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

They were a band that sold out big shows and appealed to smug people. I think the comparison to Arcade Fire is apt.

But comparing the Clash to White Stripes would get in the way of the "point"

comparing the Waterboys to the Arcade Fire would probably get in the way of the "point" too

I always found this Melvin quote interesting:

"There were no songs that mirrored the black experience. I felt the black experience had been hijacked musically to simply being rhythm, beat and melody, and the words were getting lost. That's when I invented a style that used words to carry the melody."

Glenn Kotche, now there's a guy who loves 4/4 time.

This is maybe a bad thread for a new person to start on (hi, people) but what disappointed me most about the New Yorker piece was SFJ's lack of engagement with some of the bands/people he took pot-shots at. I'm guessing that the Arcade Fire guy and people like Malkmus and Tweedy are fairly smart and articulate - why not talk to them, ask them about this, engage with them? The whole article seems like a premeditated attempt to lob a grenade then run away and hide. Fair enough for the Village Voice maybe, but in the New Yorker? It's just lazy and immature.

The whole article seems like a premeditated attempt to lob a grenade then run away and hide.

there's been precedent

well it's also a column, and not an unbalanced piece of reporting wherein sufjan stevens is asked to defend his lack of black influences.

it seems to me like using the music to assess the 'whiteness' of a scene is totally useless. its a social issue and music might be a rallying point but if music history shows anything its that these signifiers change drastically over time; what represents popular music to black social groups at one pt represents popular music to white social groups later on and, to some degree, vice versa (maybe?). Trying to use words like 'more rhythm' and 'funkiness' and myopic generalities like 'soul' just confuses everything.

Fair enough, Jordan. I guess I'm just getting tired of column culture, where people have to get more and more provocative just to get noticed. It's not really conducive to intelligent, engaged discussion, is it? Also, what's with the obsession about syncopation, funk, and dancing? Can't music also be emotional, witty, or comforting? I don't know, it just seems so limiting, this demand that everything should constantly be merging/morphing with different cultures.

frankly i think emily's right that this 'think' piece could use some more reporting and less on-the-sidelines mental guesswork and extreme myopia

Can I just interject and say no matter what people have to say about the piece, A+ to whoever wrote the headline.

WHEN DID THE HONKY STOP BEING FONKY?

x-posts

Who says syncopated, funky dance music is not emotional, witty, or comforting, Emily. But yes to the reporting angle. Maybe if SFJ had asked Arcade Fire and Malkmus or whomever, and they responded ,"Why shoul our music have to go in that direction," SFJ might have phrased his premise slightly differently.

also, who turns to indie when they are looking for "funkiness"--- Jordan Sargent

Circa 1981 postpunk tried to add funkiness.

Yes, Whiney the Clash were out before the indie-rock explosion, and before Nirvana and before rap became the force that it is today. And that's part of the point. Sasha is asking certain but not all circa 2007 indie bands to attempt and accomplish musically what the 1980s era Clash, a major label onetime punk band that sold lots more cds than the indie Arcade Fire, did. There's a bit of apples and oranges.

idk dudes i wouldn't have wanted to read a canned quote from jeff tweedy explaining what his influences are. (xxxposts)

everything else emily said was otm tho.

Circa 1981 postpunk tried to add funkiness.

too bad nobody sounds like 1981 postpunk these days!

I guess I'm just getting tired of column culture,

Very OTM. I'm exhausted with reading about music, outside of interviews or reviews. Anything else just irritates me.

(except for ILM of course. I LOVE I LOVE MUSIC)

This is fun to read.

Kudos, people.

Hi, Emily! Welcome.

Oh, I wasn't saying that funky music can't be emotional, witty or comforting - some of the stuff I was listening to this evening, on that Very Best of Ethiopiques CD is exactly that. (Musically witty: I can't vouch for the lyrics.) It just seemed that SFJ was bludgeoning "indie rock" for a lack of funk, which is rather like hammering a Cronenberg movie for a lack of pithy one-liners.

Almost every band mentioned here in defense of 80s indie's alleged engagement with "black" genres like funk, r&b, reggae, etc. is from the UK. Every band mentioned in the original article is from the U.S. Something else that could have been explored, I guess.

I can't be bothered to find it upthread, but Ethan alluded to the Doobie Brothers and the EL Lay studio-rock posse's (and I'll include Steely Dan for convenience's sake) own unexplored relation to contemporary R&B and a sense of jazz history. The topic itself requires more thinking than I'd like to give it at the moment, but it's there.

