Daddy, what is indie music?
“Good question son. It’s kind of everything these days, but in the good old days it actually meant something tangible.”
It always fascinates me how musical genres are constantly invented then warped, diluted and eventually rendered inert as valid descriptions of a style or movement in music.
Rock ’n roll was a clearly defined take on blues and country that quickly grew to represent any form of guitar-based energetic pop music from the 50s through until the emergence of electronic music. As it grew, it split into a plethora of strands – heavy metal, classic rock, garage rock, punk, grunge, and so on. Many of these sub genres in turn mutated and generated sub-genres – thrash metal, black metal, post-punk, etc.
Of course with “rock” as the initial seedling, this was a totally understandable evolution fueled primarily by journalists and record shop clerks fastidious about classifying and labeling the music for ease of access.
Back to “indie” though, a term that first emerged to categorise music that was being generated by bands and DIY record labels outside the mainstream record industry. They were considered to be “independent of the machine”.
Indie was essentially a word that described the route to market, rather than the sound or style of the music.
In the US, the best example was the hardcore punk scene of the 80s that spawned the likes of Black Flag, Minor Threat and Circle Jerks. Across the Atlantic, it was the same decade that saw labels like Postcard, 4AD and Mute creating local grassroots scenes that their fans identified with and felt part of.
Things started to blur when bands grew in popularity and felt they needed to further their fame and/or wealth by shifting to a major label where distribution networks were larger and more funds were available to line their pockets.
Some made the transition and retained the elements of their music that made them great. R.E.M were one that managed a few albums with Warner Bros before stasis set in, while Sonic Youth have, perhaps, been the most successful at straddling both the under- and over-ground.
As these changes happened and the bands’ music changed, the indie label stuck.
Meanwhile, other bands with similar sounds became associated with these acts, and what transpired was the rise of a number of mopey, jangly guitar groups, which may have replicated the sound of their inspirers but had none of the poetry, grace or conviction.
Consequently, indie became watered down, diluted into smaller tributaries like indie pop, indie folk, indie rock, Madchester, no wave, Britpop, indietronica, whatever. The groups were scattered across major labels, independent labels – even no labels.
Today, the term “indie” can be used to describe bands as disparate as The Arcade Fire, No Age, LCD Soundsystem and Fleet Foxes and, as a result, the word has been entirely neutered and made meaningless.
This all begs myriad questions...Does anyone give a shit? Who’s to blame for the intellectual laziness? Do genres serve a purpose? If they do serve a purpose, are they more relevant now in the age of digital media and iTunes music classification? And could we just survive on a simple and universal set of name tags like classical, blues, rock, jazz, pop, country, world, reggae, avant-garde and electronic?
“Daddy, what is indie music?”
“I don’t know son, you tell me...”
Chris Familton is a freelance music journalist based in Sydney. He currently contributes to Drum Media and FasterLouder ,and has had work published in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. He makes a point of telling people he has interviewed members of The Velvet Underground and The Stooges. You can read and follow him at http://www.doubtfulsounds.net.
Comments
On Monday, May May 2011 Mark Barrington said...
“Damn fine piece of writing Bro,next topic "What is Dubstep"......... ”
On Monday, May May 2011 Helen said...
“I've never liked the expressions "indie". For me, it conjures up a whole lot of stupid little hairy bands travelling about the countryside in vans and hauling crappy amplifiers. Or those label-created phonies with perfect teeth wearing shiny bright Converse sneakers. Thank god we now have the tools to create great music in our bedrooms - and without picking up a bloody guitar!”
On Monday, May May 2011 jack said...
“Type Your comments here.....to me it was an english invention... with all the great indie bands from scottyland and around the uklate 70s thru the 80's...then the usa.. catching up.. slash label etc....but once grunge hit and the may-jah.. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ were laid about== it all went to shit.. and nz and ozzie bands ran off to use usa producers and.. ranked up 6 figure cost for albums that sounded like shite.. flying nun bands are still paying off these lps today.. today... it all seemed bullshit....nz never had an indie thing because with qe2 arts councial grants >nz on air..down here it was all goverment sponsered indie rock....In the late 90's nz gov gave flying nun records an award for exports sales of 1 million dollars over an 18 year period.. but it also said that flying nun records had been given $730,000.00 in gov grants over that same periord..(((so in truth 280,000.00 over 18 yrs is a big forking loss...shi=had(((every chance))) had also chalked 700,000.00 in nz on air grants...and the other 2 big auckland indie rocky labels around $3-5000,000.00”
On Monday, May May 2011 Brett said...
“"Indie" -- a good example of the evolution of language semantics...so blunted it loses all identity and thus becomes meaningless Great article Chris! Keep 'em coming”
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