Presenting the next installment of the Sasha Frere-Jones score, where Idolator rates the indie rock bands we see at the CMJ Music Marathon based on how musically “black” they are, taking the learned teachings of New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones as our guide. This time we lay down the ground rules so you can play along at home, and we offer a little more explanation of the reasoning behind our little experiment.
Judging by the e-mails, some people got a little cranky over this! (The following gets a tad emo/serious, so feel free to skip ahead to the part where I start making fun of things if you wish.) People thinking this is me saying that indie rock should somehow be held exempt from its often dodgy racial politics–this wounds me. Forget indie rock, there’s not a single aspect of white–and especially white male–culture that doesn’t need to be mercilessly picked apart for both the covert and overt, conscious and unconscious racism that it perpetuates every day! This seems self-evident, but you’d be surprised how many white men are content to let their privilege go unchecked. (Wait, no you wouldn’t.) And indie rock is a subset of white maledom that’s notorious about letting its cultural assumptions go unexamined.
So I understand why Frere-Jones wrote the piece. I just happen to think the piece was bullshit, especially his bizonkers internal inconsistencies and wild generalizations over genre. Indie rock’s race issues are more cultural than sonic, and though musical choices are always tied up with a musician’s social outlook, someone choosing to emulate Bruce Springsteen rather than Larry Blackmon hardly constitutes a cultural crime. Indie rock’s cultural, social, racial, and sexual hangups are not going to be resolved via the forced “miscengenation” Frere-Jones is looking for. This process of reexamining white male (musical) privilege needs to have begun, like, yesterday, but nothing is gained by the guy who writes for The New Yorker wagging his finger at Win Butler and shouting J’accuse! in his out loud voice because his band isn’t living up to some ideal he formulated in junior high. Otherwise “serious longform criticism” becomes just as silly as, say, assigning point values to bands based on some critic’s dubiously defined racial characteristics. Just as silly, but a lot less funny.
Now on with the mockery.
THE RULES
- Subtract 10 points each if band lacks “swing,” “some empty space,” and/or “palpable bass frequencies.”
- Subtract 10 points if the band identifies more as “punk” than “funk.”
- Add 20 points if that punk band is the Clash.
- Subtract 10 points if the words “noise,” “art-rock,” “prog,” or “math-rock” can be used to describe the band. Ditto the following metal subgenres: thrash, death, grind, tech. Automatic disqualification: black metal.
- Subtract 15 points if the band primarily draws from folk traditions other than the blues.
- Subtract 15 points for slap bass. (That’s a red herring.)
- Subtract 20 points if artist in engaged in wholesale recreation of a particular era of African-American music.
- Subtract 50 points if swing revival band.
It is at the discretion of the researcher to fudge the numbers a little if they feel that a particular band has just a little more swing and a little less indie in them.
O’Death
Celtic-style band that “thrashes” on its banjos and whatnot. Not only do the they have the temerity to play white people folk music but then to “punk” it all up.
SFJ SCORE: 45
Peasant
Singer-songwriter with acoustic guitar and harmonica. Sadly for his score, he draws more on the side of Bob Dylan influenced by Woody Guthrie than the side influenced by the blues.
SFJ SCORE: 55
The Airborne Toxic Event
Off-brand indie rock by a mixed-race, mixed-gender crew that dresses like really stylish undertakers. The “palpable bass frequencies” (though that could have just been shitty acoustics) help them pull out a respectable score, however.
SFJ SCORE: 70
Health
Noise-rock that takes abrasive frequencies and the term “herky-jerky” to irritating extremes (if you’re SFJ) or awesome extremes (if you’re me). The drummer’s caveman syncopations and the low-end do their best to save their bacon.
SFJ SCORE: 60
Ezra Furman and the Harpoons
Four guys who listened to the Violent Femmes a hell of a lot in junior high. Score should be self-explanatory.
SFJ SCORE: 60
Ponytail
Despite being the most rhythmically interesting band we saw all day, these Baltimore art-punks lack any trace of funk. Depressing, but the numbers don’t lie.
SFJ SCORE: 50
Charlotte Sometimes
Typical shouty and loud post-alt mall emo fronted by male falsetto singer. Beat is for Sonny Bono.
SFJ SCORE: 70
The Pack
Disqualified: hip-hop group.
SFJ SCORE: N/A
Cobra Starship
Trust-fund emo with keyboards that cost more than your rent and purple couture sweatshirts that cost more than their keyboards. Fail.
SFJ SCORE: 70
DAY TWO COMBINED SCORE: 60
TOTAL COMBINED SCORE: 61
Proving that this is shady science at best, the emo bands are kicking everyone’s ass. But indie rock is still keeping its head above water. Barely.
