Article Response: Indie Kids

Also, I know some people who have managed to become adults, with jobs, and suchforth, and remain indie at heart. Those are the saddest of all.

Happily insular,

No offense taken, Larm-O

It got me thinking, is indie rock way over-represented online or do I just move in the wrong circles? I mean, that stuff doesn't sell all that well. How come there seems to be so much more coverage of music/ dissection of scene for indie rock than for other genres? (All those "How to love an indie boy"-type joke pieces that have floated around through the years, very similar in content to this piece.) I'm sure Autechre sells as much as Modest Mouse. I want more sites like Skykicking and Josh Blog (FT obviously has radio pop covered.)

and there seems to be something a little desperate about this need to constantly slag indie rock culture in a generalized sort of fashion (in between reviews of clientele and piano magic, neither of whom i would have heard of without ft). it reminds me of j.d. considine's suspicion that people who constantly bitch about pop do so because they don't like the fact that pop moves them.

but of course there are kids who are all those things. come to ottawa sometime.

The reason I talk about indie in general and indie culture is multifold. I find the 'culture' in general frustratingly uncritical - endless bands, endless reviews, precious little to say about most things. I also find the culture irritating even when the music is lovely - I don't see that this is a contradictory response. So I write about bands that I find interesting or I find matter to me, and a lot of them happen to be indie. (I also find guilt fascinating as a response to music, obviously).

Why do I find the culture irritating? Well, my main serious bits of the article were the ones focussing on insularity and the oddly patrician approach to taste and music discourse I find in the indie 'scene'. Speaking personally, as a pop fan, I've spent countless postings, articles and e-mails having to defend my tastes from their very root. And I think that's been really good for my development as a listener, a writer, etc.

So FT takes a stand against indie because it amuses me, and because I think it's good for people to be confronted with dismissive opinions: most indie rock criticism not only takes indie to be the centre of the musical universe, it also leaves the attitudes and assumptions behind the music unexamined. Our counterweight may be crass, but at least it's there. Usually I drop a line into a review somewhere or a side-point in an NYLPM piece and try to keep things reasonable and polite; sometimes the frustration at stuff gets to me so the hammer is tried rather than the chisel.

As for intelligent writing, it's all very well but I so rarely get any feedback. By shoving some of Tanya's stuff front and central at least responses are guaranteed. Thanks, as ever, for yours!

When you refer to indie kids, what do you precisely mean, for instance what albums would a stereotypical indie kid your are refering to would have bought in 2000? and what would their favourite albums of the 90s be? Does Indie kid mean boring britpop and dull dadrock that would encompass shed 7, stereophonics, cast, oasis, kula shaker, montrose avenue, bluetones and all that rubbish that MM/NME celebrated for most of the mid 90s onwards.

or are indie kids that wear identical tshirts, baggy jeans, and sometimes hooded tops they seem to only like 3 bands blink 182/offspring/ green day - you know those hidedous 13-18 old i see wondering around in groups - sheeplike, unoriginal and dumb.

my comment re unoriginality was mostly directed at the easy jokes about masturbation, ugliness, and social maladjustment. i really don't think it's necessary to answer "why are they wrong?" or "why doesn't it matter?" here. i realize it was meant as humour but i thought it was weak, partly because it was unoriginal.

maybe you have a different perspective over there but here indie rockers are a) 80% male and b) an extreme minority. most people don't even know what indie rock is. it's not a scene any straight guy would get into for a shag. most indie rockers have had their tastes criticized (and had to defend them) a million times ("punk was a fad," "you can't hear the words," "they can't sing," "it's just noise," "can't they even tune their instruments?" . . .). much more, in fact, than the typical pop fan (which you obviously are not), whose tastes *are* the social norm.

of course indie rock criticism is indie-centric. it wouldn't be indie rock criticism otherwise. i've long ago stopped reading pitchfork regularly for that reason but that's just my taste. reviews are more important for fans of non-mainstream music who aren't exposed to the music they like through radio or TV. i have also been frustrated by the "experimental but not too experimental" aspect of indie rock taste but, hell, at least they generally tend to be more open to experimental music than most people. ultimately not everyone's going to be obsessive enough about music to cultivate a thousand aesthetic sensibilities and invest heavily in each one. i don't see the need to pick on people who have a specific taste.

some of the music i like and some i don't but i'm not sure it makes me a more critical listener than anyone else just because i prefer the magnetic fields to pedro the lion or camera obscura to don caballero (or ligeti or nagamani srinath or coltrane or bauhaus or boston to pavement or yo la tengo or aix em klemm or whoever). there are after all enough people who love rachel's and despise my bloody valentine.

