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Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: eknox on 06 Dec 2007, 00:11
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I cannot work out what the term 'Indie' means. please enlighten me
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http://www.wikipedia.org
I sincerely hope you're trolling and not actually being this stupid.
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Imagine getting teabagged repeatedly by people with more money and power than you will ever have.
This has nothing to do with indie, I just wanted to see if I could get you to imagine it.
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Whoa, that's doosey.
Indie means a lot of things to a lot of different people, it's better to come to your own independent understanding of indie as the meaning of indie will change in accordance with the capricious nature of the masses. It is an umbrella term as well.
To start you on your quest I'll bombard you with facts and you can resolve the ambiguities independently.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/indie
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=indie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie
You have no idea how hard it was to resist using multiple forms of dependent in this post.
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I guess you could describe indie as the music that people, who may or may not self-identify as "indie kids/hipsters," listen to which can't easily be placed under some other ridiculous label.
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I think it has been over a year since we had the 'What is emo/indie' stickies at the top of the page.
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Wow, you guys, weak boarding.
I can't believe I'm saying this but n0t_r0bert_b0yle!! is winning here.
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Wow, you guys, weak boarding.
What the deuce are you talking about? This is fucking 2007. Coming onto a message board and asking a nebulous question (as your second post ever) like "what is indie" is just retarded Nettiquite. Google it, look it up on Wikipedia, whatever. There is no reason for threads like this.
It's like coming onto a mathematics board and saying "hay guys what is pi?"
SRSLY.
Stop the madness.
Think of the children.
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Hey, the guy posted a question, sounding genuinely clueless, on a message board for a webcomic related to indie music. Which is read by a lot of people who don't know shit about indie music.
The Wikipedia article on indie rock is confusing and not entirely accurate.
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My position stands: Strategic use of Google will provide any and every answer that any of us could give, and the thought that this board is populated by extremely knowledgable and reasonable people (aside from a very select few) is frankly laughable.
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OK, then. In addition, to checking wikipedia try searching the archives for the past threads on this subject. Also, lurk around the music forums and you will eventually obtain an understanding for the elusive definition of indie. I also recommend reading Our Band Could Be Your Life because it is awesome.
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Seconded.
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My position stands: Strategic use of Google will provide any and every answer that any of us could give, and the thought that this board is populated by extremely knowledgable and reasonable people (aside from a very select few) is frankly laughable.
I would say that most of the regular posters are fairly knowlegeable and at times reasonable.
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give me a break, i live in Tassie (google it)
but seriously- sorry if my post offends, but its not a term that gets used by people i know, and i only have only really heard it on QC and occasionally on Triple j.
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The wikipedia article on indie rock actually lists Dinosaur Jr as a hardcore band and I feel this is indicative of its overall quality. It actually manages to be worse than the wikipedia article on emo, and that's saying something.
I agree with Ballard, Google or lurking are not going to get you a good answer because there isn't one (not a fact that would be apparent from a search either). Basically, indie means independent, in other words not produced by a major corporation. Beyond that you will never get a good description. If it's basically rock music and isn't metal or punk and isn't very deliberately aimed at the top of the charts (even if it gets there) then people will call it indie. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, just listen to Husker Du and have a nice cup of tea instead.
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I would ask who Hüsker Dü where but someone would slap me (and yes i have looked it up on Wikipedia :angel:)
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Ok, that doesn't make sense. The Wikipedia article on Hüsker Dü is pretty informative.
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give me a break, i live in Tassie
Oh man, you have my sympathy.
Think of the bands you hear on Triple J about a year before the commercial stations pick them up. Think of the videos you pretty much only see on Rage and not the Saturday morning chart shows. Think of the kind of stuff you'll find in little music stores and places like Fish and JB and not in Virgin Music, HMV and such. Chances are that is what a lot of people regard as indie stuff. That is not really a definite definition and I am sure a lot of people would disagree with me, but from what I've seen it really is pretty broad.
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Actually, Virgin has been trying far too hard lately to appeal to the indie audience. Every time I walk in there, Ted Leo and The New Pornographers are up front by the entrance for everyone to see.
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give me a break, i live in Tassie (google it)
forgotten corner of Australia. A heavy part of our 'Indie' culture(s) is based on over-simplifications from the US.
Don't worry, it's even more blurred for us than our distant neighbors from the North. If you're trying to get indie cred and finding parameters to fill with your faux-awesomeness, get over yourself and listen to stuff you like. But your probably not doing that cause that would be totally uncool, right?
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Well, the New Pornographers and Ted Leo have had several years of word of mouth, strong albums, positive critical responses and a rather huge world wide fanbase to help them get some recognition in a Virgin megastore.
The Arcade Fire accomplished more than this is less than a year with one album.
Modest Mouse have hit singles on the radio.
This may sound odd, but an indie act is able to touch a large fanbase and achieve widespread recognition. It's amazing, I know!
Although, in many cases, they're able to do this because they turn crap.
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Sony BMG keeps screwing up Modest Mouse.
