Hipsters: Scourge or Irrelevence

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
<brightly>From Wikipedia...

Hip, hipster and hippie

During the jive era of the late 1930s and early 1940s, African-Americans began to use the term hip to mean "sophisticated, fashionable and fully up-to-date".[1] The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940, and was used during the 1940s and 1950s to describe jazz performers. The word evolved to describe Bohemian counterculture. Like the word hipster, the word hippie is jazz slang from the 1940s, and one of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show on November 13, 1945, in which Stan Kenton called Harry Gibson "Hippie".[3] This use was likely playing off Gibson's nickname, "Harry the Hipster."[4]

In Greenwich Village, New York City, young counterculture advocates were named hips because they were considered "in the know" or "cool", as opposed to being square. In a 1961 essay, Kenneth Rexroth used both the terms hipster and hippies to refer to young people participating in African American or Beatnik nightlife.[5]

In 1963, the Orlons, an African-American singing group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania released the soul dance song "South Street", which included the lyrics "Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street...The hippest street in town".[6][7] Some transcriptions read "Where do all the hippist (sic) meet?"[8] Nevertheless, since many heard it as "hippies", that use was promoted. "The Hippies" was also the name of a mixed African American and white soul singing group on the Orlons' record label, Cameo-Parkway.[9] Reminiscing about late 1940s Harlem in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term African Americans used to describe a specific type of white man who "acted more Negro than Negroes."[10]

A hip person, a hipster, or a hippie, then, is someone who is aware of the latest developments or trends, as in "I'm hip to that." It was also often used as a verb in the early days, such as in the phrase, "I'm hipping you, man," which meant, "I'm making you wise." [11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_(etymology)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's also cognate with 'hep', as in 'hep cat'.

I'm in a pretty hep group* myself.



*high energy physics (research) group
 
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Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
as of, say, 1996: irrelevance

I guess the style lived up to its name in the early nineties. I don't know. At this point it's kind of pathetic. I have nothing against them, I mean I know a few and they tend to be kind of empty-headed, and I honestly believe they have no souls, they creep me out, but they are more or less innocuous. However when I see one on the street I can't help laughing.
 

Shonx

Shallow House
The thing with hipsters comopared to the beatniks is that 'hipsters' have evolved via the internerd and the suburbs in that a fuckhead can be a jaded know-it-all without having left their environment of 'comfort'...The beatniks were inspired by leaving their fucking nest, the hipsters are inspired by living in it!

so lick my shite! :p

Isn't it mostly a combination of both nowadays - I mean presumably you'd need to attend clubs and events to understand the dynamics of a night as well as scouring the net for new tunes. Even before I had the net, it was obvious from going out to nights that there were a lot of jaded know it alls who did the equivalent of chatting shit on the net but, y'know, in old skool analogue style - in pubs, clubs and peoples' houses.

don't think that has alot to do with baleric, but there was and is a time when things get boring in genres and people mix musical genres that are often compartmentalized together, often before there is enough good music in that genre to warrant playing a whole night of it.
i personally just try and play good records old and new when i dj but i always have, sometimes more or less.

Yeah same, I think dj's whose style relies on creating a very narrow microgenre for themselves not only limit the breadth of tunes they can choose but make for very predictable and tedious sets (although plenty seem to think this is a good thing for some reason).

From the wiki article on Balearic Beat -

"The style of Balearic Beat is described by its inventors, as opposed to its UK followers, as the ability for the DJ to play across a broad range of styles, from early minimal new beat to the first extended remixes of pop-songs, making Balearic DJ sets those that tend to have the sharpest turns of musical direction. While the public outside Ibiza generally describes Balearic Beat as a music style, the island based community regard Balearic Beat as a non-style or a healthy disrespect to style conformity and a challenge to the norm. Its a freestyle expression that seamlessly binds sporadic vinyl inspiration through technical flair on the turntables."

Particularly liked this bit which seems to ring true far

"Today, due to segregation in the electronic dance music few promoters few DJ's dare to stretch their spectrum of styles that far in fear of losing identity and clients."

If style and identity are based entirely on what they buy then it's no wonder they're a bit insecure about it.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
"The style of Balearic Beat is described by its inventors, as opposed to its UK followers, as the ability for the DJ to play across a broad range of styles, from early minimal new beat to the first extended remixes of pop-songs, making Balearic DJ sets those that tend to have the sharpest turns of musical direction. While the public outside Ibiza generally describes Balearic Beat as a music style, the island based community regard Balearic Beat as a non-style or a healthy disrespect to style conformity and a challenge to the norm. Its a freestyle expression that seamlessly binds sporadic vinyl inspiration through technical flair on the turntables."
Have any really good records come out of this scene, though? Compared with UKG or jungle or techno or whatever...
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Does seem that taking various tunes from different genres is actually closer in some ways to original balearic in a way though, rather than the compartmentalisation that has come in since, and I quite welcomed that in sets by Sinden, Switch, Diplo, etc. We're really talking about this in a more superficial way though aren't we, and it's almost impossible to tell in someone else what's desperately trying to be cool and what's a wide-ranging interest in different styles.
But it's not really about deciding whether the DJ is authentic and then deciding based on that whether you liked the set - the proof of the pudding is in the eating and all that. What I don't like is a set that doesn't flow, that doesn't build up a vibe, that doesn't suprise me in any way. And that can happen when the DJ doesn't really know the genres he's mixing but just has a bunch of the most obvious anthems from each and bashes them out in no particular order, which is the sort of 'blogline' DJing style I had in mind.

I mean to be honest isn't there just as much superficiality in those sticking with one genre and buying the latest big tunes and then not playing them as soon as they're a couple of months past freshness.
Well yes, but I wouldn't advocate that either.
 

