Last night I was clicking through the zillionth or so argument on the Internet I’ve come across this decade, and as with approximately 98 million-billion-trillion of them, it hinged, to some degree, on the definition of “indie.” We’ve gone through this a quintillion times on this blog, too, so I’ve decided to ask everyone to make a subtle, yet important semantic shift: The next time you’re tempted to use the word “indie rock” to describe a band, scene, movement, Web site, or general state of mind, I want you to take a deep breath, crack your typing knuckles, press “delete” five times, and instead type this word: alternative.
I realize this is a lot to ask. For a lot of twentysomething writers/bloggers/scene-types, “alternative” is, it would seem, a forbidden word, because it’s so closely tied to a specific era–the post-Nevermind major-label gold rush that for a brief, shining moment saturated the country with Better Than Ezra clones, as radio stations switched over to “modern rock” formats by the gross, and its lumbering-on-and-on-and-on aftermath, so adroitly covered here by Al Shipley. Believe me, I understand the pain that having come of age on this stuff can cause, especially when you look back at the damage it did for an entire generation’s taste in hip-hop. (I’ll never forget the razzing I endured at a restaurant job for once suggesting that the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head was maybe not hip-hop’s all-time gold standard.) In this day and age, “alternative” doesn’t mean Nirvana or Sonic Youth; it means Staind and Creed, and what self-respecting member of the Williamsburg Archipelago would dare identify herself with such a thing? (Especially since the nostalgia re-appropriation wagon hasn’t reached the era of Lollapalooza Mk. I saturation quite yet.)
The thing is, “indie” isn’t working anymore. If anything, it has more specific and limiting baggage than “alternative.” Sure, you can ask how music that’s supposed to be an alternative to the mainstream keeps that status once it goes mainstream, but calling something on a major label “indie” is some fourth-level-of-hell stage of kidding yourself, in a far more concrete way. (We’ll leave England out of the argument for the time being, since anything with guitars, it seems, is considered “indie” over there, meaning Coldplay is or was indie, a delusion no one in America has ever bothered with, thank the fucking lord.) The other week, when I asked for everyone’s least favorite alternative rock hit, almost everyone responded with something from the ’90s. I was kind of hoping someone would rep for Fleet Foxes or Vampire Weekend or something, but it was a kind of unspoken code: “alternative” means ’90s, “indie” means ’00s. And never the twain shall meet, apparently.
For obvious reasons this is delusional, just as it is for today’s youn’uns to sneer derisively at Fatboy Slim but eat up Justice. (Same principle, different costume, and besides, Fatboy’s On the Floor at the Boutique wipes the floor with Justice’s much-downloaded Fabric-reject mix, as it does with all but a handful of commercially-released DJ sets.) But I’ll leave that argument for later. If nothing else, reclaiming language as left for dead as “alternative” not only points up a continuum that’s still going (if not evolving, exactly), it’s exactly what the more po-faced fans of this stuff deserve: taking Conor Oberst’s lyrics seriously is just as much a you-get-what-you-pay-for proposition as buying Sponge albums was back in the proverbial day. So embrace your real heritage, kids. After all, if the most clueless of the current crop of downloaders-without-portfolio are any indication, the next group (which will likely have heard even more and have even less of a context to discuss it in) really won’t know the difference anyway, for all the semantical gatekeeping in the world.
Man, I’m so old, I actually remember when, with a straight face, we called all this shit “new wave.”
As late as ‘87 or so, swear to god.
@Chris Molanphy: No way, man, ‘postmodern.’ Or should I say ‘po-mo’?
taking Conor Oberst’s lyrics seriously is just as much a you-get-what-you-pay-for proposition as buying Sponge albums was back in the proverbial day
Hahahaha!
@Ned Raggett: To me, that was an MTV term. Even at 17, I couldn’t use that one with a straight face.
Then there’s “college rock” - but that one I only ever read in magazines. I never actually uttered it to anyone.
But “new wave” honestly came up in conversation all the time in high school - mostly, I think, because of the alt-station in our area, WLIR, which threw the term around for most of the ’80s with reckless abandon.
I’ve been saying “alternative” for awhile to describe my taste as well as my own music. Last weekend though I decided to covert to saying “college rock”.
A Sponge reference? Holy crap. I’m on board with your plan, just from that alone.
In my iTunes, I change the genre for almost every cd/download. (Not everything is either “Rock” or “Alternative and Punk.”) Anyway, for most releases after around 1980 that aren’t explicitly punk, pop or hip-hop, I use some combination of “Alternative” and a date (80s, mid 90s, early 00s).
