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

There's already been evidence that SFJ reads ILX threads about himself (and judging by his blog posts he's DYING to) so there's really no reason to e-mail him.

There's already been evidence that SFJ reads ILX threads about himself (and judging by his blog posts he's DYING to) s

http://www.magicdragon.com/SherlockHolmes/SherlockSmall.gif

LOL, what are you the Sherlock Holmes of the Internet?

da croupier that chip is makin' you look like you're wearing shoulderpads or something

also, just as he's ignoring all the rock bands that aren't "indie rock," he's ignoring all the indie acts that aren't "indie rock" (the stuff that tends to make his best-of lists). He's stacking the deck to a ridiculous extreme.

x-post hey mr. full disclosure feel free to actually acknowledge the complaints rather than settling for "u mad"

"All I have is one-line bitch-outs. This is the fault of the piece I am bitching out."

especially if you're gonna complain about "one-line bitchouts on message boards"

x-post!

Dude with respect it's hard to parse what your complaints are through the foam 'n' froth you're bringing here. Here, let me acknowledge this complaint:

lol at 'somebody saw this coming 28 years ago' fuck is he on

Incisive, penetrating criticism there, da croupier, aka the dude who has the nerve to accuse somebody who actually posts under his name of having disclosure issues

da croupier, if it will make you feel better go ahead and articulate your positions, or complaints. basically as far as i can tell right now your position is: "LOL SFJ Googles himself and didn't write about 311, LOL."

curmudgeon did you the favor of detailing the flaws of the piece in a full paragraph, John. Feel free to respond to it if you think there's no meat.

Mr. que, there was some thread ripping on him a year or so ago and his response-to-the-haters on his blog had some pretty direct references to it.

so?

yeah he ain't you so the line about one-line bitch-outs still sticks man, "co-sign" doesn't count as critique

lol i found ilx through sfj's blog

Dude, you said "lol what are you sherlock" when I said I didn't have to e-mail him to know he'd see the complaints here. I'm just explaining.

da croupier, aka the dude who has the nerve to accuse somebody who actually posts under his name of having disclosure issues

Hahaha your name is "John D"?

x-post I'm sorry you're disappointed with the brevity of my disses, John. Still feel free to explain what aside from that and their perceived rancor is ill-minded about them.

this thread deserves better than you, da croupier.

i'm sorry i'm interrupting your contributions to it, Mr. Que.

four-year-old thread on same subject, featuring actual thought and exchange of ideas, here:

Class, etc Pt. 2: Indie vs. Pop Culture

bonus fact: thread was started by sfj

so what do you like about the article, john?

let us exchange thoughts and ideas about it, rather than this unbecoming sniping

(The heavy bass frequencies cause car seats to vibrate, literally massaging the passengers.)

Not attempting to derail the discussion, but: how about some counter-examples in response to SFJ's argument? What are some indie acts that swing, etc.?

Just axing

Ignoring his conflation of "rock'n'roll" with "indie rock," his "best-of" lists on his site provide the names of plenty of indie acts that swing as much as the Stones did, especially if we're allowed to include indie dance acts.

you're not talking about the article yet.

I mean, if we're talking about "indie" not "rock," then you have to acknowledge groups like LCD soundsystem, unless by the very act of having a dance beat you're disqualified from the genre, which would make his point fairly moot.

x-post I'm really baffled as to how you and John can keep chastising me for not saying anything when I'm throwing a lot more effort into it than either of you.

i believe anthony's complaints are roughly mine, i.e. that even for a position i might agree with at times (that indie rock shouldn't be so scared of dr. funkenstein) this is a poorly constructed piece of rhetoric that falls apart before it gets anywhere near a finish line but that most egregiously ignores the fact that in many ways indie rock is more connected to "rhythm" than it has been in quite some time (coughcoughDFAsashayouchoadcoughcough). and that john and mr. que's weird pile-up mostly seems born out of unwilling to do the unpacking of the SEVERAL YEARS WORTH OF DISCUSSION WEVE ALREADY HAD ON THIS TOPIC including THE SAME SHIT SFJ TRIED FOISTING UPON US A FEW YEARS BACK CIRCA EMP TIME that anthony has managed to squeeze into his "one-line bitchouts" ala "basically limits to folkies and brian wilson fans" i.e. get the fuck out of here with that reductionist bullshit, to say nothing of the reductionist bullshit that automatically comes from "where has it gone, the fonky fonk of my youth," i.e. putting "black rhythms" up on a pedestal, or ignoring that the vast majority of 70s and 80s white folks music was about as funky as starland vocal band or goddamned wang chung, which also ignores that maybe wang chung and starland vocal band had something to contribute to popular music despite not sounding like either grand funk or the isley brothers.

