Sekrit Origins

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

One of the persistent themes in the Now polls is "wow this is my first NOW album" (frantically ticks everything). Another persistent theme is "OK at this point I'd got into indie" (ashamedly ticks nothing). So in the endless search for shared experience let me ask you this question:

How did you get into indie?

and as a bonus question - let's try not to make this too loaded -

If indie is less central to your music listening now than it once was, why do you think this is?

Define the i-word however you like.

I think I have asked similar qns on ILM, but this is a new kettle and these are new fish.

Comments

[spittake.livejournal.com]

I got into indie by sending away for the Working Holidays series from Simple Machines because it was written about Christina Kelly in Sassy.

My listening now is more influnced by what's in the $1 bin.

[spittake.livejournal.com]

about BY CK

[(Anonymous)]

Post lyrics to 'Rubber Ring' now, plz!

I got into indie because I got into girls but girls didn't get into me and I wanted to listen to something as I lay on my bed and felt...not so much sad...as...It's an identity thing, I think. I wanted to something to 'stand for' me, and indie esp. say Belle and Sebastian at first seemed to do this. Don't get me wrong, they didn't save my life: it was more a badge, something to talk about, be proud to be into, associate myself with. The reasons why I did this are still vague: I identify with a voice usually, as someone I'd like to know. Perhaps that's it...

But I do still listen to a lot of indie and I do, as then, listen to lots of other stuff. It never particularly 'got in the way' in that respect. Indeed, I've never understood people reacting against their indie past unless they do it on the grounds that they find the music mediocre.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

That ill-formed rant above was by me.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

What I mean is--I was young, I wanted something to follow, collect, talk about, etc, and music was that. Indie appealed cos it was about bands, with back catalogues, and could fill my time when I was lonely/bored.

This fact was important to me. I sometimes think it's ignored.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

A rockist point, it is too, I guess.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

B-but the Now albums are full of indie!

My answer is the semi-obvious one: When I went to college I was hanging around with people 4-5 years older than me, and it became clear that Dave Fanning was the only 'credible' radio show on the air (unless you lived in one of the bits of Dublin that could get John Peel).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No, not really I don't think, it's a social point.

I got into music because it was something to talk about - not entirely because, but partly. Indie when I got into it seemed to talk about me in a way that other music didn't. This is the case for a lot of people, I reckon.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are, sorry, I was exaggerating in my post above.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I was into indie before indie existed, me. Actually that is sort of true in a way, in that I was into the music that indie grew out of - punk and post-punk and Stiff and power pop and all that. It didn't feel like anything separate until it was sort of crystallised into a scene in the mid-'80s, so I guess that was when I started thinking of something called indie, and I was into it then, a lot of the acts that ended up on C86 and so on.

As the '90s got going I found that white guitar music was shrinking rapidly as a proportion of the new music I played. Hip hop and dance (broad sense) were grabbing more and more of my attention and affection. No new guitar/rock/indie bands at all seemed to be emerging that I thought very much of. My suspicion is that the young white British talent that in previous years would have picked up guitars and formed bands were making techno (etc.) in their bedrooms instead, and that Underworld, Orbital, Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and a huge long list of others might mostly have tried rock/indie the decade before - and some of them would have been very good at it.

Whatever, I don't really need to make a case for the decline of indie here - fact is, I stopped liking it with extremely rare exceptions (Pulp, Spiritualized), and these days I listed as little as possible, and I dare say that'll continue until I fall for some new acts in the genre, if that happens.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

How did you get into indie?

When 'This Charming Man' and 'How Soon Is Now?' got re-released in the early 80s I found I liked them a lot although the first Morrissey single I really liked was, strangely, 'Pregnant For The Last Time'. Prior to that I instantly loved a lot of the stuff that co-opted indie with dance i.e. Happy Mondays (although oddly I hated 'Fool's Gold' at first) but this seemed to be more for the dance angle as I didn't really go from there into MBV or anything. I bypassed whatever passed for British Indie at this point, going from acid house influenced stuff straight to US Grunge and Metal before ending up at Britpop...missing a lot because I didn't listen to albums much and I hadn't started going to gigs at that point.

