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

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?

1-10 of 16 for " mindie rock " (About) - 0.02 sec

"This album has better legs than, hell, most mindie rock albums of the day."

http://www.sashafrerejones.com/2004/05/youve_tried_the_rest_now_try_t.html
Maybe dude is way ahead of me

I'd say "schmindie" but he spends more time talking about groups way artier than Death Cab.

And Idolator used it once or twice last year. Catch the fever!

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

So is a "carrot rope" a new kind of weed-whacker?

Schmindie I get, indie + schmaltz, but is the m in "mindie" for middling? not as good. "art-rock"'s worked for decades, stick with that.

i like 'cubicle indie', which i got from ilx

or "art-schlock" as Chuck used up thread, if you're really offended

x-post but hot chip is cubicle indie, right?

cubicle indie is perfect

cubikindie.

mia is cubicle indie

Schmindie I get, indie + schmaltz, but is the m in "mindie" for middling? not as good. "art-rock"'s worked for decades, stick with that.

-- da croupier, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:59 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Art-rock is Battles and Liars and TV On The Radio, which he's clearly not talking about.

tv on the radio is pretty cubicle indie in my experience

arcade fire, fiery furnaces, devendra, panda bear all qualify as art-rock too, just the lighter side rather than the king crimson side

i dont know if most dudes who listen to rock music thats influenced by black music really even know or care about that

Are black guys who hang out with white hipsters required to have large retro afros?

ban dally

in h.s. my friends gf got kicked out of the house & had to move into the projects w/ this redneck dude (this is SC ok) and whenever we listened to rap (just, like, biggie or tribe) he would bust out the racist that-aint-music bullshit but his favorite shit ever was kid rock

I like SFJ articles on average, but this really reads like several unrelated takes on race and music thrown together with a healthy dose of weird race guilt.

What's the end result supposed to be, from all of this? Wilco figure out syncopation? Arcade Fire get some soul? New bands are formed that are into "miscegenation?" And why is it popular black music that indie white musicians are supposed to engage with, anyway?

The only real argument he throws out, among mentioning the diversity of influences that hip hop picks up on, bickering about the lack of rhythmic variation in indie rock, and going on with some sort of unrelated history lesson, is the "lassitude and monotony" that indie rock apparently gets stuck in.

Has he not realized that this is a genre with a lot of anal-retentive individuals thinking there's some purity of form to conform to, and a fanbase that writes about every move without any sense of levity? It's like SFJ fell for the indie trap by even making an argument.

That's not to say that every indie band is out there churning out music that's trying to reach some perfect indie rock formula or whittle their own aesthetic to a fine point, but there sure are quite a few who seem to do that sort of thing.

i worked at this store last summer & there was this white metal dude, real nerd type heavy into his celtic heritage & drinking guiness & listening to kmfdm, bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet

all that "commercial, but generally unappealing" stuff

(btw, you gotta love a construction that contradictory)

"appealing to a general audience, but generally unappealing"

x-post to and what

some people really can't handle the full breadth of music, they need artistic reinterpretations done by contemporary artists from their social and economic class

where is the indie pat boone?

by social & economic class you mean ethnicity right? i dont think kid rock was any more in this dudes 'social & economic' class than biggie smalls was

Indie Pat Boone is Magnetic Fields

indie pat boone is living in the heart of every ironic rap cover

Nitpicky point: "Grizzly Bear has no relation to black music" As evidenced by the their cover of "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" that they've been doing all year?

This was the exact same thought I had when I read that sentence.

I'm still kind of happy that, whatever issues I ended up having with them, the friends I would go to lunch with in mid-high school were into playing wilson pickett and sam & dave tapes when we were driving to taco john's. That and the cassette single for "all about the benjamins" which somehow got into rotation.

x-post yeah, I guess I mean ethnicity

post-funk

"bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet"

Ouch

SFJ basically spends the whole article trying to be a reverse-Geir, asserting the vague idea that there's some straight line out of Africa from which all rhythm is derived, and that all white musicians should either bow down to this awesome force and incorporate it into their music as faithfully as possible, or get out of the way and let black people make all the music. He not only laments (in reference to Michael Jackson) that "he alone could not alter pop music’s racial power balance," but puts forth the idea that Dr. Dre did tip the scales in the 'right' direction.

Are black guys who hang out with white hipsters required to have large retro afros?

-- dally, den 16 oktober 2007 15:03 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

No, but it’s an acute observation.

"bitched & moaned when i put on any soul or r&b shit but had like 30 cd-rs of everlast, 311 & sublime in his cd booklet"

maybe, like SFJ, he more interested in miscegenation.

he WAS more

but puts forth the idea that Dr. Dre did tip the scales in the 'right' direction.

Snoop's hair tipped the scale in the right direction.

in london we lived w/ these two white anarchists who only listened to white rappers, from such diverse subgenres that was clear the only thing they prized was whiteness - eminem, sage francis, el-p, necro, paul barman, aesop rock, edan.... what the fuck does any of these dudes music have in common besides being made by white dudes??? the only non-white rapper they liked was immortal technique, who is some kind of south american dude or something

SFJ basically spends the whole article trying to be a reverse-Geir,

haha when I read the essay last night I envisioned a Richard Roeper-esque Geir response.

xxxp the craziest thing in that whole article to me was when he says hall & oates were on the same level of talent as mj