poptimists | "Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying. They're abysmal."

piratemoggy.livejournal.com posting in

Surprised no one posted this yet-

Does the world need another indie band?

The short version of that article is that no one really knows who buys Scouting For Girls records. It is quite marvellously vehement though if you, like me, spend a mystifyingly large amount of your time trying to think of a new way of saying 'this is a shit indie single.' Not sure it goes far enough for me on some aspects (the bit with some bloke talking about the wonder of some kids dancing to 80s/90s indie as though this makes them genii is particular obnoxious) but does contain the quote from this subject line.

Edit: I might add, this isn't a 'HAR LOOK ALL INDIE ARE CRAP' post. I think the article's interesting because we've been talking about how these instantly charting indie bands are the new throwaway boy/girlband for awhile, particularly this week and although this is a smug indie person talking about it from a smug indie perspective, it's surprisingly on-the-money in a lot of places. It might be worth asking, if it's not a totally overwrung question that ultimate ends up with 'THE MAN' as the answer, why you think these particular little trends of throwaway bands/groups start and what you personally think brought on this particular glut of awful?

Also, I really cannot emphasise enough that I have had to review The Enemy three times in the last year.

Current Music: Pantera- Five Minutes Alone

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From:

friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com

I couldn't help, while reading it, thinking of Melody Maker c.1993, and substituting the word 'indie' for '[manufactured] pop', and phrases like 'smooth-chinned strummers' for 'designer-stubbled underwear models who can't play an instrument'.

I'd also take issue with the idea that C86 'crystallised the indie sound' - if you're working from that reductionist a stance, I sort of feel you get what you ask for!

But yes, some interesting points raised; bit of a shame them don't, for me, seem to go anywhere much. I realise your edit does cover some of what I'm saying, but hell, I don't see why I shouldn't repeat myself, if everyone else is doing it these days ;-)

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

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.

From:

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...)

From:

damnspynovels.livejournal.com

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.

From:

freakytigger.livejournal.com

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.

From:

damnspynovels.livejournal.com

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.

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

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.

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

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.

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

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.

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

I have exactly the same hate complex for P Weller.

From:

freakytigger.livejournal.com

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.