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I don't think it's fair to put all the blame on Sony BMG.
Well, the New Pornographers and Ted Leo have had several years of word of mouth, strong albums, positive critical responses and a rather huge world wide fanbase to help them get some recognition in a Virgin megastore.
Indeed. When it comes down to it, most stores could care less who makes the product as long as they turn a profit.
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I never got the 'indie is a genre of music' as if it's comparable to a genre like rap, or ambient, or blues.
Whenever someone claims they listen to the genre of indie music, I want to slap them. Indie isn't a particular sound. Indie just means the music was released under an independent music label. that's all.
There might be philosophies that are a part of being indie, but this doesn't make it a genre. More a life choice.
Am I completely wrong?
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These arguments were all we discussed in the summer of 06. This is making me feel rather nostalgic.
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The other problem with the umbrella term Indie (rather than the genuine term mentioned by Staedler and Tommy) is that about 90% of it, well known or not, pretty much just sounds like generic pop music or, in the worst cases, adult contemporary.
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I've always thought of adult contemporary as the more palatable side of (90s, in my mind) commercial pop music. Bands like Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant. Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, but what's so horrible there?
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Indie is not a genre, but Indie Pop is, amirite?
Seriously, genres are getting to be worthless words these days.
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Indie is everything on an independent label I think.
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Indie is everything on an independent label I think.
Not so much these days. I think it's more about estabishing a fan base on an indie label. There are tons of bands that are considered indie that are on major labels right now, but only moved to a major label after they were already popular on an indie label. (The Decemberists, Death Cab, The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, etc.)
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Wow. I think we've just seen a discussion become a metaphor for itself.
No, wait...maybe I'm overthinking this.
But...could it be?
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I agree with Ballard, Google or lurking are not going to get you a good answer because there isn't one (not a fact that would be apparent from a search either). Basically, indie means independent, in other words not produced by a major corporation. Beyond that you will never get a good description. If it's basically rock music and isn't metal or punk and isn't very deliberately aimed at the top of the charts (even if it gets there) then people will call it indie. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, just listen to Husker Du and have a nice cup of tea instead.
Indie and Alternative and such are horrible ways to define music in terms of a specific sound. An indie band probably is so because they don't want to sound like the pop music that is heavily controlled by record labels. Since these labels have become more and more interested in turning obscenely high profits, they generally try to sign and market bands that will do well, and thus market the rather bland pop music that a lot of people that come places like here tend to dislike. Now, back in, say, the 70s, the average label would be more willing to sign bands that were "weird"; one of my favorite alt/prog style bands had WB publishing a lot of its music at least on this side of the coast. Hence it's a term that's not been in use for very long, sort of like "underground" and such, which mean similar things, though underground was to my knowledge used most with punk musics.
Since indie thus involves a contrast against the less-experimental mainstream record labels, it's hard to really create as unified a definition of the sound as a more popular genre since there is a significant element of experimentation and innovation in sound, as compared to the less imaginative efforts that might come from more mainstream music. Hence indie involves rock instrumentations and even sometimes pop-based chords, melodies, and lyrics, but with a change in the role a specific instrument might play.
For example, Mellowdrone is considered indie through Wikipedia. One of their songs I am familiar with is Oh My. This song is not far off from a pop song in vese-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, etc. construction, but a lot of the forefront instrumentation on that is more electronic rather than purely guitar-based, and the lyrics seem nonsensical compared to your average "I love you and I'm saying that I love you pretty explicitly, and rather than talk about how I wish I could fly over there like a shooting star or something, I'm going to be mainly concrete in how I explain my love to you and everyone else who is listening" song.
Alternately, a band like Future of the Left is probably more unusual and less palatable to listeners of pop music, since a lot of their music feels like strangely-mixed metal, with near-primal raging about pointing and summer activities and thumbs and pickled onions and Mark Foley, over a heavily distorted and mixed guitar that doesn't use the typical pan-to-center technique of most pop songs that doesn't always come into play -- some songs are near totally driven by a combination of drums and bass, also try Death from Above 1979's Pull Out as a similar style to this.
Yet one would consider both bands to be indie. As such it is that so nebulous a definition for indie exists, but one might think that involves either some sort of rebellious or mature sound as compared to the typical teenybopper pop that plays on top radio.
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Sonic Youth have been on a major label for 17 years.
The defense rests, your honor.
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the thought that this board is populated by extremely knowledgable and reasonable people (aside from a very select few) is frankly laughable.
I knew MWhaling and you, sir, are no MWhaling.
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Indie is the noise a tree makes when it falls down in the forest with no one around to hear it.
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OK, seriously, I'm ending the serious part of this thread. This covers pretty much everything right here:
From The Melancholy Rhino:
"There's two ways of discussing 'indie' - one generic/categoric/analytic, an attempt at objectivity, the other judgmental/personal/anecdotal, an application of attitude that subsumes both aesthetics and economics - and there's no obvious way of separating them out.
