Comments on: Death Cab for Juno.

By: bittertwee

bittertwee — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:23:09 +0000

@CRS- I’m curious to know, as far as your second point goes, if you think the whole cycle is happening a lot faster these days (whatever “these days” means. Let’s say, as opposed to the pre-internet days). It seems to me that something barely has a chance to be underground before it’s glommed onto by the big corporations and mass-marketed. Which means it’s difficult for an underground phenomena to evolve slowly before it gets too big and then dies. From this standpoint, you can see why some people don’t want the things they like to become popular- it’s not so much snobbery as it is protection.

By: CRS

CRS — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:40:32 +0000

I like the word “indie” a lot, and I liked the word “alternative” a lot, back in 1992 when the word had meaning. What I liked about “alternative” as a word was that it was so perfect a description. It described a mindset, a commonality, versus actually describing the music itself. It was a way to categorize things that were perhaps disparate and to find what made them the same– a way to say that you liked Bjork, Nirvana, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, and Belle and Sebastian, all groups who sound absolutely nothing alike, but if they were all playing at the same festival, would make sense, rather than be just whatever is the top bands for the day.

Then of course the word “alternative”, which used to have meaning, got co-opted. It was being used to describe things like Matchbox 20 and Creed– what in the hell is “alternative” about that? How did this word, whose literal meaning is “to be different”, get stuck to shit that was the definition of mainstream?

The same thing will happen to “indie”. It’s frustrating, but already there are “indie” bands that aren’t really independent at all.

There’s two upsides to this.

1) The word “indie”, unlike “alternative”, actually describes the distribution method used to get you got the album. Nowadays things like “labels” are completely irrelevent. EVERYTHING is going to be “independent” sooner or later, meaning nothing will be.

2) Indie music, by definition, is underground. Underground music has a way of reflexively reacting against the mainstream. All these mid-tempo bands will become more and more mainstream, and reflexively, new bands will form that will be a reaction against it, meaning in a few years will have a few Dinosaur Jr. or Sebadohs making noise and causing earaches. And then when those bands have gone mainstream, we’ll have mid-tempo stuff again, then back to erratic noisefests, on and on until the sun goes burns out. As long as you keep your ear to the ground, you’ll always be happy.

By: bittertwee

bittertwee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:13:17 +0000

I was complaining to someone about this very thing the other day, and they recommended the book “The Conquest of Cool.” The subtitle is “Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism.” Sounds depressing. Also if you look it up on Amazon, the related titles, like “Commodify your Dissent” sound equally depressing. They might be good reads, though.

And Juno was just appalling.

Nice blog!

By: zippyfish

zippyfish — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:16:47 +0000

Agreed. ‘Indie’ is getting co-opted by the powerful – like they do to everything that they think will work for them.