I Kan't Spell

 
Strokes and Rilo Kiley Retreads

2004 was the year indie music established itself, proving finally that it could be the one thing the marketplace demands - - sellable.

When I heard the first Indie ringtone my soul sucked up into my stomach so hard that I almost slapped someone, anyone standing next to me - actually there was an old woman on the floor - post-slap - post-hearing that trite ring.

Indie music isn't dead. It isn't sleeping. It's being hung up on a cross and whipped to death while bands like Keane, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Artic Monkies and whoever else is next come dripping out of the "Spear of Destiny" hole placed there by the masses and the labels. Writers have always been quick to announce the death of anything. I think Punk was dead before the Pistols even took the stage. Indi is not dead but the roots of the tree it grew are drying up.

Can you tell the difference between Indie and Major label anymore? I can't. The times are moving so fast now that I can't even change genres fast enough. BMG and SubPop and Little Indian and Sony are all the same to me. I looked up the other week and saw Death Cab on Warner and with the 4th most selling ringtone. I mean what the fuck? You couldn't pay people 5 years ago to see this band and now because it's on the OC people fall in love with it.

The truth is, many Indie record labels are run like any other business -- to make money. They pay for hip clothing and fancy press photos and work like hell to get their bands publicity. The artistic freedom indie labels promise is supposed to distinguish them from the majors, but when was the last time you heard a mainstream rock band complain about its label dictating material? Now you might be saying, "But what about the great Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot drama? A major label turned down an artistically adventurous album!" And yes, Reprise, a Warner imprint, dropped Wilco. The band was then picked up by Nonesuch, a diverse label with solid indie cred, who then released the album. So the indie world saved the day? Perhaps -- if you forget that Nonesuch is also a Warner subsidiary. IT NEVER ENDS.

Another once-defining element of the indie world is amateurish production values meant to convey a DIY aesthetic, a rejection of slick marketability. Though there are many exceptions, the quick glance at indie's biggest and brightest turns up some of the shiniest, glossiest pop material in the marketplace. Is it any surprise that the slickest sounding bands -- Rilo Kiley, Postal Service -- have the most crossover success? What's even worse than this is the identity that Indie bands try to establish on their recordings by sounding slick but not too slick. Old bands that were Indie didn't TRY to sound earthy, they had shitty equipment and people fell in love with that real sound. When you try to emulate it - - that's just asking for a kick in the nuts by the Indie followers.


For comparison, let's look at the latest installment from the prime purveyor of so-called indie music to the masses, Music From the O.C. Mix 5. Of the 12 songs on the album, five are by bands (Subways, Rogue Wave, Youth Group, Of Montreal, Stars) who are on so-called indie labels (Wea, Sub Pop, Epitaph, Polyvinyl, Arts and Crafts, respectively). But none of those five made their most recent record independent of any label influence -- i.e. label money. Granted, many of these bands having been truly indie at one point in their career: Baltimore based Rogue Wave self-released its first album and Kaiser Chiefs financed their first single themselves. But grassroots support for indie bands has been supplanted with the label-run, Astroturf campaigns for bands like My Chemical Romance. A band's credibility no longer seems dependent on dues paying.

I was telling Jas last night that one of the most discrediting things a band can do is to release a video on MTV without ever having played a live show. That's just the tip of the iceberg these days. Somewhere I feel as though we are supplanted with Indie-like information in order to trick us into this being new and fresh and hip and something to really rally behind. The days of Indie are seemingly coming to a crash now that Indie labels have sold out and major labels have become indieized.


Isn't having an audience important? Doesn't everyone want as big of an audience as they can get, a large forum for their ideas? Why should financial success negate artistic integrity? Couldn't it verify it? And as the bands get bigger audiences and more money for tours, music and videos, the world becomes full of better music. Where's the harm in that? What's to get bent out of shape over? As Pavement quips, bring on the major leagues, right?

The danger lies in that famous Greek word that I had to look up: hegemony. Basically this is the idea that revolutions get beaten down by the masses because the masses adopt the revolution. They simply take your cause and make it their own. It's like the minor leagues for the mainstream. As 2005 drew to a close, the mainstream still pimped indie aesthetics. But during this heightened indie sale-ability, truly indie releases are suffering.

One truly independent release from 2005 was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled, self-released debut album. They had a small tour and did well. In comparison the post-punk-Strokes-handjob band called The Bravey were fed to us as Indie. In actuality they were released on Island records (also does Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey) and sold 35k records in its first week. Somewhere in Idaho a fat girl just said "I love the Bravey. They are like sooo my favorite band." That's not Indie to me. But I'll have to admit that I didn't do my homework on the band and saw "Fletchers" on their play list and bought into the idea that they may be a real down-to-earth band. 2 weeks later I saw their MTV video - obviously recorded before this tour. This was just the machine making a band and then giving them street credit by being able to say "Look they played dive bars across America for 3 months." This was a very smart marketing strategy. But yet they made all the little mice who love Indie music that much more cynical. The people that made it cool for the fat girl in Idaho just got real pissed off.

So since Indie is pretty much dead I am wondering what is next. It may be something totally illogical that I can’t figure out. What I would like to see, and what I think I will endorse for 2006 is residential rock. There I coined the phrase Residential Rock. We shall support our local bands like any good minor league town. No matter how bad they are, Indie sounding or not, covers band or whatever, support your local Rock Group.


None of this is meant as a knock against bands like Death Cab for Cutie or the White Stripes, or Nirvana before that. But if they are indie, then what are the truly independent to be called? If indie-oriented labels are continually being sucked up into the mainstream, who will be the avant-garde? Will you and I be able to cut through the label hype to find truly independent music to support? If you've got an answer to any of that - call me later - The O.C. is about to start.
Link posted by JVMM : 1:05 PM