Pandagon: The Search For Cred
This is why I hate the cred/no cred debates -- music's music, and people listen to what they like. Sometimes a genre (mainstream vs. underground, indie vs. metal) is just a preference, not a message. Unfortunately, we take people's sonic preferences -- and I mean genre-wise, not between different artists -- to reflect their inner self, an imprecise and always reductive way of doing things. Don't believe me? Try and find one person you respect who'll admit to like rock or rap without qualifying underground or indie. In my experience, it's a long search filled with lying people...
ACTUALLY i know people who hate indie/alternative music. i know a person who hates "alternative" people - and i don't mean alternative lifestyle... he thinks they're just trying to be different. i tried to explain to him that not everyone wears certain clothes or listens to certain bands because they're trying to portray an indie image. MAYBE that's just what they like - that's all there is to it.
i know some people who don't have very broad taste in music, either. a former roomate of mine thinks almost everything i listen to sucks and would rather listen to some boring dance music with the same beat in every song. some people like that stuff.
I so abhor this kind of snobbery. The term "poseur" comes to mind when I think of sooooo many people I've been unfortunate to know along the way; people who kinda looked like me, sorta dressed like me, listened to the same or similar stuff, people I saw at the same or similar shows, who patronized the same or similar radio stations...kinda thought similarly, read similar things, blah blah blah, and there should've on the surface been every good reason to be friends with these people, but dammit, they were just poseurs. :D Noses in the air, pigeonholing right and left, snobbishly looking askance at anyone who didn't subscribe to this magazine or wear those shoes or have that limited edition pressing of such and so band's all-German LP...and you know what? Change the clothes and the tunes and the hair, and you've got any 80's hi-skool teen angst movie. :) Snobbishness is interchangeable, universal. I oughta know: I was known to raise an eyebrow at my friends' record collections too. What you don't do is condemn a person to bad taste hell if you see something YOU don't like! It takes all kinds. I have my preferences, you have yours, if they coincide, peachy, if not, to each his own. And that's that.
Afterthought:
When the hell did the term "indie" come to mean an aesthetic, anyway? And who decides what aesthetic it defines? I've been watching this slowly come to pass over the last several years. It started out simply meaning any record company that wasn't owned by the enormo bastards (also my new band name); or movies made by Hollywood-machine-independent folks. Now there's an actual code, a uniform, a lexicon, somehow content is dictated, and I want to know who decided this. I don't honestly know what the hell "indie music" is supposed to sound like. How did it get to be its' own genre? The whole point of being indie is to be DIY, to do something yourself, not sit around and wait for your ship to come in. Aren't people who make music on independent labels, the label owners, and those who deliberately seek this (incredibly divergent) music out kinda skeeved at having the term "indie" co-opted by anyone who wants to cash in on this (incredibly vague) idea?
Just wonderin'. :)
"Aren't people who make music on independent labels, the label owners, and those who deliberately seek this (incredibly divergent) music out kinda skeeved at having the term "indie" co-opted by anyone who wants to cash in on this (incredibly vague) idea?"
YES! I hope they're skeeved!
I hate it when people say you're not a "real" fan of a band because you don't have every album they ever put out. I hate it when people think that because you're a certain age that you like a certain kind of music or that you're too young to be a fan. That's all bullcrap! Where's my flask, godamnit?!
whut you said, gurlfren'. :D hey, i gotcher flask right over here, next to my snazzy replacement copy of mink car! thank YOU!! i was going (only "going"?) kinda cwazy without it. :D weee! xoxo sulky :D
HEY! No drinky outta me flasky, 'K?
;)
wha?! damn, i didn't backwash...some people are sooo picky. :)
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This page contains a single entry by Jeremy published on September 21, 2004 9:31 AM.
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