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

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

jess and sasha pictorial. awes

i thought al shipley was patrick fischler based on quirkyindiemovie.mpg

congrats on now having 2 stock shipley zings. maybe now you can work on coming up with a 2nd shakey mo zing.

temendoid i don't get what you are saying. is that some kind of unconscious freudian racism?

this just strikes me like those conversations about how white america was afraid of elvis' hips -- they were just as afraid of him legitimizing the black dicks that the music still represented more like.

and you took it the logical step further but yeah. we can argue the accuracy of sfj's descriptors and drag in sales numbers, counterexamples, etc. but once we get past how foolish the article is we're left debating the state of sfj's mind, and maybe others like him. i think he's using rhythm, syncopation et al as a stand-in for 'balls' and he wishes white guys with guitars would be perceived as exemplars of(or at least default to) his version of cool like they were 'way back when' instead of ceding that space to others, and for some reason he thinks using 'black musical elements' is the only way towards doing that. it's silly cos instead of waiting for arcade fire or whoever to move in his preferred direction he could just decide to identify with whoever is doing that, and that could be black people or whoever in a perfect world but plenty of white people fit the bill, that's what stumping me. i honestly think he's got a wonderfully passive-aggressive essay in him addressing indie fan attitudes but until he decides to write it he's incapable of anything more clear than this with regard to this 'issue'.(i should talk i know, but i don't get paid for this shit)

maybe you can loan me some from your 90-minute daily lab sessions of coming up with weak slams towards nobodies like alfred soto

people are trying to actually talk without it being all ZING ZANG ZONG here, ethan, go revive the rolling snap thread so you can son me there if you really have to

btw i might add that until maybe 3 weeks ago two days ago, i believed that Sasha Frere-Jones was black

i haven't read a whole lot from him but still

gotta wonder how much different a piece like this, or the reaction to it, would be if it was coming from, say, Greg Tate.

let's watch!...

i have a feeling greg tate wouldn't write such a shoddy article. also this kind of piece is only ever written by white dudes. not that it has to be, but i am sure greg tate would be approaching this from a completely diff angle.

funny how sfj seemed like such a relief after the nyer's occasional use of nick hornby

greg tate\\\ "my indie rock band burnt sugar was never able to believably incorporate the sounds of pavement and other authentically white bands."

xpost Tremendoid I wasn't sure at first because SFJ's use of miscegenation is so off-base but I think you're really on to something there. Masculinity in indie rock culture is in a really weird place right now--Witness the awkward dudes I know who listen to wolf eyes and wear bad clothes and are really into their bikes who refer to most average white dudes as "Bros," a term which totally has its place, but in this case all those bros are going to clubs or fratty parties and listening to rap.