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

I also wonder what is this guy doing at all those indie gigs? It seems he is expecting stuff that the rest of the audience prefer not to hear at all.

the smiths had some funky jams.

(there's a quote for the ban max r thread)

didn't dance music make all these sort of arguments redundant anyway?

black guys influenced by kraftwerk and new order, black and white producers developing jungle, raves having racially mixed crowds, etc...

not so easy to tag certain styles as "black" or "white" now.

great work, keep it up.

Ban ILX.

Rap is obviously the "blackets" genre ever. Sampling doesn't count as "influence".

Oh for fuck's sake.

my street name is now "blackets".

Good name for an indie band

Boy, this is what I missed last night when I chose to listen to Style Council records!

Dear Robin
Hope you dont mind me writing, its just that theres more than one thing I
need to ask you. If youre so anti-fashion, why not wear flares, instead of
dressing down all the same. Its just that looking like that I can express
my dissatisfaction.

Dear Robin
Let me explain, though you'd never see in a million years. Keep quoting
Cabaret, Berlin, Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Duchamp, Beauvoir, Kerouac,
Kierkegaard, Michael Rennie. I dont believe you really like Frank Sinatra.

Dear Robin
Youre always so happy, how the hell do you get your inspiration? Youre
like a dumb patriot. If youre supposed to be so angry, why dont you fight
and let me benefit from your right? Dont you know the only way to change
things is to shoot men who arrange things, Dear Robin
I would explain but youd never see in a million years. Well, youve made
your rules, but we dont know that game, perhaps Id listen to your records
but your logics far too lame and Id only waste three valuable minutes of
my life with your insincerity.

You see Robin, Im just searching for the young soul rebels, and I cant
find them anywhere. Where have you hidden them?

Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision.

Sasha used to love Arcade Fire I thought. He wrote a prior New Yorker article all about them and that show he saw over in London

haha he also wrote about Spoon a few months ago.

The heavily compressed frequencies of indie rock cause iPod headphones to vibrate, literally massaging Nick Southall's writing career.

-- Curt1s Stephens

lol!

º_@ at this bewildering timewarp of a thread.

His e-mail address is on his website and he solicited comments. Will we see another followup on his New Yorker blog, or his own blog, or will he just leave it be.

this has been a simon reynolds meme since forever

Didn't Reynolds actually write a fairly similarly themed, and equally selective, essay a couple years ago, about the diminishing "dialogue" between black and white music? (I tried googling it last night, but I couldn't track it down. I'm pretty sure it led to similar discussion on an ILM thread though.)

It's also been a me meme for forever -- for 20 years, at least. But in the last few years, ever since all those indie bands started wanting to sound like the Cramps and/or the Gang of Four again, and ever since fucking electroclash for crissakes, I've stopped complaining about indie's rhythmic stiffness so much, since it's seemed to become so much more a moot point. (Maybe it was always a moot point, if I'd paid attention to the right indie.) So what I find most curious about Sasha's argument is the timing of it -- Why now? Why not in 1990, when it would've actually maybe been news, in some way?

And yeah, there are tons of exceptions. Battles bore the heck out of me (if Hold Steady are a "regular rock band," which they're not, I'll take regular rock anyday), but in the last couple years, haven't plenty of bands like Mahjongg and Measles Mumps Rubella been incorporating all kinds of dub space? And I don't hear any particular lack of swing in, I dunno, albums by Black Lips, Gore Gore Girls, the Sirens, Gogol Bordello, A.R.E. Weapons, Tiger Army, and the Birthday Massacre I've heard this year. (Not to mention lots of regular rock bands, who can still be way more exciting than art-schlock bands.) And those are just some ones I like -- doesn't a shitty new band who wish they were the Rapture or Franz Ferdinand still come out every week now? Or did that stop? Hell, don't people even claim that Of Montreal is influenced by Prince these days? I can't stand that stuff, but kids do dance to it.

Reynolds approaches it differently from Frere-Jones. Less liberal guilt, no interest in old-school American soul and 50s rock, plus Reynolds later turned on hiphop and just started with his grime and prog themes.

xp...And then there's all the crossover between indie rock and undie rap, which I assume is still plentiful. And if Sasha wants dub space, he might consider listening to indie metal -- Dalek and Jesu (neither of whom I'm particularly crazy about myself) aren't that far apart these days. Though of course metal can sometimes sound even whiter than indie rock, in its own way. And sometimes it finds jig and humpa rhythms from the middle of Europe and manages to swing them anyway.

And I'm not even going to mention country.

The Reynold's piece was in Frieze. It is on their website I think.

im sure he was just pretending to like my chemical romance in order to impress famous internet music critic sasha frere jones, indie pop musician john darnielle, and noted gay porn star jordan sargent

oh do fuck off ethan, when did I ever say rap dudes didn't listen to rock music

what about limp bizkit? greatest act of the last 15 years and this sasha woman doesn't even give them props.

FFS

Should I lock my doors so SFJ can't break in and drag me to the Syncopation Re-education camp?

