A week of contemplative silence. What would you change?

I should clarify something: Haines is, of course, allowed his opinion concerning pre-fab pop, but it's his seeming assertion than any intelligent, reasonable person should agree with him that's flawed.

I can't help bu tfeel as if pop culture A.W .(in the year of the world wide web) is becoming more and more subculturey and instead of trends there are only bubbles of influence. There are many cults more than there are major shifts. I think that fellow from the auteurs wishes it was 1969 or 1975 when there could be TV and movie inspired movements.

Much though I might *agree* with Mr. Haines about Steps and Wetslime being "cultural mistakes" I, however, am of the opinion that, if I were forced to a week of silence... at the end of it, I would be so grateful to hear *ANY* music at all, that I would probably embrace Pete Waterman and Ronan Keating in all their plasticine glory!

What Would Epictetus Say (WWES)?

People are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things: for example, death is nothing terrible... the opinion about death -- that it is terrible -- is the terrible thing.

That said, I am disturbed by my own opinion of Hype Williams videos and what they hath wrought. If all videos that appear to be filmed in some kind of "luxury spaceship" were packed into said spaceship and shot directly into the sun my opinion of chart-bound hiphop would improve like the fuck you've never seen.

A week of silence from Luke Haines? Sounds good.

I'd like a week to track down and exterminate (preferably with a flamethrower and/or Hellraiser style hooks) everyone who is or is involved with: Stereophonics Travis Starsailor Embrace Coldplay Slipknot Disturbed (hook the bugger up by his chin piercing) Limp Bizkit...and all nu-metal & variants, actually Feeder Jools Holland Jo Whiley Steve Lamacq John Peel US punk (new stuff, not old stuff) 'Doctor' Fox Smirkin' Steve Wright and many, many more.

I like embrace! the last album was neat. embrace are going to be really good and it's fun watching them be adventurous.

Right on Tracer! I took a class with a very bitter Music Video director who hated that man and his monopoly of MTV vomit.

And after this week of silence we'd get: The new Luke Haines album, which is released in the UK on Monday!

I would personally destroy the idea that Embrace are adventurous. Either that or Thom Yorke.

has anyone else noticed that SCARY fact that with every passing day, Tony Blair looks more and more like... YODA?!?!?!?

aww...get away with ya, ally, embrace are FUN!

If your idea of fun is evil bastard children of the Verve and Oasis, sure.

Ally, "ty" has been smoking doompatrol's crack. Don't encourage it.

Embrace fun? Can I kill myself now, please?

Trends in music -- keep it all as it is. It's the business side of things that needs a kicking, not the music itself. Wishing a sound that one generally doesn't like away is fun selfishness, to be sure, but really, why bother?

As for Haines' idea and him in general -- idiot. I hate him even more now.

I like embrace, wot's the big deal? *shrugs shoulders*

That's all very well, but...for extermination purposes, which to use? The flamethrower or the hooks?

I like Luke Haines as well. Perceptive and the Baader Meinhoff project was very interesting. A psychotic ray davies tacklling subjects no one will.

I just though of something. With the internet, there is now the possiblity that all reviwers of records can theoreticlly include clips of the songs with the review. I hope this eventually happens, because I have the feeling peoples actual opinions of the songs would differ greatly from what the reviewr says.

Given Haines' last year was all about using Billie's producer to finagle a Top 20 hit, I think there's more than a little game-playing going on here. Unfortunately the gameplaying is generally less interesting than his records, which I usually have time for.

'Finagle'!! What a verb!!

If I lived in the country that produced Westlife, I'd be shitting myself too. (Irony) God Save The USA, Nation Of Quality Culture (/Irony).

He's not from the country that produced Westlife. HA!

Luke Haines silence - as a gesture, no problem. But as a demand, well then it's just a demand for our attention.

WESTLIFE = IRELAND! DOUBLE HA!

Are Stereophonics/Travis/Coldplay/Starsailor the British equivalent of blandos like Matchbox 20/Vertical Horizon/Blessid Union Of Souls ? That's the only way I can understand the hostility directed against them on here. They seem pretty benign otherwise.

Yes.

They're WORSE than Verizon, Matchbox, et al. Not to mention which, Mod Lang, the hipster indie-brit import store in Berkeley, actually is moving an astonishing number of Starsailor albums/singles. Stupid indie-kids will buy anything.

Indie rock is so tiresome. SOme of the music is good but mostly its just kids who wan t to seem cool. Its like some freakin subcultre bullshit, liek being a skater.

When I was eight or under, I saw a film on TV abt a skater, a little Dutch girl who skated alone, skated and skated, self-contained and slight and elegant in scraf and little woolly hat, up and down the frozen canals. I thought it was so great, and I was just so angry and unhappy that I would never be that little Dutch girl. What's wrong with skating, Mike?

sidetrack:

that just reminded me of the southpark episode where the english boy goes...'oh isnt skating fun...isnt skating fun...see if you can catch me...'

I think Mark would make a very nice little Dutch girl. Especially if he came home, opened his huge Oxford Unabridged Dictionary and penned letters to Hans while drinking hot chocolate.

