Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

How is "Ivy League" a bad thing to some people?

does this really even need to be discussed

i am torn on how to answer that

I think there's another explanation for whatever class resentment you see against VW, and even moreso against The Strokes. Popular music, in its ideal, mythological sense, at least, is something many people have traditionally liked to think of as the sphere of the working classes, a sphere where people from poor or modest means rise to the top on their grit and energy and honesty and fire-in-the-belly.

If VW aren't rich rich, they're certainly privileged and they certainly come off as privileged. And somehow success appears to come so quickly and easily to them, almost to the extent that you'd think one of them had a well-connected parent like the Strokes did. And they may have no such connections, but that's how they come off. And to make things worse, they actually sing about stuff we associate with privilege, and if there's an irony to it, it's not the biting irony of satire, but a more gentle, almost blank irony. So even if there's a bit of tongue in cheek, the overriding message is still "We are privileged, life is easy for us, and thus we have easily become successful even in what was once for people of other classes."

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:51 PM (1 year ago)

best post

ppl so bitter about the success of others

call all destroyer and scottpl generally OTM in this thread

I'm less bitter about the success of others when they aren't constantly reminding me of it. I'd probably like these guys just fine if they had the strokes write lyrics for them.

Oh Hopper, why must you breaked my <3? I never saw you complain when a hundred privileged, white, upper-middle-class ska bands stole music from Jamaica.

"Globe-trotting sons of distinguished men, clumsily exploring distant cultures despite only being passively, naively invested."

tried to find a jpeg of buster playing drum in arrested development, failed.

i mean, scott, lets get real. to anyone who's actually PLAYED MUSIC IN NYC, yes it was real fucking annoying that a bunch of rich kids got super famous in 9 months when everyone else was working on year-six of doing web design, so they could trying to raise enough money to pay the retarded, prohibitive $500 a month it costs to rent a practice space in this town. That's why its annoying that they went to Columbia, not because they read Foucoult's Pendulum for homework or whatever

well, you are being up front and refreshingly honest, but most people aren't. I don't hear a lot of "that sucks these preppy kids are doing better than we are" or "they had it easier on the way up" etc. That's an honest set of terms in which to talk to about class, and it's up front about how you're personalizing it (tho in a way that doesn't matter to most listeners, but hell that's why it's "personal")

But "I am struggling and it sucks that these people with a more leisurely life are succeeding" is a lot of different than "poor Africa being appropriated by a rich white kid." That conclusion disguises that the real class problem isn't between VW and "Africa" (which like goole said is problematic as a "thing" in this discussion anyway) because to Hopper's Africa the person paying $500 a month for a practice space is wealthy as fuck too. The problem then is between VW and some listeners; those listeners are trying to remove the object associations related to being white and educated and Western and middle-class.

Jessica Hopper vs. Ryan Pitchfork FITE!!!

I do believe there's a lot of confusing Hopper's detailing the already-running discourse on Vampire Weekend and her staking a claim in it.

Because she's not really doing the latter.

she doesn't write about all that much else, does she? except to say that their drummer is crap, true enough

lol @ my drunken thread

Globe-trotting sons of distinguished men, clumsily exploring distant cultures despite only being passively, naively invested.

yeah this quote is amazing

they do a really great job of compensating for a mediocre drummer on this record (great drum sounds, lots of cut-up live drums mixed with lots of programmed beats, hardly any straight live playing)

(assuming he is mediocre; i wouldn't know since i couldn't sit through their first album or any live clips)

Jesus christ, why do people hate money?

i don't hate money i hate boring bands that sound like Sesame Street

Sesame Street was started by fatcat liberals weaned on the public teat, you know.

thanks Mr. Hannitty

what is the matter with sesame street

nothing wrong with it, just don't want to listen to music that sounds like it was written for it

I guess it's some kind of achievement that in 2010 we're still having arguments about what bands "deserve" success, and the importance of Paying Dues.

mr. que i'm pretty sure you said the same goddamn thing about grizz bear, and it makes as much sense now as it did then.

the music sounds juvenile and silly and doesn't appear to be very catchy to me, i heard horchata the other day in a store and i just don't see what everyone is creaming in their jeans about them, they seem like a really boring band to me

and i think jessica's review was a good one

lol

Steal the rhythm while you can!

its worth listening to the whole album bro! a few times! instead of just a snippet of a song in a starbucks

i did hear the whole song, later, i went home and listened to it, to see if i was missing anything.

but i will shut up now, sorry.