i could kiss you all ovah

royal trux
spoon
ween

wow, strongo on fire & otm!

da croupier is anthony miccio for those keeping score at home

da croupier, it's not a question of liking or not liking it, I haven't really even thought that hard about it. I'm just sick to death of people reaching, at the earliest convenience, for dismissals as lame and phoned-in as "I'd criticize it if it were coherent!" and so on - it's the sort of thing you see on political blogs, lefties patting themselves on the back for their namecalling skills and righties spitting venom without any particular analysis of their targets, on the grounds that the targets "aren't worth" a thoughtful dismissal instead of ad-homs, nice zings, etc. It's worthless on political blogs and even more pointless when talking about music, though I would say that, since I care a good deal more about music than about politics.

Brad I'd suspect, just knowing sfj's tastes a little, and reading between the lines here (Clash reference, racially loaded words like "miscegenation"), that he's waxing a little nostalgic for stuff like Ludus or Cristina or Essential Logic even New Order: stuff that was in conversation with other genres, not always successfully but interestingly. Which is where his article doesn't go: making an "interesting" record, one that doesn't firmly place itself in one recognizable genre, is something of a risky business move; the more cross-genre an artist gets, the less likely he is to find an audience quickly, and a lot of people feel like if you don't find your audience fast, you're liable to miss the boat. I think he's lamenting how even when a band is said to be "taking risks," they seldom are, and that there was a time when more bands actually did take risks that might have alienated them from their audience but which made for exciting records.

My own position here is that I'm always very suspicious of any "it was better then" thinking. I hate eighties nostalgia with a fucking passion, even though there was a lot of music made in the eighties that I love intensely. But I also don't think it's necessarily a nostalgia trip to talk about stylistic shifts, and with respect to indie rock, it has failed/did fail to seek out the sort of musical cross-pollination that often makes music exciting. Purism's only good at extremes I think, and extreme indie rock is something of a contradiction in terms.

Just thinking aloud/onscreen here and doubt I could defend all this loose stuff but that's my first response.

haha I had no idea da croupier was anthony

the comparison with the white noise supremacists is cute but mostly seems like a lame attempt to draw unfounded connections with a rather virulent strain of direct racism on the cbgb's scene with OMG MUSICAL RACISM THE SILENT KILLER, as if win butler not being bootsy collins is somehow the same as someone writing songs about gooks or a member of teenage jesus hurling the n-bomb at an african-american kid, i.e. it seems to be suggesting that the arcade fire are somehow at some kind of <i>fault</i> for reflecting the music which interests them rather than some idealized polygot mutant sfj has in mind because his wig got flipped as a 13-yr-old to sandinista, which seems about as silly as castigating trae or ne-yo for not incorporating the majesty of born to run into their own little musical worlds. lol you ain't white enough.

i should note that i'm about five beers deep here

I have no beer and I must scream

okay okay i think he's right on the money as to why Wilco and Arcade Fire are so boring. Especially this part:

If there is a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk in Arcade Fire, it must be philosophical; it certainly isn’t audible. And what I really wanted to hear, after a stretch of raucous sing-alongs, was a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies—in other words, attributes of African-American popular music.

But then again, I'm sure he digs Spoon and LCD, and both bands certainly do these things (empty space in their songs, swing) so I don't know. He doesn't talk about either of those bands in the article, so maybe he realizes this? Also, Arcade Fire are really easy to make fun of, so i dunno.

I just read his New Yorker blog post and he basically lists all the complaints one could have with the piece and then lists ten songs he feels are truly "miscegenated" (i.e., "Custard Pie") which would lead to what John's saying, which is that he'd like to see something a lot more imaginative than what we have now. An article like this post, describing what he seeks in music, would be a lot better than the half-assed rhetoric he offers instead.

also he REALLY should find a better word that "miscegenated" to describe what he finds fascinating, unless he really wants to be Norman Mailer.

