Who killed Indie?

[Woebot]

Been thoroughly enjoying the Rough Trade "IndiePop" Compilation. If you havent scored a copy of this do. It'll be the freshest most invigorating thing you pick up this year, and easily the best compilation theyve put out IMHO. Actually considering a) they couldnt get even half the tracks they wanted (the list of bands whose stuff they couldnt get is as long as your arm) and that b) much of the stuff comes from the 90s (when you had to be a leper to still be listening to indie

) its quite surprisingly excellent.

This weekend i finally picked up Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup". I've a copy of "Space Age Batchelor Pad" and that rather dampened my ardour (its not that great) and my only other foray into the groop is the (awesome) "Simple Headphone Mind" (but I rather churlishly attributed thats success to its collaborator Steve NWW Stapleton). Side one of ETK left me a bit cold, ready to dismiss them as drinking from the right brews, but failing to do their own thing successfully, but POW the other three sides are excellent. "Le Yper Sound" i especially liked. Actually when I first went into Rough Trade to ask for Neu! in the early nineties (the dawn of my realisation that they were going to be a lot more difficult to track down that i'd thought) the bloke at the counter told me i should just buy the stereolab record... that was the lazy comparison early on wasnt it?

One of the best tracks on the Rough Trade comp sounds just like Stereolab. The June Brides "Every Conversation" with its funny tootling trumpet, supposedly a big influence on Belle and Sebastian (another band I have to look inot one of these days). A track like this in the late eighties, mate, I would have dismissed it out of hand as twee, pointlessly lacking in ambition etc. The sort of things I liked were Sonic Youth, Big Black, The Buttholes, AR Kane, Loop, MBV (wonder what journalist i was tailing?)- quite portentous music that seemed sort of lofty and other, tuned into a superior frequency range. MBV's early stuff still has this homemade atmosphere, "Paint a Rainbow" for instance off this comp is cut from this cloth. And it got me thinking that the whole C86-vibed scene must have crashed headlong into the kind of expectations that teenager like me had at the time. "We dont want twee music like The Pooh Sticks!"

If there was one band which, almost singlehandedly collected all that was C86-ish in Indie and "re-branded" it, if you like, but simultaneously gave "proper uk indie" a more glamorous spin. It had to be Stereolab. If you once were an indie fan , then you probably became a Stereolab fan demographically speaking. It seems like the rest of indie went forever buzzcock-power-pop at this same point. In that sense, in this (typically) hastily assembled theory, I reckon Stereolab killed indie. Either that or they ate it alive.

 

[sammy garraluga]

Stereolab replicates The Shaggs.

 

[Rambler]

Space Age Bachelor Pad Music is pants: a much better route into Stereolab is Transient Random Noise Bursts I reckon.

 

[Diggedy Derek]

I think Yo La Tengo killed indie. Decent, bland, mildly spiky songs, they seem to provide a one-stop shop for that indie vibe- at the same time never bringing anything new to the table.

 

[xero]

surely acid house killed indie in 88 when it paved the way for the heinous indie-dance

 

[polystyle]

Actually when I first went into Rough Trade to ask for Neu! in the early nineties (the dawn of my realisation that they were going to be a lot more difficult to track down that i'd thought) the bloke at the counter told me i should just buy the stereolab record... that was the lazy comparison early on wasnt it?

Jeez , that was more then lazy ...

 

[hint]

mmmm... the indiepop comp is indeed a real treat. I'm too young to have experienced much of that movement first hand, so I'm really enjoying discovering this stuff.

I think the two things that killed off the scene were:

bands like stereolab proving that you can be fey and whimsical but also have high production standards... the public started to be attracted to the more "shiny" schmindie stuff recorded in "proper" studios and the kids with a hissy 4 track could no longer compete.

and

as indie moved into the nightclub scene (as the whole music-driven club scene took off in the UK in general) the likes of baggy took over. cos until then there were only a few big uptempo indie tracks ("this charming man" for example) that you could actually dance to.

 

[blissblogger]

Stereolab and C86

Tim Gane used to be in McCarthy, who i think actually had a track on the C86 cassette. They were an anomaly, an overtly political, leftwing shambling band

the really great Stereolab album for me is the one they did in tandem with an exhibition in New York, i'm blanking on the title, something like Amorphous Body Music. You went in and looked at these kitschadelic sculptures and put headphones on and each sculpture had a 'Lab track assigned to it. The CD got a proper release at some point. it's the lab at their softest and most French sounding.

