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

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.

Unlike Pavement, Miles never looked like he just came in from mowing the lawn.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL zing zing

Hurting, where is your evidence for that claim? Danger has been an appealing element of all forms of entertainment from the get-go, any storyteller knows that.

The future that SFJ has foretold

And OMG LOOK HOW INDIFFERENT PAVEMENT LOOKS ON STAGE LuLZ!. Indifferent Pavement is one of the sillier strawmen to march out of the indierawk haystack.

And dally Oberlin-essay sadly OTM.

I didn't mean to say danger is exclusively associated with black music - I just meant blackness is often saddled with the idea of danger. (xpost to dally_

pavement were pretty boring live, though

And here I feel a bit like SFJ is really lamenting the lack of danger in rock music and automatically tying that to a lack of "miscegenation" (a term that itself once meant something seen as very dangerous)

So my local alt-weekly's music picks are nearly 99.9% indie-rock these days, the npr all songs considered website runs mostly only concerts from rockers (though they're getting better), and a couple of local websites are similarly indie-rock focussed in their previews despite containing non-music copy aimed at the general public---so is this ok because you can see rappers on MTV and everywhere, and find African, Latino, and jazz and reggae and whatever else approaches on internet blogs and elsewhere. I say it's not ok for general interest publications and sites.

Here's the Christgau (non-)scandal I alluded to, kind of similar:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=18618

shit I suck at the internets:

Radiohead In Not-A-Bunch-Of-Black-Guys Shocker!

There were other rock bands before Pavement that looked indifferent onstage or "looked like (they) just came in from mowing the lawn."

http://www.pinkflag.com/assets/look/gallery/live/1978-cbgb-5.jpg

Who is that Tony Potato guy playing the cymbal in the Pavement video?

i think some critics are confused in thinking that indie-rock is as important or popular or progressive as the rock music that influenced it. (classic 60s stuff, punk, etc) it's a trad genre like folk now, has its conventions and isn't going anywhere fast.

hahaha pavement. good one america.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anything by Pavement

http://www.adweek.com/aw/images/best_spots/best_spots_90s/ad_pic(dockers).jpg
nice pants

one problem with the article is that it's talking about certain strains of indie -- and has some true, if kinda muddled, things to say about them -- but letting them stand in for all of indie is (as he sort of acknowledges) reductionist.

never mind jams murphy, i don't think the article even mentions jack white -- who's sold a lot more records then arcade fire, last i checked. (and ok you can argue the blackness or whiteness or minstrelsy of jack white, but you can't argue a lack of blues or soul or r&b grounding).

than arcade fire...

Yeah, I immediately thought of Jack White.

Also, what about Deerhoof? Not the singing obviously, but the guitar and drums are syncopated as fuck, and there's plenty of funk, afro-pop, dance music, and who knows what else in there.

one problem with the article is that it's talking about certain strains of indie -- and has some true, if kinda muddled, things to say about them -- but letting them stand in for all of indie is (as he sort of acknowledges) reductionist.

We need a new genre name to assign to the middling indie rock bands he's clearly talking about. I mean when he says "Indie rock," i know what he's TRYING to say, but the fact that indie, in reality, is so far-reaching, it makes it complicated.

Get on it, ILX!

Mindie rock?