Ooh, watch out Dissensus indy-rock haters!

Tyro

The Kandy Tangerine Man
What a sad irony it is that 'Indie' music has ended up being championed as the saviour of the Major record labels.

Before anyone gets too stuck in to comparing the relative sales of Dizzee Rascal to The Artic Monkeys,remember this:

The first Velvet Underground record sold a handfull of copies when it first came out in the sixties.The likes of Hermans Hermits and The Dave Clark Five
were selling millions.The Velvet's have since proven to be one of the most influentual rock bands of all time.Any indie rock band you can name will have namechecked them at some point.Musical innovation has never been a big draw for the record buying public and never will be.
 
Rambler said:
Dunno if it's so much a sense of threat, but I do feel that the lines between one and t'other are being more thickly drawn than they were in the past - eg britpop and jungle, when it was quite possible to be into both and not feel really unusual.

I've found the opposite of this to be true :cool: !!

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mms

sometimes
Tyro said:
What a sad irony it is that 'Indie' music has ended up being championed as the saviour of the Major record labels.

that's not the case as the indies such as domino etc are making alot of the money

there have been loads of times when musical innovation and revolutionary ways of making/listening etc have been huge i think
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
there have been loads of times when musical innovation and revolutionary ways of making/listening etc have been huge i think

yeah, just not right now. would like to think it's darkest before dawn though (see 1975 / 1986).

thing is there are (some) great innovative, exciting groups and musicians out there with something to say that are operating in a 'pop' idiom of one kind or another, or making music that could translate to a large scale audience given the right nudge. i think lots of people have felt that there's perhaps been no point in trying to make that leap, that it's more important to make the music you really feel should be made and leave it at that rather than risk being damaged by the marketing process or something, even if that means only directly reaching a small coterie of those 'in the know'; settling for a peripheral influence. wasn't a lot of 'real indie' characterized by an air of intentional amateurism as a stance/defence against having to compete on someone elses terms or play the 'industry game'? it's easy to see why.

seems that the grimesters on the whole are not afraid of this, which is great of course.

what we need is more margin dwellers and cultural wall-flowers getting ready to push to the front and rush the stage. in a strange way maybe the artic rolls and their particular route to exposure have prised open the door of possibilities just little bit?

of course it's in the nature of revolution / evolution that it is very hard to predict, and the next step will in all probablility not be at all like the previous ones. watching the clip of the sex pistols on 'so it goes' on jarvis cocker's pop tv thing the other night (was that a repeat?) nearly brought a tear to my eye. how did that feel (i was 5 at the time)? if i was a little older then and had seen it i think i would have been like "holy shit! there's real people on tv, look!"

are 'the kids', and the rest of us, not once again crying out for voices that really speak for and to them about how they feel and what they want, to actually be heard? beyond parochial social comentary / realism that is.

avant gardists / weirdos / outsiders / self-appointed geniuses - accept your responsibility and start thinking BIG, for all our sakes. learn from the past but talk about your present and our future.

change lives and minds, provide hope and clues.

here's to the New Weird Pop.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
blissblogger said:
as if to prove the parallel, the guardian girl that everyone's making fun of... clumsy writer for sure but she also did a piece on grime (kpunk linked to it) and you know what, every point in it is OTM

(except for the bit about NME championing Dizzee!!)


O come on, 'clumsy writer' is understating the case just a bit, I would say... Some of the worst sentences I've ever seen in print... She has invented a whole new mode of product placement hackwork...

The grime piece is not AS risible - it's like a passable, as opposed to an atrocious, school magazine piece - and at least she does talk for half a sentence or so about music and culture rather than list statistics.

once you get past the music

bit of an odd thing to want to do when analysing pop isn't it? Doesn't the alleged similarity between grime and Carling indie just come down to the fact that they're made by teenagers or men in their early twenties?

Don't think these similarities can be pushed that far anyway beyond the Arcticzzzz in any case.... Franz Ferdinand are smug griduates who write gibberish lyrics that are supposed to sound clever, don't hear much frustration or youth vitalism there... Kaiser Chiefs sound like a middle-aged pub rock band trying to get with it circa 1981... Libertines indulge the same sixth form poetry drool that teenagers have done forever, no specific reference to any contemp landscape there....
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Ah, the Smug Police arrive.

Is there a Q message board? Perhaps you'd be happier in a bile-free environment like that.
 
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Tim F

Well-known member
Ha ha I must admit that I actually am taken in a bit by Franz Ferdinand's "gibberish lyrics that are supposed to sound clever" when I hear them on the radio - at least on "The Fallen", although that's probably the worst (or best?) of them in this capacity. But then "gibberish lyrics that are supposed to sound clever" can be applied to a lot of good lyrics in rock (and other) music!

(also I love that Simon, Marcello and Kelefa Sanneh are united in Arctic Monkeys appreciation, it's sort of remapping all the debates of the last few years!)
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
blissblogger said:
to me it's actually the similarities (once you get past the music--grime's stalled-futurism versus AM's reenergized conservatism) between grime and the nu-Britrock that are striking .... the vitality and hunger of youth in an environment full of traps and dead-ends .... they are white and black versions, or views, of the same landscape.... neither of them have a vision of how to escape or transcend it beyond "making it"

the tragic difference you overlook though simon is that if they are both visions of youth in trapped dead-ends, indie bands actually have some hope, given the number of their ranks with major label deals, chart hits and therefore some kind of income to propel them from beyond their current existance.

grime however is an even more tragic mirage, because no one has ever "made it" - except dizzee, who managed to combine good fortune (winning the Mercury Prize, not a route open to many acts) with good timing and hard graft to court the indie industry machine.

also the comparison from the two group's points of origin is unballanced - you're not comparing like with like. The depth of social inequality and isolation of London's generation grime is far worse than that of indie.

the equivalent areas of social depravity - say inner city Manchester or Glasgow - don't produce indie bands (what do they produce, new school d&b?). The indie heartland is bored kids from sleepy cul-de-sacs in medium sized satelite towns (hello Hard Fi!). Which negates your suggestion that they're "white and black versions, or views, of the same landscape"
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
The important point for me was about neither of them having a vision beyond making it. Almost Simon's exact word's actually.