The generic bit is easily enough determined. It's generally agreed that indie starts with Nirvana - there was plenty of music around before 1991 that didn't fit into the mainstream and was put out on independent labels or white labels and had a cult following, but it was called underground in the 70's, post-punk in the 80's, and alternative thereafter, and it wasn't until ‘Never Mind’ went supernova that the word 'indie' started to be used by the mainstream media to tag something that had previously been ignored. Its usage differed subtly in the UK and the States, in that UK indie emerged as a reaction to the commodification of Britpop (Oasis - believe it or not - were seminal once) and has been personnified by a distinctively non-metropolitan (ie proudly detached from the London club scene) sound, like that of groups such as Super Furry Animals, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, and Manic Street Preachers, from Wales, and Mogwai, Arab Strap, the Delgados, and Belle and Sebastian, from Glasgow, being less rock-centric, in general, than its US manifestation - 'indie rock' - which some say evolved out of the different styles of just three highly influential bands: Sebadoh (lo-fi aesthetic - big on enthusiasm, small on technical proficiency), Pavement (quirkier, art-damaged, self-referential, musically diverse), and Superchunk (punky - guitars, more guitars, and very loud drums).
But this is the sort of contentious lippy stuff that barstool musicologists will contentedly blab on about til the cows come home and still no-one will be any the wiser. Can Radiohead still be thought of as indie despite being signed to a major? Is Sigur Rós selling its soul to EMI, or are they just ensuring a vastly wider audience than ever they could have achieved via the resources available to Bad Taste or Fat Cat? Does this sort of thing matter except as a major source of procrastination at exam revision time?
In a broader, and more illuminating sense, the expression 'indie' became one of those abbreviations that tend to cluster around any significant moment of cultural change as flags of identification (as in hippy for hipster, or nazi for Nationalsozialistisch): it comes into that category of abbreviations that have acquired meaning independent (appropriately enough) of the original - like tv (telly), perm, nuke, hype, dis, and so on - and a surprising number of people don't know, when they're talking music, which are the majors that 'indie' is actually independent of. Of course you do. But hey, just for the record, let's remind ourselves that they are as follows (selected subsidiaries in brackets) in order of market dominance:
Universal Music Group (Geffen, Mercury, Island DefJam, Interscope, Decca, Polydor)
Sony BMG (Columbia, Epic, Work, Jive, Arista, RCA, Milan)
EMI Group (Capitol, Virgin, Mute, Parlophone, Heavenly)
AOL Time Warner (Warner Bros, Sire, Maverick, Atlantic, Elektra)
By default, these have come to represent the anti-Christ quads - formerly quintuplets - of the indie world, and I'd be prepared to risk a bet that the total purists out there also run Debian on Macs and regard Windows as the gateway to Hell. But you don't have to be an out and out anarcho-syndicalist to see that there's a shift of emphasis that runs from left to right as you trace your finger across the catalogues of Constellation or Fat Cat and on into those of EMI and SonyBMG - and that that shift reflects a substantively different way of evaluating an artist's worth. It's probably naïve to condemn the Universal management as being careless of anything but the bottom line, but, equally probably, it's true. It's hilarious the way the record industry refers to the human providers of the product - en masse - as 'artists', as if the mass-produced production-line pretty boys and girls who clog the airwaves with their arse-waggling bollocks might be spoken of in the same breath as - oh, where do you begin? Time was when artists were artists and musicians strummed their lutes and knew their place, then along came the Vinyl Fairy and waved her gold-dust wand and suddenly anyone with straight teeth, one or two pierced nipples and a recording contract is a Michelangelo and Michelangeletta. But it can't be repeated often enough: the music industry is precisely that - a phenomenally profitable global industry. The global music market was worth $32 billion in 2003, of which the European music market was worth $11.8 billion; total unit sales were 2.7 billion, and the four major record companies now control 74.7% of the world market (with Universal alone accounting for 23.5%) - 80.6% of the European market.
Those are the bald figures. The big question is: where does indie music fit into all this talk about total unit sales and profitability?
Listen to Don Wilkie and Ivan Ilavsky, co-founders of the Canadian label Constellation:
"This is our 'post-rock' -- a term that must be construed politically in equal measure to its referencing of some diffuse 'instrumental' or 'deconstructed' musical aesthetic. 'Indie rock' was never a genre and its bastardisation as an aesthetic category was one of countless elegant corporate-intellectual coups during the 1990s. Sadly, all too many hipper-than-now taste-makers were happily complicit, ready to replace 'indie' with 'post' and thus help extinguish any abiding concern about the economies that ground and contextualise rock music. So fuck post-rock, and the smooth untroubled consumption it enables. Independent rock as a utopic analogue for social organisation is our mandate."
(from the Constellation manifesto)
Likewise, Jon Whitney of Brainwashed advocates an uncompromisingly proactive position regarding the majors:
"Brainwashed.com and The Brain boycott Major Label music for many reasons.
1. There's so much exciting music happening from the enormous number of indie labels, our small volunteer staff doesn't want to waste our spare resources.