FURTHER RESEARCH: A Paler Shade Of White [New Yorker]
Slap bass is indeed a red herring. So much so that in a
white-lady-fronted disco band I once sang back-up for, the black bass
player did nothing other than flamboyantly slap the shit out of his
bass’s six strings. If you could callibrate that band for the SFJ scale, you’d earn a Ph.D.
I am in love.
“there’s not a single aspect of white–and especially white male–culture that doesn’t need to be mercilessly picked apart for both the covert and overt, conscious and unconscious racism that it perpetuates every day!”
So…when I go to TCBY and buy an ice cream cone then I’m somehow being racist? I had no idea…
Any more than four strings on a bass guitar is clearly cheating. Unless you’re that guy in Los Lonely Boys.
Oh and? White dude playing slap bass = JAM BAND. I don’t think this is what SFJ had in mind, y’all.
Doesn’t Airborne Toxic Event get points taken away for naming themselves after something in a Don DeLillo novel? That is so white.
@therichgirlsareweeping: Or Seinfeld.
@therichgirlsareweeping: @Nicolars: Or a fretless bass, at that.
Sahsa Frere Jones lost me when he tried accusing Stephen Merrit a racist for pointing out the plainly obvious fact that modern r&B and hip hop sucks, and is boring. Not to mention unbelievably stupid. Middle brow at the very best (see Kanye).
So that guy’s a tool. And you’re right, why is anyone working for the Times somehow allowed to finger-point at “the man”.
You can’t subtract for ‘-tech’, because that would include Ghetto Tech and there’s not way my DJ Assualt 12″s are anything but a straight 100.
@CloudCarrier: Looks like I spoke too soon, Yeasayer!
@dalecooper: You mean the New Yorker?
Also the “Stephen Merrit” [sic] debacle involved a misunderstanding/difference in interpretation of Merritt’s comments on Song of the South at EMP. His Times playlist and claim of only liking the first two years of rap were the auxiliary materials S/FJ used to support the argument.
If you’re going to criticize the guy, don’t use the same lack of clarity and bad example choice that he did in writing his piece in the first place (which is a criticism that even supporters of S/FJ’s argument should acknowledge).
@lastclearchance: Wasn’t Sasha taking potshots at Stephin long before last year’s EMP? He seems to have removed his lovely “Gerrymandering on ice” entry from his own blog but you can see it here. It’s from May, 2004. Homeboy knows how to keep that chip locked on his shoulder.
I thought it was Jessica Hopper who got all bent out of shape over Stephin’s Song of the South love, basically picking up Sasha’s ball and running it the wrong way into the parking lot (she didn’t even stay to hear everything Stephin had to say on the subject). Regardless, I keep wondering how long it’s going to take before Sasha (or anybody) comes up with an actually intelligent and non-scattershot way to begin a discourse, assuming a discourse is even called for.
@oovy:
You were in Dee-Lite?
@lastclearchance:
I think he’s confusing Sasha Frere Jones and Kaleefa Sanneh.
@relaxing:
Ghetto tech or any music, really, that uses lots of Roland 808 drum patterns = perfect 100.
@baconfat: Correct on both counts I think. The EMP confusion originally came from Jessica Hopper (though her original blog post got murked too) and S/FJ was certainly noting the other stuff as it happened, but May 06 was when S/FJ’s Merritt critique got bigger.
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: Yeah, you thought that was Q-tip rapping, but no.
Here’s the best response to SFJ’s piece I’ve read, it’s from Slate. It’s fair, balanced, and devoid of truthiness.
[www.slate.com]
As for the scoring policy that rewards 20 points to Clash-like bands, it reminds me that SFJ never mentioned Bad Brains (all-black and a major hardcore punk pioneer that influenced countless white punk bands) once in his article.
@Cam/ron: He mentioned them in the accompanying podcast. But agreed, he should have done it in the article, it’s a pretty relevant band to the subject.
@CloudCarrier: Fretless bass is only okay if you’re … Mick Karn.
@Cam/ron: And I just read the Slate piece. Totes agree.
Bad Brains:
-lacks “swing,” “some empty space,” and/or “palpable bass frequencies.”
-identifies more as “punk” than “funk.”
-primarily draws from folk traditions other than the blues.
I’m liking this rubric!
If you’re anywhere near the Internet, you’ve likely heard (or read) that music critic and Ui founder Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a long essay titled “A Paler Shade of White” in last week’s New Yorker, and that it’s rubbed all sorts of folks the wrong way.