Shonx

Shallow House
Have any really good records come out of this scene, though? Compared with UKG or jungle or techno or whatever...

http://whatilike-jp.blogspot.com/2007/12/balearic-beats.html

There's an article there. I don't think it was so much about tunes from the scene, more seeing what could be incorporated which I think was the important thing. I was pretty sure that hip hop and stuff like the Mondays came under that umbrella but may well have been wrong.
 

mos dan

fact music
sorry to come so late to this party, esp when such detailed and thorough discussions have already wound up, but i was asked for my two cents, so i gave it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/03/fashion

i actually think vice is unequivocally a force for good these days.. seeing the piece on the grime youngers in this month's issue was quite significant i think. if they were true dilettantes they would have dropped that shit years ago.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________

That all sounds very reasonable.

I guess that a culturally peripatetic tribe does not afford itself the time to gain expertise in discrete practices, so cannot be expected to create great art beyond patchwork quilt pastiches or enthusiastic semi-inspired skits.

The hipster is possibly a personality type: one that is motivated by finding novelty. Ability and inclination determine how deeply they might inadvertantly delve into the flavour of the minute before they feel compelled to look elsewhere.
 
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mos dan

fact music
The hipster is possibly a personality type: one that is motivated by finding novelty. Ability and inclination determine how deeply they might inadvertantly delve into the flavour of the minute before they feel compelled to look elsewhere.

i was thinking about this when i was writing the piece, and it made me think of john peel! and how he defended his practice of playing records by bands when they were brand spanking new, before abandoning them when they got big and were all over daytime radio 1. "i just get really excited by new bands" was something along the lines of what he said. and so, if (arguably) john peel is the ultimate hipster, it makes them rather more difficult to hate, does it not?
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
if (arguably) john peel is the ultimate hipster, it makes them rather more difficult to hate, does it not?

Absolutely!

Another way of looking at it might be that the hipster is forever searching for something that is worth the abandonment of all future searches - a hopeful, melancholic quest for a place finally to rest.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Ha, that CIF article has provoked some truly Have Your Say-level bilious class hatred:

"The hipster bars and the grime scene's council estates are neighbours in London's East End – and Vice have long been putting on grime acts at their Shoreditch pub venue and covering them in the print magazine."

Oooh, the private shcool kids pay the council estate kids a pittance to sing and dance for them like marionettes and are thereby granted an iota of street-cred. Won't stop them getting the shit kicked out of them if they were ever to visit one of these council estates.

Wasn't Max Gogarty a hipster?

Max Gogarty: the gift that keeps on giving.
 

mos dan

fact music
Max Gogarty: the gift that keeps on giving.

haha, poor kid, he's never gonna dance again...

i just sought out that gogarty thing again, and how funny is it that the final comment - out of 473 of the fuckers - before the mods eventually closed the comments, is from dubstepforum's own mc buffalo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2008/feb/14/skinsblog

Feb 14 08, 10:26pm

Buffalo widdy lockstop, brock em up fully job lot

check wide raving crew i hit dem safe seen lock down mack up

thailand ur time will come, going out to a dubstep raver, put yo fuckin hands in the air, wave em roun like u just dont care

\voice scratches like a badman

safe out

badman buffalo
 

Alfons

Way of the future
my sister gave me this book for christmas last year after I kept badmouthing hipsters:


I didn't really like it to much, but it defined hipsters as those who are hip, in the know, know something the ordinary joe doesnt. Mentions bebop, the beatniks, bohemians, pulp writers...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I didn't really like it to much, but it defined hipsters as those who are hip, in the know, know something the ordinary joe doesnt. Mentions bebop, the beatniks, bohemians, pulp writers...

Well yeah, that's what the word meant *then*...I can't imagine the guy with the ironic mullet and vintage AC/DC t-shirt sipping a 'pramen in some divey Shoreditch bar has much bebop on his iPod.

Also, the second editorial review is rather funny, infused as it is with the optimistic notion that you can get kids interested in history, literature and 'high culture' by trying to make it sound modern and 'street':
Leland will lead YAs beyond Kerouac to "Original Gangstas" Thoreau and Whitman...
"If you think about it, Shakespeare was, like, the Lethal Bizzle of his day..." :cool:
 

Alfons

Way of the future
Well yeah, that's what the word meant *then*...I can't imagine the guy with the ironic mullet and vintage AC/DC t-shirt sipping a 'pramen in some divey Shoreditch bar has much bebop on his iPod.

Also, the second editorial review is rather funny, infused as it is with the optimistic notion that you can get kids interested in history, literature and 'high culture' by trying to make it sound modern and 'street':

"If you think about it, Shakespeare was, like, the Lethal Bizzle of his day..." :cool:

ha ha true!

the reader reviews are a funny read to

My friends always told me I was not hip, uncool, etc... So I decided to read this book to learn what one means by the term hip.

Is there a difference between the "hip" of those times, being in the knowledge of some subculture and the hipsters of today. Were hipsters of the bebop or beat circles actively engaging with the culture etc.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I love this:

My friends always told me I was not hip, uncool, etc... So I decided to read this book to learn what one means by the term hip.

hip (adj.) the exact opposite of what you are if you decide to read a book about what one means by the term 'hip'
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
Another way of looking at it might be that the hipster is forever searching for something that is worth the abandonment of all future searches - a hopeful, melancholic quest for a place finally to rest.

That's beautifully put. I'm like that.

But I don't think hipsters are. They're just forever searching for credibility. & status. & laffs. Nothing romantic or melancholic about that. Great art doesn't emerge from that kindof quest, just great tossers.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
after avoiding and then finally giving in and reading (the majority of) this thread, at last i have found/come up with a term which describes me (and some others here i imagine) well enough for all purposes:

geekster.

thank you dissensus! :D
 
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