A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences

who wants odds that it ends up in 'best'

the wilson response should be!

Wowee zowee: if Sasha wants more Africa in his indie, I hope he has "The Wolf Put His Mouth on Me," from the new His Name Is Alive album, on endless repeat.

sort of continuing the work of ABBA in a lot of ways, and although it incorporates beats and stuff like that from contemporary R&B, there's a hell of a lot of more tin pan alley tradition stuff there

But Max Martin only did the same thing that Sam Cooke, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Phil Spector, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, ABBA, Bee Gees, Commodores, Lionel Richie, Earth Wind & Fire, Hall & Oates, Madness, Specials, UB40, Culture Club, Haircut 100, ABC, Soft Cell, Yazoo, Michael Jackson, Billy Ocean, Pet Shop Boys, Scritti Politti, Seal and Saint Etienne had all done before better before him: Proved that "black" and "white" musical values are completely possible to combine in a great way without having to sacrifice the latter.

XTC, "That's Really Super, Supergirl": funky

http://www.lakewoodconferences.com/direct/dbimage/50166068/Toaster.jpg

PUT YOUR COCK IN IT XPOST

Geir, is that a quote from the white supremacist site?

Shut the fuck up because disliking so-called "black" music has nothing to do with white supremacy or racism. There is no such thing as "black" or "white" music which is why I am using these marks when writing about those stupid terms. Music - by definition - builds on Tin Pan Alley values. Regardless on whether the performer/writer is black or white.

Music - by definition - builds on Tin Pan Alley values.

Haha, what? By definition, really?

Yes, because Tin Pan Alley values are the same values that music had always built on before it: Melody and harmony and rhythm together, with the former two being slightly more important than rhythm.

Yes, because Little Rascals values are the same values that movies had always built on before them: image and sound and editing together, with the former to being slightly more important than editing.

also, was it not Ira and George Gerswhin themselves who noted the necessity of rhythm before the necessity of music?

Ira and George Gerswhin = insufficiently Aryan

I Got Melody, Who Could Ask For Anything More?

I think I touched a nervy-nerve.

Melody Of Certain Damaged Norwegians

"In The Arado Ar 234 Over The Sea"

Impressive knowledge of nazi aircraft there. Most people would have gone for the Me109.

There's a great thread on "I Love Aircraft" about the lack of African-American influences on the design of the Spitfire, btw.

You can tell whitey-designed planes. they don't loop and roll as well. too much emphasis on climb-rate and wing-loading.

if you must know, i pretty much searched wiki for german aircraft and picked the first one i saw that would work in place of "aeroplane," but thanks, haha. actually one side of my family is the kind of German-Americans that really suppressed/abandoned those roots for obvious reasons, my granddad was in WWII on the US side but there used to be a weird cringey family in-joke about him being a U-boat captain.

had no idea there was even an "I Love Aircraft" board, although that's one of those things that works as a great joke whether it's real or not (see also: Diplo saying "Gully is my mother's maiden name")

Will Oldham Covers R. Kelly, Bjork, Danzig on New LP
Sure, you knew he'd been hanging out with the guy. But did you ever think you'd hear Will Oldham's take on R. Kelly's triumphant "The World's Greatest"?

I suppose it's a little hard to say just what Oldham's gonna do next, but-- for now, at least-- we've got a notion: Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Ask Forgiveness, eight covers ably tackled in all their nimble glory by Oldham, Espers' Meg Baird and Greg Weeks, and cellist Maggie Wienk, due in the UK November 19 thanks to Domino Records (no word quite yet on a U.S. release).

SFJ from his New Yorker blog

October 23, 2007
Ultra Brite
Soon, I will post responses to the e-mails I’ve received in reference to my article on musical miscegenation. This will probably go on all week, with a short break for an elaborated review of “In Rainbows.” (This one-(link)- was written after only brief exposure to the album and cannot stand as my review of record.) The discussion will end on Friday with some good-natured, articulate, and exacting e-mails I received from a member of one of the bands discussed in the piece.

SWLABR

More discussion on blogs and in comments on blogs. More post-Slate column comments from Carl Wilson, and Wayne Marshall has weighed in:

http://www.zoilus.com/

I am not yet convinced by Wilson's theory that today's indie-rock is more upperclass than earlier generations of indie, and that hardcore punk was more class mixing (I think punk and indie has always mainly been middle and upper middle class with little to no change).

