If you read just one response to Sasha Frere-Jones'
attempt to ramp up his Google Blog Search hits, make it Carl Wilson's argument in
Slate that the problem facing indie—aside from the fact that it's a "genre" with boundaries that are seemingly defined by the biases and record collections of whoever's doing the defining at the time, ahem—isn't rooted in race as much as it is in class. A sample: "With its true spiritual center in Richard Florida-lauded 'creative' college towns such as Portland, Ore., this is the music of young 'knowledge workers' in training, and that has sonic consequences: Rather than body-centered, it is bookish and nerdy; rather than being instrumentally or vocally virtuosic, it shows off its chops via its range of allusions and high concepts with the kind of fluency both postmodern pop culture and higher education teach its listeners to admire." [
Slate]
Idolator
Many moons ago (i.e. in March), former Idolator Brian Raftery launched a broadside at the snooty/reactionary response Stereogum had to the idea of the 33 1/3 series of books publishing Carl Wilson's critical journey into the heart (will go on) of darkness that is Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love. The irony, as a few readers noted in the comments section, was that the book was hardly an ass-licking paean to a terrible album, written for a series that should have been focusing its energies on, I dunno, Wowee Zowee.
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