judicial reasoning

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

SONIC YOUTH ARE NOT INDIE ftb:
i. signed to geffen
ii. possibly that's IT unless being GOTH = not indie

SONIC YOUTH *ARE* INDIE ftb:
i. girl on bass
ii. the lex loves them
iii. "art pop" = indie by definition
iv. culturcide-style shenanigans w.the WHITEY ALBUM (obv they are better at shenanigans than culturcide cz they LIKE POP)
v. daydream nation!!
vi. "our" grateful dead
vii. postpunk = indie
viii. WALL OF GUITARS D00D!¡!

Comments

[dansette.livejournal.com]

ix. You can't really dance to them unless it's some kind of arm and hair waving around rather than hips type thing.
x. Overwhelmingly, devastating male dominated fanbase.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

indie has a relatively high female fandom index so x won't work (in fact it proves that sonic youth are DEATH METAL which = not indie)

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

My opinion on this goes no further than "of course Sonic Youth = indie durr", but it does give me an opportunity to do THIS:

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

"but it has balloons on and is owned by a girl"

hahaha, not a chance, indie boy...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There is nothing indie about that photo whatsoever!

I ended up doing MADONNA KARAOKE that evening. It doesn't get more pop.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Haha, Lex is a boy with a guitar!

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is because I just have a lot of female friends, but I think I know more girl SY fans than boy. Also, my friend Kristie is the biggest SY fan I know, and she is most definitely a girl.

ALSO

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

DUDE, they are SONIC YOUTH, they INVENTED indie (fsvo indie)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

You forgot: Jim O'Rourke.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

true but i cannot really parse JOR: avant and indie aren't identical

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

No, they're not, but JOR has always been firmly fixed in the land of nindie rock, despite whatever else he got up.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

haha ok you;re the expert with the COMPLETE COLLECTION OF FLEXIDISCS

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Dude, I think the guy is mostly 1 x fool BUT he was totally inescapable in the mid-late 90s, if you were down with US nindie. Which I was. Unfortunately.

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

He did manage to appear as player/producer on all those Chicago-centred indie concerns, but then that part of the world all seemed to come out of a hardcore scene (Bastro, King Kong et al) and went down the post-rock route (Gastr del Sol, Tortoise, Chicago Underground Duo). All of his early releases were electroacoustic or musique concrète (or rock concrète, as I've heard his Brise-Glace project called); and he produced peeps like Tony Conrad and John Fahey. His earliest stuff with SY was on their SYR releases (SYR3 was a SY/JOR co-release, Musikaj Perspektivoj I think it was called; and SYR4 Goodbye 20th Century comes to mind). I don't think he was necessarily Herr Nindie, but maybe my selective memory is overlooking his indie concerns (I always imagined that was Steve Albini's side of the Chicago music-producing Reich) -- which didn't become clear till Eureka in the late-nineties.

I own far far too much of JOR's output.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

ix. Sonic Youth and The Whitey Album reissues are in the new release racks in Fopp this week.
x. all their other records are £5 in Fopp.

but on the not indie side

[dansette.livejournal.com]

iii. Genuine respect for the not very indie Karen Carpenter and Mariah Carey. Unless mental disorders make them kind of indie?

Re: but on the not indie side

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

this is borderline i think, cz they also approved and supported daniel [thingie], who is even more mad than mariah -- i have a carpenters covers compilation CD where the best thing is by shonen knife = NONE MORE INDIE in the HISTORY OF INDIE (ps i love shonen knife)

(mariah approval is just a GOOD THING ALL ROUND)

Re: but on the not indie side

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

johnson?

Re: but on the not indie side

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes him (i have been proofing the listings section all day and it is FULL OR ERRORS caused by a STUPID COMPUTER)

Re: but on the not indie side

[dansette.livejournal.com]

Daniel Johnston? Maybe just being feted by Sonic Youth makes Karen Carpenter indie but Mariah could never ever be indie not even if she collaborated with Shonen Knife on a song that mentioned the rain a lot.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think this is fair and true -- they should have put something by her on GOODBYE 20TH CENTURY

Re: but on the not indie side

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I never knew SY loved mariah! Oh wow that makes them even acer.

Re: but on the not indie side

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Bah you beat me to the userpic.

Re: but on the not indie side

[dansette.livejournal.com]

artistic_vices has it too but I had it first, so dere!

Re: but on the not indie side

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

i have a hard time hearing 'arthyr doyle etc.' as all that respectful. not DISrespectful, maybe, but... deeply disapproving?

it seems to have little to say about her music qua music though. (even qua pop music!)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Culturcide OBVIOUSLY love pop very deeply. They just can't admit it to themselves.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"art pop" can't be indie! because if it was that would mean I loved loads of indie which obviously I can't.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Mudhoney = the pop Sonic Youth

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

Oh man, now you've gone and reminded me of Culturcide.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't think SY do love Mariah, actually, though my only knowledge of the matter one way or another is of a snidely mixed review that Kim wrote of Emotions in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. IIRC she approved of "Make It Happen" because it had disco in it but despised most of the rest. (That era was Mariah's best, by the way. Not just "Make It Happen" but the whole album and then the live unplugged "Can't Let Go" later in the year.)

Trivia In Head Spice

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

wsn't there a britney mention in their last record? But agains like mariah i couldn't tell whether they liked her or were making fun.

and yes, there are quite a few for the sonic youth ARE AVANT (whatever) column.

In their 'brighton..' boot there is a segment where da yoof play along to a madonna track bomming out from the speakers before going into one of their indie 'classics' => a proto-poptimist moment, for sure..

[giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

'Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream' on Sonic Nurse orginally titled 'Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream'

SY's new alb - 'Rather Ripped' - is going to be their last for Geffen

Indie festishisation of the guitar doesn't normally extend to actual technique or whatnot - ie SY not enuff strum/jangle and too much Garcia-noodle for the indie massive as it is today