Empire of Dirt - Wendy Fonarow Music Culture

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of the bands that are considered exemplary of the indie genre use feedback and effects pedals (equipment that modulates the sound of the electric guitars), such as Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, and Sonic Youth. Indie also includes the melodic and intricate Smiths, Madchester’s Stone Roses and Happy Mondays (guitar bands that used dance rhythms), and the stripped-down and intelligent Folk Implosion and Pavement.32 Other notable bands are the melodic Teenage Fanclub and Belle and Sebastian, the zeitgeist-hopping Blur, and bands with falsetto vocalizations, such as Radiohead, Suede, Muse, and Coldplay. Bands influenced by the artists of the 1960s are also part of indie’s heartland, such as the Boo Radleys, the La’s, and Oasis, as are garage artists such as the White Stripes, the Strokes, and the Hives. Others include danceable art pop bands such as Franz Ferdinand or Artic Monkeys and pretty much anything that had been released on Creation Records.33 Indie has been claimed to be typified by the C86 compilation tape put out by NME in 1986 that featured bands such as Primal Scream, the Pastels, the Wedding Present, Big Flame, the Soup Dragons, the Wolfhounds, the Shop Assistants, and the Weather Prophets.34 Other C86 bands, such as the Servants and McCarthy, later mutated to become the successful indie bands the Auteurs and Stereolab. These bands, many of whom were Scottish, had short songs with an underproduced, introverted quality that was characterized as “shambolic.”

      Simplicity is a dominant motif permeating indie musical practices. The indie genre values little elaboration in technology and in presentation. Indie generally places a high premium on the guitar and a low premium on production values. Much of indie music has a raw, underproduced quality, and occasionally even established and popular performers release four-track or eight-track recordings as opposed to the industry standard of twenty-four tracks.35 There is also a financial aspect to releasing eight-track recordings; some independents do not have the funds to finance extravagant high-end studio productions. However, that established artists with resources also choose a deliberately underproduced sound demonstrates that simplicity is a feature of indie style, not just a function of necessity. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this anti–lavish production bias: My Bloody Valentine spent several years and well over £100,000 making their second album, Loveless, which nearly bankrupted then-independently owned Creation Records.

      This simplicity of production is extended to indie song structures, which are often basic verse-chorus alternations: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, bridge, and chorus.36 Indie bands generally favor a traditional three-minute pop song format, at times even omitting middle-eights and bridges. While the guitar is the most highly valued instrument in indie, there is a pride in the avoidance of the guitar solo—or any solo, for that matter.* The guitar solo is strongly associated with other guitar genres, such as progressive rock and heavy metal. Indie’s streamlined song structures are one of the ways that indie differentiates itself from other rock genres that utilize the same instruments and exhibit a proclivity for the guitar. The rejection of guitar solos is descended from punk’s negative reaction to the use of guitar solos by mid-1970s rock bands. Punk’s response to progressive rock’s expansionism was to call for a return to the primal traditions and excitement of rock and roll—to be direct and short (some songs were just a minute long), with simple verse/chorus structures performed with speed and raw power. As characterized by Dave Laing, who took his book’s title from an Adverts song, the punks became One Chord Wonders (Laing 1985). Indie bands could be characterized as three-chord wonders: in an end-of-the-year roundup, Melody Maker summarized 1994, which was dominated by Merseybeat fundamentalism and a call for return to “authentic” music, as “three chords on yer Rickenbacker, three stripes on yer shoulder, and clichéd sub-Lennon ‘attitude’ ” (Melody Maker, December 23, 1995). The reference to the “three chords on yer Rickenbacker” suggests the prevalence of indie’s three-chord song organization and guitar orientation. “Three stripes on yer shoulder” refers to the popular style of Adidas athletic clothing (the plain shirts with three white stripes on the shoulders that were worn by many indie bands and fans in 1994 and 1995). For indie, a raw, simple, underproduced quality to sound suggests closeness to the wellspring of musical authenticity. Though it certainly expands on punk’s call for the most streamlined musical productions, indie continues the punk legacy of simplicity, directness, and avoidance of extravagance in musical forms.37

      Simplicity also extends to indie’s musicianship and performance. Many indie bands are considered lacking in technical proficiency, but this is viewed as a positive attribute within the indie community, because musicianship is viewed as formal training that distances a performer from the essence of music. As one writer characterized the indie sound, “The groups were spirited rather than skilled instrumentalists—indie records often sounded as though they came from a place beneath musical society—an austere underside to the affluent city life above” (Cavanagh 2000: viii). Formal musical training is seen as a form of mediation between musician and music. One of the most damning insults that can be leveled at a musician is to be called a “muso,” implying a technically proficient musician without spirit or emotional attachment to the music he or she plays. Formal training, like priesthood, is thought to take the musician down the known pathways of the establishment, to stand between the artist and true creativity. For example, Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order attributes his development of a totally unique bass style to the early days when the band had “crap” equipment. He would play his bass at the top end of the fret board so that he could hear himself. For indie, music of value is self-taught rather than learned in elite, sanctioned institutional settings. This distaste for formal codes is also a characteristic of Romanticism, where the creative spirit is more important than an adherence to traditional procedures.

      According to indie values, live performance should be simple and straight-forward also. Indie is often represented as lacking stylization, dramatics, or exaggeration in the presentation of the band during shows. This simplicity of style is often made fun of in the press and by members of the community themselves: “They look like an indie band—glamour-free four-piece with girl bassist seek gig in litter bin.” (NME, September 25, 1993); or “Tonight, they play a gig that could be sent on video to a far-off star system as a definitive explanation of indie rock: three anonymous blokes and one mildly charismatic woman play songs with verses and choruses on guitars while bouncing up and down in front of a similarly bouncing crowd of people wearing T-shirts advertising the band or other bands like them and sweating a lot” (Melody Maker, February 2, 1995). While these reviewers are critical of the bands they cover, both point out the generic convention of austerity in indie’s style. Showmanship is thought to reside in the aesthetics of the music and the attitude projected by performers, rather than in theatrics.

      Indie’s overall style can be characterized as dressing down with a particular ethic that favors conspicuous poverty for performers. It is extremely modest. Often performers do not look much different from their audiences, usually selecting T-shirts and jeans to perform in, with some bands even stating that it would be inappropriate to wear clothes onstage different from their everyday wear. As one musician put it, “People wear street clothes and let the music talk. Not all this pretense” (L.B.). The general staples of indie dress are items bought at charity shops, band T-shirts, tatty jeans, and a penchant for the color black (Polhemus 1994). Charity shop items and band T-shirts are often too large or quite tight. The look of the everyday is the characteristic style of indie. For example, the Wedding Present, a band once called “the Princes of Indie City,” was described as follows: “They talk ordinary. They dress ordinary. They embody the proud discredited dream of indiedom, namely that in every no-hope English ghost town there lurks a poet laureate of disaffected adolescence” (NME, January 14, 1989). Even mildly dressing up is considered glamorous. For example, in 1994 indie fans and the press touted a resurgence of glamor among indie bands. This new fashion traded the oversized T-shirts for a tighter, form-fitting style, the inclusion of athletic clothing (“three stripes on yer shoulder”), and an increased number of people wearing moderately glittery clothing. When comparing indie’s version of glamor to other musical movements such as glam, punk, and metal (all genres that included stylized make-up and highly altered clothing), indie appears very tame indeed.

      The “shoe-gazer” musical movement of 1991 reflected paradigmatic indie style in many ways.

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