2. There's enough reviews, support and coverage from places like Rolling Stone or Spin or NME.
3. We don't agree with practices that include in-house publishing clauses, high-budget awards shows, radio station payola, million-dollar music video expenses, retailer price-fixing or conglomeration of smaller labels that result in deletion of catalogue and employees (ie: profit-minded as opposed to artistically-minded).
Due to this boycott we will actively ignore major product at all opportunities, since even bad publicity is still publicity. We also openly encourage every individual to spread the word. We also wish the media outlets ignore major label product, even try going for an issue being completely major-label free."
These two positions represent the more radical edge of an identifiable polity that comprises a major distinguishing feature of indie culture. It might not, except in a very few cases, be a particularly coherent or articulate or organised affair, but it's a polity nevertheless, of the sort that befriends few adherents to old-school political systems and values, whether they lean to the left or the right - a disorganised organisational system of anti-authoritarian, non-conformist, pro-individualist (occasionally nihilistic) self-expressive values, and one that by definition is open source. One cheap 'n' cheerful rule of thumb for testing an artist's indie credentials is to determine which side of the file-sharing 'debate' a particular candidate is on. This works for divas as well as for newbies - which elevates our dear Björk Gudmundsdóttir to veritable Indie Ice Queen and damns the pretend Lady Madge of Ashcombe as an avaricious mainstream madonna.
Indie is a tribe, however, not a nation, and quite a large, unruly tribe at that. It has its obvious leaders, shamans, and spokespersons (of which, this year, we've lost, in John Peel, one of the greatest and the best), its marks of recognition (that excruciatingly careless carefulness about dress codes at gigs), passwords (if you now type GY!BE rather than just plain GYBE without thinking you're truly cool), its annual gatherings (All Tomorrow's Parties being to indie what GOP is to Red Amerika), its myths, its rituals - all the paraphernalia, in other words, of a sub-culture verging on a religion. Typically, however - unlike the equivalent sub-cultures of C&W, say, or death metal, or grunge - it's a tribe linked by a very loose set of affiliations - consensus- rather than vote-driven - and somehow retaining its credibility as a genre despite the fact that no two people can ever seem to be able to agree what indie actually is, despite frequent, lengthy and impassioned threads on the subject in the music groups.
Whatever it is, one thing is quite clear: that the sites of its creative incubators have shifted continents. The rise and rise of indie has been located almost exclusively in the US and Canada and (particularly) the UK until quite recently, when world-class artists have begun to emerge on such European labels as Morr and Staubgold in Germany, Mosz in Austria, Gooom and Locust in France, and, further afield, Thule and Smekkleysa/Bad Taste in Iceland, Extreme, Sigma Editions, and Preservation in Australia, and, amidst a huge explosion of indie labels in Japan, a couple of personal faves: Plop and Childisc - the list is growing by the month. (Nothing yet comes to mind from either South America or the Indian or African sub-continents or the Middle East, which might well prove the grist to some future thesis that indie proceeds like a benign isotopic side-effect of the meltdown of those cultures in which nuclear families have exceeded the specs of their containment chambers - but really, that's so off-topic ... )
There's another sort of independence that needs to be mentioned, of course, and that's the freedom from playlist hell that the internet provides for new artists struggling to get a hearing. Clearly, less and less people are relying on TV and radio and music magazines, the traditional sources of information, for guidance towards new music, turning instead to trusted newsgroups, interactive sites like Audioscrobbler, and e-zines such as (*modest fanfare*) the melancholy rhino. If you're reading this it's because either you have an open curiosity about indie music, or because you've been here before and got a good tip or three and decided to come back for more. After all, what is the rhino if not independent - of everyone who might want to tweak a commercial advantage out of getting a good review here - precisely because of its editorial independence? The rhino serves indie through being indie.
And perhaps that's the point - that this amorphous mess of a genre that is also an amorphous mess of an attitude attracts a following based on a kind of potlatch economy, wherein the only currency that matters is the gift of musical ideas. No-one's going to be so dogmatic or naïve as to expect that, in the real world, no-one's entitled to make money out of this, but the tacit indie agreement, and the one thing that bottom-lines the whole indie ethos, is that the only true capital is the music, and that that, in a world which increasingly conspires to decree the opposite, is priceless."
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Where was that post much further up the page? It was absolutely fantastic.
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That's not what the article is actually saying, though. It's simply saying that the success of Nirvana was when the TERM "indie" came into popular mainstream usage.
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No it didn't. That's when it went pair-shaped.
Pear-shaped?
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Sebadoh, "Gimme Indie Rock", circa 1991:
Started back in '83
Started seeing things a differently
And hardcore wasn't doin' it for me no more
Started smoking pot
Thought things sounded better slow
Much slower, heavier
Black magic melody to sink this poseur's soul
VU Stooges undeniably cool
Took a lesson from that drone rock school
Manipulate musicians hack righteous drool
Getting loose with the Pussy Galore
Cracking jokes like a Thurston Moore
Peddle hopping like a Dinosaur, J...