*sigh* i'm coming off as really defensive of indie here, which a number of indie rockers who know me would find very funny. there are flaws with the scene/s that can turn you or me off but mostly these are all just come down to basic human tendencies (social insecurity, naivete, sexual desire, need for companionship, . . .) it's not a scene for everyone, especially if you're not a raging fan of indie rock, and it's not a scene i would wholeheartedly commit myself to, but again, that's just me and my taste. i don't know.

so yes, i thought it was fucking brilliant, though some of the 18 points were much funnier/true than others. some were kind of lame. but then again, who am i to judge indie rockers? my favorite band is still the velvet underground, so what do i know.

There are always people like yourselves who denounce the popular, well-known bands and say 'Indie kids have shit taste/are narrow- minded sheep because they don't like *insert obscure band who no one has ever heard of, that you would be able to find in any record store and you should feel like an idiot for not knowing them*'. I'm always open to listening to exciting new bands. But if I hear a great band I'm not going to throw casual references about them around so everyone will be impressed with my cool taste and lord it over others and say 'Ohmigod, do you like Shed 7, they're so passe'. I still love Shed 7. Don't deny something worthwhile and enjoyable just because *now* you're cool, in your sole, lonely definition of the word.

i.e. not Mrs. Spears, but Jessica Simpson

Anyway, Shed 7 are a poor example because they were shit before they were hip, they were shit while they were hip, and they're shit now. It'd be like me using J Lo to defend pop, or something.

I chose Shed 7 because it's such a popular band to put down (and I still do like them). I could have put any well-known indie band - the Bluetones maybe. It doesn't matter which one I put because, as I expected you said the equivalent of 'Ohmigod, do you like Shed 7.'

And yes, I have talked to indie kids. A lot of them are lovely - this is why there is a nice big caveat on the side of the article saying we don't really hate them. Most of them dabble in musics other than indie, which is great: some genuinely do have as narrow taste as is being painted, and those ones often end up becoming prominent in the 'scene' and hence being judged unfairly by relative outsiders like myself.

Meanwhile yes I gave the obvious answer to Shed Seven, but I don't see that it proves much of a point other than that a lot of people ENTIRELY CORRECTLY hate Shed Seven. It'd be like saying, you're a film snob, you don't like Battlefield Earth, and me saying no because it's rubbish, and you saying a-ha! Told you so!

the thing about the article is that it hit a few tender points about the amount of conformity in the scene. But I'm happy with the music I listen to and the way I look and I felt I ought to defend it.

I still like Shed 7...

VIVA THE REAL REVOLUTION OF ROCK AND ROLL THAT WILL ONE DAY TAKE YOUR SOUL AND SPIT OUT THE SHIT THAT IS WHINY LITTLE BOY MUSIC! VIVA THE TIME OF TRUE REDEMPTION, THE TIME OF TRUE MUSIC! ONE DAY YOULL SEE AS I SIT IN MY THRONE AND JUDGE YE THAT WORE BLACK FRAMED GLASSES AND CLAIMED TO LIKE BOTH AT THE DRIVE IN AND THE SPICE GIRLS!

-heidi

I myself decided to dress in a generic indie rock fashion, with the "ironic" t-shirts, the tight courdoroy pants, the repulsive late- 70s tennis shoes, et cetera. I couldn't bring myself to wear the buddy holly glasses, but that's immaterial. The point is, I've never gotten more action in my life. I didn't realize that "hey man, I love your shoes" is what passes for a pick-up line among the bed-head indie tarts.

I don't even listen to indie rock, I hate it, I listen to rap. Not even that college "hip-hop" turntablist snooze crap, but real shoot- em-up die-nigga RAP rap. But so long as I wear my little tight shirts and maintain the perfect slouch, it's all indie. Rap can be indie, reggae can be indie, and god knows disco can be indie. It's about looks, it's about sex, and that's all it's about.

Girls don't like music anyway. They're buying those $200 7-inches because they're cute, and they think of them as a lifestyle accessory more than a vehicle for music. It's girls that fuel emo and any other type of music made by crying pussies in red Saucony shoes.

And with God as my witness, I swear that when I'm able to perfect my indie rock style, I'll be able to do anything I like. I will masturbate and poop in the middle of the road with complete impunity. Hey, it's all indie.