In fact I went to V festival before actually seeing an indie band live. I still can't think what my first specific indie gig would've been...will get back to you.

I think all of this means I never really did get into Indie (the genre) properly but I acquired indie/rockist values thru other means.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, for me it was a natural evolution from prog! (this was in what are now termed the 'post punk' years, mind)

And I stopped listening to it because indie stopped being "prog" and went back to the 60s (Beatles, Velvets, N Drake etc) for its inspiration instead. Either that or because of alt-country.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

obv that should be 'early 90s' re Smiths singles.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

oh but I DID like Carter!

[(Anonymous)]

Got into indie by way of Depeche Mode, around the 1989 mark...

I would religiously watch The Chart Show, hoping that it would be indie chart week. At that time it seemed to always be Joe by Inspiral Carpets, or Monkey Gone To Heaven by The Pixies at number one.

But anyway, watching The Chart Show to see how DM were fairing got me into "indie". At least The Chart Show's definition of such.

[spittake.livejournal.com]

also, I got into UNREST haha

[juror8.livejournal.com]

I got into indie because Top of the Pops 2 once had Ben Folds Five and the Eels on the same episode around when I was... 13/14. I think they also had 187 Lockdown on the same show, but they didn't really figure in my consciousness.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I've never been into indie.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

People will often eulogise about bands saving their life etc? Identifying and all that.

Anyway, music was, and is, my great hobby. It was a gateway for me, for better or worse. Living in a small town, near Glasgow, I was drawn into various scenes from which I've never really emerged; I've broadened to encompass other groups. It is amazing how many of my friends I have made through shared love of music, through gigs of friend's bands etc.

Indie, in this respect, is the common musical currency for myself and many of my friends. Microhouse being too hip, pop not hip enough etc...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have never been indie, as we all know.

However, the music I loved in the 90s which wasn't Proper Pop - this was basically trip-hop on the one hand, and female singer-songwriters on the other - I got into via their occasional excursions into the chart: hearing Tori Amos on the top 40 show, finding Massive Attack and Portishead on Now albums. And I think the crucial thing is that I now had the resources (magazines, friends) to dig and find more of this stuff; and I also Used Logic, ie rather than waiting for good music to come to me I went out to look for more trip-hop and female singer-songwriters.

And the reason I always insist that Tori Amos, Portishead et al aren't indie is because they seem completely diametrically opposed to the indie I have always loathed ie Oasis!

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Indie, to me, has never been Oasis. Possibly because the indie circles I move in loathe them.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

as for the second qn - female singer-songwriters aren't central to my listening now because I am not an angsty closeted teenager, though my old Tori and PJ albums are always there in the rare event that I need them; and I don't listen to trip-hop because It Is Dead.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

Oops. This was me.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely, I remember 187 Lockdown being on TOTP2 also. Even though I rarely watched said programme.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I got into indie because freakytigger decided to wean me off heavy metal and made me listen to Doolittle by Teh Pixies. It was all downhill from there. So I suppose some of the reasons were social, and although metal and indie co-existed for a while, the ideology of indie eventually worked its unpleasant charm and persuaded me that metal was somehow immature and I should not be listening to LA Guns etc. (Oh and Metallica went shit.) I also found other friends were into e.g. Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and so on (Tom was always more on the arty and UK side of indie) so it made for a good topic of conversation outside our little circle. Of course freakytigger was never quite as beholden to the indie-mentality I don't think and used to still like the pop music which I had already rejected when I got into metal. At one point I may have accused him of only liking something to annoy me, which I still maintain has a grain of truth in it. It wasn't real pop at that point, anyway, but indie-approved canon (Bowie, PSBs) and he listened to John Peel just as much as I did... As well as notoriously accusing a reggae song which mentioned Manchester of jumping the bandwagon!

I realised that the indie-ideology was too narrow and got into other stuff. First big step back to life was getting into e.g. Omni Trio and Richie Hawtin in my second year at uni. The awfulness of Modern Life is Rubbish by Blur had been what really made me realise I needed to change my horizons, I think.