Smells like indie spirit

[T-rex]

And yeah, you should be braggin! Hell I never sold 5000 CD's! You and MT both. . .

[Everybody's X]

well that's the 12 million dollar question isn't it?
She has obviously tapped an emotional vein with her fans and exploited it and if we all had that recipe ..well I'd be on a bus somewhere instead of a message board

[jebjerome]

Oh, this is about the word "indie". Damn. Let's never talk about this again.

[stinkpot]

i'm recording my indie band this weekend. what setting should i put my compressors on in order to get that genuine indie sound?

[MAR]

I saw anthrax last year

Why?

[thearnicasync]

i'm recording my indie band this weekend. what setting should i put my compressors on in order to get that genuine indie sound?

Just make it sound like the Flaming Lips, and you'll be fine.

[dwelle]

yet another wonderful contribution, MAR.

welcome to the board...

[soundguy]

I saw anthrax last year

Why?

well, pretty much because they are the only band that I saw when I was 14 that still rules today the way they did when I was 14. Pretty much the only band I can think of that is WAY cooler with a new singer (no, I dont really at all like brian johnson, especially considering bon scott was so bad, god had to freee him to kill him, thats fucking badass, no pill, booze or assasin was taking that guy out). I think they are the only band that I saw when I was 14 that is still even together, let alone being good or bad, shit...

You may want to tie me to the whipping post or something but anthrax fully fully rules. The records are hit or miss since they introduced a computer into the thing (duh), but those guys will always bring an old school smile to my face. Something about a band where the drummer writes all the songs, thats really cool on a certain level. Pretty much the anthesis of how uncool aerosmith can be for letting the singer write all the drum parts. Makes you wonder what kind of purgatory it must be to be joey kramer, what the F?

dave

[jebjerome]

bon scott was so bad, god had to freee him to kill him, thats fucking badass, no pill, booze or assasin was taking that guy out

I think he suffocated on vomit in a parked car after a night of boozin'. Which is also badass.

[bobbydj]

You figure its accurate to consider the commercialization of "indie" rock as a marketing reaction to numetal?

Uhm no. I haven't noticed a greater - or lesser - attempt to commercialise indie rock (whatever that may or may not be) recently.

Believe it or not, in my cave I dont pay attention to this stuff too much, but thats what Im figuring. When the FIRST white stripes records came out years ago, THAT was indie. I remember when the first record came out and some of my friends were really freaking out about that band, it took a few records before the world really cared about the white stripes and Id be suprised if the world is gonna care about them too much longer, within two records I bet we get the jack white solo thing or new band, whatever.

Yeah they've been around some 5 years now and released 4 LPs, or something. If they did 6 that would be quite some going, given the short-termism of the market.

So the tide goes from this really big sounding "over produced" rock thing which what, grew out of throwing tons of money at the survivors of the "grunge" movement, right?

Not really. There've been big records from bands with similar outlooks to the White Stripes every year or so since I dunno. 1980. But then I'm thinking of this in very broad terms. So for me there's not a massivedifference between, say, Bleach and White Blood Cells. To me, they have a similar kind of attitude. Also, I would put In Utero closer to something like Tad's Salt Lick (or yeah, even early White Stripes) than Pearl Jam's 10. Totally different thing to me.

Labels then take tons of money and throw it at bands to make "small" and amatuerish sounding records which of course lights a fire under the ass of every home recordist on earth "YES, finally someone who sounds just like me!"

Be more specific - name more of these "amateurish" sounding records. Oh - Franz Ferdinand? I'm afraid I don't buy the notion that this LP is the outcome of some kind of major label A&R conspiracy to dream up the aural antedote to nu-metal or whatever. Cynical as I am about the biz , I think there's often a bottom-up process at work here. This will be an uncomfortable thought for some, because think about it. What if pressures/movements/tastes/trends etc. actually do emerge from below from time to time? What if the bands themselves actually want to sound like Franz Ferdinand (which to my ears doesn't sound - quality and productions values wise - a million miles away from early Talking Heads, Gang of Four, and other bits and pieces of new wave). What happens if the very last thing they want to sound like is RHCP?

I see Domino - FF's label - as an interesting one. The head - Laurence Bell - seems to me like someone with a healthy, enthusiast's interest in the whole process of making and releasing music. A similar background to me and one or two others here, I suspect - a one time post-punk power-pop front man (with Perfect Daze). One way or another he's also enabled the funding of some truly fantastic records (such as Mush by Leatherface).

How cool would it be if the reaction to that crap is all of us getting together and deciding to make really GOOD sounding records free of stupid sounding PT and compression tricks, just tight, awesome and honest records of bands rocking? Im sure Im off my rocker and overly hopeful, but with soooooo much slack bullshit out there, seems like a legitamte reaction would be the underground responding with something really PRO sounding.

But you see, if your original synopsis is wrong, you yourself are very much in danger of being the overground. I.e. the very top-down, manipulative mindset you apparently wish to attack. Because if bands like Franz Ferdinand are going into the studio and aiming for - I dunno - a similar set of production values to Gang of Four, but the engineer is trying his/her hardest to RHCP-ise it. Well, fill in the gaps. It doesn't need spelling out.