Rock and Roll genius, ride the middle of the road
Milk that sound, blow your load
Shoot it further than you ever said it go
Four stars in the Rolling Stone
Oooh sludge rock,
That's hard as harsh
Just gimme indie rock!
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Taking inspiration from Husker Du
It's a new generation
Of electric white boy blues
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Breaking down the barriers
Like Sonic Youth
They got what they wanted
Maybe I can get what I want too
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Time to knock
The hard rock on it's side
Time to knock
The shit right up a storm
Turn to amaze
With the indie sludge
Grunge!
Aaah!
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No, no. Pair-shaped.
Shaped like a pair of balls.
Ah, I get it. Next time specifiy the type of pair in the sentence, please, to avoid confusion.
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Ah, I can't believe that I missed the conception of a new "What is indie?" thread. I guess it's too late to do the getting raped by corporations bit? Did someone make that joke already?
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Well, the New Pornographers and Ted Leo have had several years of word of mouth, strong albums, positive critical responses and a rather huge world wide fanbase to help them get some recognition in a Virgin megastore.
Hence, trying too hard. Or not hard enough.
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Or not at all.
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Nah, their sales are dying since even people who buy music mostly buy it on iTunes now. So every music CD with the exception of boxed sets is $10. And they're trying like hell to appeal to indie kids because they're more likely to pay to support the artists they like.
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If I buy a CD, I try to buy it from a local CD store that is not part of a long chain. This way I support independent musicians and local businesses, rather than pouring money into the Fat Cats' pockets.
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Which is precisely why they're failing.
I actually really respect Richard Branson. He built that company on his blood, sweat, and tears. But he's more involved in Virgin Atlantic and being obscenely rich than in the label/chain nowadays. Whoever is running the company for him is murdering it.
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I too respect Branson, he is fine entrepreneur and reflects all the attribute that one aught to have.
On the other hand i don't respect established, obscenely rich companies out of general principle.
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Imagine getting teabagged repeatedly by people with more money and power than you will ever have.
This has nothing to do with indie, I just wanted to see if I could get you to imagine it.
That really confused me for a second, 'cuz I immediately thought "Oh, he's talking about capitalism... but that's only tangential to indie! Or wait, is it...?"
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I too respect Branson, he is fine entrepreneur and reflects all the attribute that one aught to have.
On the other hand i don't respect established, obscenely rich companies out of general principle.
So you're saying one should be a fine enterpreneur but should strive never to become successful out of sheer hate for The Man?
I have nothing against established and/or wealthy companies. It is when these companies abandon what made them established/wealthy in order to become more wealthy that I have something against them.
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I should have clarified that.
Firstly, by "one" I mean any entrepreneur and secondly, obscenely rich companies tend to end up succumbing to their greed and I can't justify feeding that.
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I've always thought of adult contemporary as the more palatable side of (90s, in my mind) commercial pop music. Bands like Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant. Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, but what's so horrible there?
I guess my point is that Indie, weather using the quantifiable definition of affiliation with non-major labels or not, is usually praised by fans and critics alike as being some kind of wondrous, completely visionary form of music. I believe that about 90% of the time it sounds exactly like extremely basic pop music.
There's absolutly nothing wrong there, and I do love many acts classified as indie for their genuine creativity and ability to create something completely different, and even some acts that just sound like pop-crap. I guess it's just a pet peeve of mine, and usually I'd just rather listen to something that I haven't heard a hundred times before.
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I wish I had more time to read these boards so I could catch conversations like that one.
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I thought the mods started locking "what is X Genre" threads like 3 months before I even registered for the boards. That was two and a half years ago.
I've always thought of adult contemporary as the more palatable side of (90s, in my mind) commercial pop music. Bands like Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant. Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, but what's so horrible there?
Let's see here...
Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant.
Oh yeah, that. [/rude]
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I guess my point is that Indie, weather using the quantifiable definition of affiliation with non-major labels or not, is usually praised by fans and critics alike as being some kind of wondrous, completely visionary form of music.
People see what they want to see. You have a prejudice against what you perceive as an "indie" community. I think you'll find that fans and critics of all music, indie or otherwise, praise it as being wondrous and visionary. You just probably come into contact with a lot more "indie" fans than, say, metalheads or country enthusiasts.
For example, a friend of mine who writes for the New York Times and is a nerdy white-boy from way back who grew up on indie rock now goes batshit insane over Rihanna and T.I. as though they're the messiahs of a new revolution in sound.
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I suppose that may be true, though usually it's a lot easier to tune out anyone who claims Rihanna and T.I. as the second coming, or current-wave country fans who love Rascal Flats. Also, perhaps since "indie" is clearly the big commercial thing right now, there's more press for it... or something.
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Not really, since even Pitchfork cream themselves every time T.I. puts out a new single.
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Oh god, yes. And don't even get me started on Nas's Illmatic.
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I genuinely do not know who T.I. and Nas are. :?