I don't really understand the critique that goes: "What they are doing is morally reprehensible AND they don't sound good." Like, you need to stick with one or the other. No one debates the aesthetic value of Prussian Blue, and generally there isn't a ton written about the politics of shitty unknown, untalented bands. When you put the two together it sounds a lot like, "The food sucks and there isn't enough of it."

err i was under the impression, based on my limited experience, that ivy league schools were populated by the children of the people who run the world, and that nearly all other schools... weren't. that's a pretty big difference. if you want to do the "relative to Africa" thing then the former are the dictatorship families with the mansions and the swiss accounts, and the latter are $40 salary people.

uh yeah that's not really true

i mean i applied to an ivy. i'm from a pretty regular background. there are tons of us. some of us even get in.

and btw the school i did go to had a 60% acceptance rate and was loaded with really really wealthy kids with powerful families

mr. que don't you like spoon

less scholastic rich kids gotta go somewhere!

goole, cher was 17 when "i got you, babe" was a hit...only formal post-secondary education was from the University of Street Knowledge, Los Angeles campus

man, i can't believe a working girl got ripped off like that. i mean, salif keita is royalty for pete's sake!!

from the nyt today:

It’s easy to see why ILM would be drawn to the anti-Vampire Weekend pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the anti-Vampire Weekend narrative, you can just blame Vampire Weekend.

Second, it absolves P&J voters of responsibility for their problems. Over the past few years, many Pitchfork writers behaved like idiots, but so did average P&J voters, racking up unprecedented votes for Kanye. With the anti-Vampire Weekend narrative, you can accuse the former and absolve the latter.

Third, Vampire Weekend is popular with the ruling class. Ever since I started covering music, the ILM-ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at Vampire Weekend that they will hand power to Gucci Mane.

So it’s easy to see the seductiveness of being anti-Vampire Weekend. Nonetheless, it nearly always fails. The history of popism, going back to William Jennings Bryan, is generally a history of defeat.

That’s because P&J voters aren’t as stupid as the popists imagine. Voters are capable of holding two ideas in their heads at one time: First, that Vampire Weekend do rig the game in their own favor; and second, that simply bashing Vampire Weekend will still not solve the country’s problems.

i believe bashing vampire weekend can and will be instrumental in bringing about a comprehensive socialized single-payer health care system to all americans.

ok guys i know this band has fancy pants international influences in their music, but what kind of crazy fake accent is the guy singing in? dude pronounces "cousin" like Balki Bartokomous.

where can I buy a pair of those fancy pants?

I can see that you pulled the trigger on your quip gun, but I think you'll find that the chamber was empty.

The Original Mr. Fancy-Pants

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5f/Guybrush_Threepwood.png/240px-Guybrush_Threepwood.png

just for the record, heres the full article hopper was drawing those quotes from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/07/vampire-weekend-contra

Koenig, however, is generous in understanding how the band have come to be perceived in the way they have. "Because we favour certain ways of dressing and don't shy away from using obscure words and we went to Columbia University, people have put all the elements together and prejudged us as privileged white kids, even using the word 'Wasp', which immediately implies privilege," he says. "Those things, juxtaposed with our interest in world music, have made it very easy for people to raise the flag of colonialism or imperialism. But the two main writers in the band are Jewish and Persian, which is a pretty broad definition of 'whiteness'. We're certainly not all fresh off the Mayflower."

goole, cher was 17 when "i got you, babe" was a hit...only formal post-secondary education was from the University of Street Knowledge, Los Angeles campus

Wiki sez she was dyslexic.

I thought she was American.

half-breed gypsy-american