I don't know about killing indie but one of the nicest, coolest swerves out of C86 was Saint Etienne. Their second single was a cover of a Field Mice tune and i think they took a certain anti-rock/ anti-rock'n'roll (not the same thing, actually) sensibility within C86 and developed into this neo-mod/proto-Popist aesthetic. In a certain sense, they were the antithesis of Primal Scream (who also killed indie) although both SE and PS embraced house, sampladelia etc.

Didn't Oasis kill indie by making Sixties revivalism mainstream?

i can't believe you bought that comp, matt! have you really exhausted every other form of music on the planet?

 

[Rambler]

Yeah, Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center, with the artist Charles Long.

McCarthy were great - any band with tracks called 'The Drinking Song of the Merchant Bankers', 'Write to your MP Today' and 'Use a Bank I'd Rather Die' is good fun in my book.

 

[uncannydan]

if you're looking to explore some of the finer moments in indie-pop history i recommend searching out a few key labels:

sarah records - home to some of the finest british indie pop of the 90s. field mice, 14 iced bears, boyracer, the orchids, the sea urchins, st. christopher, the wake (after they went totally twee)

all the sarah 7" singles are highly collectible and can be a pain to track down. ltm is reissuing the entire field mice backcatalog in early 2005, so i recommend picking those up, especially "snowball" which should include their "emma's house" 7" which is choice.

elefant - some overlooked gems on this spanish label. the first le mans album is a joy. they also released singles on colored vinyl by the pop race, union wireless, st. christopher, trembling blue stars, bootby (members of figurine), the lovelies, and countless others.

little teddy - the bartlebees, who've done work with jowe head of television personalites fame, tullycraft (who've i've never really like, and other lesser known german pop bands were and are active on this label.

creation - check out early jesus and mary chain singles (upside down, for example) for some brutal pop feedback. primal scream, bif bang pow!, oasis, and a number of other influential indies made their mark here.

that rough trade comp is a long overdue tribute to a bygone era. there still are a few crucial bands out there. the bartlebees, the legends, the monochrome set...but most of them are long gone.

 

[xero]

The sort of things I liked were Sonic Youth, Big Black, The Buttholes, AR Kane, Loop, MBV (wonder what journalist i was tailing?)

I'm guessing you were reading 'the maker'? For me it was the blissblogger's review of Husker Du's 'Warehouse' that pretty much kicked things off, musically - something about 'soulboys & tasselled loafers fluttering in the wind - the return of ROCK' if I remember rightly

 

[Diggedy Derek]

a much better route into Stereolab is Transient Random Noise Bursts

Yeah, totally agree with that, love love love that album. They'd made serious progress from the excitable indie naivity of Peng- Jenny Ondioline is almost indie-pop remixed by The Orb, new layers emerging from nowhere, the near edible sound-textures becoming a content in themselves.

Got 2/5 in Q when released, they said it was long and confusing, which was obviously the point.

 

[mms]

Didn't Oasis kill indie by making Sixties revivalism mainstream?

yes although there was a lack of quality in alot of what the baggy boys did, there was still a continuation of the spirit of experimentation that alot of indie proper had.

i think some people from that kind of stereolab world reshuffled in the face of baggy and also us rawk and took up the mantle of indie proper to a more significant extent though, the shoegazers and the seefeels and post rockers of the world.

but jesus, oasis, i was a student while oasis were big and i felt like a total outcast as a non fan of retro rock music, and without that whole desire to be a swaggering bowl haircutted replicant for cool britannia.
Any notion of music making you cool in that situation was completley out of the window, if it wasn't oasis no one cared, or they thought you total freak
i tended to hang out with the locals.

 

[Rambler]

Tony Blair and New Labour killed indie. That whole cool Britannia rubbish. Making friends with Blur and Oasis, people trying to pretend this was like the Stones vs the Beatles, all that crap - everything surrounding that part of history when indie became mainstream and we were all doomed to Travis for the rest of our lives. When the whole point of indie, that it was underground, awkward, anti-establishment, got turned around - the Tories lost, for a couple of years people lost something to resist, the underground became the establishment, spin took charge (find me better spin doctors than the Gallaghers!). You could feel it happening at the time when the records you were buying started to creep into the top 10 - for a while it felt like victory, but it soon turned to ashes.

Indie kids, be careful what you wish for.

Or summat like that ...

