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

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[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.

[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.