Is indie a genre?

I guess for me the question is really answered by ignoring it to an extent, though sometimes that's pretty well impossible. To me 'indie' and its categorization is a mug's game, but if you look at bands who specifically claim the banner themselves or else don't object to being described as such, it's no more dead as a scene as goth or death metal is. The more something becomes codified, the easier it should be to kick against those bounds as they become cliches -- but there seems to be something in human nature that prefers to dwell within them most of the time, which is how you can get a slew of bands that, as you say, are just Husker Du/Pixies/Nirvana redux. In that context, something like Disco Inferno is a bolt from the clear blue sky and still is.

Ultimately I like to ask myself, "Is music dead?" A few seconds' reflection tells me, "Course not." There are always new bands and performers in any number of styles I'm finding that are quite grand. Therefore who needs the angst?

Didn't think to check eg Belle and Sebastian — I needed to stay pure, so as to have ground from which to mock the taste of the friend I was with — but my GUESS is mainstream Rock&Pop.

81/82 was perhaps the end of the road in terms of "where can we go and what can we do with this music??" It got pigeonholed into a catch- all term "indie", and subesquently petered out into easily parodied cliche on C86.

What do you understand by the term 'originality'? Give your answer citing examples where necessary.

But bands like the Raincoats, Joy Division, The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, Josef K, the Slits, and probably even the Smiths in the period leading from punk up to the early Eighties had no obvious precedents. The late '80s indie explosion consisted of bands who were using the technology of the day to expand on Sixties and post-punk musics (with the exception of groups such as The Young Gods, Skinny Puppy etc). The only "originality" was in the field of electronic dance music and it has remained thus ever since, I feel.

What attitude? A combination of enthusiasm, self-righteousness, and dismissiveness, I think. All three of which are sometimes justified. Also - possibly - a kind of open-mindedness about 'new music' (checking out bands, buying obscure releases, supporting new talent, etc.) with a kind of closed-mindedness about ideas about music: if you visit indie-oriented message boards, or visit the pages of self- identified indie fans or read fanzines it's staggering how old and well-rehearsed all the rhetoric is.

um so yeah, indie... what does it mean? way too vague. like really.

yes, but not just for the indie kids anymore ;-)

Ned will mail you a disc. Though honestly, it was supposed to be a trade for an album to be named later on my part, everything rare and crazy I had to offer Ned either already had or didn't want. Which made me feel depressed and useless. Thanks a lot, Ned.

Mark Morris was otm in 2001. At least in the UK, all that "indie" means is "mainstream guitar music", of which the latest wave (Arctic Monkeys et al.) is absolutely unbearable. So it's pretty much lost all of its meaning, if it ever had any: any semblence of 'independence' is long gone. A quite accurate definition would be "crap mainstream guitar music of the sort promoted shamelessly by the rag that it the NME". Does anyone else feel the same, or, like me, shudder when they hear the word used by their friends?

that is*

indie is a feeling

yeah, let's make fun of it in general.

it's a genre term that still has relevance, referring to artists that are still in the post-punk tradition of operating in some sense outside of mainstream culture or with some d.i.y. spirit. the debate as to whether the arctic monkeys are indie or not is not a particularly interesting one and basically beside the point.

Sure, but your definition is at odds with how the word is used today by the mainstream press and by the majority of young people. Most people in the UK today use the word "indie" to refer to bands like the Arctic Monkeys, the Kooks, etc. These bands aren't outside mainstream culture, and don't follow any 'post-punk tradition'. That just isn't how the word is used any more. Instead, it just refers to popular, mainstream guitar bands, which was what Mark Morris said above. Hence, why I said that "indie" has lost its meaning.

well maybe it's different in the US. i don't see a problem here with how the majority of young people who are aware of something called "indie" are using the term.

"majority of young people" = British teenagers?

I shouldn't make fun, really, cause if not for the word "emo" I suspect a similar organization would have shaped up in the US over the past decade or so. But I appreciate using "indie" over here to refer to a whole audience + acts circle of sorta more "specialized" music, built around the post-punk rock lineage, but encompassing turns off into different directions and aesthetics, etc., blah blah blah -- so long as that audience exists, which I doubt will change anytime soon, given how it self-perpetuates around the same media and music.