Hip-hop snob complain that hip-hop became hip-pop (as if that's a bad thing) sometime between Young MC and Mase. It was always pop. All the sacred cows, Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash, A Tribe Called Quest, made music that was undeniably and unapologetically pop music. Sometimes it was even materialistic, bling bling, shoot em up, coke snorting, hard-rocking pop music. Nothing has changed.

sure, talib's album isn't good, same for jt money, same for trick daddy, who cares? being a top 40 gangsta doesn't automatically make an album listenable same way that being intelligent and speaking honestly doesn't. equating big balla clichés with an 'exciting' artist that 'has life' is just sophmoric. admittedly, the indie-hiphop template is rapidly getting tired, but so is your revered mainstream hiphop 'shoot- em-up die-nigga' template (and the former is far more enjoyable to begin with). when artists work to make original works that rise above stagnation or cliché, that is when you have music that is exciting. i see the roots doing this, i see jay-z doing this. they're not mutually exclusive. i have no problem with rap being pop, that's exactly what it has always been and what it will always be, just as rock is pop and country is pop. it's music and it's art.

(as i side note, i'm also very disturbed by the misogyny in your lengthy indie post as well but it's too late to address that meaningfully, and so let me just point it out for now. mr.herbert's 'mission statement's instant embracement by the other members of the forum is a close-up example of how howard stern/rush limbaugh/that guy from fox news 'tell-it-like-it-is' assholes create huge cults around their deplorable statements and awful generalisations. it's super-funny to say that girls don't really like music and are just buying records as fashion accessories if you have the mentality of an antisocial ten year-old boy, but otherwise it's just sexist)

'no i get it, i doubt very much that this guy seriously believes that rap isn't good unless it's 'die-nigga' and women don't REALLY like music, it's done in the same smarmy 'we're playing with the idea of male chauvinist asshole rants, we don't actually believe it' that maxim and all those sorts of things are and it becomes such a muddled self- referential joke that the 'fans' of such a thing just believe what it's saying. you think the wife-beating morons who love maxim because it's about man stuff and shows girls in bikinis actually get the usually defensive ironic double-meaning of most of the stuff? they're just assholes. i don't like the idea of a guy who says this should be picked up as any sort of object of appreciation. what if i decided to play with the idea of political correctness and say that 'black people don't really listen to music' or 'i don't like pussy emo, i listen to real die- jew skinhead hardcore'? not so funny and agreeable then. anyway i'm done with this.'

And THAT is the last line on this because I'm not bringing up that goddamned gangsta rap discussion again, other than to say YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE. Now start a new thread already if you want to go on about "die nigga" rap or whatever you are on about.

Very quickly, yes I'm probably being a misogynist, and definitely generalizing when I say that girls "don't like music." But I think that's there's some, maybe just little tiny bit of truth to that. If syaing it makes me a tell-it-like-it-is asshole, in the mode of Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh (though who listens to them anymore? G Gordon Liddy is the king), so be it. And of course I was trying to be provocative, and only half-believe what I'm said.

I'm not trying to exacerbate things, but I for one was offended by the same generalizations - especially the 'boys club' tone of Chris Herbert's post, yet somehow it was the 'yeah, right on brother' reinforcements that came just after that seemed far worse. So joke or no, it makes no difference at that point. Damage done. I'm a girl. I love music, for real. Why should I have to read that shit in a supposedly enlightened place like this? It's also a really disturbing social phenomenon that whenever anyone, anywhere, ever has the courage to stand up and call someone out (with good reason) there is always a legion of 'smoother overers' that start pressuring that person to let things be. Apparently conflict makes people uncomfortable. Is it really better if those feeling discomfort to begin with, just shut up seethe silently beneath the status quo? And yes, I CAN leave if I don't want to read it.

ethan, you rock.

I just have to say that the brutal truth contained in the orginal indie kids article intoxicated me, and made me go perhaps a little further than I should have.

I don't even care if saying that gets me yelled at. I still fail to see - NEWSFLASH I AM A GIRL - what was so offensive about Chris's original post. It was glib and sarcastic and definitely in poor taste - so fuckin' what? As I said, people need to go reread all that jumping down the throat done to necromancer (yes, Ethan, this means you) when he went off on rap music being a bad influence on popular society - ie a FAR BETTER SELLING FORM OF POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT THAN A MAGAZINE (just ask Fred Solinger about magazine sales) - yet you're all going to claim Maxim is going to negatively influence people? It's going to negatively influence people just as much as rap music will.