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=205
October 24th, 2007
Global Ghettotech vs. Indie Rock: The Contempo Cartography of Hip

You can tell whitey-designed planes. they don't loop and roll as well. too much emphasis on climb-rate and wing-loading.

african planes got syncopated propellers
have a hard time keepin track of the fellers

With this piece Frere-Jones has demonstrated himself every bit the racist—for buying into this pathetically regressive set of ideas—as any 1950s Southern preacher who decried white interest in animalistic, vulgar race music. That Frere-Jones’ delineates and fetishizes the other—this carnal, black backbeat, this jungle sexuality he insists on placing in contradiction to cerebral, “oblique,” “flat-footed,” white rock—should damn him alongside those who delineate and vilify the other; both visions assign the same traits to blackness.
http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/10/paint-it-black-1.html

snap

Perhaps this new book will help lead ILM out of the wilderness on this confusing issue.

ok, THAT, of all the responses, is the one I most want SFJ to publicly address. (xpost)

For real though.

HOOS

Dave Allen (Gang of Four) responds:

http://www.pampelmoose.com/mspeaks/?p=1094

I guess.

http://infinity.cos.edu/art/strong/module/apprec/unit4/livalb4c/photo6.jpg
L.H.O.O.S.

You know one thing I was thinking about, since re-reading this thing in the actual print new yorker, was how he had to stop singing because he couldn't uhmm... find a style of singing that was informed by both black and white music but wholly unique, which is something Mick Jagger and Prince were both able to do.

And I wondered if this had anything to do with him not at all being attached to his sexuality, or expressing anything from his gut, or his entire band maybe being some intellectual sort of affair, all about putting together all his influences in some way that would be "interesting"

For some reason this sort of bothered me the most

Yeah, it's a cliché, but the appropriate lament is not "I couldn't sound black" or "I couldn't sound white" or "I couldn't sound like Elvis" or "I couldn't sing like Smokey" but "I couldn't make it sound good, I couldn't sing convincingly, I couldn't find my voice."

Dateline 1974: Forest Hills Vocalist Fails To Send Convincingly British, Breaks Up Nascent Punk Band

I was rap/hip-hop would incorporate some black influences. Sampling the past isn't good enough.

You know when you drop by some indie rocker's house after a gig, and you end up looking at their CD collection and go 'OK - interesting. They have Sonic Youth and Big Star etc etc etc, and also some folk music: Irish stuff, Bulgarian stuff... but no black music, no Indian music, no African, no Japanese no Chinese, no Balinese, no Australian indigenous, no Tibetan, no Mexican, no Spanish...' No non-European music at all. And therefore, no non-European influences in this person's music. This is not rare, is it, in recent years? How did this become indie music? When did that twist happen?

I think this is the core of the best part of SF-S's argument. Perhaps he framed it hyper-provocatively, and there really is no such thing as race. However, the point he is making can be refined, and it is simply this: when it comes to influences, in a world where a few mouseclicks can bring you music from any part of the world, why is so much indie music so tendentiously and relentlessly Euro-focussed? It's like people here in Australia who only eat pie and chips.

*SF-J, of course.

in a world where a few mouseclicks can bring you music from any part of the world, why is so much indie music so tendentiously and relentlessly Euro-focussed?

The "alternative to what" thing has been brought up already.

In a world where the singles charts are completely dominated by R&B, it is natural for the underground to contain those who dislike that kind of stuff and who are searching for something entirely different.

Singles charts haven't been "completely" dominated by R&B for about four years Geir, I don't there's been a single point in the past 18 months when there's been more R&B tracks in the UK top 40 than there has guitar tracks

You know when you drop by some indie rocker's house after a gig, and you end up looking at their CD collection and go 'OK - interesting. They have Sonic Youth and Big Star etc etc etc, and also some folk music: Irish stuff, Bulgarian stuff... but no black music, no Indian music, no African, no Japanese no Chinese, no Balinese, no Australian indigenous, no Tibetan, no Mexican, no Spanish...' No non-European music at all. And therefore, no non-European influences in this person's music. This is not rare, is it, in recent years? How did this become indie music? When did that twist happen?

Spain isn't in Europe?

who has actually had that experience?

i'm forever dropping round indie rockers' houses after gigs.

but sometimes i have to look on their computer for music, it can be a real grind.

but it usually pays off when i can out them for not owning any balinese music.

sometimes i check their dvd racks and bookshelves too, to see if they're up to date with tibetan fiction.

I don't really listen to much other than tiring, desexed white upper middle class because that's who I am. That really fucking sucks. I need a soul infusion.

It's like people here in Australia who only eat pie and chips.

plz not to hate on pies

Let's see when I do hear funk and soul it's when I'm preparing coleslaw and sauce at Raising Cane's on the lucky days my co-worker Avis is working, as the manager sometimes accommodates her. I am the only person who will, for 6-8 hours, take scoop after scoop of coleslaw and put it in cups, so people visit me occasionally to break up my ritual and inspect my slaw. Avis sings along and dances.