The definitions of "indie" and "alternative" now have additional meanings, including their respective genre labels.

duh... it's a new kind of racism music that's sweeping the country?

.....so long as that audience exists, which I doubt will change anytime soon, given how it self-perpetuas around the same media and music.

i guess "alternative" was america's "indie" right? surely the US is gonna get this semantic napalm strike sometime soon what with the likes of modest mouse and death cab being on major labels, very popular and still labelled as "indie" thou maybe they get labelled as "emo". i don't quite get that american thing of calling everything "emo". well not everything. the fundamental difference between american and british indie is that the american tradition is in a post-punk lineage whilst british indie is in a mersey beat lineage.

we have done this more than any single topic

surely "the nme is not very good" and "here's a piece from the guardian/pitchfork/exeter student newspape; isn't it disgraceful etc etc"?

No, I think this wins.

This article is packed with challopsy goodness, including the assertion that Kings of Leon are "terrific":
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/does-the-world-need-another-indie-band-870520.html

Reading the top of the page quickly I thought that article was written by Robert Fisk at first.

"Britpop changed everything". Sorry, going against ILX positivity week, but really.

The article correctly attacks the ghastly nature of NME/Q Brit-indie, however the Glasto paragraph shows up the weakness of the writer.

"Britpop changed everything" for the worse = Oasis and Weller dadrock

Yeah, Weller had sold dick all in the 15 years of his career up to Britpop's start.

sarcasm, right?

I CAN'T TELL ANY MORE

Britpop did change everything, inasmuch as it made some people think a prerequisite for artistic success was a high chart position.

But it gave us some good bands, too.

it made some people think a prerequisite for artistic success was a high chart position

pretty sure this was a widely held belief before 'wake up boo!'

Yes, but not in the circles that bands like, I dunno, The Boo Radleys operated in, really. "Britpop changed everything" isn't especially out of place in the context of the piece, which admittedly I don't really see the point of

The piece is an excuse to have a go at this year's crop of wholly forgettable haircut bands. But really, i'm not sure they're much more punchworthy than last year's, or (probably) 1984's.

Yes, but not in the circles that bands like, I dunno, The Boo Radleys operated in, really.

Exactly. appearing in the top 40 was, i think, such a rare shock for people like, say, Ride, that it never figured in their game plan (if indeed they actually ever had one). But then the more nakedly avaricious corners of Britpop somehow contrived to make it weird *not* to aim for a Top 20 hit.

This has been covered elsewhere, I'm sure.

"now known by some" = "I just made it up."

I think it was also the Independent that did a review which was entitled "The Vietnam War was a horrific experience - but it did give birth to some cool soul tunes."

Is grindie a genre?

It's a semi-decent piece. It rather shoots itself in the foot by rose-tinting the likes of The Verve, who were just as conniving in terms of arranging success as anyone else around the same era, and who didn't appeal to refined cultural aesthetes anywhere near as much, at their peak, as they appealed to lunk-headed beer-soaked morons, same as any big rock band, certainly post Oasis and probably ever.

I also think the etymology of the term indie causes severe wrong-headedness; Scouting For Girls & The Kooks are not in any way related to what indie was in 77 or 86 or even 95 - they're the modern day equivalent of Kajagoogoo or something, dressed up for a 00s audience rather than an 80s audience. I don't think there's any pretense towards alternative or oppositional or creative, and that interview Kooks kid did a while ago where he said "I just want to write pop songs that make girls dance, and I'm damn good at that" totally confirmed that. Keane, as I've said before, I could imagine possibly doing a Japan or a Talk Talk, but The Fratellis, The Pigeon Detectives, etcetera... there are almost certainly innumerable one-or-two-or-three hit wonders from 1983 or 1996 that no one remembers, and that's what they are.