Mind you, I'm not someone who thinks rap music is going to influence any sane person to do anything different from what they would've done otherwise, so I'm saying magazines are not a major influence either. Obviously, anyone stating Maxim is a major influence would be a hypocrite to claim that music, a more popular form of entertainment, isn't an influence on people's behavior. A popular magazine has a sales base of a few million around the world. A popular rap album has a sales base of a few million in the United States alone. Do the statistics.

And I'm ticked off at Chris for even apologizing. Don't bow to the pressure of the board, it's not worth it. Piss them off. Music obsessive IS by and large the male of the species. Which isn't to say girls aren't music obsessives - my favorite band seems to appeal only to females, from my non-internet experience - but rather that the majority share (ie more than 50%) of music obsessives are males. This is an oft stated, oft studied fact. If you don't like it, tough. Try to get more of your female friends to buy music. Just look at the proportion of men to women on this very board. Don't give me the "this is the internet, computers are for men" bullshit either (which is so hypocritically sexist it's not even funny anyhow - music is for everyone but computers aren't? Fuggedaboudit) because recent studies (and no I don't have them but one of them was cited to me by Tom Ewing himself) show that the internet is nearing the 50/50 mark more and more every day and the disparity is nearly non-existant. You can probably look this up in the technology section of Yahoo! news, which I believe had a story on it recently. Yet music sites are around 75% male. Why do you think this is if you believe what I'm saying right now is offensive? This goes out to anyone, not someone in particular...

The indie scene IN MY EXPERIENCE is particularly bad because the girls do put more thought into their clothes. I used to hang out with a pile of them in Arizona and they knew jack all about music. As I said, this is my experience and gladly this board proves to me it's not necessarily a common thing, but I can see how Chris's experience led him to the same conclusion.

Maxim RULES. End of story to me. And I don't even read it. I'm just giving them props for using Photoshop to blow up the breasts of every flat chested actress they ever have on their cover. Rock on with your fantasy world, rock on with making these women look ridiculous because everyone knows they don't really look like that. It's all hilarious to me, and I quite frankly hope someone from Maxim is reading this and offers me a dirty spread in the mag for propping them.

This has fuck all to do with Indie Kids, mind you.

Influence of media - Ally, it's pointless comparing music and Maxim. A self-help book, for instance, will tend to have much lower sales than a magazine but will be more influential on those who buy it because it is directly addressing and advising them. Music tends to have no such pretension and is - overtly at least - entertainment. Mass media mags fall halfway between the two: half entertainment (look at her! read about him!) and half advice (how to be a cooler man!). So though less ppl read it, the influence may well be stronger. I personally dont have a problem with admitting that entertainment media influence society, anyway.

Female obsessives over music - nothing to do with it being a statistical minority, at least online. In the USA, 52% of surfers are women, slightly out of proportion to the population as a whole I believe. In European countries though the average is about 40% women. In the top 20 by volume posters on this board the percentage is either 10% or 15%. Napster users are (IIRC) about 65% male. That all said this board is about individuals not generalisations: leave your Hornbyesque 'observational comedy' at the door please.

EVERYthing influences people. You can listen to whatever you want and label it however you want.

Mental conditioning/brainwashing/memetics is as real as writing in E-prime is a real solution to disspelling falsehoods and "spooks" (false essences of things).

It is funny as hell when some prick tries to tell you what you are allowed to appreciate or disapprove of, however. For me, I felt gangsta rap/most rap = shitty topics that I don't want to dwell on (whether it's fighting, cheating, bling blingin', gettin' respect, getting revenge, smoking pot, or rising above these peeps in the community who act this way) and it is my choice after all, what I want to dwell on. Funny how it twisted into something else. I see that going on here, too... Hmmm, who's the culprit?

Pop is the most accessible and most instantly appreciable music of all, a fact which I think *can* be supported by sales and radio play. A self-clarification is not in and of itself automatically elitist; the fact that you think it is only suggests to me that pro-pop sentiments threaten you somehow. Which is funny because racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are obviously a threat but liking pop is just as obviously not.

I found Chris' original post funny because it coincided so perfectly with my own experience of the indie pop world - that both the guys and girls were more often than not shallow people pretending to be deep in order to pick up; that the rejection of style had turned into a fashion as cynical and sexually-motivated as the plastic, "sluttish" world of pop. Chris's behaviour proves that the guys are probably more shallow than the girls, which seems correct to me (and don't say that Chris isn't an indie kid; he goes to indie clubs and is therefore an indie kid). Of course most musical scenes are like this, but at least most of them admit it quite openly.

