The indie major-signing ideal seems to be the Decemberists, who made a big thing of how they did this to be *financially comfortable* and practical, and then released an album which was, if anything, quieter and less sonically enthusiastic than their last record on Kill Rock Stars. *Right* ideologically sound, The Decemberists (I love you anyway)!

But then you have people like MM and the Smiths, and their connecting factor, Johnny Marr. Marr is interesting: he's a working-class, ambitious indie lad who made it very big, places no moral value on low-fi (he bemoans his inability to have the first Smiths album remixed) and yet also sort of has an eye on his cred all the time - which results in a curious, middle-class-on-average sort of identification where he plays up his immigrant roots, mentions that he can't really *afford* not to reform the Smiths, and in one favorite bit of mine, once qualified his sports-car ownership by specifying that it was an "old black Mercedes S.L 300." (I'm taking this from the Q&A's on his old site; they're not linked now but you can still root 'em out.)

Here I cannot resist (again) mentioning Morrissey, who comes from the same background, doesn't seem to give a damn about cred of any kind, but instead embraces a camp display of wealth - throwing out Gucci shirts to be ripped apart by the audience, having the stage sprayed with perfume before he comes on, etc (and of course that's also a boxing and Elvis thing, because Morrissey must always hit at least three of his schticks at once - Gorgeous George, whom Elvis so admired, having the ring disinfected with Chanel No.5).

Anyway, yes, indie seems to be so dominated by the middle class that its values -thrift, reasonable distribution of modest wealth, a slightly patronizing respect for the working class- have seeped into every corner (save Mozzer's corner, because Mozzer's corner has always been on a different planet and as time passes he steers further and further away from Indie anyway). It's intriguing that class posturing lies behind every musical genre/movement out there; it's a lot *more* intriguing that no genre can agree on what the "ideal" class is.

Spondee

Middlebrow? Really? I won't deny it, but is that the best word? I can recognize the middlebrowity of Slate's coverage of things I know a lot about, but boy howdy do I value them as a resource with regard to everything else. Plus it's well-edited, and has an impressive hit rate re: non-annoying regular contributors (save Yoffe and Hitchens).

Sorry, thought I'd defend Slate a bit before I clarify: I agree that their music journalism is crap, and tends to have a curious self-loathing slant - no matter who's writing, there seems to be a belief that music must justify itself politically before we can sit down and hear it as art, and that somehow our taste can never quite agree with that ideal.

Spondee

Cam/ron

[idolator.com]

Great minds think alike, eh?

I thought this piece was quite interesting, and I agree more with its reasoning than I do with SFJ's piece.

Rob Murphy

Wilson's piece gets a little thick in a couple of spots, but mostly I think he's spot-on -- he manages to very deftly pull apart SFJ's argument while not letting indie-rock off the hook.

Chris Molanphy