So yes, a vaguely interesting read and not offensive, but (to an ILM mind) pretty directionless - "hmph, bad bands have always been bad, whether they've got a guitar or a synthesizer or whatever"; however, this piece wasn't written for ILM minds; it was written for casual music fans who are a bit dissatisfied with haircut indie but who aren't smart enough to realise fully on their own that haircut indie and its vague signifiers of rock authenticity is not for them because it's not rock or authentic or whatever it is that they DO want.

someone tell Conor Mctwatnicholas at NME the game is over

NME.COM's possible Mercury Music Prize contenders include:

http://tinyurl.com/5mhvvx

Babyshambles
The Enemy
The Pigeon Detectives
The Wombats
Ting Tings

Last year Conor was a Mercury Prize judge - hence the nomination of The View

I bet there are kids right now saying the same shit about indie that I said about "alternative" back in the 90s. how can it be alternative when its the mainstream kind-of music. huhh??? answer me that.

"alternative" back in the 90s. Do you mean crap like: Pearl Jam and The Stereophonics

"Mctwatnicholas" has potential for reuse

alternative was a term thrown around for everything back then, kind-of like indie now (indie is the mainstream mass youth culture thing at the moment). I go back to my shitty suburban hometown and I see kids riding beater fixed gears and wearing skinny jeans skateboarding down main street probably listening to Of Montreal or some shit.

if Keane do a Talk Talk i will rip off my own goolies and eat them onstage at the Royal Festival Hall

Conor McN's actual name is "Zach Brash"

burt_stanton and djmartian kicking game together = this thread's going place

it's not going anywhere because Of Montreal are as irrelevant in the UK as school kids eating peanut butter sandwiches and hersey's chocolate bars

yeah, this is US centric. I'll even throw in a Dinosaur Jr. reference to make the irrelevance complete.

Hey, I've been writing letters to Nestle to get them to start making Hear'say chocolate bars again for months now

Scouting For Girls & The Kooks are not in any way related to what indie was in 77 or 86 or even 95 - they're the modern day equivalent of Kajagoogoo or something

You mean, they have a fanbase largely consisting of 12-year-old girls??

Britpop did change everything, inasmuch as it made some people think a prerequisite for artistic success was a high chart position.

Or maybe it was a return back to the golden days of English pop dominance in the 60s (First English invasion, culminating in twee psychedelia) and 80s (Synthpop, New Romantics) where there was no opposition between being artistically pretentious and at the same time aiming for the charts?

The way I see it, appealing to the somewhat snobby hipsters and the hit-buying kids at the same time, and then making it into the historic canon of popular music/rock is sort of the ultimate achievement a popular music artist/group can manage. The was exactly what The Beatles, Kinks and Who managed to do, and also what the 80s New Romantic acts set out to do (and succeeded, according to those of us who have no fear of synths).

If there's one thing I associate with Oasis, Cast, and Space, it's the idea of being artistically pretentious.

Geir tell us about all the new romantic bands who made it into the historic canon of popular music/rock - I am on tenterhooks

^^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF8XgRgyy48

Depeche Mode and Soft Cell both did that, as arguably did Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

If there's one thing I associate with Oasis, Cast, and Space, it's the idea of being artistically pretentious.

"Be Here Now" is pretentious as fuck. Only they didn't live up to what they set out to do there. And Blur and Suede were definitely pretentious, as have Coldplay been at least from their second album too.

Depeche Mode and Soft Cell both did that, as arguably did Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

Not too certain about Spandau Ballet, but definitely ABC, Human League and Scritti Politti. "Lexicon Of Love" and "Dare" both repeatedly make it into those best albums of all time polls. OMD's "Architecture and Morality" is also on its way there.
Of course those will never be accepted by the baby boomers, but they are not alone in defining the canon. At least not the 1980 onwards part of it.

^^^this is relatively OTM as Geir goes.

yes, add all of those to the list.

sort-of fair comment re oasis, but i doubt they were thinking "haha, now's our chance to make a crazy freewheeling experimental opus and sneak it to the top of the hit parade" as much as "pass the gak, our kid".

(xpost to geir)

Summing up the Oasis oeuvre in a nutshell there!

Franz, on the other hand, are a good modern example of "appealing to the somewhat snobby hipsters and the hit-buying kids at the same time". It seems to come down to a lack of condescension and pride in one's intelligence, I think.

Kinda think that you have to have a pretty extensive idea of 'canon' if you want to include all the new romantic era bands mentioned there (none of which I have strong feelings about either way), however I would not be sorry if the words canon or pretentious were struck from the dictionary so I'm regretting saying anything now

sort-of fair comment re oasis, but i doubt they were thinking "haha, now's our chance to make a crazy freewheeling experimental opus and sneak it to the top of the hit parade" as much as "pass the gak, our kid".