Basically, this is an oversharing way of saying, agreed.
@Chris Molanphy: Even at 17, I couldn’t use that one with a straight face.
Could anyone?
I think around high school it might have just been called 91X music or something similar. Then again I lived in San Diego, so.
I really love that Fatboy Slim mix. Mostly because i’m a sucker for ska-related stuff. But tis good.
@Ned Raggett: We used “New Wave” with a straight face in the late 70s as a way of separating punks from punk-associated but not really punks (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, whoever), but by 1981, or even earlier, it was a dead term.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with this post, more or less. Thing is, and I could be wrong about this, but I think there’s a lot less hip-alt-rock-whatever-you-wanna-call-it on major labels now than there was 5 or 10 years ago, more “indie” rock on actual independent labels. So I’d be less willing to make this argument now than I would’ve then. Still, the I-word really doesn’t work anymore, on a number of levels.
Does this mean that Aaron Lewis and Fleet Foxes somehow inhabit the same genre? Does this mean that I can consolidate my negative feelings towards overly sensitive jocks and willfully wimpy hippie types into one easy group?
In any case, I’m all for re-writing the dictionary.
I take all my direction on this subject from “Melody Maker.”
After all, if the most clueless of the current crop of downloaders-without-portfolio are any indication, the next group (which will likely have heard even more and have even less of a context to discuss it in) really won’t know the difference anyway, for all the semantical gatekeeping in the world.
[www.indie1031.fm]
Can’t we just call all of it “rock”?
I will also note that I am as guilty as anyone of using “indie” where “alternative” will do, as with my poll essay: [pop.idolator.com]
Can’t we just agree arguing about genre labeling is more bullshit than the labels themselves?
@Ned Raggett: I think around high school it might have just been called 91X music or something similar. Then again I lived in San Diego, so.
That’s funny, because growing up in LA, we just called it “KROQ music” before the “alternative” label was dreamed up.
i’ve stuck with “college rock” since the mid-80’s but now i think i’m gonna switch to Elijah-M’s suggestion.
rationally this seems like an excellent argument. but i can’t help but struggle against that word. even though “alternative” does mean nirvana and sonic youth to me, being 31, it also means crude attempts at marketing and utter cluelessness about those bands. so i agree that indie is a terrible, almost meaningless term, but i really wish someone would come up with a completely new one.
Wow, only one year ago, in an equally slow news week, we had
almost the same discussion!
Neither “indie” nor “alternative” should mean ANYTHING in defining a (sub)genre of music. In some of the early “indie vs. sellout” Internet wars (on alt.music.alternative, shortly before the formation of the “list that shall not be named”), “indie” referred to a means of production and not a style or sound. Along the same lines, I will gladly throw my lot in with those who bemoan the use of “C-86″ to refer to anything twee. But I’ll leave that battle to folks who were there, like Crayola over at xPQwRtz or the proprietress at Kitten Painting (dig through their respective archives and you’ll get the whole story).
I’m sticking with “new wave of new wave” - These Animal Men 4EVA!!!!11oneoneno
@The Illiterate: by 1981, or even earlier, it was a dead term
I didn’t say we were “with it” or hip when we used “new wave” in the mid-’80s…
Also, I’d disagree at least a little with your 1981 cutoff. That’s the year MTV was invented, and they definitely flogged the term for a few more years — as “new wave” transitioned from its original post-punk meaning to something more like “heavily made up British New Romantic types who are secretly playing disco.”
@Elijah-M: Must we discuss this music at all?
@Chris Molanphy:
Man, I’m so old, I actually remember when, with a straight face, we called all this shit “new wave.”
@The Illiterate:
We used “New Wave” with a straight face in the late 70s as a way of separating punks from punk-associated but not really punks (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, whoever), but by 1981, or even earlier, it was a dead term.
Yeah, that was right around the time the powers that be (radio, Rolling Stone, etc) figured out Pat Benatar and The Cars were not punk rock.
Despite being a card-carrying Gen-Xer, I don’t use the term “alternative” anymore. I used it as a shorthand to quickly get a point across w/people whose exposure to the music was limited. I use “indie” in the same way now.
Btw, isn’t it unfortunate how most of the best of the pre-Nirvana college radio/alternative/indie rock (The Church, Robyn Hitchcock, etc etc etc) never got in on the commercial spoils of the early ’90s?
(on alt.music.alternative, shortly before the formation of the “list that shall not be named”)
Oh, there’s been more than one such list…
how about “indiecore-mo”?
