"Indie" / 7 ages of rock

john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Predictably depressing that "indie" would be the culmination of this UK TV series.

I remember seeing my first copy of Sounds or the NME in the mid-80s and being very confused about the word "indie" - I assumed it meant "Indian", but then there were all these really weird band names like Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, Crass etc in it.

The prog was an absurdly mainstream look at "indie" as a genre. For example I would have started with C86 and given massive props to John Peel. Or gone back to The Fall and the Postcard bands maybe.

The trajectory we suffered instead was something like

The Smiths -> Stone Roses -> Madchester -> Britpop -> Oasis vs Blur -> Libertines.

The shite that got talked about in relation to The Smiths was ridiculous - I swear some bloke said it was the first time something a bit miserable and literary had interrupted the party atmosphere of Top of The Pops or something.

there was an embarassed nod to the responsibility these acts have for creating Jamie Oliver and Coldplay, which was quite funny.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
Didn't see it, but what's interesting now is how Indie went from being this fey, cultish, intentionally wimpy music in the 80s, to becoming Britain's 21st century version of Hair Metal. The triumphalism surrounding bands like Oasis and the Manics in the 90s was depressingly idiotic, leading to the situation now.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
john eden said:
there was an embarassed nod to the responsibility these acts have for creating Jamie Oliver and Coldplay, which was quite funny.
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From being music for awkward misfits, to providing the soundtrack to a "normal", blokey lad-mag lifestyle.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
For me indie was the first time rock's supposed underground went deliberately retro, forever harping on about perfect pop while scoffing at anything that ever got near the charts. Less so The Smiths, but certainly the C86/Creation bands, on through Stone Roses, culminatiing in Brit Pop, which just seemed a battle between the faux-Beatles and faux-Kinks.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
swears said:
From being music for awkward misfits, to providing the soundtrack to a "normal", blokey lad-mag lifestyle.
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I think it's also interesting to look at it from the "indie distribution" angle - the space opened up by idealists like Rough Trade and John Peel and legions of little lables and fanzines etc became a doorway for corporate rock and indeed gave "Indie" its name.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
john eden said:
I think it's also interesting to look at it from the "indie distribution" angle - the space opened up by idealists like Rough Trade and John Peel and legions of little lables and fanzines etc became a doorway for corporate rock and indeed gave "Indie" its name.
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If memory serves 'indie' officially became a genre rather than a state of business because the NME was sick of seeing 'its' chart dominated by PWL and, later, unknown dance acts.
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
john eden said:
The trajectory we suffered instead was something like

The Smiths -> Stone Roses -> Madchester -> Britpop -> Oasis vs Blur -> Libertines.
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As a callow 13-year-old I remember hearing Noel Gallagher on GLR (as was) talking to Gary Crowley (ah, remember him?) about how and why Oasis were about to be huge - it would've been late 1994. He cited basically exactly the same continuum, without the Libertines of course. Does this continuum of oversized indie bands get its own name, I wonder? Actually Manchester seems to be the main thing most of them have in common...
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
treated just as a discussion of the very big britpop bands of the 90s, rather than a more thoroughgoing history of 'indie', this program seemed very half-arsed to me.

there's some interesting stuff to talk about in relation to Oasis: the whole lad culture thing, the rise of very explicit throwbacks to the 60s, british triumphalism/optimism after 97 and the labour landslide etc, but the program didn't discuss any of these. it was more just like;

-oasis came from manchester
-they signed to creation
-oasis became massive
-they had some songs that every one knew
-they hung around camden quite a bit. lots of other bands did too.
- then they played knebworth and that was a really big gig

i mean, what is the point of making such a banal documentary?

noel gallagher was as funny as always. don't like his music, but he's got perfect comic timing.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
Strange also how indie at first in a lot of ways was a mirror opposite of the sixties rock it took influence from (asexual, shy, underachieving, etc) then these elements were reversed again for the britpop era's phony bombast. (Although 90s guitar stuff never sounded as "wild" or "sexy" as the 60s originals.)
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
swears said:
(Although 90s guitar stuff never sounded as "wild" or "sexy" as the 60s originals.)
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some of it did alright in this respect imo:

suede - animal nitrate
elastica - stutter
kenickie - come out 2nite

don't make me keep listing these and blow any residual grime cred i may have left ;) ...i could keep doing it for a pretty long time i fear.

britpop wasn't all union-jack-draped blokey blokes in their ben shermans, is my point.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
simon silverdollar said:
treated just as a discussion of the very big britpop bands of the 90s, rather than a more thoroughgoing history of 'indie', this program seemed very half-arsed to me.

there's some interesting stuff to talk about in relation to Oasis: the whole lad culture thing, the rise of very explicit throwbacks to the 60s, british triumphalism/optimism after 97 and the labour landslide etc, but the program didn't discuss any of these. it was more just like;

-oasis came from manchester
-they signed to creation
-oasis became massive
-they had some songs that every one knew
-they hung around camden quite a bit. lots of other bands did too.
- then they played knebworth and that was a really big gig

i mean, what is the point of making such a banal documentary?
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I thought that about most of the series to be honest, particularly the first one.

Classic Britannia's looking good, though which evens it up for the Beeb.
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
I wonder if this is the right place to offer two potentially heretical opinions:

1) Elastica's music is better than Wire's music, however explicitly the former ripped off the latter

2) Laughing stocks though they may sometimes be, Britpop's female contingent - Bis, Echobelly, Sleeper, Dweeb, theaudience, Angelica, Helen Love, Dubstar, I could go on.. - produced a fairly sizable collection of good songs between them c. 1994-7
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
1) Elastica's music is better than Wire's music, however explicitly the former ripped off the latter
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Wire were poo, but the only good Elastica song is the one that ripped off The Stranglers.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
The whole programme was clearly written to support its conclusion- that rock like any other artform now consisted of creativity within historically defined reference points, that the absurd creativity and head-spinning innovation of the 60s to early 80s was over, and like a mature artform like the novel all that could be hoped for was to return, to remix elements which had gone before. This thesis was very clear to me.

Obviously they didn't mention post-modernity, but that sums it up- rock is dead, all we can hope for is the Arctic Monkeys.

Of course Radiohead were excised from the narrative, as for all their myriad faults they liminally refer to swathes of music outside of the limited brit-rock context...

The worst thing about this whole series is that it could tell you more about what the bands looked like than what they sounded like, it didn't really capture any sense of why metal was different to 60s rock say--- indeed the narrative of metal was completely absurd without an analysis of technical changes (at the level of the riff) over time--- it never explained how Metallica were more aggressive than Judas Priest... (and missed out on Slayer all together- doh!)
 
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M

mms

sometimes
john eden said:
I can't actually remember him being mentioned, but he may have cropped up in relation to The Smiths...
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thats pretty amazing. It's amazing how easily he has been either commodified thru various dodgy comps or forgotten about.
 
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