Or a little "Dutch Boy" and take to his bed with a bottle of rum.

Don't get STARTED judging the entire indie scene by bands like Coldplay, Travis, Starsailor, etc. For a start, none of these bands are even INDIE! For a second... oh, just forget it. See about 40,000 rants on the subject I've already stated on this forum alone.

North American anglophiles are, for the most part, a sad and wretched bunch. Let them have the Starsailors and Embraces of the world, so we don't have to. Thank you.

sheesh..you can't even be silent here:We had a problem inserting your message: You need to type a message; there is no "Man/woman of Few Words Award" here. Please back up using your browser, correct it, and resubmit your form. Thank you.

yoda plays guitar in ectogram. darren hefner has a great bit about danny embrace in his online diary. i've not had any difficulty avoiding pop culture, so where is the need to silence it?

When I see a littl e girl skating, I push her down. Then I shove Albert Collins records at her.

I wouldn't allow anybody as ugly as Luke Haines to have their picture anywhere. Shallow, but what else can you do with somebody who's built an entire career out of sniping at people more succesful than he? At least Mark E Smith didn't start desperately resorting to 'controversial' (yawn) songs about terrorists, but then, his career hasn't been going down the sewer since the day it started.

north american angliophiles???

I have to take umbrage. Arent you north american???

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!

STILL LOVING EMBRACE!

by and large, the underground rock and roll scene in north america is growing large and it is really GOOD FUN ROCK AND ROLL. Which is hwo it should be..

'but it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll...'

Believe it or not, I hold no brief for 'indie culture'. I don't know much about it, really. But I'll say something that I've probably said before, one way or another: there is a large-looking double standard at work when people can dismiss 'indie culture' but would get the proverbial ton of bricks dropped on them if they did the same to 'top 40 culture' (if such a thing exists).

music is music.

indie culture or not.

god bless embrace, lovin' spoonful, the hives and the pattern.

i would change nothing

I don't have a problem with 'indie culture', just the bands I mentioned, but then none of them could be called indie anyway. Er...

Pinefox, you're off the money on this one. Saying you can't criticise one culture but not another is like saying a reviewer who likes one record and not another is applying a 'double standard'. Its the specifics of the culture that are being criticised, not its existence.

a good song is a good song.

it has nothing to do with culture. when I was a punk rock big black bob dylan obsessive (13-15) I was out with my friends and I was talking about how much I hate led zeppellin and then he pointed out all of their albums and sasid 'do you really think that there isnt anything good on any of those albums...'

english, culturally, get bogged down in the 'whole weight and meaning' and especially ex-patriots to england. there is no meaning, just music that makes you happy.

a good song is a good song.

there is no meaning, just music that makes you happy.

Oh, come off it, ty. You seem to be saying that if only we'd all drop these silly tribal allegiances, we'd end up getting down to what really matters - good songs. And presumably all end up agreeing on what these good songs are.

No? Well unless you adopt a radical 'every man is an island' position, then of course you have to invoke culture to make sense of what makes us disagree about what's good. The doomy goth scene is a complete turn-off to me, for example, and any music that exists in that sphere I'm likely to take the piss out of, just as I'd take the piss out of other artifacts of that culture (eg. the clothing).

I mean yeah, if you don't want to think about music in an analytical way then that's fine. But surely if you're on this message board it must hold some interest to you.

And anyway, what's with this 'there's only music that makes you happy' business? What about all those great records that make me sad, confused, righteous or mildly catatonic...?

english, culturally, get bogged down in the 'whole weight and meaning' and especially ex-patriots to england.

Do you mean English living abroad or foreigners living in England? Or people who used to be patriotic?

Its the year 2001. We must give honest thought to Heuy Lewis AND Badly Drawn Boy. Superflatten!

Nick: you say it so well.

Tom: well, I think I have to hand it to you: yes, OK, it's OK to criticize a 'culture' (of course, as you know, 'culture' is a terribly problematic, loose, ambiguous sort of word). In which case I guess that what I was saying was that if it's OK for someone to criticize one culture, then it should be OK for someone (someone else?) to criticize some other culture.

Personally, I don't particularly want to get into criticizing either of the cultures I mentioned (assuming that they are 'cultures'). In many ways I am very distant from both of them. I think what I'm saying, though, is just that some generalizations (derogatory generalizations, especially) seem to be more acceptable than others.

I mean, depending on which city, which country you go to, going to see a rock and roll band can mean several different things. I have spent the majority of my life is small towns and villages and now am in big cities.

The differences is astounding, one, small town folk, go out and have fun at a show.....

Big city folk, go not to be entertained. Seems...like............

It is something to be duly discussed and once ascertained that they had a good time, once all aspects are thought through, then, it's alright.

I'm sorry to say that I think that that distinction sounds rather crude and implausible.

speaking in generalities...I know.

I saw Nashville Pussy in a small town in British Columbia and the same in Toronto. The rock and roll vibe wasnt there. It's so crazy when a band plays a smaller town. It's not so jaded.

Hey, I think Ty is right, kinda!! (I'm from a small village too.) But I think this is because in a big city, you HAVE to check w.yr many various different neighbours abt whether what pleasures you pleasures them, or you end up being whacked over the head with a tyre-iron for playing Cud on endless loop. The habit is initially self-protective; downloaded to the unconscious, it emerges as "cool".

