What is "indie"?

[meserach.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this question has been debated endlessly here before, not to mention all over the rest of the internet, but I'm feeling poll-happy today.

[Poll #1433917]

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Useful definition of an indie club and a pop club. From barrysarll originally I think.

List of bands on the flyer: indie
List of drinks promotions: pop

IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT BANDS OR WHAT DRINKS.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Interesting!

So it seems like the "indie" descriptor is also heavily tied in with notions of authenticity and sincerity and the rockist/popist dichotomy.

I probably ought to have had poll optons for "It means music that isn't 'mainstream' " and "I tmeans music that is 'authentic' ", although of course these just shift the argument to definitions of other words.

A dissent

[koganbot]

So it seems like the "indie" descriptor is also heavily tied in with notions of authenticity and sincerity and the rockist/popist dichotomy.

My quick response to this is "No, actually, it isn't," unless you think that e.g. there's something inherently insincere about drinks. I'd say that in the example given - list of bands on flyer vs list of drinks promotion - the question is which is more likely to hold the best promise for the coming evening's adventure. The notion of "authenticity" - i.e., inauthenticity - only comes in play when the evening fails to deliver. If you're jaded on either the world of bands or the world of drinks or both, you'll think that whatever you're jaded on is a fraud for holding out a false promise to the suckers who go for it. And if they don't feel that way themselves, well, maybe they settle for too little, or maybe they're just real young.

For me the whole rockist/antirockist terminology is a fraud itself ("rockist" being a fantasy invention of the antirockist), since it papers over the basic assumptions that the people involved share (which is almost all the basic assumptions) and doesn't even attempt to explore what's at issue in various people's choice of adventures.

If you want to read a couple of my many spiels on the subject, go here and here.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

What if I started a club night with all of my favourite bands (i.e. the poppiest bands ever to exist) and listed them on the flyer, as I would do if such a thing were to happen. Then would it be indie or pop?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It would be indie.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that it would be an "indie pop" night, because it is the very act of making the /bands/ rather than the /drinks/ the advertised feature that makes you "indie".

I.E. "indie" = "caring more about the music and who makes it than getting drunk cheaply", and thus "pop" = "who cares who the bands are, it's vodka and red bull for a pound WOOOOO"

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Well, I feel sorry for pop. It deserves better!

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Hehe! It's not MY definition, that's just how I'm interpreting it.

Maybe I should do another poll on "what is pop"?

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

Probably more suitable for a site called Poptimists!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

hence using Proper Indie and Landfill Indie to differentiate.

this conversation is now officially 21 years old btw (first spotted by me during the ascent of Kylie's first single on PWL, although it may go further back?)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Kylie, of course, wasn't indie when she was on an indie but WAS indie when she was on Capitol (?) in the mid-90s.

Anyone who has ever thought about what indie means is indie. And since indie is whatever indie people listen to this widens the definition somewhat ;)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Can you lose your indie status, once gained, by stopping thinking about it?

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

By that definition, I was indie from 1985-93, and totally not indie ever since...

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think we should also discuss the subtle differences between INDIE and NINDIE.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Don't actually have much to put in the comments, except I need to do something to justify ticking all of them.

[koganbot]

It means whatever you want it to mean

Not true. I wanted it to mean "rhododendron," but it wouldn't go.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

I think it has changed - it started off as 'a particular set of moral/ethical/political/social values' but has come to mean 'a particular musical genre/aesthetic/production style' to the average Radio 1 listener, and 'It means music by musicians not signed up to one of the major labels' to the average Pitchfork reader.

[koganbot]

'It means music by musicians not signed up to one of the major labels' to the average Pitchfork reader

Not really; I doubt that Lil Jon and Brooke Hogan count as "indie" to the average Pitchfork reader. It still probably means indie rock to most of them.

Reach

[koganbot]

I'd say something is "semipopular"* rather than "indie" if it reaches its sight beyond its own world. So the Ramones and Richard Hell and Pere Ubu were all semipopular rather than indie in the mid-'70s, despite their being on indie labels. (Sire wasn't originally affiliated with Warners.)

So we're "semipopular" here if we imagine our words can potentially reach beyond ourselves without limit, "indie" if we don't. This has nothing to do with how far our words actually do reach, since "indie" can be a big world but it's still indie if it can't imagine reaching beyond itself.

This is a mostly negative characterization of "indie," of course, and one that I wouldn't have used back in the '70s when the seeds of indie were being planted by Ramones et al. Back then being on an "indie" might especially mean that you're the one with reach, trying to get out from under the stultifying world of rock.

Back in the '50s, when "indie" did mean "independent record label" (assuming that the abbreviation "indie" was in use, which I don't know), it became associated with the rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll that was coming up on the indie labels, the majors mostly sticking with legitimate, respectable, pop. This meaning of "pop" didn't hold, of course, as r&b and rock 'n' roll became a hunk of the popular music of the '50s, and held even less after the Beatles hit, when pretty much everything that hit had some rock or r'n'b element. And in the '70s the readoption of the term "indie" had - at least in my mind, and I'm in guessing in quite a few others' - the sense of "let's have another upwelling like the rock 'n' roll upwelling." For better or worse, "punk" eventually became the name for the upwelling.

But post-upwelling - when, by the way, I was releasing my own music - indie found itself stuck in a niche, not necessarily by choice. And it was only here in the '80s that "indie" really reasserted itself as term, along with "alternative." And I began to hate them, for being lies, essentially, "indie" pretending to be independent and "alternative" pretending to be alternative when really they were a quasi-bohemian niche within the larger culture. Rock in its threat and promise in the '60s meant my half fending off and half reaching out for an alternative to me, whereas "alternative" in the '80s was satisfied being an alternative to "the mainstream," to "them." This isn't to say that for some people "alternative" couldn't have initially been an alternative, a new self beyond their previous self. But I don't see that this could last, really.

*And in a few instances manages to be genuinely popular.