First, Pavement is reuniting next year. Oh shit. I don't know what to say. For some reason I want to hide even though I'm inexplicably happy and shocked and yet not shocked and then a little underwhelmed when I think of the reality of it. But what if they went into the studio? Oh shit oh shit oh shit. What the fuck am I going to do when I live in a world where Pavement is back together?
Ok, second, anyone who hasn't read
this or
this, should if you're into that sort of thing. Nitsuh Adebe's passing glance at 'indie culture' is spot-on for the most part and Anna's addendum takes the debate out of the aesthetic ether and brings it into the real personal-political realm in which we live, and where most of these questions of good vs bad, twee vs hardcore, inde-cred vs indie-tastic are banged out. I had the privilege of knowing Anna during her indie years, making this an even more interesting topic. Because it's both a story about zeitgeist and personal histories.
Everyone agrees that things have changed since those oh so distant pre 9/11 days where independent and mainstream music sat confortably on either side of the aisle. The change has been pretty massive, but it's happened rather subtle. Or maybe rather, in a herky-jerky and uneven fashion, leaving a pretty fractured music world in it's wake. Fractured, but also indelibly connected and intertextual, if I want to get all faux-academic, which I definitely do for god knows why. This is where I break from Nitsuh's argurment: that there are two warring factions. I know it's a streamlined thesis, a simple way of looking at a complex thing for a certain ease of discussion and summation. And suprisingly, he's on point. He's got a good point about indie having been a pretty uncomplicated term in England for a while. He also nails the early aughts desperate desire for propulsive and snappy guitar rock. It's easy to forget what life was like before the Strokes and the White Stripes. Which leads me to another pet project of mine: Although we think all indie roads lead back to Pavement, most roads probably lead back to the Strokes. More on that in some other post. But yes, a bunch of stylish rich kids on a major label living an impossible New York fantasy life kicked open the doors to a lot of minds. Lame but true, and also not totally lame.
Which brings me to another much larger pastime of mine: bitching about New York. I think my major objection to Nitsuh's article is that he never mentions New York, let alone does he bitch about it. And bitching about New York or defending it has been a major topic of discussion this decade, so let's talk about it. New York has an unimpeachable music history, by far a towering meccah of cultural importance. But as many have pointed out so elequontly, New York doesn't exist anymore. That is, it is not a real place. Follow me here, CBGB's is a fashion outlet. The Village, Chelsea, SoHo, the Bowery, all impossibly priced and razed beyond recognition. Surely, history has not been totally scrubbed from the streets, but the narrative that starts there is dead, killed by gentrification or co-option or what have you. Totally inarguably dead. Brooklyn is maybe a place, but I have my doubts. Becuase I don't understand how it works. Does everyone's parent's pay their rent? Is there a 1:1 ratio of practice spaces to apartments? Does anyone have a real job? I ask these questions because from everything I see or hear, from the New York times to Pfork, Marnie Stern, to the lyrical content of Brooklyn bands themselves paints Brooklyn as fantasy world where everything and everyone is creative, vibrant, well dressed, in a band, an artist, a cloumnist, a dj, between 18 and 30. Whatever Brooklyn does is lapped up, documented, dissected, worried about, and praised. Like, this is where America's precocious navel gazing children go for life camp, and the media are their collective overbearing and exuberant parent's who force us to weigh in on every accomplishment and mishap. And the Times piece on the hipster paunch must be the watershed moment that forces a mea culpa on behalf of the media. Shit has to stop. Right? Homework assignment, someone tally up the Best New Music picks from the last two years, and see what percentage of the Americans are from New York. I took a passing glance, and it looks devastating.
I'm not saying that New Yorker's aren't talented. Not at all, and the fact that Brooklyn's hegemony is so pervasive, just means bands will flock there, widening the pool of good music. But, there remains a serious lack of real life coming from Brooklyn. That is, most of these bands are deficient in speaking to any of the experiences of most of their fans. Either too vague and cryptic, or too ironic and overly clever.
But enough about New York. Back to real life.
Let's talk about how we come into contact with new music these days. The Internet is the short answer, a longer answer would probably include our friends tastes, pitchfork, the New York Times, NPR, CW shows, Ipod commercials, blogs, etc. We can talk about the death of print music criticism, the dying music industry, obsolete physical medium, leaks and piracy. But what about the subtle personal shifts?
When I was in high school, I had what is called an
opinion leader, and his name was Andrew. By opinion leader, I don't mean that he made the opinions for his peer group, but he was the central source of information about music for a handful of his friends. Not only because he had good taste and intelligence, but also because he had a high speed internet connection, access to a credit card for online puchases, and a CD burner, all things I did not. I was what is called a low end technology user. A funny thing happened after I got my own computer and credit card and went to college, the balance of information and debate shifted. I had my own concurrent stream of new music and information, and began to stake out my own cultural individuality.
