The Music I'm too old for
Fall Out Boy. Love 'em. Know I'm old enough to be the mother of 90% of their target audience but love 'em.
Ridiculously gay dance music. Love it. Want to go to Ibiza and dance my ass off with all the other 19 year olds.
So I'd always thought that my taste in music would never mature. But recently I discovered that there is a type of music I feel too old for.
Indie rock.
I discovered this during Broken Social Scene at Merriwether Post last week. I'm not a fan of them at all, and really not of headliner Belle and Sebastian either, but I'd gotten the tickets for my friend Jeffrey for his birthday, and because I thought I could entice my husband, who had inexplicably decided he loved them after hearing "Funny Little Frog" on an airplane headset. (I couldn't entice him.)
I looked around at the crowd, and made the observation: "There is no one here who hasn't been, or isn't going, to college." The crowd just looked so similar. With hipster clothes on that showed a disdain for fashion, just a little bit of disdain, but still were very studied. Everyone was very quiet and polite, for the most part. And danced like the whitest little studious types around.
Broken Social Scene had sounded OK when I heard their cd, but live they were so fucking serious. And smug. And bearded. Bearded like Jeff Daniels in "The Squid and the Whale." An unstudied, studied beard. And they had this chick singer who Could. Not. Sing. Her voice was so thin and delicate. Just like the crowd watching them.
I actually rather liked Belle and Sebastian, who had a much fuller sound in person than I would have thought. I might have thought a large venue would just swallow them up, but they had great energy and they do write some delightful songs.
But my epiphany stands. When confronted with free mp3's from Okkervil River or Wolf Parade, I don't even contemplate clicking on them. I'll go to Fall Out Boy's Myspace page, or download new tracks from Underworld. But college rock. I think I've finally realized I'm not in college anymore.
Maybe I was never that into it in the first place. I do hold "Slantend and Enchanted" as on of the Top 10 records ever. But I almost never play any other Pavement cds, and don't even own any Steven Malkmus or Silver Jews or any other descendets. I like '90s era Columbus, Ohio rock (Gaunt, New Bomb Turks, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apts., Scrawl, ) but more because I grew up with these people. Without the social connections, I doubt I'd ever think of them either.
I'm also dying for TV on the Radio's "Return from Cookie Mountain" but not (yet) enough to pay import prices for it. Unlike those Everything but the Girl and Birthday Party imports that I bought with pride in the '80s when I made about 1/8 the money I do now. Or the Ellen Allien or Miss Kittin import mixes I bought, or the mash-up cds I bought when they were still only popular across the pond.
Yes, I believe it to be true. I'm officially over indie rock. I want my music to just be about having fun, and not about being the smartest, or the hippest, in the room. I'm over ironically being unironic.
posted by jamie @ 3:29 PM
3 Comments:
Now, more than ever, I feel more at home in indie rock than anywhere else. Mostly because I find it to be less pretentious than most other genres. But more on that in a sec.
I think most people get to an age where new music doesn't move them as much, finding it isn't worth the work, and it's hard to stay involved. I have countless friends who seem to pick certain years as a boundary - they'll listen to no new music past that year.
And I can understand that. I find I go through phases where the return on the investment of time I make in music seems to deminish. Each year, the gaps between finding something great grow wider.
Part of the problem too is our musical perspective. The older you get, the more you know. The more you hear who's lifting from Sebadoh, etc. How often do you hear something someone is claiming as brilliant, and it's little more than a rehash that someone else did 20 years earlier?
But while there's a lot of overlap, I think our aesthetic is fundamentally at odds.
I have zero interest in Fall Out Boy. I have zero interest in gay dance music. Or ANY dance music (or, as I like to call it, Beets For Amateurs). Or electronica. Or techno. I've always loathed most dance music. And I can't imagine any circumstance where I'd want to go dance with a bunch of 19 year olds.
That being said, Indie Rock, like any other genre, has a lot of crap.
And your example reveals a lot of problems with it.
First, you're going to Merriweather. The last time I went to Merriweather, I was in high school. I have no intention of ever returning. Secondly, you're going to see Broken Social Scene and Belle And Sebastian.
Broken Social Scene are Canadian. That means automatically that they're going to be off, and invariably somewhat disappointing. And I say this as someone who likes their last albumn.
Belle & Sebastian I don't really classify as Indie Rock. They're Brit Twee Pop. I know, splitting hairs. However, except for this last album of theirs, I find their music wholly unpleasing.
So this seems to bear out. While I think both of these bands have constructed at least one interesting release, neither are bands that I would embrace as great or as good symbols of indie rock. They are, after all, Canadian and British respectively. Indie rock is fundamentally American, and good indie rock is almost exclusively American.
But back to Merriweather. If you want to avoid a crowd of hipster fashion plate super-serious about themselves youngsters, don't go to Columbia! Plus, young kids are often annoying anyway, just avoid the shows they can get into. On principal, I'm opposed to any All Ages rock show. When I was underage they were the exception, not the rule, and it instilled in me a level of ingenuity (fake ids, back stage sneaking, carrying equipment for the bands, etc). We're doing kids today a disservice by not forcing them how to use their brains to sneak into shows.
I say go to the Ted Leo show this week at the Ottobar and see how you feel. He's a serious guy, but also totally fun.
Rock, whether indie or punk, should be played indoors. At night. With people packed in tight, and the smell of sweat, cigarettes, beer and bad breath mixed together.
I will take Okkervil River (love 'em) and Wolf Parade (like 'em) over Fall Out Boy any day.
I'm also one of those people who puts Slanted & Enchanted in his top 10 albums of all time (well, I sometimes like to make an argument for Crooked Rain Crooked Rain instead). In fact, I own every Pavement record and most of Malkmus' solo stuff (the last record was really good).
But I think the real thing you're discovering is this admission: "Maybe I was never that into it in the first place."
While I don't care much for the Silver Jews, I also don't care much for Gaunt or Thomas Jefferson Slave Apts. And while I did like them, I was sad to see that The New Bomb Turks were really just a one joke pony.
And TV On The Radio? Well, I wasn't much of a fan of Peter Gabriel the first time around (ha), but they do get my vote for worst album title of the year.
I don't see the obnoxious hipster posturing that you seem to see in most of the indie bands I like, probably because I try to avoid obnoxious super serious hipster posturing whether it's in indie rock, experimental music, electronica, club, hip hop, or even dance music. I really don't see that as being specifically relegated to the genre of indie rock.
And finally, I agree. Music should be fun. But sometimes, it should also aspire to more than getting a 19 year old out on the dance floor to shake their moneymaker. And that's the music that I'm most intersted in checking out.
But then... also... a very good argument could be made saying that whenever any rock music aspires to do more then get teenagers moving, it automatically becomes pretentious.
So I may have just proven your point.
Ha.
Hi Jamie,
I thought I'd take a look at your blog after reading your comment on the Mobtown Shank.
As for Merriweather, I'm 26 and I felt old there when I went to see Green Day last summer, as the majority of the crowd was 12-14 yr olds with their parents. The line for t-shirts was longer than the line for beer!! I can't complain though b/c I loved Green Day when I was 14 and this was sort of a make-up concert b/c I had never seen them back in the Woodstock '94 era.
As for indie rock, I can't keep up with it. And I don't like the idea that music is better just because not everyone has heard of it yet.
Do you know what live performance I really enjoyed last year? Billy Idol at the HFStival. I'd say he is the antithesis of being ironically unironic.
Post a Comment
<< Home