^^^was just thinking about this.
for one, in any interview between album 1 and 2 kele okereke gave a soundbite where he said he was being influenced strictly amerie's "1 thing." franz ferdinand at least embrace "rhythm," and there's a shitload of "funky" basslines and ska/borderline reggae influences w/ arctic monkeys (a band that SFJ has written about, i think).

er, was just thinking about what M@rk said, rather.

Brit indie more comfortable with trying to be fonky than sensitive American indie in the home of hiphop and funk (and yea yeas as mentioned upthread 311 and other Americans have not had such sensitivity. Nor much critical success)

Music should be more plodding. Plodding is good!

what i think is more interesting than sf-j's topic (and since we're 500 posts in who cares about staying on track) is the relative decline in what i'd call white-male swagger in ALL rock. and ok, "swagger" does not connote "blackness," but swaggering white male rock was for decades built more or less on r&b and blues foundations. i hear something like "taking care of business" on classic rock radio and wonder why very little white-guy music of any stripe except country (and there's a clue) manages to swing with as much confidence and good-time charliedom as a second-tier outfit like BTO could muster 30 years ago.

right through the 80s you had your hair-metalers and your new wavers alike primping and pomping over what were still basically r&b-derived rhythms and changes (even wang chung, which someone was snarking about upthread). there was an unforced arrogance and sexiness, which had been associated with rock 'n' roll at least from elvis (and with blues and r&b since before that). for the purposes of gross oversimplification, i count axl rose as pretty much the end of line on that train, and the distance between the rollicking raunch of "appetite for destruction" and the self-pitying grandiosity of "use your illusion" is (imo) the real gap that sfj is trying unsuccessfully to pin on "indie." what happened in between, naturally, was nirvana, but "nirvana" was really a whole lot of different things, sociocultural as much as musical, which would require lots more words to dig into. i think what's really kind of at issue is an enervating white-guy (or white american guy) insecurity that plays itself out in a whole lot of forms, not least of which is a growing inability to successfully tap into the macho-sexy outlaw strut that rock n roll actually was for elvis and for axl both. (except like i said for country, and there's a reason that the self-defined reactionary pop form is the last bastion of white american male swagger.)

and yes there are exceptions, but look how tentative they tend to be -- justin timberlake being Exhibit A. what was "sexyback" really about? all of this stuff. but he didn't really bring sexy back, he just talked about it and then rode around in timbaland's car. which is fine and i like him, but put him up against any of those needle-pocked peroxide guys now relegated to reality tv shows and cruise-ship tours and he seems like a total featherweight. (i.e. sexyback is no unskinny bop.)

ok that's what this all made me think of. which i guess has not much to do with arcade fire.

Hongro weighs in!

xpost

u late.

"Wild Honey" is by far the worst Beach Boys album ever. Even worse than the throwaway early Mike Love rock'n'roll stuff.

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

(OK, I withdraw that - being that they continued releasing awful albums into the 80s)

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

the king's back.

-- Jordan Sargent, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 5:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i think what's really kind of at issue is an enervating white-guy (or white american guy) insecurity that plays itself out in a whole lot of forms, not least of which is a growing inability to successfully tap into the macho-sexy outlaw strut that rock n roll actually was for elvis and for axl both.

otm, and its more obviously an issue in "real" rock, not indie, where sexy outlaws with rollicking raunch were actually probably MORE prevalent in the 90s, when irony was high, then when R.E.M. was on IRS.

then you have macho-sexy outlaws like Tim McGraw turning into John Prine on his last album.

I wouldn't call Maroon 5 or JT "real" rock in the way you define it, but certainly Adam Levine, etc are consciously selling their strut -- or signalling that they can strut.

What I mean is that the lack of strut is a problem on the RAWK charts, where from nu-metal on it's either pummel or ballad

probably mentioned prior, but whenever indie does venture outside "white emo guys with guitars" it gets reamed for being tokenist or a watered down 'safe for indie kids' version of the real thing. the oppression of nerdy white guys continues :(

Sasha is asking certain but not all circa 2007 indie bands to attempt and accomplish musically what the 1980s era Clash, a major label onetime punk band that sold lots more cds than the indie Arcade Fire, did.

Again: he's not "asking" any bands to do anything. He's just asking why they don't seem interested in it. What the bands themselves might have to say about it seems an uninteresting question to me: when have bands/musicians been good reporters of their intentions, goals, etc.? Unless you're really, really into authorial intention, I can't see how asking the bands (as alluded upthread, maybe not by you, I'm drawing in two things here) would be at all valuable. I for one am totally uninterested in what musicians have to say.

also Hongro's last post goes directly into the Geir Top Ten of All Time, shit was straight classic

What I mean is that the lack of strut is a problem on the RAWK charts, where from nu-metal on it's either pummel or ballad

yeah the whole post-nirvana nu-metal thing turned all angsty and moaning about bad childhoods and being a junkie or whatever. angst and mope as the prevailing white-male modes of rock expression. of course some of the angst and mope stuff -- rap-rock most obviously -- still took rhythmic cues from r&b/hip-hop, so it's not like there's one sweeping trend. but i think there is a serious lack of confidence, however you measure that but definitely including sexual bluster, in white-male (or white-english-speaking-male) pop music. i mean, i guess there's nickelback. but so anyway that has coincided in some ways with a retreat from r&b-derived rhythms, for reasons that are undoubtedly complicated and could be argued about cause-and-effect-wise for blogpages and blogpages.

