you went there, not me

"You" didn't mean you, Banriquit, it means Koenig.

Also what I'm saying includes "wealth" as a part of "Ivy League" if you want it to be -- i.e., it's a fairly large blinder if your mental egalitarianism about wealth and social status leads to your being surprised that other people care about projecting wealth to gain social status

(I just don't happen to think that's precisely the issue Koenig seems to be having there, and anyway we should probably avoid psychoanalyzing the hell out of a couple sentences)

Irony isn't part of the equation here ... it's simple, straight forward, and honest. These kids are 4th generation Ivy Leaguers and that's the image they work with. Big whoop; whether you dig it or not is up to u. The Strokes were a different situation; they had the whole punk/up-from-the-street image thing, but they got to where they were with the help of their big wig Manhattan socialite parents. That's not exactly new, though.

Where did the "4th generation" come from, Mr. Stanton?

I don't know, I read one of those interviews where the dude described his Ivy League lineage. 2nd or 3rd maybe. Or I hallucinated the whole fucking thing, which is the most likely case.

(I agree with most of the rest of that, by the way: they act and play about like the semi-nerdy Columbia kids they are, and don't much seem to be pretending to be anything else. I find this refreshing and kinda novel.)

xpost Yeah that number just shrunk by two legacies, innit

innit

anyone in ldn going to this? http://www.nme.com/news/vampire-weekend/36514

New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, tipped to be one of the biggest new stars of 2008. Pic: Jo McCaughey

got the record and am really liking some of the guitar lines. some of this is really nice and catchy and tight