A kung fu fighter in a disco

By all means post what you like, I added that edit as a bit of a disclaimer cus otherwise it frankly looks mad for a Pantera listener to be all 'LOLZ, INDIE IS RUB'

What I find interesting (worrying) in all this is that I think, due to the popularity of 'pop' as a synonym for 'crap,' all we're going to get is a funny redelineation of the genre lines from these articles, when of course there just has to be some kind of inter-genre-fan convention where everyone sits down and admits that crap is its own genre.

The backlash from these bands will be interesting, I think. It's bound to happen soon and I honestly can't predict where it's going to go.

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friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com

due to the popularity of 'pop' as a synonym for 'crap,' all we're going to get is a funny redelineation of the genre lines from these articles, when of course there just has to be some kind of inter-genre-fan convention where everyone sits down and admits that crap is its own genre

Yep. This.

Or, that crap knows no genre and can be found anywhere?

(And from my old Kerrang-reading days, I do remember quite a lot of ''INDIE IS RUB' nonsense, and I'm sure there were a few Pantera fans in there, so while it might arguably be mad, it's not actually that isolated sort of madness...)

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I dunno about all this indie business. I think we should call indie, in the classical sense, and for a second call it non-conformist. Let's also assume that people liked it originally because it had depth.

So all this nonsense isn't non-conformist is it? It sounds like non-conformist stuff might've 10 - 15 years ago or so. But not anymore. What's filling the gap these days doesn't sound like that anymore, just as what filled that gap in the 80s didn't sound like the decades' preceeding.

And this is my problem with these kinds of pieces. they drag the same old names out to whinge. Collins etc wondering where the real alternative that genuinely was way back when has gotten to these days.

And I suggest, that just cos this landfill indie shit sounds like what someone might've been upset about The Chart Show Indie Week fast forwarding past in years gone by, it's not the stuff of depth like it used to be.

And so Collins etc wonder where the non-conformist stuff is these days, because it must be out there somewhere. But the NME, once a semi-bible for this stuff (well it would be, because Collins worked there - right?) is nothing more than a PR exercise for Kasabian or whoever. Complete fluff and shite.

For a while, it seemed like the NME had its finger on the pulse. I'll argue it never did, but for a while I might concede it was close.

If you wanted to find the real non-conformist stuff, you had to do more homework than just buying the NME each week. You had to get off your arse and go to gigs early, buy the fanzines, exchange tapes / flexis... write to people... And you still do. Just cos everything else in this day and age of the net etc is a fingertip away doesn't mean to say all the real non-conformist stuff is easy to find. It never was, but Collins, you got lazy.

Do some real homework for a change.

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What, so the 'real non-conformist stuff' doesn't have a MySpace?

I think the problem is that you find the real n-c stuff and...it's OK. It's a bit better than the View, or the Enemy. You can tell your friends about it, and they'll like it, but they've got their own stuff that's a bit better than the Enemy too - so nothing gets much momentum.

But that's OK! Because these quite good non-conformist bands have got a wide virtual support system, lots of people like them, enough to fill out small gigs and get their music heard, not enough to make them famous, but the thing is being liked by 500 people FEELS pretty similar to being liked by 5000 or 50,000: you simply can't process those kind of numbers. In the past I think bands went from being not at all famous to a degree of fame, and the degree was semi-random - a few got enormous, some got NME-level famous, some got a bit below that, but all of them were more famous than the ten mates, a granny and a dog level. But now the net has made the lowest rung of that ladder quantifiable and a lot of people seem happy to stick with that.

Sorry, drunk and burbling, I will try and be more cogent tomorrow.

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No, you're totally right. And that's the thing... I mean I went to see (The) Verve in 1991 or 1992 when they'd definitely had some column inches in one of the music weeklies, and yet there was still only 30-50 people there - but that was good enough in those days.

And no, I wasn't for a second discounting MySpace as a platform for finding new music - there's just a lot of shit on there that it makes finding the good stuff so much harder. So much so that I don't think I've ever bothered, and the only way I've found myself on there was via a recommendation of a friend via Last.FM.

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There is non-conformist music, now, though, that this isn't part of. Just as 'pop' has now become a genre, 'indie' has become relevant to some specific sounds, most of which were never indie in the first place; people like the author of that article might try and pretend that there's an Honourable Indie scene somewhere, with crazy innovatives from Sup Pop's offices (actually there is a great article about Sup Pop in the new Rock Sound and they are all v. funny as far as I can tell but I'm talking more about what Sub Pop represents) striving to bring out records that the masses ignore.