 

[Woebot]

surely acid house killed indie in 88 when it paved the way for the heinous indie-dance

that must lie at the heart of the matter

 

[Woebot]

Tim Gane used to be in McCarthy, who i think actually had a track on the C86 cassette. They were an anomaly, an overtly political, leftwing shambling band

ah ha! its all falling into place!

the really great Stereolab album for me is the one they did in tandem with an exhibition in New York, i'm blanking on the title, something like Amorphous Body Music.

right. will see if i can get this and Random Noise Bursts. The french thing of theirs appears on the suface to be a stylish sidestep, but there are loads of precedents for them. Obv someone like Brigitte Fontaine, the detente between Gainsbourg and Birkin (I have that Birkin solo LP somewhere) also "Melody Nelson" was recorded in the UK with a bunch of library musicians like Alan Hawkshaw. Also stuff like Nini Raviolette and Dr.Mix.

I don't know about killing indie but one of the nicest, coolest swerves out of C86 was Saint Etienne. Their second single was a cover of a Field Mice tune and i think they took a certain anti-rock/ anti-rock'n'roll (not the same thing, actually) sensibility within C86 and developed into this neo-mod/proto-Popist aesthetic. In a certain sense, they were the antithesis of Primal Scream (who also killed indie) although both SE and PS embraced house, sampladelia etc.

There certainly was alot of indie-slaying!!! Escape routes wasnt it? Bob Stanley is def a very indie character. Real collector too, remember him lauding Lori and The Chameleons

Didn't Oasis kill indie by making Sixties revivalism mainstream?

harumph. wasnt it long-dead before they arrived?

 

[Matos_W.K.]

I like the Indiepop comp too, and I've run hot and cold on Stereolab for years; my two favorites of the handful I've heard all of, for what it's worth, are ETK (go "Motoroller Scalatron") and, uh, the new one, which I played a lot earlier this year.

problem w/question (a good ?, btw, just a technical glitch): "indie" means so many things in so many places, not unlike "hardcore." but I'll bow to the UK-centricity of the massive. (feels odd to be referring to anything to do w/Sarah Records as a "massive," dunnit?)

 

[Woebot]

problem w/question (a good ?, btw, just a technical glitch): "indie" means so many things in so many places, not unlike "hardcore." but I'll bow to the UK-centricity of the massive. (feels odd to be referring to anything to do w/Sarah Records as a "massive," dunnit?)

your quite right matos. i should have specified UK indie. though i wonder if indie meant anything so specific in the US?

-------

further thought thats been niggling me all day. the thing about "UK indie proper" was that it demanded from it's audience a very similar affection for the "unglamorous" , "raw" and "homegrown" that grime does. at least to say grime fans in the UK. everywhere else its quite exotic!!!

 

[francesco]

Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center is for me, toghether with Simple Headphone Mind, the Stereolab masterwork. The limited minilp/cd is absolutely impossible to find, but is been collected (actually on the first side) on the Aluminium Tunes album, on Warp; that should be much easier to find on vinyl and still in print on cd. The rest of the album had also other very fine moments, expecially Golden Atom, a sort of Eno of Another Green World meet the Velvet Underground.

francesco

 

[blissblogger]

C86 survivors

strange how you run into the most unlikely one-time C86/shambling veterans

most recently, i was surprised to discover that Tim Goldsworthy of DFA -- and before that, of Mo Wax and UNKLE -- had been heavily into C86 type music. And in a recent issue of Index magazine, he and James Murphy both interview Morrissey

another one was Todd Hyman who runs Carpark, the IDM/idyllictronica label, also does Acute as in the postpunk reissues (metal urbain, prefects etc), and if that weren't enough, runs Paw Tracks w/ the animal collective. I remember having a long conversation with him about C86 in which i could swear he uttered the words "Shop Assistants box set". weirder still he's way too young to have been into the stuff at the time

jon dale is all up in that shit, or at least, he's really into the Pastels.

i have a large number of c86 cassettes which i found in a closet at IPC Towers and have been clinging onto in the hope they'd be worth something on day. but Jon disabused me of that dream by revealing he bought his copy for 2 dollars. In australian, so i dunno, worth about 82 p or something.

despite loving stereolab i've always been slightly offput/suspicious on acocunt of Tim Gane's extreme scholarly knowledge of music and esoterrorist angle -- with that sort, i tend to think "probably should have gone into writing about music, not making it" (cf recent kieran hebden invis jukebox in the wire). in both cases, fantastic people to talk to about music (well i'm assuming that in hebden's case).

but when i saw stereolab at irving plaza back in must have been 96 or so, it was one of the most transcendent gigs i've ever experienced -- with the band impassive and workmanlike throughout. so go figure. like saint et, i think they manage to transcend the over-knowingness