I'll agree that Chris's comments about girls are a bit bizarre and he's done little to disprove your charge of sexism; it worries me that I barely noticed at the time. Good on you for pointing that out then, but I can't help but feel that you were using it as simple ammunition for your original tirade.

I am also sexist. I believe that there are differences, both innate and socially constructed, between males and females. I also don't see the problem, so long as there's truth backing it up.

To go from, say, some statistical evidence on the proporionately high number of young black males in London with a criminal record (which I entirely ascribe to environmental factors, by the way, lest there be any doubt!) to an assumption that all black men are criminals is a) wrong and b) socially divisive. Agreed?

Anyway, when I meet, talk to, or hear about girls who have the same relationship with music that I do, it's exhilarating. I am in favor of girls listening to music.

Chris, let me get this straight - so to correct this grievous injustice these 'fakers' are perpetrating against your delicate sensibilties, you decide to screw them over by umm... being a FAKER? Or do you just not like yourself? Either way, it's just crystal the way that you're ALL about the integrity...

Can we have a *new* article on posers? Please?

Also Chris, what do you do when you go out with a girl who finds your indie image appealing, then she finds out what your true music taste is? Because I would probably drop you because we wouldn't have that much in common....

I'm not trying to inflame the situation, I ask merely for information.

The actual indie rockers, the ones who ought to be able to see though me the second I walk into a room, probably aren't going to date me. They might like the shoes enough drunkenly make out with me at a party, but that hole in my CD rack where the Young Marble Giants should be is just too conspicuous.

"Or New Balanced one-strap baggers."

Brilliant.

But I get no excitement out of watching someone tilt at straw men of their own making. The article falls into the very same cooler-than-thou trap that is implicitly at the heart of most problems with the indie scene -- or for that matter with any scene, since the real problem is a self-congratulatory way of thinking that's common to nearly any obnoxious, inbred milieu, and has nothing to do with horn-rims and single-sided 7-inches. The narrators' voices [1] don't convince me that they're particularly more insightful or interesting or free-thinking than the people they're critiquing, so the whole thing comes off as a nasty bit of sniping between groups who, from the article, would seem more alike than either would like to admit: they just have different signifiers. (Why trade one set of scenesters for another?) I can't help but think that the people who like this article like it because it's telling them what they already want to hear. But the problem with this article and the problem with indie and the problem with any scene are all one and the same, at heart.

To make a litany of contempt worthwhile, you have to offer an attractive alternative to what you're mocking -- otherwise it's just a series of cheap shots, really. And once you've seen a few of those, they're no longer interesting, and end up seeming like the kid at the back of the school bus who brilliantly picks apart everyone's faults but who never actually does anything of his own: once in a while he's funny, but usually all he succeeds in doing is to ensure that everyone else has less fun. People like that are a dime a dozen, but they make very little of what's worth loving in the world.

[1] (as expressed in this single piece, without regard to anything of theirs I've read elsewhere -- this isn't intended as a slam of the piece's authors)

That would be a year or so ago. Now, re-reading it and bearing in mind this revitalised thread, it just looks as offensive as the stereotypical comments that the (trolling?) bloke above made about fans of rap music. Actually it would be a much better piece if it was updated to describe the 'IDM' lovers who use "indiekid" to describe all music outwith their own narrow tastes.

It's not that good a piece - some of the charges stand up (generally the good points come from Maura, who knows the lifestyle better than I do), some are just cheap, most as Phil points out are true of any scene. The "pretending to like" jibes are intentionally unfair in a frothing "see how you like it" way. But I'm glad I did it - it was a good way to lance a couple of boils that had built up over the course of a year when FT and NYLPM had got attention and criticism from just these kind of people, and I like to think that my comments on indie *since* writing that have been more intelligent and inclusive. Some may disagree. ;)

I don't know if Britain is different from Ireland in this respect, but the people buying the sort of middling crap that seems to go under the "indie" label here are not really part of any scene at all. the markers have been changed so much with the huge growth in the pop industry, that popular (ish) rock is very very accessible to the average 18, 19, 20 year old. So we're talking alot of the Coldplay clones, aswell as Coldplay, U2 perhaps, Charlatans, that type of thing, Travis. the fans are just your average lad types. I get the impression Britain might be like this too from magazines and the like.

I disagree the mocking is healthy - quite the opposite - it's lazy and now very monotonous.

I like glam, mod and northern soul. Liking all sorts of things is a good thing.