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what country do you live in?
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Australia :|
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it must be wonderful
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No, not really. We have a lot of Pop-Punk playing on our mainstream radio stations.
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I'm guessing you don't mean stuff in the vein of Jawbreaker.
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Not to mention the fact that Nas' Illmatic is an brilliant album, and T.I. has put out his fair share of excellent songs.
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I'm guessing you don't mean stuff in the vein of Jawbreaker.
Sorry, never heard of them. I believe that Fall Out Boy is what the youngsters are into today.
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Yeah guys, Illmatic is amazing.
And please go listen to Jawbreaker.
And as far as indie goes, it seems to be emerging as a pretty popular term in my school. Panic! at the Disco, the Killers, and even this band Paramore are now suddenly indie. Maybe a new term will come to describe the more eclectic music tastes that I and many of you have, as so happened previously with alternative?
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How the fuck does anybody on earth not know who Nas is? Shit man, I first heard about him from a guy I know in Luxembourg. No excuses.
This post may or may not be a bit dickish due to a pretty decent beer buzz.
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Anyone who says 'eclectic' when referring to their 'broad' taste in music is pretty much full of shit, statistics show.
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Sigh. I'm better than all of you.
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Anyone who says 'eclectic' when referring to their 'broad' taste in music is pretty much full of shit, statistics show.
I've never liked that term. I think it's pretty pretentious. The radio station I have a show on calls itself eclectic, and it's the only reason I dislike it (the station, not the word).
It's also a shitty word in general.
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Main Entry:
eclec·tic
Function:
adjective
Definition:
composed of elements drawn from various sources
Sorry to burst your bubble guys but if you like music from more than a couple different genres you have an eclectic taste in music. Nothing pretentious about it.
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I thought the mods started locking "what is X Genre" threads like 3 months before I even registered for the boards. That was two and a half years ago.
I've always thought of adult contemporary as the more palatable side of (90s, in my mind) commercial pop music. Bands like Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant. Maybe it's just nostalgia speaking, but what's so horrible there?
Let's see here...
Gin Blossoms, Better Than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Natalie Merchant.
Oh yeah, that. [/rude]
Okay I'll give you the rest of that but Natalie Merchant has a really pretty voice and sings nice songs.
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Ok, a) P!ATD sucks so much balls, they put glory holes out of style. B) They are signed with Decaydence, brain child of Pete Wents who plays in *shudders* Fall Out Boy. Third, Paramore is signed by FueledbyRamen, which is either a spring-off of Decaydence, or a something. Third, the Killers kick-ass, don't diss.
Oh, and I like Paramore, they just sure as fuck aren't indie.
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Main Entry:
eclec·tic
Function:
adjective
Definition:
composed of elements drawn from various sources
Sorry to burst your bubble guys but if you like music from more than a couple different genres you have an eclectic taste in music. Nothing pretentious about it.
The actual dictionary definition and the people who use it to describe how they could possibly listen to both Franz Ferdinand AND the Flaming Lips, since, you know, they're both just so out there and you totally wouldn't expect someone who likes one to like the other. at all. ever.
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We could always say broad or diverse, those to are far from being pretentious.
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those are all relative terms. the point is the intent in using those terms, and usually it is one of pretention.
how much of the music you listen to only uses the 12-tone scale? how much of it is in 4/4 time? how much of it relies on the same chord progressions? how much of it is based on electronic manipulation, be it synthesizing or amplification? western/u.s. musical ideas may be the most dominant/popular/whatever in terms of social capital, but that hardly stops it from being homogenous.
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I never understood why people got to go around hatin' on adjectives. If someone's being a dick, just punch them. For your sake and the sake of words trapped in abusive relationships everywhere.
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Ok, a) P!ATD sucks so much balls, they put glory holes out of style. B) They are signed with Decaydence, brain child of Pete Wents who plays in *shudders* Fall Out Boy. Third, Paramore is signed by FueledbyRamen, which is either a spring-off of Decaydence, or a something. Third, the Killers kick-ass, don't diss.
Oh, and I like Paramore, they just sure as fuck aren't indie.
Fueled by Ramen has been around for at least 10 years, and Pete Wentz' label has been around since he has become famous, so maybe a couple years. This knowledge is what you get for growing up near the well-to-do suburbs of Chicago.
But what does any of this have to do with indie?
Not really, since even Pitchfork cream themselves every time T.I. puts out a new single.
I did not know this, but I thought pitchfork wrote a lot of articles that were not genuine, or something...
And I'd like to state that while I have heard of Nas and T.I., I have never actually heard them.
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Yeah guys, Illmatic is amazing.
And please go listen to Jawbreaker.
And as far as indie goes, it seems to be emerging as a pretty popular term in my school. Panic! at the Disco, the Killers, and even this band Paramore are now suddenly indie. Maybe a new term will come to describe the more eclectic music tastes that I and many of you have, as so happened previously with alternative?