Not everyone can 'make it'. And if the music's only or primary purpose is to facilitate the musician's escape from their present circumstances, well that's not a very generous or forward thinking artistic standpoint is it? Why should the rest of us give a toss, beyond simple charity? Yes, creative musicians should be supported, but that in itself is a very poor reason to be a musician.

I'm not saying that anyone in particular is in the game for these reasons - just that there are impoverished musicians all over with little hope of their art affording them much financial improvement - but that doesn't mean their vision has to be impoverished too. In fact maybe the money will follow from actually giving the people something beyond your own whinings?
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
Noel Emits said:
Not everyone can 'make it'. And if the music's only or primary purpose is to facilitate the musician's escape from their present circumstances, well that's not a very generous or forward thinking artistic standpoint is it?

i agree but this is the standpoint grime MCs assume.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
Blackdown said:
the tragic difference you overlook though simon is that if they are both visions of youth in trapped dead-ends, indie bands actually have some hope, given the number of their ranks with major label deals, chart hits and therefore some kind of income to propel them from beyond their current existance.

grime however is an even more tragic mirage, because no one has ever "made it" - except dizzee, who managed to combine good fortune (winning the Mercury Prize, not a route open to many acts) with good timing and hard graft to court the indie industry machine.

also the comparison from the two group's points of origin is unballanced - you're not comparing like with like. The depth of social inequality and isolation of London's generation grime is far worse than that of indie.

the equivalent areas of social depravity - say inner city Manchester or Glasgow - don't produce indie bands (what do they produce, new school d&b?). The indie heartland is bored kids from sleepy cul-de-sacs in medium sized satelite towns (hello Hard Fi!). Which negates your suggestion that they're "white and black versions, or views, of the same landscape"

I agree with most of what simon says, and although I take your point, Martin - the depth of inequality is diffirent - they are both part of an alienating and disquiting society. Yet they still seem unable to rise to that challange of going beyond the critera set for success within by that society (units shifte/financial success).

Which is what Noel Emits said, more eloquently, I guess!
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Think Blackdown is right that the ONLY point of overlap of grime with indie is that both are locked onto 'making it' (a point of overlap also with reality TV contestants). But surely he's right that the differences, even here, are more significant than the similarities... Indie CAN make it, is the dominant sound of the Restoration, Grime (for whatever reasons) can't. (btw can't help feeling that the desperately depressing grime collaborations with IndieTrad saddoes like - I can hardly bear to type this - Test-Icicles (yeuch will only make matters worse. , by undermining the very nihilative appeal and USP of grime, i.e. that is NOT That Old Crap.) One of the ways in which Nat's grime piece as Off TM was the parallel with punk; punk was musically conservative but had a rage that resonated. With grime it's almost the reverse: future-oriented sound (albeit a 'stalled futurism' as Simon has it) but a rage that doesn't connect much beyond the fanbase.

Blackdown's surely also right that the 'landscapes' being surveyed are very different. The view across FF's art college student's union bar very different from what most grimestas see. As for Pete Doherty's visions of Albion...
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Well, I'd like to think that in many cases that's a stance, surface bluster. It works as a metaphor and a dramatisation of humanity's longing for a genuine, erm, civilisation. For the rage we should all feel at the present humiliations. It is better if the musicians themselves understand this though. The myth created by the ghetto kid that makes it can be powerful and inspiring, but what use is it if all it inspires is a desire to make loads of cash just like them? What use is 50 Cent now, except to a few of his mates?

But really though, I'm sure lots of people making grime (and indie-rock, and hip-hop, and noise, and all) are mainly doing it for themselves and their peers, and because they are compelled to.

Music can be the most prophetic and futuristic of artforms - allowing us to apprehend and construct abstract ideas before they become concrete realities, to test out new models of thought, new structures of organisation. And it allows us to communicate existential 'truths' whose subtleties become lost in more literal or static images.

Music leads the way, so should the musicians. Or is it just entertainment and mating rituals?

It's all very well pointing to grime as a presently more vital expression of disatisfaction, and indie-rock is largely dull-as, but neither is offering much in the way actual vision.

By the way, I think Dizzee's done well partly because there's a warmth and humanity to what he does. I mean you can certainly understand why people who don't live in inner cities don't want to wallow in the grime. At least hip-hop is glamorous. Not making value judgements just observing possible reasons for lack of large scale acceptance.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
K-Punk
With grime it's almost the reverse: future-oriented sound (albeit a 'stalled futurism' as Simon has it) but a rage that doesn't connect much beyond the fanbase.

Absolutely spot-on, the whole post actually, thanks. I think I may have been flying off at wild tangents, just a little :confused:

spackboy -
Yet they still seem unable to rise to that challange of going beyond the critera set for success within by that society (units shifte/financial success).

Which is what Noel Emits said, more eloquently, I guess!

Yes, but you said it far more more succinctly :D
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Noel Emits said:
K-Punk

Absolutely spot-on, the whole post actually, thanks. I think I may have been flying off at wild tangents, just a little :confused:

It was more a case of agreeing with Blackdown than disagreeing with you, Noel...

Totally agree that this 'making it' thing is depressing. Is there a paradox that Grime's obsession with making it is stopping it... make it?
 
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