droid said:
Thats an awful lot of assumptions for one post!
I would have thought that the 'roots' of this board (if they exist at all) are skewed more towards the hardcore/rave/UK early 90s dance scene end of things myself.
droid, i'd actually say, hands-down, that the general attitude and the roots of this board are overwhelmingly, suffocatingly indie.
the obsession with the obscure, the curatorial guardianship of certain music, the rabid (and mental) anti-pop position of many people, the contrarianism as regards anything popular, the abject failure to grasp the basics of what hip-hop is and means... all indie to the bone, just not applied to jangly guitar bands in this instance.
to qualify this, when i say indie i mean it as much more of a base-level aesthetic/point to approach music from than an actual musical style.
perhaps fittingly, this critical position has been most apparent in the discussion of the arctic monkeys. the reason they're being hated on is, plainly and simply, because they're popular. if they weren't big no one would care, but they are being touted as "real music" (whatever the hell that is) and people here appear to want their "music of substance" to remain obscure, hidden from the masses, the preserve of an in-the-know elite.
of course, indie barely exists any more in this sense and hasn't done post-britpop, oasis pretty much driving the stake through its heart once and for all (see, they were good for one thing, after all), but people who came up as fans of the indie/alternative generally carry a similar approach to popular culture for the rest of their lives, whatever they're listening to.
i know this because it's something i've had to very consciously shake off myself over the past 10 years or so.
obviously this is a sweeping generalisation and dissensus is, in reality, a pretty diverse community containing many different points of view and i'm not even saying that the indie position is devoid of merit, either - some interesting discourse comes from this perspective - but i will say that most of the things that drive me up the wall here are part and parcel of the same thing, too.