Oh for fuck’s sake.
“It’s uncorrupted and uncompromising art rock that thrives on a direct relationship between those who have something rare to give and those who want to support it”
Ok, that’s nice enough. But what does that have to do with the Silversun Pickups or the Smashing Pumpkins?
“Where’s our fucking parade?” I dunno, if you want a victory lap for something as nebulous / non-existant as something that isn’t even a real musical genre becoming part & parcel of the mainstream, how about the Grammy Awards or Coachella? Sure, those events do very little to advance the cause of history or further deeper musical understanding, but the same could be said of any initiative that suggests Snow Patrol broke any ground whatsoever.
We need more docs and books about the nutcases who weren’t part of ANY movement…and fewer where schmucks & parasites ramble on endlessly about “indie rock”. There oughta be a Kickstarter fund dedicated to STOPPING an “epic trilogy” (!) that suggests Rogue Wave and the Minutemen are part of the same movement. The notion that Dischord Records represents ground zero for indie is almost as wrongheaded as implying those pioneers oughta feel good about making the world safe for The Vines.
Fuck this garbage. I could do without hearing the words “indie rock” ever again.
Yeah, the “where’s our fuckin’ parade?” moment is pretty ridiculous, as is the snippet of video with Bob Pollard saying “for the past three years I’ve been an ‘indie rocker'” and the guy somberly posts it like Bob’s being totally serious… and then, oh yeah, we’ve got Ian MacKaye, and then we’ve got Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and then Arcade Fire winning the Grammy. Sure, you can draw a straight line directly through all three of those
This guy is an asshole, but someone really should use Kickstarter to raise money to throw Mike Watt or Mayo Thompson a parade.
(Not) Coming Soon To An EMP Pop Conference : “How Crass Paved The Way For Kings Of Leon”.
So, the “straight line” from punk to cash-money now gets drawn from the Minutemen and Dischord to Arcade Fire’s Grammy®? That makes me feel old, because I remember when all indie roads led to Nirvana. Actually, back when it was REM. They keep moving it. And why does this guy think punks won the battle to topple record labels? It’s like all those VH-1 rockumentaries that say punk’s popularity killed disco … anyway, you don’t have to gimme indie rock, I’m full.
And who doesn’t love the music at a parade? I’m tired of guys like this trying to make everything equivalent. The concept of lumping a band like Unrest – who made music for the ages that just happened to not move massive units just like the music of their heroes – in with indie swill does not fly for anybody who has done the listening. And when Barlow called indie rock ‘electric white boy blues’ he was not exactly proud of that, so maybe that’s not the kind of thing you drop on your viewers within the first twenty seconds of your beg-athon.
“A new generation of electric white-boy blues”… exactly, Barlow was MAKING FUN of all that stuff (“4 stars in the Rolling Stone” “they got what they wanted, maybe I can get what I want to”) which this guy apparently took to mean the opposite and is now flying as his battle flag. What a friggin’ idiot.
I remember having an argument w/ a fella who shall remain nameless right around the time Sebadoh began playing the song in question. He thought it was a moronic attempt at novelty rock that didn’t measure up to their rest of their work. I agreed w/ the second half of that —- it was a gag, a bit of social-commentary (and if you’ll remember at the time, Sebadoh weren’t exactly light on the self-deprecation). Did Lou ever imagine that such a minor composition would serve as a rallying cry for a dimwitted champion of homogeneity decades later? Who knows, maybe he’s asked that in the film (but I doubt it).
Yet another “history of indie rock” being written by a guy who wasn’t there for most of it, and is only just making up the context as he goes along… just like the Mike Azerrad book.
It’s too bad there wasn’t around in the 80s and 90s to capture the sounds and scenes around the country. You know, small, local record labels, or self-published writers and journalists, or small clubs where kids of all ages might be able to see some of this music. Lost, all lost, except for the movie “Just Gimme Indie Rock.”
Don’t despair, Ben. I’m sure all of Jack Rabid’s collected works will be available in coffee table book form very soon.
I hope “Chasing Cars” is on the official soundtrack
I suppose there’s not really a “best” (or ridicule-proof) opportunity to note my enjoyment of K-tel’s two-cd compilation of the same name. It’s a solid listen, people! Tip of the trucker cap to Scott Becker …
A cd-rom or film strip collection of Forced Exposure, Feminist Baseball, Speed Kills, Conflict or the 7 million equal and opposite worthy pubs of a certain vintage would work wonders to keep us dorky completists happy. I respect the cock outta folks unwilling or unable to “set the record straight” and challenge these dorks with their own retrospective blah-blah-blah-ing, but I would far rather give my money and my brain-space to the former group. And I’ve read and re-read and oral history’d all the documents I could ever since I lurked the Matador BB on Prodigy.
“I would far rather give my money and my brain-space to the former group”
Bazillion Points’ Touch & Go and We Got Power retrospectives are certainly worth your dough / brain chunks. I can’t speak for any other ex-publishers, but you’re probably not gonna see a Conflict DVD-rom / coffee table book, not while I’m alive anyway. It’s mostly because it wouldn’t be nearly as good as say, the Touch & Go book (not even close). But also because there’s far too much 80’s/90’s rehashing going on. Fair enough, there’s some fascination with old shit — i just paid too much for a couple of Wicked Lady records. But a Negative Guest List book would do the world more good at this point.
And yeah, fuck the whole indie rock parade thing. Maybe he’ll license some super rare Romeo Void footage.