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

max ive actually made a near-identical argument before, and i do think that folks in these positions and what they say about music does matter ... my whole senior independent study project was about how a small minority can affect the majority discourse.

but this article is ineffective on these terms because he's not really upending this cultural elite canon, he's still arguing everything on indie rock's terms

max, you're right that indie rock is a bigger piece of the pop culture pie than most people here are giving it credit for (I definitely think the phrase "indie rock" is much more commonplace than it was 10 years ago, for one thing), but saying "come to my liberal arts campus and you'll see how many people listen to indie rock" is kinda like saying "come to France and you'll see how many people are French".

i suppose they should get a few points for at least acknowledging the contradictions of what they're about in a really upfront way but unfortunately the name White Out only seems to make it worse somehow

if it weren't for the inclusion of ludacris and chingy i'd say it was straight up that standard timelag syndrome where white folks get into a particular black music only a good ten years or more after the black folks have moved on to something else ... sonic gentrification

it's like they've gone through Stage One of white indie engagement (the IDM-nerd missing-the-point a bit 'timbaland's rhythms are really complicated and weird and glitchy') and straight onto 'it's all about partying down' which unfortunately gets translated to a 'it's just stupid dance music but we're down with that' stance

and yeah you're right phil that house and techno, which has claims to both Afrofurist-intellect-weird-and-avant and stupid-fun-lets-great-crazy, gets written out -- although they do plan to play some technotronic and that's almost house music right?

a fascinating slab of discourse
Posted by: simon r at February 27, 2004 08:21 AM

When the hell did indie rock's terms get defined, though? I realized I don't have a clue, past the idea of college radio stuff and the growing organization of smaller labels and certain sounds.

http://blissout.blogspot.com/

simon's written some shit about sfj actually

When the hell did indie rock's terms get defined, though?

They haven't been.

Hokum. Indie rock, or whatever you want to call it is a reaction to the mainstream, just like punk rock was a reaction against AOR (or classic rock or whatever.) Or if you disagree with that then at least it's an alternative in the marketplace.

And as an alternative it has to be different than the perceived mainstream.

Maybe in the US, but in Britland, all the (rock) things indie was an alternative to have disappeared, leaving only indie - and since Britpop, it's been all meat and potatoes drumming and strumming

x-post

Arcade Fire's cd debuted at or near the top of the Billboard charts. The Decemberists were playing big outdoor halls this summer. While surely there are indie-rockers who define themselves in opposition to whatever is the commercial mainstream--well in 2007 that includes all kinds of rock as well as rap. It's hard to define what you are against.

Hugo, was the Clash with Lee Perry no longer the Clash; Talking Heads with Bernie Worrell, Nona Hendrix and others no longer the Talking Heads?

i used to make that same blindness-of-critics/tastemakers argument a lot but seriously it doesnt matter unless youre treating shit like pazz n jop & zach braff trailers & itunes commercials as the place where all music should end up - nowadays i dont really give a fuck if dorky college kids and office workers arent feeling b.g. or gorilla zoe or whatever because that just isnt my world & i dont feel the need to have ilm or pfork or whoever acknowledge that shit for me

I just read this, expecting to get all worked up and irritated by it. But I actually enjoyed it.

SFJ tends to come off as a bit of a scold, the type of dude who looks through your record collection then calls you a racist because you don't have any Schooly D records. But that's what's made him famous, or at least infamous. That's what he does, and he does it well.

What I want to know is how come all the hipsters out there feel free to dump on the roots rock? Why are we roots rockers marginalized, goddamnit! I want answers!!!

If

really it only pisses me off now when i see big rock crit blowjobs for shit like mia or chromeo or whatever that i see as just straight-up jacking music i love for its unique shit & marketing it to dorky college kids who dont know better but even that is a pretty big who-gives-a-fuck, aint hard to just only chill with ppl who acutally fuck with dancehall or geto boys or atlantic starr than to get madd at newjacks & herbs who write blogs

the 'time delay' is really interesting and hugely germane. my guesses about it are kind of off the theoretical deep end: white life is rooted in fear of community judgment (puritanism/calvinism) so, what is safely old has the threat of social danger removed. plus in liberal/capitalist concepts of progress, the present may be a screwed up mess (black ppl with slang i don't get oh noes!!), but somehow history is viewed as a series of successes, so anything you can class as 'old' is within the sphere of shit everybody understands, so if you are into it or ape it you won't be left out in the cold.

there must be an exact amount of months where the reaction to being into X shifts from "why are you being a wigger?" to "ha awesome i love that old shit!!"

"i get that like no one on ILM listens to "indie rock""

if only!

xxxxxxpost yeah i guess i dont really want to defend the article i guess i just am really sick of the "indie is irrelevant" meme.

also this probably is a little more significant to me cuz i go to a lib-arts school and run the college radio station and come from PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY and, i dunno, wear converse all-stars. so in some sense sfj is talking about "my people" or people who were formerly mine, and i agree with him to a certain extent. but the interesting things to talk about (like, the implicit racism in the rejection of black forms of music by white kids who listen to the shins or whatever, or the questions of fear of negative appropriation, which i think is the biggest reason you dont see win butler rapping) have been done to death.

