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

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).

When did REM leave IRS, again?

1988, I think.

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

for the fucking win

SFJ responds to some letters/criticsm:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones

The thing that drives me nuts about this is that if SFJ was merely saying that musicianship (in a prideful, "chops"-driven sense, not necessarily guitar solos galore but people seeming to give a damn about how well they play) has been on the wane in indie rock for a good 15 years, and that the overall quality of the music has dropped somewhat with it, I'd be totally on board. But because he wraps up his thesis in "rhythm" and some vague idea of black influence (what about math rock and neo-prog bands? lots of complex rhythm in there but still essentially as 'white' as Arcade Fire or whatever), I don't even want to agree with the part that does ring true.

"As for what constitutes a miscegenated piece of music, I chose four pieces.

Led Zeppelin, “Custard Pie.” This is built from blues bricks: the sexual metaphor (which sometimes resurfaces in hip-hop, cf. Domino’s 1993 hit “Sweet Potato Pie”) and the chords, give or take a move in the turnaround. But the band plays it like the heaviest funk in the world, which also happens to sound like pure hard rock. With Zeppelin, you always have to consider the Bonham factor: the greatest drummer in the history of rock is also one of the funk greats, and hasn’t fared too badly as a sample in hip-hop’s collective memory. Good luck figuring out where this belongs.

OutKast, “Bombs Over Baghdad.” Well, it’s full of rapping, so it’s obviously hip-hop. But the song isn’t paying any attention to the lines in the road. The beat is hard enough—stiff, at certain points—to work for a hard-core punk band, and the synth bass line that enters could be from a fast British rave track. That’s before the guitar solo, gospel choir, and drum-machine solo.

Prince, “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” This is much closer to a classic pop structure: chorus melody stated at top, verses flowing into choruses, with a very brief bridge back into the chorus. The only real break in the action is the space for a guitar solo. But Prince swings this in a way that it’s hard to imagine the Zombies or McCartney pulling off. His singing leans toward straight soul—lots of edge, plenty of growls. Wendy and Lisa back him up with uninflected, clear harmony that could be from any pop record (or TV commercial) of the last twenty years.

Miles Davis, “On the Corner.” It isn’t rock, but this is a pure hybrid. Michael Henderson and Jack DeJohnette’s rhythm pattern is Southern funk, slightly twisted, and the truncated solos are of a piece with other jazz, even if everybody seems to stop a few moments after they start. But the sound mix is a direct outcome of Davis’s obsession with the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen: the buzzer going off, the swirling sounds, the abrupt edits and violent panning in the stereo field. (Thank God that people can buy recordings from other countries.) This is the sound of the ball moving forward quickly—so quickly that nobody could find the ball again for decades."

wow, four whole from the past 40 years that combine white and black musical influences. glad we have experts like him around to dig deep.

four whole songs

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.

-- Hurting 2, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:39 AM

This is a really interesting point.

I didn't read the whole article but does he say anything that Reynolds didn't in '86?

OK, I read more of it. da croupier OTM about mainstream rock, as ever.

(Mind you, I'm listening to Mahler so I might not be the best person to comment.)

someday im going to read this whole thread and make a really smart OTM comment that everyone can agree on

oh my GOD with all this use of MISCEGENATED and only like 3 times has it been saying "wtf"

^^^

xpost

he didn't use the phrase "juju" though, gotta give him that

and actually, I just word-searched the thread and only found like two posts here where someone used the term "miscegenated" without quotation marks and some obvious distancing from SFJ's perception of the term.

i actually just read this whole thread o_O