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

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

:(

...ethan dude i understand what youre saying but pls pls pls come to my school and find four people who have similar taste in music to you, i mean it. there are 1800 students at my school and i guarantee you the most popular rapper here is atmosphere, and dont get me wrong i dont particularly hate atmosphere, but i doubt a single person even knew who big moe was, let alone that he just died.

i mean i can only speak to my situation but i doubt that its that dissimilar to places like swarthmore, sarah lawrence, wherever.

it must be such a drag having to get an education in such a cultural wasteland.

dude please.

"true BUT when people say "brian wilson" in recent indie context it almost always means "god only knows" and not "help me rhonda." (why people would rather sound like "god only knows" than "help me rhonda" is a mystery to me, fwiw.) i.e., it's wilson's diaphonous symphonic side that is most often referenced, not his 8-bar/12-bar side."

True and OTM Mothra...

dally we're ignoring u because youre annoying and weve all had the arguments youre trying to start 600 times before and really arent interested in having them with your dumb ass

hurting, please, i got the hell out of NJ. i was born in princeton and wouldnt go to that fucking school...

Yeah. I think I was only duped into going there because I'm NOT from NJ. I should have thought better of it when the first site I saw on my campus visit was the river dorms, but somehow I didn't process them, like "Oh, this can't be part of the actual college."

i get that like no one on ILM listens to "indie rock" and 90% of americans dont either but the 10% (or less) that do are (for a variety of sociological/economic reasons) the "cultural elite" (aka, theoretically the "tastemakers" for the upper middle class)

for all the bitching ILM does about indie rock I think a higher percentage of people here listen to the stuff & have love for it but have major complaints about the nature of it, right - it's almost like family arguments or something. I doubt that anyone would give a shit about Sasha's article if it didn't intersect with some stuff they gave a shit about. I suppose one could say "no, I only care that it's SO WRONG" but I wouldn't be buying that, I mean people are saying wrong shit at any given moment but you tend to respond when the question they're wrong about is something you also care about. IMO, etc.

To look at the brite side, I like the way that Sasha is willing to describe his own mixed emotions about how to sing and about singing as a raced activity,

there was some ILM thread where this stuff got a lot of discussion, anyone remember what it was?

also ethan you gotta quit hating on mia, it's unbecoming

if it contributes to the discussion any the 1st time i ever noticed sasha frere jones i thought he was black (it was for that big wu-tang discography)

i think was confusing him with sacha jenkins from ego trip

i think a lot of people are responding because they want to look smarter than sfj

actually i think a lot of people post to ILX because they want to look smarter than the person above them

http://www.eyejammie.com/sacha-party/DSC_3465.jpg
im pretty sure this dude listens to arcade fire too

i thought sfj was black for a minute. i forget why. maybe he has succeeded in incorporating african-american influences. he can sometimes write about hip-hop w/o making me cringe. still hes no nathan rabin.

why all the "VU are uber-white" stuff? they are easily the most doo-wop influenced of any 60s rock band i can think of.

Most doo-wop influenced 60s rock band? Boy, wait'll you hear the Beach Boys...

Good point, though. Just a few obvious examples off the top of my head that contradict the VU's alleged whiteyness: "There She Goes Again" ripping off Marvin Gaye's "Hitch-Hike," and the debt "Sister Ray" owes to Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor (Reed admits as much in the Up-Tight book).

i thought sfj was black too

then again i lived a good portion of my life thinking tracy chapman was a white guy based on fast car

people, just cuz we are talking about indie doesn't mean we have to debate the merits of VU

2. "him talking about his struggles to sing with his funk band"
In response to Reply # 0

tie into the posts i made last week about the Dap-Kings and their "authenticity" problem (and solution)

btw i might add that until maybe 3 weeks ago, i believed that Sasha Frere-Jones was black... i understand that many people make that mistake, though

--------------

I AM THE NEW NEGRO (and so can YOU!)

http://combandrazor.blogspot.com

tie into the posts i made last week about the Dap-Kings and their "authenticity" problem (and solution)

???

thank god he found the solution!

i thot sfj was a white chick based on a review of the clash he did

his brother is a really terrific typographer

i'd love to see jess and sfj lezz out

ew

I thought sfj was a 40ish white guy based on tidybeard.jpg

you mean jessica???

jessica hopper vs strongo hulkington