To look at the brite side, I like the way that Sasha is willing to describe his own mixed emotions about how to sing and about singing as a raced activity, I thought that was a brave move. I think his final section is interesting too in its willingness to own up to a feeling of loss about the very phenomenon that he also criticizes. Counterexamples can always crop up (showmanship oriented indie: The Make Up, Quintron & Miss Pussycat; hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie, Gravy Train!!!) but part of doing a New Yorker piece, presumably, is swiftly making a macro-scaled argument that New Yorker readers (i.e. not hipsters but the parents of hipsters) will give a shit about.

he'd be wise to slow down

earlier today and elsewhere one of my pitchfork colleagues (mr. hogan) responded to this article with what amounted to "oh hai remember jams murphy" and i kinda felt like that was all that needed to be said in response. like i wondered if that arcade fire show sfj talks about was one of the co-headlining shows with lcd soundsystem, and if so how he just completely, willfully shut out the existence of that strain of "indie" in order to make his "point." like, dude, you're the one that recently wrote the slob job over friggin vampire weekend, and i cant think of a whiter goddamn band out there despite their much vaunted "deep appreciation" of "african music." sometimes you can be head-over-heels in love with "black" music and still come out sounding like a goddamn musical j. crew ad. (as with a band like, i dunno, ui. o snap.)

royal trux
spoon
ween
and
battles (among others)
i thought when sasha went into full-disclosure, "ui was funk" mode, he was going to bring up battles

hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie

Drew what you trying to start, total war?

"oh hai remember jams murphy" and i kinda felt like that was all that needed to be said in response.

a one-line bitchout? for shame.

there's something I find really awful about the way the flaws in his pieces are forgiven BECAUSE they're in a high profile paper, like we shouldn't expect impressive work in places where it'd be readily visible, and THAT'S where the rancor comes in.

in fairness jess vampire weekend kind of make that their whole point don't they?

there's something I find really awful about the way the flaws in his pieces are forgiven BECAUSE they're in a high profile paper, like we shouldn't expect impressive work in places where it'd be readily visible

you can't expect people that read the New Yorker who are older than 35 to really know who LCD are, though, can you?

isn't that why SFJ writes for them in the first place?

haha but they should know panda bear, right?
x-post

i mean i thought the whole idea is that he was presenting a cliffs notes version of hipster culture for those that purchase mont blanc fountain pens and expensive watches

"hip hop culture referencing indie: Cocorosie

Drew what you trying to start, total war?

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:02 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link"

see what I did there?

i guess what i'm saying is, he has to use the big easy examples (Arcade Fire, Wilco) in a piece like this, so his audience will "get" his point. . .either that or he didn't include LCD because he knew it would really undercut his point, which would really suck I guess.

indie is wicked white tho - even if there is lcd soundsystem and whatnot

but no one really cares right

see what I did there?

I kiss you so hard it leaves bruises

Iirc, Ethan had been quoting things from a white supremacist message board

haha aw man...the good ol' daze :)

you keep up with ethan? i hope that dude is good, miss him on the board still

Not really, he occasionally pops up on fb, but that's it. Seems like he's doing alright tho.

I am totally psyched for this to be a book, honestly no way it can disappoint

lol good attitude

I am totally psyched for this to be a book, honestly no way it can disappoint

are your expectations really that low

http://www.sashafrerejones.com/2009/11/best_of_2010_1.html

ethan never responded to my fb request ;_;

also smh, that article is less relevant than ever now

Arcade Fire made his best-of list for 2010, so how will that fit into his premise (whatever it is at this point).

2007:There’s no point in faulting Arcade Fire for what it doesn’t do; what’s missing from the band’s musical DNA is missing from dozens of other popular and accomplished rock bands’ as well—most of them less entertaining than Arcade Fire

]I asked Geir if it was a quote from a white supremacist message board and then he told me to shut the fuck up.
Wow, I didn't catch that the first time around. Can't believe Geir actually told someone to STFU. He's always so unnervingly polite.

nah the "you're a nazi/racist" accusations REALLY set him off.

the curious case of the racist who didn't want to be thought of as racist

ILM has always been preoccupied with this topic. It is what ILM was based on, the entire "black" music is superior to "white" music is the entire foundament of what ILM was originally meant to be.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 4:36 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark

board description?