I mention this because I think it's a nice little microcosm of the shift in the influence of music in social exchange. Andrew was like a record store clerk. He heard everything before you did, had access to albums you didn't, and his own opinions about what was good and bad. But like any record store owner, he was also curator to his friends and spread the gospel of good music, new and old. This was the story for a lot of kids interacting with music. There was a record store, an older brother, a cool friend, that girl you were interested in, etc. These people still exist for sure, and there will always be the guy or girl who just cares a little bit more than you, who will be more up to date. But access is more or less equal to all. This matters because it helps to obliterate time and place and the cognitive space of music culture. As Andrew deftly pointed out when talking about local music scenes, it's just as easy to have a scuzzy Philly noise rocker that actually lives in Minnesota as it is to have the Philly scene. Ok, Andrew I butchered your quote, sorry. But it's a good point.
This is how Brooklyn exists in the minds of millions who have never been but dream about it. It is possibly even more real online and in our (my) fantasies than in physical space. Which makes the development of a local scene easier in one way, the fact that you can connect quickly and easily, and harder because why stick around your shitty town when urban escape fantasies abound. I know that people have always flocked to New York to make it. The difference now is that fantasy world is so reinforced by ubiquitous media, so much of it uncritical of the indie lifestyle, that anything outside of it irrelevant. There are exceptionms, but have you noticed how much these other scenes look identical to each other? What does this mean for independent music as a whole? Will kids chase the fantasy of bohemia and make the music of their heroes, or will they dig their heels in and say, this is where I am, this is who I am, enough with the bullshit?
Nitsuh brings up another good point: what's at stake in taking a critical stance on an album or band. This has always been a part of the hipper than thou indie culture. But now, it's not just about taste, it's personal, it's political. You like Pains at Being Pure at Heart, fuck you, you're ruining music! You like the Black Lips, no you don't, not really, you don't actually listen to their records, fuck you, no one does. On one hand, as I get older I have the firm sense that I can listen to whatever the fuck I want more or less unapologetically. And under the weird big tent-The Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, No Age tent-this sentiment is the norm. You can like whatever, that's cool. As long as we're all cool about it, and politics of fame or influence aren't involved. But the problem is, those politics are omnipresent on the web, and to some extent, in real life.
Consider Nathan Williams and his crimes. His biggest crime wasn't being an ass onstage, his biggest crime was being anointed by the hype-machine and not being genuflect about it. I don't mean to drag this episode out again, but I think it was one of the most interesting events this year. The scuzzy noisy rock guys (Psychedelic Horseshit, Black Lips) attacked him because he's a little spoilt bitch who can't handle his drugs. I also imagine a lot of those nice polite indie fans hated him for being such a rude little punk. And of all people, he would be the ideal mixture of the two camps Nitsuh talks about. Scuzzy, gruff, loud, noisy, on an honest to god inependent label(s), but also pop-accessible, popular, young and sorta attractive, sorta awkward. But instead, he was a mixture of the things both sides hated (so it seems), the unearned popularity, the self entitlement, the hipper than thou stance, the lack of technical proficiency, the hot chicks dancing absentmindedly at his show. And this is where I posit that the Nathan Williams Daytripping episode and subsequent breakdown (they are inseparable in my mind) act a cogent characterization of the indie world at that moment. Everything's there: the shit hot label showcase at SXSW, the hype, the token weird band from Philly with token unkempt hair that you're supposed to like, the burgeoning alcoholism, overly earnest MTV interviews, the vampirical bloggers, the insidious consumerism no one really seems to mind anymore, the awkward hip-hop fandom (and let's be honest, cool as it is, it's fucking awkward as all get out, just look at Jay-Z swaying to Grizzly Bear, awesome and awkward, which is I guess, what indie rock always kinda was).
I watch this all and I think, this is real, this is what's really happening! The Smell, Todd P, Brooklyn, Baltimore, 'Loft Pop' are all real yes, but only for those who are actually there. For the rest of us in flyover country, they remain a distant fantasy. And yet something about the Kafkaesque spectacle of Nathan Williams failing to graciously navigate the unreal world of indie-rock hype strikes me as the unseen unheard underbelly to all this. He's was at the center of the disgusting circus, and just his ability to make people feel weird is admirable. That is, the argument about what's wrong with Wavves inevitably leads back to the argument about what's wrong with the music world that spawned him, and that's why I keep coming back to it. Also, god it's fun to talk about at parties.
I think it's interesting that Anna has been pushed away from indie and towards Hip-Hop. Interesting because I've had my own initiation into Hip-Hop love and fascination. Interesting because lyrically speaking, Diamond District's In the Ruff has been the most relevant album I've heard (well, at least a tie with Merriweather Post Pavillion, which doesn't count cuz it's big and universal and stuff). And it hit's me that it's no longer hip-hop tourism anymore, and I feel oddly a participant. Oddly, because I know I'm outside the world of hip-hop fans and even further from street life. Then again, maybe not. I dunno. Maybe it's just a bit closer to my life than the aesthetic aloofness, niceness, and/or genre exercises of indie music.
Posts
