j.hall wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 15:33 |
rankus wrote on Mon, 22 September 2008 18:14 |
INDIE:
While it's true that in the 90's the term indie meant "independent from a label" or an extension of the "alternative" movement, these days it is a defined musical genre. It defines a College Rock ethic that would have included bands like REM…. If they came out today, they would be pinned as “indie”....
|
when i first heard the term "indie rock" (as noted in my previous post) it had VERY LITTLE to do with being independent and EVERYTHING to do with the "fabric of your life" and the "sound of your band"
when "indie rock" was first being birthed some of the top bands to be placed in this "new sound" were:
slint fugazi jawbox shudder to think polvo drive like jehu boys life giant's chair superchunk girls against boys jesus lizard aminiature rocket from the cript
just to name a few.....
chicago, DC, san diego, chapel hill, austin and to a lesser extent, KC.
like i said, as some one deeply rooted in this scene when it was in it's hey day, it pretty much doesn't exist anymore outside of urban outfitters and a fairly established name for a genre of music consisting of bands that get college radio airplay.
|
I'd agree with your list of bands to a certain extent in that they fell under the "indie" banner or were "indie friendly"--but I think that those are mostly either post punk or post-hardcore or what critics and fans were terming the bands as (Jawbox, Shudder To Think, Polvo); Math Rock (Slint); Drive Like Jehu were in between genres of some sort of post-rock math rock hardcore thing; Rocket From The Crypt was always too rooted in traditional rock n' roll and punk (Stooges, MC5, Chuck Berry) to
really be indie.
I'm a huge fan of most of those bands, and to be perfectly clear, there were huge divisions
then in their subgenres. I mean, we could go one step bigger and say "rock" or "music"--in which they're all music and rock, but some of those fans of those genres were pretty specific of not getting much peanut butter in there with their chocolate. I know plenty of people that like RFTC but not Jehu and vice versa, because RFTC violated the rules of indie rock of that time (too "rock", too much posturing, etc). Most of the bands you list were on Dischord, and by that time, Dischord and Don Zientara had built up a reputation as being more post-punk and proto emo. Jawbox were an incredible band....but they were more influenced by Joy Division and Fugazi, a harder edged version of technical sort of punk/ melody. With those sorts of off kilter rhythms (even in Fugazi), that sort of leaned towards a math rock thing, rather than indie rock.
I still say Guided By Voices and Pavement were the quintessential ones--you know, slacker culture, extremely lo-fi, kind of poppy, jangly. Anything that tends to be still heralded incessantly on Pitchfork is still what I consider to be the templates for indie--which is why I pretty much don't like Pitchfork, because I usually know that what they rave about is trying to replicate that early indie Matador sound, which has been done to death (cute songs, cute vocals, nice and friendly, don't rock the boat). They don't come right out and say it, but their mission statement should state, "hey, we're trying to promote the spirit of Matador bands circa 1990-1994".
Dischord and Touch and Go (and other "indie friendly" labels like SST) were still too on the outer fringes of what they dealt with; Matador was pretty friendly, accessible, poppy. The Jesus Lizard was
much too abrasive and metallic to really be technically defined as "indie"....to a casual observer maybe they were, but even when they were tagged "alternative", that wasn't doing them justice.
And bear in mind that I detest the term "post rock" and most labels....it's just that I know the quintessential bands of what falls under that banner because I haven't even gone looking for it, it's just what i've grown up with in the last couple of decades' worth of label marketing/ fan terms/ critic terms. I even hate the word "emo", but some of the Dischord stuff would lean much more towards the emo sound/ ideal (ie: no drinking, vegan/ vegetarianism, etc). To the average person this all sounds RIDICULOUSLY overanalyzed....but i've tried to be in between tons of these sub-groups and i'm always the guy that's like "can't we all just get along?". Even in the garage rock thing that came to a head of popularity maybe 5 years ago, you'd have a zillion sub-groups in there that wanted nothing to do with the others' bands or fans.