Indie Rock: What's Going On?

or maybe it's just because i went to a Versus/Yo La Tengo concert two weeks ago, since Versus is my fav band of all time, only to get a buncha people i *supposedly know* saying "but Versus doesn't have the genius and brilliance and genius YLT has" just because i went specifically for Versus. i didn't even say i didn't like yo la tengo. yeah. sure. and "YLT" doesn't have the "brilliance and genius" that thelonius monk had... and i'm sure people can debate me on that point as well. the point is... who really CARES? i grew up with Versus, and, as cheesy as it may sound, i found them to be inspirational partly because of the fact that richard, james, and ed were asian-american like me. woopty-freakin' doo. i got insulted like any good fan should. give me my credit.

i like what i like only because i like the music. that's that. maybe i have supposedly "conformity problems", or maybe i'm listening to this band or that band becuase they're the "indie genius du jour". whether or not i am or i am not is irrelevant. all these "conformists" people make fun of seem to have this one quality about them.... they LIKE the music, no matter how "good" or how "bad" it is. if they flip sides to another genre altogether, who are we to judge? i'm not gonna waste my time whining about that.

oh, oops, wait, i just did. my bad.

indie rock, as opposed to the british "indie" (which never seems to be suffixed with "rock"), refers to all american independent postpunk rock music. evolved out of the hardcore scene, which privileged the diy, indie-label, community-oriented ethic and the lo-fi aesthetic. frequently new hardcore isn't included these days. you'll frequently notice nasal vocals low in the mix and drony guitars with a thick overall sound and sometimes notice alternate tunings, guitar noise, or a busier-than-average rhythm section. the bands mentioned so far in the thread should provide examples. emo is a subgenre.

Rob Crow will soon be given his due. With songs this perfectly catchy it's inevitable.

And does anyone willingly use "indie rock" as a flattering descrpitive term anymore? I implement it only when stuck trying to describe music to folks when I run out of pretentious similies. (Wait a sec - there was that thread where Nitsuh brought up Pinback...)

That said, most of the bands that qualify/ied I still love dearly. And there's plenty of music/bands (Small Factory, for one) that was lost in the IR glut of the mid 90s that should be rediscovered and reconsidered.

Ian's point re: college music is spot-on. Sure, the radio stations might be charting the Shins & Rainer Maria & the Dis Plan, but it's the non-"indie" rock stuff that's really moving.

1. bonnie prince billy - i see a darkness
2. talking heads - sand in the vaseline
3. new pornographers - mass romantic
4. cat power - the covers record
5. various artists - city on a hill
6. r.e.m. - murmur
7. johnny cash - love, god, and murder (box set)
8. radiohead - kid a
9. widespread panic - another joyous occasion (live)
10. jane monheit - never never land

i want to go to ian's school. heh. and who buys r.e.m. albums online when you live in athens, fucking hermits? i walk two feet outside my door every day and there's r.e.m. getting shoved in my fucking face. jesus christ.

Not a pop title in the lot! Probably because there are so many huge record stores here. The UC Berkeley top ten is a bunch of stuff I haven't heard of and Fiona Apple. The number one DVD in Berkeley is Pierrot Le Fou, but almost the entire top ten for the UC Berkeley campus is anime. It's so predictably weird!

1. _All That You Can't Leave Behind_ - U2
2. _No Angel_ - Dido
3. _One_ - The Beatles
4. _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ - Various
5. _Kid A_ - Radiohead
6. _White Ladder_ - David Gray
7. _Play_ - Moby
8. _Music_ - Madonna
9. _The Green World_ - Dar Williams
10. _Brand New Day_ - Sting

My alma mater is apparently too technologically ignorant to have an Amazon purchase circle. (The fact that there are 10 record stores I can think of off the top of my head within a 15 minute walk of Harvard Square might also have something to do with it. Also, if they're keying the purchas circles off of addresses somehow, the Harvard mail system seems to have been expressly designed to confound this type of data collection.)

But, then, if we slide down to New Haven, CT (home of Jenna Bush), we find the following:

• Tori Amos - To Venus & Back
• Radiohead - OK Computer
• Portishead - Dummy
• Cesaria Evora - Cafe Atlantico
• Leo Kottke - Six & Twelve String Guitar
• Dar Williams - The Green World
• Buena Vista Social Club
• Radiohead - Kid A
• Astor Piazzaolla & New Tango Q. - Tango Zero Hour
• Talib Kweli & Hi Tek - Reflection Eternal

Clearly, this is indicative of the listening habits of the well-off upper-middle-class element that haunts the halls of Yale. It's also indicative of folks not keeping up with the times - psst, Radiohead has a NEW album out, kids. So does Portishead.

