birth of the flattened cool: the origins of the indie voice?

As I argued upthread, I don't hear it. The only specific examples anyone came up with was someone like Julian Casablancas.

(xpost) As for Lou, what about Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman? And Patti Smith, for that matter? I don't think any of them exactly sounds like Lou Reed, but they all have stylistic things in common with him that they don't have in common with, say, Ben E. King or Roger Daltrey.

Lou's always been prickly on Dylan, from what I've read. I think he thinks of himself more as a contemporary and peer than a descendant. I remember one interview where he made some backhanded compliment about how Dylan sometimes writes lines that just knock him out. (Paul Simon is always similarly admiring of but undeferential to Dylan. I guess it's hard to be a singer-songwriter of Dylan's generation.)

he's totally malkmus-ized for someone so 'heartland.' with dylan influencing out to the coasts, maybe now you have coasts influencing back towards the center?

And, as I understand it, the music of Jonathan Richman as we know it would not exist without Lou Reed.

but just to have the idea to even want do that was cool, no? and in such a way that ramblin' jack would not ultimately be party to.

"Baker's singing itself functions on many levels, examining them constituting a certain kind of critical archaelogy. You start to dig and first you come across what Rex Reed and many other commentators on the subject have described with words like 'innocent' and 'sweetness.' Keep digging and at a certain point you come across a layer of irony, but hammer in your cerebral pickaxes a little deeper and you reach ... more innocence. His pared-down technical machinery at times suggests a hip Alfalfa, a little kid circa 1940, singing grown-up songs, cooing rather than screeching up to the mike and pretending to be a romantic crooner, like a little lady making believe in her mother's formal gown; the preciou precociousness of the thought makes it so endearing.

At other times Baker takes a 360 degree turn: rather than a child feigning emotional maturity, he becomes a rather tainted Lothario in a fruitless search for lost innocence. It's to Baker's credit that he's the most widely debated vocalist since Al Jolson: to some there are incredibly deep emotions stirring or about to be stirred when he sings, while to others, there's a whole lot of nothing going on, and to still others, that in itself is attractive -- a Jim Hoberman says, it's like 'being sweet-talked by the void.'"

Maybe there are loads of Lou types (the first John Cougar album is supposed to be Lou Reed influenced--you mention Dream Syndicate, etc.), but I still don't think this was the vocal archetype spittle was originally talking about.

The only Dream Syndicate record I like is the first, self-titled EP on Down There Records. Man, that record is good! A lot of people like the Days of Wine and Roses LP, but I think it's mushy sounding and maybe not too compelling as an album. Too bad that early EP is rare now.

i was saying almost the same thing today, except about neil hagerty's guitar playing.

bert williams was a (black) performer from the dawn of the 20th century, enormously popular (fairly well represented on record, for the time), who did stuff that was less about virtuosic singing than getting a story and an attitude across. the very lack of emotion in his voice (on some records; he could be fearsomely sentimental on others) serves to put a certain distance between him and the words and stories.

Tim, you don't hear this exact thing on Closer at all? Even compared to the delivery on something like "Shadowplay" or "New Dawn Fades"?

BTW I never meant to say that my examples contained every element of what spittle was looking for. Just that they could be seen as containing certain elements of what would eventually develop into a more well-defined 'indie voice'. Obviously David Gilmour is not himself an indie singer.

(sundar, they sing pretty poorly. I was just kidding. Actually, I have to admit it varies from church to church. Some churches are really good at cranking out dreary singing though.)

post-60's, also dylan-influenced. the whole guitarmassplainsongdaybydayunitarianuniversalist strain owes him a heap. don't know about lou reed.