(and jack white is an exception here too, although exactly what kind of exception i'm not sure because i've never been completely sure what jack white is up to.)

"real" rock, not indie, where sexy outlaws with rollicking raunch were actually probably MORE prevalent in the 90s, when irony was high, then when R.E.M. was on IRS.

Well, when REM were on IRS you had Johnny Cougar and Ratt and AC/DC and Loverboy and Bryan Adams and the Romantics and ZZ Top (who could be pretty darn ironic, last time I checked) etc. Not to mention Joan Jett. I'm not really sure who the '90s post-Cinderlla/Faster Pussycat/Warrant equivalents would be. (Stone Temple Pilots, I guess? Black Crowes?)

And now I suppose you get white rock dudes in Hinder or Nickelback or Avenged Sevenfold or whatever trying to swagger. Maybe they even pull it off sometimes, and I've been too lazy to notice. But yeah, if there's white rock that swings and swaggers like rock used to, it's calling itself country now for sure. And I said I wouldn't bring it up, so I'll leave it at that, though I'm curious how much Toby Keith and Shooter Jennings and Little Big Town Sasha listens to. (None of whom are afraid of Doobie Bros beats, either.) I liked Tipsy Mothra's post a lot.

(And then again there's also stoner metal, which has plenty of swing and swagger, when it pulls its '70s retro schtick off, which is rarer lately, and usually for a fairly small audience, though Monster Magnet and Queens of the Stone Age have had their mass-cultural moments; how do they fit into this?)

actually yeah Josh Homme is really worth mentioning in all this

wish I liked Shooter Jennings better

Xhuxk, if you re-read the entire sentence, my point wasn't that 80s real rock didn't have swagger, but that indie rock didn't "when REM was on IRS," and it prolly had more in the era of GVSB, Spencer, Afghan Whigs, Horton Heat, Supersuckers, etc, etc. the nineties when SFJ suggests indie lost it.

I for one am totally uninterested in what musicians have to say.

-- J0hn D., Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:20 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lol irony

i mean of COURSE it had swagger in the 80s, tipsy's whole post revolved around axl.

anthony if your implication is that that remark was unintentional irony I'm frankly insulted dude, that punch line deserves respect

i think what's really kind of at issue is an enervating white-guy (or white american guy) insecurity that plays itself out in a whole lot of forms, not least of which is a growing inability to successfully tap into the macho-sexy outlaw strut that rock n roll actually was for elvis and for axl both. (except like i said for country, and there's a reason that the self-defined reactionary pop form is the last bastion of white american male swagger.)

All of which I can't help but think is a by-product of the rise of the service and knowledge economies (and the decline of physical work) and the increasing sedentariness of our lifestyle.

good post, btw

"The Last Bastion of White American Male Swagger" sounds like either a really good Stephen Merritt song or a really bad Lou Reed title.

indie rock didn't "when REM was on IRS," and it prolly had more in the era of GVSB, Spencer, Afghan Whigs, Horton Heat, Supersuckers, etc, etc. the nineties when SFJ suggests indie lost it.

When did REM leave IRS, again? Because in the '80s you had all those manly Touch & Go and Homestead and SST bands, remember: Scratch Acid, Killdozer, um, Painted Willie and Das Damen or whoever. White Zombie were even indie band then! But yeah, I agree indie lost something in the early '90s that it half gained back later in the decade, if that's what you were saying in your higely ambiguous earlier post.

"manly" maybe but I've re-read Stairway To Hell enough you don't go to them for rhythmic swagger.

enough to know

Typos galore in my last post too.

(Btw, Little Big Town are not as swaggery as Toby or Shooter or Montgomery Gentry, really; they're more in the Fleetwood Mac lineage -- toughest voice in the band is actually a girl -- so maybe they weren't the best example. But they make some fairly explicit funk moves on their new album, so they're relevant.)

to clarify my hugely ambigous post: real rawk used to move, since the nineties that's been dropping. indie never really did, but probably did most in the 90s, the same time SFJ said indie lost its sense of rhythm (something it never regained except in his Sound Of Silver review).