Paramore....ow ow ow. My roommates were watching MuchMusic the other day, the video for one of their songs came on and holy crap they are bland.
....and regardless of the adjective you use, to me words like broad/diverse/eclectic signify the sort of person who says 'oh, I like everything!' Chances are solid that no, no you don't. I've never understood what's wrong with having focused taste and knowing specifically what you like. Being closed-minded and a jerk about it isn't cool, but bragging about being eclectic as a knee-jerk in the other direction isn't cool either.
(Yes, I realize my hypocrisy in saying that you shouldn't be closed-minded while slagging off Paramore in the same post but that band is seriously pretty bad guys.)
And alas, you can't punch out everyone that uses an adjective you disagree with, be it 'eclectic' or 'indie'.
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how much of the music you listen to only uses the 12-tone scale? how much of it is in 4/4 time? how much of it relies on the same chord progressions? how much of it is based on electronic manipulation, be it synthesizing or amplification? western/u.s. musical ideas may be the most dominant/popular/whatever in terms of social capital, but that hardly stops it from being homogenous.
This is a far more neck-punchingly pretentious paragraph than someone saying they have eclectic musical taste because they like Willie Nelson, Public Enemy and the Sun City Girls.
Seriously, this thread. God.
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I call total and complete bullshit, tommy.
Just because Western music in general follows some conventions doesn't mean that there isn't a range and that one can't be eclectic within that range.
Apply this to literature. Literature generally follows conventions of grammar, spelling, tense and perspective. All literature written or translated into English uses the same 26 letters and almost never uses made-up words. All of it. But how could it be anything less than eclectic to enjoy both Terry Pratchett and J.D. Salinger?
Also, I have never heard anyone claim to be "eclectic" because they like "Franz Ferdinand AND the Flaming Lips".
Finally, terms are relative. In comparison to the average music listener, it is definitely abberant to the norm to listen to more than a few genres which are, at least on the surface, worlds apart. Do The Pipettes and Bardo Pond generally follow the same Western musical conventions? Oh, sure, whatever, I guess so. Do they sound anything alike? No. No, they do not.
This whole argument is stemming from some ridiculously cooler-than-cool refusal to be perceived as attempting to be cool. Which is bullshit that people should outgrow by the age of 21, or at least 25. I don't know how old you guys are, but I outgrew all that shit a long time ago.
My musical taste is eclectic. Fuck you if you think I'm trying to be "cool" by saying that. I'm just trying to be precise.
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I'm saying that I've seen this argument a million times. People who say "Oh, no matter how different the music you listen to is, you're still not eclectic because most of it still uses notes and chords". And I'm saying that offering up that argument is, as you said, a kind of meta-pretension which boils down to one person saying to another:
I'm so cool that I can prove you aren't.
There are people who think it's cool and impressive to listen to "varied" music. There are some on this forum.
But there are also some people who say they listen to "all kinds of music", or who say "my tastes are eclectic", or who say "I listen to pretty much everything, as long as it's good" with no agenda other than to convey:
It would take me thirty minutes to give you a list of bands I like which would properly express how absolutely schizophrenic my musical taste is.
I don't think it's particularly interesting or cool that I like bands which are on the opposite of the musical spectrum which most people acknowledge. I just think it's true.
I'm not going to say that there aren't douchebags who say things like "I listen to so many jazz artists, I can't even name you any" in an attempt to be cool. There sure are. But to tar everyone who says "I listen to a wide range of music" with the epithet "pretentious" or to say they're being inaccurate because "Oh, well, all that music falls within the range that the human ear can decode, so clearly it's not really all that different" are equally kind of pedantically hipper-than-thou.
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Edit - Also, I can't see anyone in this thread saying that your taste in music isn't 'eclectic'. I don't know what you listen to so maybe it is. I don't really see why you are defending yourself against personal accusations that haven't actually been made.
But there have been people saying that "nobody" has eclectic musical taste, and since I am somebody, I am included in the set of people being referred to as being unable to claim an eclectic musical taste.
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You mean you actually understand why you like the music you do?
That must be weird. I can't ever explain why I like what I do.
I disregard the "indie/mainstream" thing entirely, see long Melancholy Rhino article on page 1.
The only people I know who say "I listen to indie rock" are like 38 and mean "I listen to 80s-90s lo-fi alternative and can't even spell Neutral Milk Hotel".
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I don't know. I sometimes say, "I listen to indie rock," when someone asks what I like, but in that I don't really care kind of way. I've found that it tends to go over better with people than actually listing names. I listen to other stuff, but that seems to be the safest response when with people I might like, but who only have a casual interest in music. What would be a more appropriate response? "I like lots of stuff" just seems like an even emptier response and does seem to carry a connotation of either a lack of interest or pretentiousness.
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Also, I have never heard anyone claim to be "eclectic" because they like "Franz Ferdinand AND the Flaming Lips".
