Indie Rawk

When sitting across the dinner table from my second cousin Ben Collins, member of the band Chronic Future, and now ‘curator’ of the Modern Art record label, I was asked (politely) “Oh, what kind of music do you like?.” My eyes transfixed on his inch wide stainless steel gauges and the H.I.M. tattoo on his girlfriend’s wrist I couldn’t think of much to say. So when my mother took the opportunity to blurt “Oh, he loves you guys!” it only made the rest of the night that much more awkward while I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the aforementioned body augmentations. In reality I think that I was listening to Broken Social Scene’s fourth or fifth album, confusingly titled Broken Social Scene, as per the advice of ‘indie rock’ cartoonist Jeph Jacques. At the time I felt a little like Tim Canterbury from the British office who during the introduction of the third episode exclaims in a perturbed voice 

"I'm into ballet, I love the novels of Proust, I love the work of Allen DeLon, and I guess that's what influenced her to buy me HatFM… I love the radio too."

 In regards to what his mother bought him for his thirtieth birthday. Essentially I didn’t like that my musical tastes had been reduced to a form of interfamily pandering.

It’s not until now, something like six years later, that I can look back on it and laugh. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve seen BSS in concert, and have had a severely intoxicated Kevin Drew order security to forcibly remove me from the Cleveland House of Blues because I would rather hear the bands older material than one of the self-indulgent tracks off of Kevin’s The Spirit If… I felt (more than) a little vindicated years later when my mother once again ran into my cousin and this time responded to the same question by saying that I loved that new band The Arcade Fire. Although this was again a lie, Ben’s response; that if that were the case that I should check out the latest addition to the MA label, The Miniature Tigers, made me feel a little more warm and fuzzy inside than the blank stare he had given me at the dinner table years earlier.*

                Despite the truth that a large portion of my music taste is defined by Jeph’s two year-in-retrospective type album reviews I have come to realize that he is, in essence, a phony. Like most people who carry that title he not only aspires to, but also presents himself as, something which he will never be, the epitome of indie rock fandom. Unlike his phony brethren, I think it’s honestly not his fault. As with any music enthusiast Jeph can’t help but like what he likes, and while he is attempting to make his taste not only an allegory for but also a guide map to anyone’s (and everyone’s) indie sensibilities he falls into the same trap that most do when they talk about their (music) tastes; he’s not nearly as self-aware as he would like to be. Unlike Chuck Klosterman who will preface any statement advocating 80’s hair metal by mentioning his first reaction when listening to it as a 14 year old child, Jacques fails to delineate between his guilty pleasures, bands that he likes because a girl he has a crush on was wearing their shirt, and what he really thinks defines indie rock. Instead it all gets rolled up into a confused and conflicted laundrylist that more accurately gives us a sense of JJ’s life than of the spread of current indie bands. This isn’t to say that these bands aren’t interesting, I would have never have heard of RATATAT had it not been for the four sentence album review that I stumbled across one school day afternoon while desperately looking for something of interest on the internet. But in the end no amount of jokes about Stephen Malkamus or anecdotes from Jeph’s only attendance of an Arcade Fire show** will make his collection of pet CDs anything more than just that.

                Much like the indie scene will only be populated by those of have no concept of the roots of any of the music that they listen to, Jeph and his acolytes will continue to be impressed by the musicianship of the artists that they admire and advertise while not ever having heard the sound of Chick Corea’s fingers tickling ivory*** (or as the case more often is; plastic) or the vibration that occurs when John Coltrane’s lips wet reed. These are the people who mock Jam bands for being self indulgent and absorbed while they simultaneously talk of how Sufjan Stephens is a musical genius and the Arcade Fire’s Suburbs****  is the seminal work of the decade. While each of these people will tell you that they truly have a feel for the heartbeat of this sub culture that they so desperately want to be at the center of, in the end all they can do is tell you about all the albums that other people and publications told them to like. The result of this is crowds of cross armed fans impatiently tapping their feet through new songs as they mutter to themselves about how much better every band’s ‘older stuff’ was. While this might lead to such wonderful results as a Grammy award and Kevin Drew singling you out in the crowd, it will never be as much fun as cranking the volume while Captain Marvel plays or watching the lights explode as Phish comes out to encore with  the Edgar Winter Group’s Frankenstein.

                

*In truth even before meeting him for the first time I had recently waited outside of the Riveara theater to catch a glimpse of these (now) indie superstars. Managing to purchase a ticket to the sold out show from an over-stoned concert-goer, I got to not only see the Arcade Fire three months before they were making the cover Time(?) magazine, but also Wolf Parade before they had released an album, and the Bell Orcestre during the only period of time that anyone gave a shit who they were.

**the most notable being a story about confusing the lead singer of Wolf Parade for an additional percussionist for the Fire, which can be found here: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=178

***In case you were not aware, this is a euphemism for playing the piano. You should have been able to tell this because a) Ivory is not sentient and b) it is a dentine, meaning it has a protective enamel that covers any of its nerves that could even be considered to be susceptible to tickling.

*** *an album that nicely compliments Win Butler’s 15 other songs about how he hates his childhood in Texas, the only difference is that this time he is telling you that you should hate it too.