I'm glad we agree on something.

i'm just asking.

also, makeoutclub.com, one year later, still offers proof that not every point made in the piece was off. cheap? sure, some of them were. but none were based in anything 'obsolete' at all.

gee whizz - I have not seen that makeoutclub for about a year - there are some laughable sad American girls on there, cliched beyond belief - horn rimmed glasses, pasty faces because they don't eat meat, i am so sensitive, alternative and unique statements, surprising a lot of bible followers - i suppose the christian right particularly in the south has a stronghold on culture/life in the US, straight cut fringes, naff emo/contemporary punk bands listed by the dozen - some of them have so narrow AND LIMITED music tastes!

This is just daft.

I grew up in a suburb of Georgia and removed completely from any scene at all, until high school when i made the periodic trips to Athens to see Olivia Tremor Control or Elf Power and started making pseudo-Flaming Lips songs on my 4-track at home. I had read alot about my parents' 60s revolution and was in love with the music; the way people dressed at these shows felt good, Mr. Roger sweaters and all, like a cheerier, more fun version of Nirvana. At school i wore ties and blazers and t-shirts cos I saw a picture of Syd Barrett and he looked so dandy and experimental at the same time. My parents thought I was crazy and/or on drugs, and asked me several times in fact.

Around this time I started hanging out with people in Atlanta, who had impeccable thrift store post-Grunge fashions and were making improvizational music with old synthesizers and cheap guitars and stuff. They referred to each other as 'kids' and this was the first time I ever heard the term. It seemed to ecompass a lot of the musical/stylistic ideas i was pursuing at the time.

My little brother was into hardcore and screamo and i would drive him around to all these shows and i looked weird enough to fit in and get into the pit and all that. I moved into a punk rock house with some kids that were members of a band that is now A Small Victory, and they were nice guys, we stayed up late nights dumpster diving and listening to Bjork and all that. I met and fell in love with a goth girl and died my hair black, which has since then morphed from a shaggy-haired George Harrison '68 look to an Oliver Twist look to a Classical Greek cherub look. I never thought that i should imitate others but i did like the look of black and ran with it.

I tried to listen to At the Drive In and couldn't get into it. My roommates also had a lot of non-ironic pop around like the Dirty Pop of N*Sync and Britney Spears and all that. Anyways, over the years I bounced between hanging out with different scenes (mostly the local punk scene), becoming increasingly conscious of the Stylism that worked its way into them.

It's funny cos today maybe I would be a stereotypical indie kid; last week my mom called me up to say that she went to a department store and all the styles looked exactly the way i dressed in high school.

Nowadays I go to school for art and live with two private art-school kids, and they constantly look like models. It seems like that whole group kind of stems from the indie kid elitist model (especially since they're all at the right age) but more elegant and self-defined. Sorry for the long post.

Oh, and I do love The Smiths and The Cure (go ahead, cruxify me).

#15 (plus 16 and 17) articulates something I've been sensing for some time. This shrinking of the genepool is progressive, such that you can't possibly have too many more generations of some of these strains of indie before the perpetual inbreeding between simplicity and amateurism results in collapse into demented whimpers. It's like generation 0 offered a refreshing DIY reaction to the most ornate popular music of the 70's. But by generation 23 or whatever those living in the self-referencing cave so long without allowing themselves to appreciate a truly swinging brass arrangement first hand or, I dunno, even a genuinely driving or complex or funky rhythm, are going to have too few tools to construct even the most rudimentary pop song. Presumably most have broader tastes, it sounds like it in fewer and fewer cases, and I can feel my brain cells dying.

When did the cool kids (who usually are considered to have ample spending money) start copping the style? How can two stereotypes at opposite ends of the social spectrum be so similar?

or are indie kids the popular kids in high school now, like the jocks? I'm confused...maybe things have changed....I would think the popular kids all listen to rap and play sports, etc....or maybe Dave Matthews band or something....

Man....I guess maybe the indie folks I know are different or something but the people in bands I know pride themselves on being able to play....good drummers are revered....every "indie" type person I know loves James Brown and Miles Davis...I guess I know more people that are punks not indie or something...but it seems like "indie" on this thread is becoming some kind of wierd catch-all for everything people hate or something....

what the fuck are crumpets anyway?

I think that kid Chris Herbert upthread was pretty funny, and misogynistic, but i think the big tymers are funny too so whatever.

Really? That sounds like a character from Dickens almost....or something....that's an awesome name.

-- M@tt He1geson

OTM

genius.