nowadays i dont really give a fuck if dorky college kids and office workers arent feeling b.g. or gorilla zoe or whatever because that just isnt my world & i dont feel the need to have ilm or pfork or whoever acknowledge that shit for me

the thing is i wish i could say that but every day i go to class with girls who have panda bear pins on their messenger bags and my on-off girl works for a PR firm that does these bands, so its harder for me to just be like, "listen to what you want." i mean honestly this is why i spend time on ILM, because i have like 5 friends, tops, with whom i have overlapping taste. (and i know this is MY PROBLEM, and frankly most ppl at my college are pretty uninteresting, but right now its my world)

yeah its not like hte time delay shit doesnt happen with white ppl music too... a million alex in nyc threads bitching about sex pistols shirts at baby gap or iggy pop in a m&ms commercial or whatever

max, could you get you and your friends to act and sound a little more black? thanks.

i should modify that to say "i only have five friends, because theyre the only people at my school with whom i have overlapping taste"

the more i see the ilm apoplexy the more i think leaving in the word 'miscegenation' is where sfj gets it right, despite himself. i think king elephant in the room is BLACK GUYS FUCKING WHITE WOMEN, hence the silly anxiety about him and his buddies being rendered sexless by proxy(why he insists on using a subset of a subset of dewy wimps as his proxy i can't quite figure, but that's his problem. also, i say that as a fan of many said dewy wimps; his other contribution is pushing me to give neon bible a listen, quite good so far).

max, it's ok to be friends with people who don't share your taste.

if i get one more facebook invitation to some kind of "ironic" trapped in the closet party or if one more person tells me that the music im playing in the quad or at my house is "dumb" or "gay" or whatever, i actually will cho seung hui this whole fucking campus

also you might try dropping the holden caulfield bit, 'lil pal, and judge people by their deeds and not their panda bear pins.

max, it's ok to be friends with people who don't share your taste.

-- dally, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 18:09 (46 seconds ago) Link

the issue isn't if it's "ok"

the implicit racism in the rejection of black forms of music by white kids who listen to the shins or whatever

what's this about?

whats more interesting about white kids at liberal art schools that are indie is what they listen to besides indie. cuz of the internet and whatnot people hypothetically can listen to everything and shuffle their ipods from feist to t-pain or whatever, but in practice this white people listen to some token undie stuff (having been a md @ a college radio station too :( ).

hai guys if you dont like the kinda music everybody around you listens to you can actually move & make new friends

um when you go to parties and you turn of "phantom limb" and turn on "country grammar" and peopel groan and push you at the first hit of the bass because they don't listen to "rap."

xpost dally.

i used to live in ATHENS GA but after a couple years i found ppl to go see pastor troy with

yeah but how boring to only be friends with people who share your taste?

artdamages: what do you expect? I don't imagine a lot of young black peoples' ipods are shifting from feist to t-pain either.

there must be an exact amount of months where the reaction to being into X shifts from "why are you being a wigger?" to "ha awesome i love that old shit!!"

yeah its not like hte time delay shit doesnt happen with white ppl music too... a million alex in nyc threads bitching about sex pistols shirts at baby gap or iggy pop in a m&ms commercial or whatever

-- and what, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 6:06 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ethan OTM....it's like read old black flag SC punk shit and those dudes would get serious beat by cops....now in the same area they are probably using a BF t-shirt in a fashion shoot or some shit.

lolz @ choosing friends for what they listen to

also if you think about panthau du prince all day (i don't) it makes sense that you would want to hang out with people in real life who also think about panthau du prince all day, not people who think about colin meloy all day xpost to this friends shit.

hai guys if you dont like the kinda music everybody around you listens to you can actually move & make new friends

8 months till graduation

temendoid i don't get what you are saying. is that some kind of unconscious freudian racism? am i afraid of BLACK GUYS FUCKING WHITE WOMEN too? maybe not anymore cuz i have faced this fear head on w/the help of porn.

i choose friends based on which tv chefs we would rape & torture

i married a woman that couldn't care less about more than half the obnoxious shit i listen to, and god bless her for it.

it's not "choosing" friends retards. like ppl who hang out and play dungeons & dragons all day hang out with other ppl who play dungeons & dragons all day because they share interests. not bcuz they are making an explicit decision to block out everyone else.

lolz @ choosing friends for what they listen to

u friends with a lot of skrewdriver fans?

um when you go to parties and you turn of "phantom limb" and turn on "country grammar" and peopel groan and push you at the first hit of the bass because they don't listen to "rap."

-- Jordan Sargent, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

This happens to you a lot?

i married a woman that couldn't care less about more than half the obnoxious shit i listen to, and god bless her for it.

-- M@tt He1ges0n, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 6:16 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

not married yet but this is my situation and i love it

ethan knows a joke

just one though

t's not "choosing" friends retards. like ppl who hang out and play dungeons & dragons all day hang out with other ppl who play dungeons & dragons all day because they share interests. not bcuz they are making an explicit decision to block out everyone else.

-- Jordan Sargent, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Heh, nerds.

also this probably is a little more significant to me cuz i go to a lib-arts school and run the college radio station and come from PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Did you transfer out of RUTGERS? Affectionate lol @ Rutgers kids who want to pretend they go to a "lib-arts school" (I was one of them)

i had to deal w/ it at my own house this weekend. it's not a huge deal, since i tend not to pary that often w/ ppl who listen to spoon @ parties, but i was just explaining what i thought max was saying.

hurting, please, i got the hell out of NJ. i was born in princeton and wouldnt go to that fucking school if every lacrosse jock there gave me a beej.

guess what guys lots of college students actually listen to rap music!! even white ppl!!

if youre talking about some other wack form of non rock music i cant help you there

guess what guys lots of college students actually listen to rap music!! even white ppl!!

-- and what, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 6:22 PM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

but they dont go onto to be rock critics

if youre talking about some other wack form of non rock music i cant help you there

-- and what, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 1:23 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

:(