The uniquely popular list is Dar Williams, the O Brother soundtrack, the Gladiator soundtrack, Emmylou Harris, Santana's Supernatural STILL, Enya, Paul Simon, and fucking Moby. The bestseller list is O Brother, Beatles 1, Enya, new U2, Dar Williams, Paul Simon, Santana, Emmylou Harris, fucking Moby, and Mark Knopfler. I think the similarity is significant. There's not much in the way of music stores around the school either.

For the U of Minnesota (it doesn't split it down by campus, so the other cities with campuses may fuck things up but probably not by much):

The uniquely popular list is Butch Thompson and Laura Sewell, the Blenders, Miles' Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel, Stacey Earle, Puccini's Turandot, Semisonic, Mississippi John Hurt, the O Brother soundtrack, the last Sleater-Kinney, and Bell. The bestseller list is O Brother, Beatles 1, Eva Cassidy, U2, Enya, Dido, Emmylou Harris, David Gray, Mark Knopfler, and Paul Simon.

If I look at the Minneapolis circles instead the uniquely popular list gets a bit more arty (?) and the other stays the same. Since a large number of UM students would list their addresses as being just in Mpls or somewhere close, and not the U of M, this may be significant. I wonder what one of the little liberal arts colleges around the Cities would have on its lists, but I'm getting bored.

-- "Hardcore" was used by early-'80s punks to set their culture apart from the first wave of UK punk and CBGB bands.

-- "New Wave" was used by bands or club owners who didn't like the stigma of "punk" or "hardcore."

-- "College rock" referred to college-radio staples like R.E.M. and the Smiths, bands that were neither New Wave nor hardcore.

-- "Emocore," later "emo," was a cathartic response to macho D.C. hardcore, created by Rites of Spring and other Washington hardcore bands in the mid-'80s.

-- "Indie rock" became a late-'90s term for bands on independent labels who wanted nothing to do with punk. "Indie" also denoted self-avowed punks (e.g. Beat Happening) who didn't care whether you thought they were punk or not. Now "indie" is associated with anything that sounds like these bands, regardless of whether they subscribe to the DIY ethos. It also refers to bands that play the club circuit established by non-corporate bands.

-- "Grunge" came into wider use in the mid-to-late '80s to describe any heavy, dirty band that wasn't metal. Then it became a media buzzword after "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

-- "Alternative" or "alt-rock" followed a similar route, but was originally rooted in the whole idea of alternative media and alternative culture.

-- "Hardcore" was "reclaimed" by late '80s punks to set their culture apart from "college rock," "emo," "indie," "grunge," and "alternative."

Also-rans: Underground, DIY, New Music, Love Rock, Post-Hardcore, Post-Punk, Underground Pop, Goth, Industrial, Speedmetal, Grindcore, etc.

Funny, but there isn't a genre named above that wasn't coined before the '90s.

the rolling 2k11 thread you were looking for.

but seriously, did anyone see Reynols before they cancelled their tour? If anyone's gonna save indie, it's a band like that.

lol reynols

life goes on

obla-di obla-da

― Tom, Saturday, 26 August 2000 00:00 (10 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Damn!

sadly, nothing has happened in indie rock since 26 august 2000 00:00.

reynols jeez

none more indie. Reynols/No Reynols is the shit

props to Otis breaking down the Five Colleges w/ the old Scooby Doo analogy

emo existed back in 2000?

yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJzAoxvWizw

^good song but I tend to use EMO to describe nasally, whiny, childish, dramatic and/or flowery vox that really grate on me. And apparently I am more prone to hating these voices as apparent by various indie threads on ILM. Then again, even I like a few singers with nasally, whiny, childish, dramatic and/or flowery vox. Just not as many as everyone else.

Heady days, heady days:
http://www.fourfa.com/

i find that when i speak to younger people (I'm 32) they have a wildly differing idea of what "emo" means than I do.

!: http://xconditionedx.blogspot.com/2008/05/90s-emo.html

tylerw OTM

and then i'm like: "young people! let's get our emo facts right!"

'emo' should remain an insult imo. even in conjunction with music

how in the living hell is rye coaltion emo???

i think i have a braid record on vinyl.

emo changed again after this thread. What generation of emo is it now?

Did we really let the twentieth anniversary of this thread go entirely unmarked? I suppose we were all a little distracted.

There's an analogy between the Five Colleges and Scooby-Doo, with each school a different character. Hampshire is Shaggy. Will Oldham is an alum; he's probably as close to the stereotypical Hampshire student as anyone (hyperintellectual, violently odd, stupidly pretentious).

Sorry to correct 20-yr-old misinfo, but Oldham didn’t go to Hampshire. (He attended Brown, but didn’t graduate)

(Maybe this was pointed out later in the thread, I stopped reading at that point)

Lol

they were probably mixed up with Elliot Smith.

Tom's blog from the first post is still archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20001206155500/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/2000_08_20_singlesa.html

Apparently the offending emo bands were Get Up Kids and Samiam.

what is indie rock's "What's Going On"

^"Float On"