So I just noticed on the New Yorker's contributors page this week that SF-J's book about "identity and popular music" is now being referred to as a memoir? (Has that always been the case?)

It's actually a viral marketing campaign for Ui albums, I hear

Ha, this is the thread where Geir told me to shut the fuck up!

― The Reverend, Thursday, February 3, 2011 6:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really, one of my proudest ILM moments.

― The Reverend, Thursday, February 3, 2011 6:58 PM Bookmark

So I just noticed on the New Yorker's contributors page this week that SF-J's book about "identity and popular music" is now being referred to as a memoir? (Has that always been the case?)

― Sax Blatterday (jaymc), Tuesday, December 18, 2012 12:55 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And now his Chicago Humanities Festival bio says that he's "currently working on a two-volume memoir about New York and the arts." So this probably has nothing to do with "A Paler Shade of White" anymore, right?

The only thing more pallid and flaccid than a U/I fan is a U/I member. This guy is the worst.

He was born Alexander Roger Wallace Jones on January 31, 1967, in Manhattan, the elder child of Elizabeth Frere and Robin C. Jones. His younger brother, Tobias Frere-Jones, is co-founder of the typeface design company Hoefler & Frere-Jones, and is on the faculty of the Yale School of Art. Tobias and Alexander both legally changed their surnames from Jones to Frere-Jones in 1981.

He is a grandson of Alexander Stuart Frere, the former chairman of the board of William Heinemann Ltd, the British publishing house, and a great-grandson of the novelist Edgar Wallace, who wrote many popular pulp novels, though he is best known for writing the story for the film King Kong. (Merian C. Cooper wrote the screenplay.)

In 1983, Frere-Jones played Capulet in a St. Ann's production of "Romeo and Juliet" directed by Nancy Fales Garrett. Mia Sara played Juliet. In 1984, Frere-Jones's "We Three Kings" was one of ten plays chosen for the Young Playwrights Festival. The original reading starred John Pankow and Željko Ivanek. The final production at the Public Theater starred Adam Klugman, Jack Klugman's son. His follow-up play, "Jump Down Turn Around," was performed at St. Ann's and starred Frere-Jones and actor Josh Hamilton.

Oh yeah young capulet of Manhattan scionage, tell me what's funkay!

ok so why does he go by sasha exactly?

"Let me educate you on race"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Sasha_Frere-Jones_by_Piera_Gelardi.jpg/640px-Sasha_Frere-Jones_by_Piera_Gelardi.jpg

^This picture is notable as it is the first time in his life SFJ ever visited a receiving dock, although it was on a Sunday, after a scrumptious brunch in the LES! #workingclass

"A Perfect Day for I Zimbra"

In 1983, Frere-Jones played Capulet in a St. Ann's production of "Romeo and Juliet" directed by Nancy Fales Garrett. Mia Sara played Juliet. In 1984, Frere-Jones's "We Three Kings" was one of ten plays chosen for the Young Playwrights Festival. The original reading starred John Pankow and Željko Ivanek. The final production at the Public Theater starred Adam Klugman, Jack Klugman's son. His follow-up play, "Jump Down Turn Around," was performed at St. Ann's and starred Frere-Jones and actor Josh Hamilton.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, October 27, 2014 10:43 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

Figures that this guy went to St Ann's

He could pretty much write his own ticket and the life he chose is explaining his friends' music to his parents' friends.

Can't really hate him though.

and this was the guy who traced Timbaland + Magoo's origins to "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker."

so he kissed mia sara possibly several times

right on

ok so why does he go by sasha exactly?

Sasha is the diminutive of Alexander and Alexandra.

Yeah I had an Alex/Sasha friend growing up. Parents were actually Russian though, not sure about this one.

i've been an Alexander my whole life and i didn't know that. using the first 1 or 2 syllables of the name seemed like the natural diminutive.

put this in the solange thread, but thought that might be the wrong place for it. some excerpts from a new book on solange and indie rock, whiteness, race, etc.

https://gal-dem.com/why-solange-matters-book-extract-stephanie-phillips-indie-microaggressions