Basically they were high on Coke, which is known to make people pretentious (and shit....). And they have always wanted to make the top of the charts. Only without selling out in a teenybopper/boyband/pop way.

Brits use the word "indie" now like Americans used the word "alternative" in the 90s, right?

that's the impression that i get

[/i]mightymightybosstones[/i]

Brits use the word "indie" now like Americans used the word "alternative" in the 90s, right?

Not entirely. Americans in the 90s would define Oasis as alternative while there is no way that any Brit (or European for that matter) would define Dave Matthews Band or Hootie & The Blowfish as indie.

DMB and "Hootie" weren't described as alternative here. That was for shit like the Gin Blossoms and whatever 3rd wave Gin Blossoms band came out.

This usage of "indie" in the UK dates back to the early 90s if not earlier, it is kind of an equivalent to the US "alternative" - not a new thing at all.

The indie lists did actually start in the early 80s didn't they? Or possibly even earlier?

Anyway, "indie" as a term for a musical genre was used for stuff like The Smiths as early as 1983-84. That is way before Britpop.

It's not an exact parallel Whiney, but it works as a basic rule of thumb yeah

The "Indie Chart" started in 1980, but it did actually mean independent label music then. I don't know exactly when the word "indie" became a musical genre, tbh.

Those acts were probably slightly more leftfield than the Britpoppers though. In a way the original poster is right that Britpop was a form of pop rather than indie. But the bands grew out of the indie scene and were also musically influenced by indie. Sometimes even very indie, but the addition of production values and catchy choruses meant that it probably wasn't right to describe them as indie anymore.

However, if Oasis and Blur were indie in the mid 90s, then The Kooks and Coldplay are today too.

To me the notion of indie doesn't fit with the idea of genre as a sonic signifier very well at all. It's more an aesthetic politics, really, which means it's bound up in certain kinds of musical practices, institutions, discourses, etc., which better captures the broad spectrum of sounds that could all be classed as "indie." To say it's about the music somewhat ironically misses the point.

No shit.

When I was in England I saw some TV channel with like the Top 100 indie videos evar! And the top 10 was like 8 Oasis videos and Blur.

indie punk, baeleric funk, even if it's old junk....

To me the notion of indie doesn't fit with the idea of genre as a sonic signifier very well at all. It's more an aesthetic politics, really, which means it's bound up in certain kinds of musical practices, institutions, discourses, etc., which better captures the broad spectrum of sounds that could all be classed as "indie." To say it's about the music somewhat ironically misses the point.

But most contemporary genres are defined to a similar degree by their aesthetic politics. I'm thinking specifically of rap, metal and punk, especially WRT the maze of subgenres each inspires, but I suspect the same is true of every musical genre that isn't simply "pop". Like indie, these all have recognizable sonic signifiers, but we can't make any real sense of them without taking into account the "musical practices, institutions, discourses, etc." on which they're predicated.

So, what you've said doesn't seem to mean anything. We can examine indie as a sonic pallette or as an "aesthetic politics" -- just as we can with any musical genre.

why did i just waste 3 minutes reading this

Welcome to the LBZC, son

Does "indie" mean anything these days? If so, what?

a demographic

dead as a doornail. needs to re-invent itself desperately. punk could be considered more indie than indie is in 2015

http://www.picgifs.com/clip-art/entertainment/bingo/clip-art-bingo-442587.jpg

it's weird; it seems like 'indie' has become another word for 'rock'

it's rock without the rock

gonna indie round the clock tonite

The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie

Indie dream died for me once I realized there was always going to be non musicians making money off and controlling music outout at any scale from your major label down to the town scenesters with all the expendable cash.

Basically it is all a giant popularity contest anyways so just do whatever you want

things i'm tired of:

the dream pop stuff with the beats

the revival of every well-known genre from 20 years ago

not playing your instrument

death to epiphany core

Epiphone core?

Indiestars, the broke-ass rockstars.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Indie

I read this, and felt trolled

Jesus Christ, that article

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/emma-jackson/sexism-in-music_b_8330178.html