I think what's interesting is that indie-as-a-genre has styled itself with the manifesto of really representing people with really real music and suddenly, the way that indie has marketed itself for years turns out to be as fragile and corruptible as the way in which the pop it sees itself as a reaction to (well, not the good bits of it which just see themselves as making music but you know what I mean) is/was.

I feel there are probably some tensions with a lot of poptimists somewhere at the bottom of all this. I know I tend towards an indie-based interpretation of the musical world, which isn't to say I listen to primarily indie, since I definitely do not but that there are maybe certain phrases I use or criteria I have that point that way.

As a Young Person thus unaware of what went on at the time, I'd personally find it interesting to dig at some of these old "indie"/non-conformist bands (ie: The Jam, etc.) and find out whether they ever were at the time, which I'm assuming they weren't. The retrofetishism-for-credibility around currently, though, is v. interesting in an extraordinary, panicked backpedalling way; it's ok to be pop so long as you're also 80s, thus Neon Neon have a Mercury nomination, etc.

I actually like the article far less this morning. I think I just got overexcited because it had some good insults in. Even so, it's relevant to our interests.

ANYWAY that made no sense because I am not awake yet. I'm not sure any of it was a reply to your post but, err, yes.

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The Jam are REALLY AWFUL do not check them out! Like seriously soul-suckingly turgid crap. Someone tried to get me into them once and I am not sure if I have spoken to that person since.

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Oh, I know that; I have been exposed to much Jam in my lifetime and have developed a hate complex for Paul Weller that sometimes threatens to consume me. I meant probing the pop culture that surrounds them, not themselves.

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I have exactly the same hate complex for P Weller.

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The main thing about the Jam is that they had a big fanbase which was also INCREDIBLY loyal: their singles would nearly always go straight in at #1 at a time when this was very rare indeed. (The only other person to do it at the time was Adam Ant and this was a BIG DEAL) So you had Smiths or MCR level devotion to WELLER combined with an actually huge fandom, an unusual combination. For journalists into indie (or the idea of indie) they are pretty much a model of how to be very popular and also very committed, so it's not surprising they're held up as a touchstone.

They're also unusual in terms of Weller breaking up the band at its height and saying "fuck all this, soul music is what matters", which made them even more legendary among some fans, and pissed off others hugely.

I find Weller really annoying but like about a half dozen Jam songs and a handful of Style Council ones.

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Heh, yes, I meant a Pantera-listening Poptimist, really. Hardly makes me the most indie-free person around. :D

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

"[Punk] has become a meaningless term. It just covers guitar bands. But it was never meant to be about a type of music, it wasa spirit and an attitude. When I glance around the bands that are supposedly [punk] today, I don't see any attitude. I don't see any content in their records, any political interest in the band members. They're a terrible generation, unfortunately, but they're becoming famous overnight and selling a lot of records."

DYS?

This guy's argument seems as predictable as the music he's complaining about - or rather there are two arguments here. One is that the kids today listen to conformist crap, the other is about the co-option of treasured symbols and heritage by conformism. Obviously these are old old moves, and seem to me to leave us with two possible responses. One is to say - sure, these things are cyclical, move along nothing to see here but the wheel turning. The other is to ask - sure, but why Indie this time around, or why this and not that. But the answer is probably cycles again. The bigger issues behind this are interesting, but seem equally tired- why are we assuming that non-conformism is good and conformism bad, especially when all the evidence suggests that societies require big doses of both; we're all familiar with non-conformism functioning as small-scale conformism; and then the generational thing whereby non-conformists become taste-makers and gate-keepers, despite their own outlooks and attitudes having shifted, so that they can only recognise the trappings of non-conformism, but which they still pass on.

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

Also I bet the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying would be a lot more exciting than Scouting for Girls.

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does nobody here like ANY scouting for girls?

not even the elvis one? come on.

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also didn't we stop talking about bands like SfG as indie? i just hear a guitar-based pop band. mcfly sound indier than SfG and i rly haven't heard anyone talk about McF as indie. that i can recall. not srsly anyway. are the feeling indie? it seems pointless talking this way.

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Actually I do like the Elvis one. It doesn't make up for 'She's So Lovely,' though, which is the worst song ever.

Also in response to yr other comment; when I write a review of one of these bluddy awful "indie" bands on Chartblog, you'd be surprised at the number of times there's a comment from a fan going 'OMG U NOT UNNASTAND THEIR RELEVANCE TO YOOF AND THE CLASS WAR AND STUFF' to which I sort of quietly weep into my keyboard for awhile.

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andthatisthat.livejournal.com

Dude, preach it. That's why I try to ignore reviewing those kinds of songs as much as I can get away with it...

