The Noughties could easily be a band pushed by EMI and destined to cash in on the Topshop craze that has dominated and commoditized indie music and culture. It is, however, more than a band: it’s a decade that is responsible for destroying any enjoyment I ever had in new music.
When reading this story this morning, I couldn’t help but think about how drastically independent music has changed and how the way we venerate new music has become more intense and integrated with mainstream outlets (major motion pictures, fashion houses, high street shops, etc. etc). I remember buying ‘Asleep in the Back’ the morning it came out on Friday May 4th 2001, one day before the band played Temple Bar Music Centre as part of the May Bank Holiday gigs that are on every year. Mull Historical Society supported and it felt like a such an exciting time: Elbow had just got a 9/10 review for ‘Asleep in the Back’, with NME calling it one of the first great debut albums of the decade so far. Like when Bloc Party first appeared on the radar, I responded to them the same way we all did when we heard ‘O.K Computer’ for the first time: I was in awe of a sound that was so densely structured, so new, so of its time . I heard a band that could threaten Radiohead for their crown as Britain’s most innovative and cutting edge band that could actually write songs.
I spent the remainder of the school term waiting for the lunchtime bell and devoted what felt like a criminally short lunchtime break just walking up and down Kells town listening to ‘Asleep in the Back’ on my Walkman and relishing the very thought that I had discovered and connected to something that my peers in Kells hadn’t. Sure, I couldn’t kick a ball and wasn’t on good enough terms to refer to some of the other guys by their nicknames. I didn’t live in the town and never socialised with schoolmates at the weekend. But I’d found a sound, a genre, records, chord changes, lyrics, music videos and gigs that aroused and awakened different parts of me that I never knew existed and that would eventually define me as an adolescent and, eventually, an adult.
Since then, “indie” music / culture over the last 10 years or so has been slavishly marketed toward the masses, or those that would have been considered as “float listeners” (forgive the pun) and therefore saturated with low- quality, second rate art that appeals mainly to teeny boppers and “one album a year” folk. As I’ve illustrated above, it used to be a private world that you gained entry to by buying certain records, reading certain books, seeing certain films that the mainstream audiences weren’t interested in and that appealed to you and very few others. It was a private club that you eventually earned access to by immersing yourself in that culture, but by first showing a hunger and initiative to find that world: going to gigs regularly, finding new bands, going to the library and absorbing everything thing that you knew would help you on up the road.
When I moved to England in 2003, I could see where it was going and the private world that I knew had been blown open by market strategists and fashionistas. Everyone became an outsider and, of course, that’s the root problem of it all for me. The intimacy of that world that I was able to inhabit is long gone and I feel more and more distant from my peers and current listeners than ever before. If I was once in love with new music and indie culture, I’m now in an open, long distance relationship with it. What happened post- Strokes- around 2003 / 2004 to be precise- is that large target audiences- students, major labels, fashion houses, socialites- suddenly realised that independent culture was a cool, hip thing to be part of and that it had, at the turn of the 21st century, it had undergone a period of rejuvenation that hadn’t really been seen since the 60’s, a time when pop culture had was in the same lane as mainstream culture at that time. Pop culture had beome an issue for centre right current affairs magazines and squares hungover from the 50’s.
This newfound interest had spawed regular shoppers at Urban Outfitters, a cluster of indie club nights, poseurs name- dropping bands that they hoped others hadn’t heard of and clad in a kooky- cool, Karen O kind of way, all the while telling you giving you the synopsis of the latest quirk comedy that you haven’t seen yet. In short, the culture became saturated and what was once a private gathering amongst like- minded individuals had become a house party in which those you felt no affinity towards were invited. My way of dealing with this? Running out the patio door and into the neighbour’s garden.
The biggest intrusion for me is that all one has to do now to be in any way involved in indie music / culture- or convinced that they understand the very first thing about that world- is to buy themselves an outfit in Topshop and keep up to speed with what is being promoted and written about on Pitchfork. Is anything- chiefly, any art form- meant to be as effortlessly penetrable as that faithful example suggests?
For me, Indie music / culture died in 2000 / 2001 when it started trying to appeal to everyone and eventually did. Selling out is too simplistic a term to apply to what happened; the way in which it went from being something small and intimate to something which had an influence far greater than its initial ideals and will, eventually, be subject to satire, is too complex to chart for the simple reason that the exterior factors involved create seperate arguments and issues that invite debate upon themselves (business models, changing tastes in art, the rise in live music, etc., etc.).
This blog will only ever discuss music from the past and music that never gets written about in other music mags. The contents of this post are the reason why.
