Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

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

a bit slow on the uptake with this one. i only just heard it. like what i hear so far, but assumed they were a british band, and was pleased that the uk could still at least feebly muster up a semi-interesting guitar band. now i'm disappointed, as there's plenty other stuff coming out of NYC that is better than this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/03/popandrock

"The Hold Steady's Craig Finn is not shy about stating his literary intentions. 'I consider myself a writer as well as a songwriter,' he says. 'The further we get on from the birth of rock'n'roll, the more people who have ambitions to be a writer feel that rock'n'roll is a worthy art form to express themselves in.'"

^^^a certain ilx poster better turn up and apologise for that article asap

American music is enjoying a golden moment. Literary bands, with songs that revel in intricate language, complex narratives and cinematic plot twists, are on the rise.

!!!! (Actually, I think this is true.)

'Becoming a rock star is something more graduates with literature degrees do than before,' says Benjamin Kunkel, novelist and co-editor of the New York journal n+1, which blends literary theory with pop culture. 'Rock'n'roll, which used to be for people under 30, is something you listen to from cradle to grave these days, and that puts new pressure on lyrics to be meaningful and intelligent.'

ugh x infinity

Anyone who considers serial commas "an obscure point of grammar" is not someone I trust to think about what's "literary" and what's not.

But I already feel like I've spent too much of my life trying to assure both music people and lit music that the judgments they map onto the other just Do Not Work and are not as interesting as they seem, so maybe we can refer here to one of those Believer music-issue threads and have done with it.

Probably having a strongly held opinion about the use of the Oxford Comma, though, is. I assume most English speakers don't know about the difference between using a comma before the 'and' or after the 'and.' And especially don't know why you'd be pro-one or the other. (Personally, I love the Oxford comma. That's the way I was taught to do it in Grade School, and it helps remove ambiguities. 'I like to eat pizza, fish and chips,' V 'I like to eat pizza, fish, and chips.')

^^^a certain ilx poster better turn up and apologise for that article asap

I believe board policy states that I only have to apologize if people are forced to look at my picture, so I'm golden here

WTF

The Brooklyn band are noticeably short on the sort of lyrical refrains that make you want to shout along and throw beer over your friends.

^^^^ Unlike, say, The Shins or Death Cab For Cutie. Hooligans.

New song Ottoman is pretty good. A lot calmer than the new stuff I've heard live. It's out there now...

Their cover of Everywhere is great, it just gives you the song straight up and finds a few nice dynamics in the arrangements. I never realised that song was as good without the vocoder, which is why I thought it was good.

They played a couple of new songs in Sheffield last night, but I don't think "Ottoman" was one of them. The second of them was particularly heavy on that ringing 1980s hi-life/Bhundus guitar style, and very tidy it sounded too.

The band did seem a little swamped by the hugeness of the venue (Sheffield Carling Academy) I'm guessing c.3000 in attendance, most of whom knew most of the words, so it was a case of people's collective memories compensating for the poor sound (drums way too high, vocals too low, bass swallowed up by the general muddy echoey rumble). Not many people there over 25. Lots and lots of dressed-up girly girls, which makes a nice change (I'm told they're a major feature at Kings Of Leon shows).

"Everywhere" was the first encore. Everyone knew the words to that one, as well. That surprised me.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/11/fucked_up_vampi.html#more

Early this year, when some college friends and I filmed a skit spoofing indie rock (and specifically hyped bands like VW), we would dress somewhat ridiculously, like this:

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=parodyuo1.jpg

http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=parody2oy6.jpg

Little did we know that Vampire Weekend's actual publicity shots would defy our parody by mirroring it. I saw this photo after we filmed our video, so we didn't copy that one guy's outfit.

http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vampireweekendkc7.jpg

It's reminiscent of when McDonalds actually used Minor Threat in an ad campaign, two years after an ILXor joked about that very marriage of brands.

Try these images again:

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/12/19/f_parodym_b269e30.jpg

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/12/19/f_VampireWeekm_569ce38.jpg

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/12/19/f_parodym_b269e30.jpg

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/12/19/f_VampireWeekm_569ce38.jpg

I don't think that's an outfit, I think that's a pile of scarves strewn on a conventionally dressed person

i think the VW photo came first

It probably did for all we know. We just discovered how hard it is to parody certain trends without it evolving into looking like a sincere homage or appearing prophetic.

i like these guys til the vocals kick in. nice african influences although a bit twee and usually not that well integrated but then you hear the singing and it ruins everything. best track on the album is the one that sounds like the strokes. or actually the ones without the african influences like the one with the violins.

so . . . these guys are still partying on cape cod? p4ork4ever