Would be a nice F you to all the "pros" trying to sound like "amatuers". I mean, just consider it, go buy a bunch of roy thomas baker records, if your shit doesnt sound like that, your not done yet. Listen to the cars, they really didnt have the greatest drummer in the world, yet they were a hit machine and the records sound insane.

But as I said, I think those pros are in a minority. The whole indie sound (loose, diverse and all but undefineable as it is) is not commercial. Or not so commercial that any big label producers are instructed by A&R people to reproduce. To repeat, it seems to me that a lot of what you regard as a conspiritorial, top-down process is quite possibly more accurately viewed as a bottom-up thing. 9 times out of 10 you are hearing something very close to a sound the band themselves want, and have striven to arrive at. Yes, it may well be that they have consciously (or otherwise) aimed for this in an attempt to, say, invert the values of nu-metal or whatever. I dunno.

[kdarr]

Holy crap people... this is getting to be an exercise in tail-chasing.

Is indie an attitude or a type of singing or a business plan or a haircut or a production technique? Man, I don't fuckin care.

The industry hasn't really changed much since the beginning, folks. All labels are out to make money, by capitalizing on whatever's popular for the moment. Then, they move on to the next moneymaker. That's how it's always been and always will be.

This is the basic idea at every level of the industry. Some "artists" are very concerned with their commercial appeal, some are not. Some records are highly polished and produced and ultra-digital protools-ed, some are recorded on a portastudio in a dingy basement. Some music sounds really good to me, some does not. In the end, it really doesn't matter if you're indie or major or government-subsidized.

The independent music movement (and the home studio boom) simply allows more artists to release music, at any level or in any format. What this ultimately means, is that everyone can and will release their own music, and as with every information boom, a huge percentage of it will be trite, derivative, undercooked, boring, and maudlin. The remaining small portion of it will be really good shit. Some of the boring shit will sell like hotcakes, regardless of how bad it is. Some of the good stuff will also move units like crazy, in spite of how unique it is.

I honestly believe that it's the same ratio of good to bad as it always has been. Think of all those horrible, wack, phony records that came out at the same time as the classic, "golden age" rock records. For every John Coltrane, there was some dumb square honky trying to make a mambo record about 15 years too late.

About the only difference is that there's SO much music out there, finding the stuff that really moves you as an artist or a recording engineer or just a listener requires a little more digging. Keep your bullshit detectors finely calibrated, and dive on in. It's easier to hear music, new and old, than it ever has been.

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[Antero]

I'll toast to that.

I'd throw in another difference between Now and Then, though: Radio Is Fucking Dead. Back when, something new and awesome could actually get played. In my era nowadays, you can count the number of good new artists on the radio on one hand.

Ah well. That's what I have the internet for.

[TapeOpLarry]

Indie doesn't exist. Major doesn't exist. Only albums exist. Some are good, some are bad. I don't care how many records the White Stripes sell, they suck next to Quasi. I look for the records every year that blow my mind and there are many. I don't watch MTV or listen to the radio or watch Billboard charts. I just listen to music.

[jeddypoo]

You know what I think is real wierd?

This is just my observation somewhat inspired by jeff's comments, but something Ive never really thought about before:

In the early 90's when I was primarily playing in a band, and all my friends were in bands and all my friends friends were in bands, the catch word was "alternative" which later transformed into the catch phrase "grunge". At no point did myself, my friends or my friends friends ever refer to our projects as "alternative" or "grunge". I saw people get into fist fights over labeling back then.

Today it seems to me, living in NYC, the place where the indie scene went to die, there is this unabating current of bands, friends bands and friends of friends bands that are absolutely vying for the "indie" label and celebrating it like a science fair prize when they get it. I dont know if Im totally exposed to %100 morons or something but I cant even tell you guys how many times Ive heard guys in bars saying "yeah, Im in this indie band". Maybe my memory totally sucks, but I never went around saying "Im in this grunge band".

totally totally totally different tide. Alternative and Grunge were really nasty meaningless labels back then. I see the word indie as just another useless label created by the music press which has ZERO meaning to me (unlike say METAL which kinda brings an image to my mind) but yet, the people involved with it are attracted to that word like a bug to a bug zapper. Oddly enough, all the "indie rock" I hear all sounds the same to me and has about the same emotive level and attention to detail (and NOT in a punk rock way) so maybe it all makes sense. Celebrate the label, wierd.

maybe Im totally off base, Im sure someone will let me know.

dave

As far as I remember, people have been using the term "indie rock" for like 12 or 13 years. There's a Sebadoh song called "Just Gimme Indie Rock" that's from about 1992. I remember the Pixies being suddenly moved to the newly invented "Alternative" section in record stores around 90 or 91', but indie rock as a word has been around to describe anything made by "different" kids for a long time, too.

I think it's descriptive in that it implies something fairly broad, but specific enough to make one understood a lot of the time. It's just a word. No reason for any of us to get bent out of shape. Beyond that, I could insert the word "music" in the above statement, too. It's just music. Not life and death.

[joeysimms]

I don't care what you like, it sucks!

Eat it, grungeindiepunkrockalternaemohippies!