I do something like what Ty says BUT this is cause hanging out with and talking with my friends IS the good time - the culture being consumed (gig/art/film/whatever) is kind of secondary to the chat. Also obviously we disagree, though sometimes we all agree, similarity of perceptions being partly why we're friends.

Expecting other people to pay for your opinions on culture...well, thats a different story.

Well, I don't want to contradict anyone's 'experience' - but I still don't quite see the logic here. If you go to see a band in - let's say - a provincial town (Exeter? Ipswich? Northampton? South Shields?), chances are you'll be with other people - just as chances are you will be in London. (Of course, you might also be on your own, either way.)

I wonder. There are significant and fascinating differences between the provinces (if I'm allowed to call them that; I might add that the word is IN NO WAY perjorative in my hands) and the capital (I'm talking England here); but I don't think that they can boil down to the fact that provincial people are un-self-conscious where metropolitan types are always worrying what the arbiters of cool think. Who says the arbiters of cool live in the metropolis anyway?

Who says the arbiters of cool live in the metropolis anyway?

....they usually say it themselves, but as anybody knows, if you think you are cool, your not very cool.

Sorry, for bringing that up, pet peeve. And I disagree with Tom, it's not supplementary for me, it is *the* experience. If I want to experience my friends I can go for coffee or do some dodgy stuff like shouting at seniors.

I pity those poor pop-haters, wandering through the outside world knowing that they will be PUBLICLY LYNCHED if they deny the SOCIALLY ENFORCED TRUTHS that "Britney is a talented and respected musican" and "Gangsta hip hop expresses a worthy metaphysical perspective, and is an excellent stimulator of the evolution of the English language". One would think that I Love Music would provide a safe haven for such visionary pariah figures, where they could devote themselves to such revolutionary ideals as "playing one's own instruments" undisturbed. Alas and alack, those nasty oppressive pop-intellectual NAZIS have infliltred this once-proud board as well, it seems, brutally supressing any alternative, or indeed "alternative", to their plastic corporate pop regime.

Seriously though Pinefox, the idea that it's "okay" to dislike indie but not pop on ILM is giving way too much importance to those who hold that opinion here. Some people on ILM slag off Starsailor, and some people slag off Destiny's Child. Understandably Destiny's Child fans then leap to their idols' defence. The fact that no-one here really feels like waxing eloquent in defence of Starsailor should hardly be taken as evidence that they are being SILENCED and OPPRESSED.

I don't feel oppressed. Usually I don't listen. Just a good shrug. Bullies never get to me. Today I was listening to Nick Drake, Pink Moon, Twenty four seven soundtrack (love north country boy), embrace - drawn from memory and joy division.

Catergories and bullies in pop don't do it for me.

Whatever you say. Let me add that I don't hate pop - I LOVE pop.

People don't leap to the defence of Starsailor because they're indefensible.

I would, if I liked them, people here hate Embrace but I like them. Fashionable/Unfashionable. Who cares. A good song is a good song.

Well yes, but Arsesailor have no good songs (that I've heard anyway).

what about their drill'n'bass lloyd cole remixes done under the name of closet nelly (playing camden monarch tonite-ah!)

What about them?

For what it's worth, Pinefox: the fact that I don't care about any set ideas of "fashionability" has nothing to do with my geographical location. I suppose it influences my view of things unconnected to pop (how I vote, for example) and my view of certain records which I like anyway, but not whether or not I like records in the first place.

There seem to be a lot of boring hipsters outside London and people gloriously unconcerned with "cool" within London (when in London, I naturally seek out the latter, many ILM-ers included). I totally agree with you that the differences between London and "the provinces" (a term I choose not to use though I accept you not using it pejoratively; the phrase I favour is "non-metropolitan Britain", which is a far more accurate term for most of this country than "rural") have to be spoken of in more advanced terms than they are often reduced to.

Two things:

1) I have never said "you can't slag off indie culture". Hell knows, I complain about it all the time. What I *DID* say is, if you're going to criticise indie culture, please give examples of bands who are actually *INDIE*. I don't object to the dismissal of "indie", I object to the classification of bands like Starsailor *as* "indie".

2) Just as aside, even though this thread has got about a million miles from its original topic, I'd just like to report that Mr. Luke Haines himself is not even holding true to his musicless ideal, as he was making A LOT OF NOISE rehearsing at our studio on Sunday.

So now you know.

Notice the subtle name drop of Luke Haines. Very hip!

If I wanted to Namedrop, I'd mention running into Stereolab in reception, or seeing Arab Strap stumbling their way to the toilets. ;- )

I just wanted to point out that Mr. Haines was not even being true to his own demands! Humph!

More namedropping! I can't keep up! Very hip!

I've met the drummer from Supergrass at a Poptones night. That's my claim to fame.

i know my next door neigbours. well, sort of. ok, not really, but i did see them in the garden once...

I saw the train ticket fellow today. He usually doesnt say anythign to me....but today he told me to 'bugger off'. I walked away with a smile.