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The article has some fun insults for landfill indie, true, but I really cannot get fully behind any argument with a cornerstone of praise for Kings Of Leon, The Verve and The Smiths :o

And he's criticising it for lots of wrong-headed reasons too ("the Pigeon Detectives...won't make you want to topple the Government!" as if that would make them any better), and the indie ideology which focuses on means of production and a DIY aesthetic is total, total bullshit, always has been and always will be.

I think it's inevitable that once anything reaches a certain critical mass outside the mainstream, it will become co-opted into the mainstream (from within, the attitudes of its practitioners, which is why it's so effective) - I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing. I don't think landfill indie is any worse than all the examples of 'proper' indie he talks about (I mean, C86? Ew, dude, gross!) apart from being more omnipresent.

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celentari.livejournal.com

You're bang on the money here. His basic point that this music isn't exciting is correct, but his exploration of why is terribly flawed.

And there was The Verve, who, almost 20 years after their formation, remind us what indie really meant to people in the days when there was no danger of troubling the pop charts, nor of paying the mortgage with music; when the words were about something, anything – politics, perhaps, or at least an original thought about love

I saw the Verve's delusions of relevance at Glastonbury this year. It was horrible, mind-boggling cringe-worthy bollocks.

I think YOOF and/or experience may be the key here. I remember listening to the Offspring and Rage Against The Machine as a teen and thinking it was all terribly revolutionary and subversive and rabble-rousing. I listen to it now and cringe that I could ever have believed this, but I think fans of landfill indie probably experience something similar (insert misguided adjectives of choice, naturally - the Kooks are "deep", the Fratellis "visceral" or whatever), because when your musical palette is underdeveloped (whether through YOOFULNEZ or inexperience) you aren't equipped to make the distinctions you later make. This would also explain why, generally, the less "into music" people are, the less fussy they are (probably a symbiotic relationship, that).

And there is more than a whiff of "things were better in the olden days - which is coincidentally when I was younger and perter and less jaded" about Collins et al's reactions.

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the-roofdog.livejournal.com

If he'd cited RatM his defence would've been better - at least them and Offspring were fun bands (fsvo "fun"). When your yardstick for exciting challenging music is 'Lucky Man' you have failed at life.

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I do wish the article had asked some fans of these bands what they think they're getting out of them. I think, like Alan, that the idea of SfG fans thinking they're non-conformist, or an alternative to anything, is surely a straw man!

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conform/don't conform - is that just a place holder for niche or 'music that pissed yr parents off'. which clearly this stuff doesn't. perhaps that's what annoys ppl like this writer.

SfG was the only thing i played on my mac over the weekend that my mum said 'oh i like this'

yes because it's immensely popular and appeals to a lot of people. and not just a niche of younger people.

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The funny thing about music that would piss parents off is, that even back in this writers glory days of the early 90s, "Dominator" by Human Resource would've done a much better job than "All In The Mind" by Verve.

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(A Poptimists EXCLUSIVE)

Top 5 Genres among 12-14 year olds (% saying "in" or "on the way in")
1. R&B (66%)
2. Pop/Top 40 (58%)
3. Hip-hop (57%)
4. Rock (55%)
5. Club/Dance (54%)

Top 5 Genres among 15-17 year olds (% saying "in" or "on the way in")
1. Club/Dance (74%)
2. R&B (68%)
3. Rock (64%)
4. Indie (61%)
5. Pop/Top 40 (59%)

Top 5 Genres among 18-19 year olds (% saying "in" or "on the way in")
1. Rock (72%)
2. Club/Dance (67%)
3. Indie (64%)
4. R&B (58%)
5. Drum'n'Bass (56%)

Top Rock/Indie band for each agegroup:

12-14: The Hoosiers (or My Chemical Romance if they don't count)
15-17: The Ting Tings
18-19: Muse

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What this shows w.r.t. the article I'm not sure! - only that, yes, indie is now completely mainstream as you move up the age brackets, and it's a term that means *something* (though I'm not sure what) to the people listening to it.

Something very important is that musically you react to the people around you, not to the 'wider culture': I think when I was 16 I read the NME partly because it seemed to provide a window on some kind of wider pop culture and let me position myself within that, but I don't know what (if anything) does the same now. Whereas the article Moggy linked to seems to be assuming that the wider culture still exists and that the decline of indie matters within it.

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BIG UP THE 12-17-YEAR-OLDS :D

the kidz are alright! the students, however, are not.

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i love the (obvious) way club-dance jumps from 54% to 74% at the age of 15 and then rock takes over 2 yrs later :-)

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Well, the slight fall in club/dance I guess is linked to the rise of more specific dance genres like drum'n'bass (and HARDCORE RAVE which comes in 6th for the 18-19s).