Actually I’d be happy to call it “fourth-level-of-hell stage” rock
@Chris Molanphy:
Man, I’m so old, I actually remember when, with a straight face, we called all this shit “new wave.”
As late as ‘87 or so, swear to god.
It seems to me that by 1987 the term “new wave” stopped being a term that previously used as an equivalent of “not mainstream” and started being a way to describe a genre of music. Sometime in the mid-80’s, the terms “college rock” or “alternative” then became the way to say “not mainstream”. Maybe this is because by the middle of the 1980’s, new wave bands like The Police had actually crossed over into the mainstream; but also, I think that to some degree, the music that was often described as “college rock” was a reaction against new wave (now perceived as a genre) - out went the synthesizers, in came the semi-acoustic guitars.
No, I’m not going back to “alternative.” It has too many steakhead associations. Indie is co-opted to Hell, but then I only use it when I’m talking to people who only care about pablum. If I’m talking to someone who knows anything, I can just jump straight into pertinent band/sound comparisons.
@Elijah-M: Amen. Let’s call it rock music. Rock ‘n’ Roll, even.
My main classification problem these days is, um, electronic music. It’s not techno, it’s not electronica, it’s not IDM, it’s not acid house, it’s not drum ‘n’ bass, it’s not garage or jungle, certainly not nu-rave…what is it? If I like the Field and Lindstrom, what do I say it is I’m listening to? Aka, if most of my “electro” (?!) music is stricly from word of mouth, and I don’t know really any of the delineations respective to various European nations or US urbanscapes, what is the big umbrella over all that?
Thx.
I use backspace instead of delete- does this mean I have to keep saying indie?
Either way, I always thought alt. rock was music that sounded like it was derived from punk and indie was music that derived from punk but didn’t sound like it.
Either way again, people tend to stick with whatever labels make sense to them and it rarely seems to matter whether it makes sense to anyone else.
@D.R. Mosby: Good call — this sounds close to right to me. Frankly, by the mid-’80s “new wave” sounded dated even to me, but my friends and I continued to use it as shorthand because we didn’t know any better.
[dons asbestos suit]
To quote Steven Page (1993-4-4 Massey Hall):
“Do you feel ‘alternative’? What does that mean anymore? I don’t think alternative is really about Doc Martens or a striped t-shirt or a goatee. Because they can be found on just about every street corner right now. That’s not a bad thing: I’m still wearing it because I think it’s cool. Just because something that used to be unpopular is now popular doesn’t mean it’s bad. But it doesn’t mean it’s alternative either.
Alternative is really about the misfits. Alternative is about people, and not the people who have funny hair because they want to be funny looking. Alternative is about the people like my friend Andy Creegan over here who has funny hair because he doesn’t know any better.
Alternative is about people who just discovered acid washed jeans and won’t discover hyper-color t-shirts for another year and a half. That’s what alternative is all about. Alternative is for geeks like us!”
And then they launch into Fight the Power.
If the fans aren’t wearing Manic Panic, it ain’t alternative …
how about “indie” taking to mean “independantly minded” and not “on an independant label”. hell, “emo” used to mean “emotional (or as i first remember it, emotive) hardcore” but i dare anyone to call dashboard confessional or fall-out boy hardcore. how many indie labels are there that aren’t at some point owned or distributed by majors? (i know - like billions. everyone with a cd burner thinks they’re a label)
i think bands being distributed by major labels could still (and do) represent or express an independent spirit, just as bands with nothing but a myspace page and a copy of garageband can be another pearl jam clone, or a wanna-be michael botlon or whoever.
jeez, people love to get upset over their labels. i gave up on that when people started calling avril lavigne “punk”.
i don’t think “alternative” is a great word to try and hijack. in the internet-era, is there really such a thing as “mainstream” or “alternative”? what is r.e.m.? what is santogold? jimmy eat world? my morning jacket? ra ra riot? vampire weekend? i could do this all day…
@MayhemintheHood: Me, too. As a Lolla MK I vet, I find this development as troubling as my suddenly emergent punch and grey hairs. @Audif Jackson Winters III: I’ll see your manic panic and raise you a pair of 14-eye Docs.
I meant paunch.
@PeterBjorn&Yawn: Most electronic genres are determined by their BPMs, rhymthmic character, and quite often, the instruments they’re produced from. For instance, classic acid is based on the Roland TB-303’s sounds. Of course, many artists have a habit of smooshing genres together into unclassifiable beasts and makes genre labels irrelevant.
@revmatty: Ha!
“Alternative Girlfriend” is one of my favorite songs.
