"It's impossible to be Actual* Pop and Actual Rock simultaneously!"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the lex just claimed this: is he korrekt?

my response = it is NOT COMMON CERTAINLY but it has happened, like a kind of harmonic convergence within recorded music after -- with things after never the same as before

for example:
i. stones
ii. sabbaf
iii. slade/pistols (=essentially the same thing anyway)
iv. pulp fiction inspired resurgence of SURF sound

obv plenty of bands have been one then the other but not simultaneously, and some have even switched back again

*note use of ACTUAL here must not be employed in any kind of essentialist slipperiness, bcz that kind of behaviour is INDIE

Comments

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Emo = pop squared.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Concurrently. I have never quite got that, they all lare around shouting about how punk they are but...

oh, never mind, I just remembered that whole nu-metal fiasco. Now it all makes sense.

[cis.livejournal.com]

Mmm but only a certain kind of emo, the stuff that's actually Blink-182 come round again - I was going to say My Chemical Romance (emogoth and also pop), f'rinstance, but I don't think you could argue the case for Bright Eyes (emo and also indie).

[juror8.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with that. There's that weird diagram you can draw that goes Indie > The Killers > PANIC! At The Disco > Emo, and the gap between the Killers and P!ATD is so so so thin, yet for the bands either side of them the gap is surprisingly massive. I keep meaning to start an "emo bands on the NME cover: what does this mean?" thread on ILX, but I honestly can't be bothered.

FLYMO!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

call it by it's name!

[cis.livejournal.com]

It'd just descend into the usual 'so the NME sucks then, oh that wacky conor mcnicholas, he's a bit of a tw4t eh' bobbins - descend into? that's all it'd be, with added 'kids these days don't know what real emo is blah blah ritesofspringcakes' - I doubt you'd get anything useful out of it, alas. I find the evolution of emo and how it relates to indie really interesting though, I used to wonder if the uk was ever really going to 'get' emo since it doesn't have the same indie rock tradition, and now that a lot of this emo stuff is... the US equivalent of indie-disco indie (the pop indie that lex hates most) it seems to make a lot more sense in a uk context. Or something, i don't know.

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my thought exactly, I couldn't stomach another 200 posts of "Why aren't Zoviet France on the cover this week, that's how you sell newspapers?".

What's interesting to remember is the last time rock music outsold indie in the UK (99/00), the NME's response was to go to bat for REAL rock music: QOTSA won album of the year, they put Amen of all fucking people on the cover, the idea was "Yeah, Kerrang has all the big shorts/Alien Ant Farm stuff, but we have Proper Rock Music". I suppose perhaps at heart there's always been an "admiration" for Real Rock amongst the indie-rock base, even if there's been no desire to listen to it.

But it's hard to argue that the kids who are listening to MCR and FOB these days would have been the ones listening to Papa Roach and Staind six years ago, so why has the NME embraced them? Is it just simple economics? Is it the fault of The Killers? Also, haircut indie is quite spectacularly and insularly British (I mean, fuck, these bands use the word "Albion" unironically), so why would their fans also fall for one of the most American of genres? Might as well put Montgomery Clift on the cover.