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Does minimal techno come in anywhere? :D

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"bloodless bleeping beset by infighting" (2%)

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It was not asked about sorry! Bassline/garage was, and is steady across all agegroups at 38% or so.

Teens bottom 5 genres:
1. Country (15%)
2. Christian (16%)
3. Folk (16%)
4. Classical (23%)
5. Bhangra (24%)

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There goes the Mercury Prize's cred with the kidz!

Um hang on a second was hip-hop subsumed into r&b or...is it...just NOT THERE?

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Yeah it's there! 3rd for 12-14 year olds, slips to 6th for 15-17 though (its popularity doesnt change, but other stuff overtakes it), and then down to 8th or 9th for the older kids.

It does well among urban teens too, unsurprisingly.

I've now got the age/gender breakdowns open, and hip-hop drops in appeal to boys as they get older but increases in appeal to girls.

Also - the jumps in indie and rock for girls as they get older are HUGE: I think this is the real story behind the article and the current situation, a 'feminization' of indie and rock's appeal (against which you'd predict a journalistic backlash obv).

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"the jumps in indie and rock for girls as they get older are HUGE"

is this a new thing though? feels like it, but it could be an illusion

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Certainly they've always been popular with girls but I'd say not this level of popularity - 3/4 of 18-19 year old girls saying indie is "in". (I think some of it may be sampling issues though.)

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I've now got the age/gender breakdowns open, and hip-hop drops in appeal to boys as they get older but increases in appeal to girls

This might be because of the dancing aspect? Hip-hop/street dancing seems to be a v popular cross-female-demographic way to keep fit and have fun at the same time - boys tend to be less inclined towards dancing (esp choreographed dancing) for whatever reason. There are like five boys in a class of 25-30 at the class I go to, which is slightly EEK when the tutor demands that the boys run through the routine by themselves.

The feminisation of indie is definitely important, indie bands as the new boy bands etc (and just as boring as boy bands ever were! the only one I had real affection for was Backstreet Boys). I'd love to know how, credibility-wise, McFly are perceived vis-a-vis The Kooks, among teenage girls.

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koganbot

Drum'n'Bass on the way in!

And "Club/Dance" topping 15 to 17! My guess is that in the U.S. "Club/Dance" gets an older crowd, but also that in the U.S. it is more distinct from the more popular genres than it is in Britain. (That said, I just got an email from Solange Knowles' publicist that says that Michelle Williams' "We Break The Dawn" - co-written by Solange - is #1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay chart. That's actually a fairly small market - only about nine stations in the entire U.S. see themselves as specifically going for "dance" rather than r&b/hip-hop or urban or top 40. But "We Break The Dawn" could very easily be classed as r&b or urban or top 40, and it's a really good song, though I think Michelle's relatively nondescript vocals could be holding it back in those markets.)(And I wonder what the crossover is among your teen respondents, if someone who says "Top 40" and someone else who says "r&b" and someone else who says "club/dance" might be thinking of relatively similar music.)

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The organ's journalists were once so passionate about the integrity of the genre that they threatened a schism over the inclusion of too much hip-hop on their pages; now it, too, has become a corporate entity.

"I recently saw an interview with Conor McNicholas where he was talking about 'growing the brand'," Niven recalls. "The editor of the NME using the expression 'growing the brand'! It's hardly Nick Kent sneaking out of the office to run down Carnaby Street and score smack, is it?"

Yes the NME is rub but i. Fuck off Nick Kent, ii. Fuck off Grandad, iii. you can't really go "oh the glorious days of the hip-hop wars" and then two paragraphs later be saying indie should learn from "Jay-Z the world's greatest rapper", iv. a schism over what should be in the NME is TOTALLY AN ARGUMENT ABOUT THE NME BRAND!!!

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

Other than offering thanks for providing some useful one-liners and an opportunity to guffaw behind my hand, I don't have a lot to say about the article (preaching to the converted innit).

The one point that is worth further exploration is the argument that none of these bands are making any money from their short bust of success and that they need to build long-term careers in order to do so. (a) Is this true? And (b) does it really matter if they don't make money? In some ways I think the "throwaway" element of these bands is the healthiest thing about them. Pop is supposed to be disposable.

Point of correction: The Verve = the epitome of landfill indie and always have been, Andrew Loog Oldham sample or no Andrew Loog Oldham sample.

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

full of 18 years olds????

fvck off, it's full of people who were There 10 years ago, and run by people even older than that.

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what's more, it's done innit? finito...

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carsmilesteve.livejournal.com

has NPL stopped as well as the winchester?

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