As a cataloging librarian I deal with this all the time: working with the vocabulary bestowed upon us by the Library of Congress AND battling with an older generation of librarians. One of my colleagues is determined to have “indie rock” made an official LC genre heading and was surprised when I disagreed with her. “Indie” doesn’t really describe how a music sounds and that’s what the genre headings are for. “Alternative rock” works just fine - for now.
@Cam/ron: Exactly. W/ genre classifications being irrelevant, what shall I call “it”?
Part of me wants to say we discard Genres and start organizing by Labels, but that’s hardly any better. When asked what I listen to I usually just sigh and say, “Shit you’ve never heard of.” unless they seem genuinely interested in the question.
I have tried several times to split up the “Rock” genre in my music collection into “Rock” and “Alternative”. It’s got 214 artists in it, and it can be a pain to scroll through. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s pretty clear that the Drive-By Truckers are “alternative” or “indie” or what have you, but they sound more like Lynyrd Skynyrd than Sonic Youth, and it seems unfair to them to cordon them off from their influences just because most of their audience is left of the mainstream. Sure I could split everything up and make a “Southern Rock” genre, but I’m sick of making nit-picky decisions about what goes where. Most interesting bands span more than one style anyway. So Rock is Rock as far as I’m concerned.
what about crindy?
I always tell people I listen to rock and roll, which I always mean in a pretty broad sense.
I dunno about alternative in all cases though. With a band like Sebadoh, who picked up some fans during the alternative era but never made the major label jump, it just seems inappropriate. Their music predates what we usually think of as alt-rock and came from a tradition that a lot of people, both then and now, preferred to call ‘indie rock’. Or maybe ‘indie’ is more a confusing term now than it used to be? Still, what about a band like Wye Oak? Are they an alternative rock band?
We all just gotta suck it up and be more descriptive.
If music is saved on or represented by a physical object, it’s pop music.
The degree of how “pop” it is: completely relative.
I know that’s not useful now, but when music is eventually outlawed, none of this will matter.
There was an excellent round-table piece on this very topic in last month’s Independent (newspaper) in the UK. Conclusion was that we really need to lay the term “indie” to rest, and I’m inclined to agree.
The whole piece is really worth reading (clicky here), but three quotes in particular stuck out for me:
Tim Walker: “Someone has even compounded a helpful term to use when you call the record companies in a [festival] line-up emergency; this uninspiring, guitar-gelled Polyfilla - of which The Fratellis are a fine example - is now known by some as “landfill indie”.”
Simon Reynolds: “By 1986 ‘indie’ pretty much equated with a refusal of the pop present. Because it now meant a style of music, not a means of production and distribution, it could be uncoupled from the independent label system, and that is what gradually happened.”
Andrew Collins: “[Britpop] was great fun… But it wasn’t indie, and it pushed a whole slew of workmanlike guitar bands centre-stage, where they were even expected to represent their rebranded country, giving the quite false impression that Cool Britannia was an Indie Nation. The essence of New Labour, indie was capitalism dressed up as revolutionary socialism.”
Hmmm. In conclusion, I’d definitely like to see that phrase “landfill indie” used a lot more.
IN A WORLD OF HUMAN WRECKAGE!
i actually bought “Plowed” on Itunes months ago b/c I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I’ve never been happy with genre labels which are actually just radio station demographics, which is what ‘alternative’ is (also ‘adult contemporary’ and all that - not a genre, a marketing stereotype). As a Brit, I’ll always defend the use of indie as opposed to the “I’m Special!” bragging of ‘alternative’, which talks more to music-as-identity than it does music-as-aesthetic.
But really both terms are so far removed from their initial meaning now, arguing that one meaning is less spurious than the other is like arguing that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is more/less plausible than the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Americans can and will continue to mock ‘indie’ for being meaningless, and we will continue to smirk “alternative to what!? fnar fnar” in your direction until some genius can come up with A Third Way.
How about - ALTERNATINDIE?
If it ain’t metal, it ain’t music.
@How do I say this … THROWDINI!: This is a good point. The only “indie” in my iTunes collection is “indie-pop,” separated from “pop,” because obv. there’s a difference between Madonna and Marine Girls. I loathe the “Alternative and Punk” tag.
I can get behind this full-force. I’d also like to start using the term “college rock,” just to see how people respond to it.
And Sponge. Back to YouTube.
Eeech. The whole ‘music-labeling’ thing is a losers game, because once music fans self-identify with a term, the marketers rush in and turn it into a tag for whatever soul-killingly awful music they want to sell us by the pound.
Just say you’re a sucker for a well played guitar and a winsome haircut and leave it at that.