Finally, terms are relative. In comparison to the average music listener, it is definitely abberant to the norm to listen to more than a few genres which are, at least on the surface, worlds apart.
i've heard people claim to be eclectic because they like michelle branch AND the wreckers. is that close enough? i mean, you're right, terms are relative, so isn't it kind of contradictory to be talking about 'the average music listener'? i would have guessed that the average music listener likely does listen to different genres, but whatever.
i would say most people would describe their own musical taste as eclectic. it's just perceptional bias. sorry, i hope you did not think i was seriously trying to criticize this. i still think it is a form of pretentiousness but it is one that i am guilty of as well and it is probably something intrinsic in human nature. anyone claiming to be above it would indeed be full of shit. everyone's happy about the music they listen to because they spent time and effort seeking it out. there's nothing wrong with that.
This whole argument is stemming from some ridiculously cooler-than-cool refusal to be perceived as attempting to be cool. Which is bullshit that people should outgrow by the age of 21, or at least 25. I don't know how old you guys are, but I outgrew all that shit a long time ago.
isn't that a bit unfair of you then, criticizing me for something i'm intrinsically incapable of?
My musical taste is eclectic. Fuck you if you think I'm trying to be "cool" by saying that. I'm just trying to be precise.
hm. i did say the key was intent in using terms like eclectic, but perhaps i made a mistake in saying it is 'usually' one of pretentiousness. i should have just said 'sometimes'. but is one word really enough to make you feel like i was criticizing you personally?
I don't think it's particularly interesting or cool that I like bands which are on the opposite of the musical spectrum which most people acknowledge. I just think it's true.
I'm not going to say that there aren't douchebags who say things like "I listen to so many jazz artists, I can't even name you any" in an attempt to be cool. There sure are. But to tar everyone who says "I listen to a wide range of music" with the epithet "pretentious" or to say they're being inaccurate because "Oh, well, all that music falls within the range that the human ear can decode, so clearly it's not really all that different" are equally kind of pedantically hipper-than-thou.
i guess i was just trying to say the same thing, that some people are douchebags, but not all? you are right though, i am pedantic. but that will just go away after i grow up in a few years.
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If you read that old thread I linked earlier I was saying that a lot of people who like 'Indie' think it is very different from mainstream music. It's not, which is the point Ruyi was trying to make.
I'll take your word for it. To me it seemed much more that she was making the point that it's not eclectic to listen to both Metal Machine Music and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, or to listen to Fear of a Black Planet and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. In the former case, such "music" really doesn't use 4/4 time or chords or scales or other Western music conventions (and neither do many other types of bands, everything form Wolf Eyes to The Charalambides). In the latter case, it's not even about the music, it's about the mood and presentation. I don't think you can disregard lyrics and attitude when deciding if one artist is in any way similar to another.
When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I just say "everything" and try to change the subject. I've found that in any situation where someone asks me "What kind of music do you listen to?" they're generally the kind of person that I have no interest in talking about music with anyhow.
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i guess i was just trying to say the same thing, that some people are douchebags, but not all? you are right though, i am pedantic. but that will just go away after i grow up in a few years.
I think you're just too involved in over-analyzing the tastes of others, or the intent of their declaration of said taste, or whatever. I don't care what anybody else in the world listens to and would rather just talk about bands than their fans.
Which is why I tried to end this thread on page 1.
Unfortunately when I have time on my hands and beer in my system I am apt to get into these pointless debates.
Curse you, Internet. Curse you.
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western/u.s. musical ideas may be the most dominant/popular/whatever in terms of social capital, but that hardly stops it from being homogenous.
I think that since all the old ideas are already played out, some musicians decided "Okay screw this, we're going to do what WE want now using some less outdated ideas, and if people actually like it, then cool." And for a while now, the specific sounds of the forerunners of that artistic movement are being emulated and commercialized, and it apparently pisses people off.
You know what I think?
BLAH BLAH BLAH GUYS IT'S HAPPENED WITH EVERY SINGLE ARTISTIC MOVEMENT OR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE IN HISTORY. Something gets popular? Other people want to ride the gravy train. It's a mixture of good business practice and human nature. The Greeks use columns and people think it looks rad? Oh shit, here comes Rome saying "Sup guys, our most important buildings have columns now." Somebody invents the gun and they start winning wars and gaining new territory. Soon enough, everybody's got guns and it's a clusterfuck bloodbath. Somebody uses carbon fiber construction to make their race cars lighter, and they go faster and win more often? Soon enough, everybody's doing it.
tl;dr - Copypasta is how we humans work, we can stop caring and go home, there's nothing to see here.
P.S. - Don't try to argue with Roo, she's too damn good at it.
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P.S. - Don't try to argue with Roo, she's too damn good at it.
And people wonder why I stop posting here for months at a time sometimes (aside from out-of-town show-playing).
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P.P.S. - Don't be dramatic, you should know by now that I don't hate you.
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Didn't say anybody hates or dislikes me.
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thats a good question overall, what IS indie? is indie something you can even DEFINE in terms like other musical "cultures?" bah, its almost rhetorical
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Dead thread is dead
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I DO COCAINE!