By virtue of the piece being for TNYer, it spends a lot of precious space retreading r'n'r miscegenation. I know it must be tough for Sasha to get press access to actually directly ask a few of the musicians in question, but that would've been nice, or maybe a little more investigation into why those '90s Indie bands decided to shy away from the trad. blues-tinged rock sound and rhythms. The bits of the essay that weren't history lessons come off as too LOL HOW CAN YOU LIKE YHF IT HAS GUITARS BUT LACKS THE BACKBEAT OF MY YOOF?!?

Little MTV History question-- how long did it take for MTV to play an MJ video after the H&O vid?

I guess what I find most aggravating about this episode is the whole 'Bring It On!' sentiment on S/FJ's blog, as tho there are no valid criticisms of the piece.

I keep thinking about Yo La Tengo and others embracing avante-jazz. Is it easier to play such sounds and not have folks questioning how well you swing or sing (I think this has been discussed on ILX before), than other African-American styles or do the band members of such groups merely gravitate musically to such genres--yea I know that Ira Kaplan was a critic and djs on WFMU etc.).

This brings up an interesting point (one probably for another thread, but I'm here now), because the free jazz pioneers got it from all sides: some accused them of being "not Black enough", and the Europeans they influenced went to (sometimes disturbingly) great lengths to distance themselves from Black music ("No, THEY play Free Jazz; WE play Free Improvisation").

-Minutemen loved funk and jazz for sure.
-Fugazi were all huge dub heads.
-Black Flag swung REALLY hard towards the end (see "Swinging Man" for proof) and Ginn was a huge jazz nerd.
-Minor Threat loved go-go but I don't know how much of it made it into their music. But punk rock of that era in general can get traced back to Chuck Berry fairly quickly
-Mudhoney had a blues feel whether they cared or not.

With regard to Minor Threat (otm about Chuck Berry, btw), there was this band once called the Bad Brains...

As for Sonic Youth and Husker Du, the Hendrix influence is pretty overwhelming.

The article is somewhat of a viscous dollop of wank.

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

OTM to kind of a monstrous degree.

How exactly did Pavement "whiten up the landscape irreparably" all on their own? Fer cryin' out loud.

tellingly sfj cites none of the bands sara correctly mentions but instead his own band (ahem) despite the faux-modest disclaimer about his singing maybe that's a little self-serving? along with everything else reinvigorating the old cliche "critics are frustrated musicians"

otherwise pretty lame attempt to push buttons/stir controversy etc. slow news week, I guess.

Meanwhile, back to SFJ...

There’s no point in faulting Arcade Fire for what it doesn’t do;

Then why did he spend three paragraphs doing just that?

"...they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing."

moved? sheesh.

I thought it was Miles Davis who did that?

The only movement Pavement prompted in me was towards the exit with all speed!

I would love to write a book about how Pavement ruined rock for a generation. I also think, besides whitening up the landscape irreparably, they're responsible for making it cool to pretend like you're not moved by what you're playing.

Uuuuugh no no no no DO NOT WANT. And is this try referencing Pavement/Malkmus live or what? And if I look hard enough will I find critics shaking their fists at the sky about this? Seems like there's room enough in this world for blues-guitar rock and janglified kind.

SELL-SERVED SHOCKAH!

lol at the idea Pavement had any lasting effect on indie except the Teen Beat-ification of frontmen looking to get major labelled

x-post

Yep to Miles.

Those shoegaze bands were so much more exciting to look at.

Is Sasha gonna give out copies of the article to the bands (and fans) in NYC this week for the CMJ Fest...Or perhaps appear on street corners outside the clubs and halls reading aloud from it. Bring the New Yorker to the people.

I thought it was Miles Davis who did that?

Do you mean his squinting, his bending-sideways, or his bending-backwards?

Unlike Pavement, Miles never looked like he just came in from mowing the lawn. Or like he'd rather be mowing the lawn.

(The "irreparably Whitened The Corners" thing, yeah, that's actually seriously tenuous. Didn't mean to otm that)

Didn't Christgau catch a ton of shit for saying some white rock band wasn't African enough some years ago?

I'm always surprised that SFJ is a musician. Most people who play music don't seem to be this hung up on what is "black" or "white."

there were loads of drippy black-influence-free indie rock bands before pavement, why blame them. plus, lack of affect in music is a good thing.

Yeah, but Miles didn't do it because he didn't care, he did it because he wanted you to know he had complete disdain for you. (xpost)

Haha lol @ ILM defending indie rock.

Didn't Christgau catch a ton of shit for saying some white rock band wasn't African enough some years ago?

Probably. And called Hendrix at Monterey a "psychedelic Uncle Tom" still comes back to haunt him every once in a while.

This article is like reading an Oberlin senior thesis.

Miles famously turned his back to the audience. There were other rock bands before Pavement that looked indifferent onstage or "looked like (they) just came in from mowing the lawn." Pavement did do a good job of it though, I will agree.

The Shins and The Decemberists are interesting examples, because I always think of them as white English major homesick tea-and-fuzzy-sweater music. It's very safe and non-threatening, and I wonder if that's related to it being the antithesis of *dangerous* black or black-influenced music (which is itself partly a creation of the record industry).

How can Pavement have ruined rock for a generation when barely anyone listened to them?

x-post to Hurting2
What is partly a creation of the record industry?

Sorry, I mean the idea that black music has to mean danger is partly a creation of the record industry.

And also partly a creation of the white American cultural imagination.