Why Is "Post 1990 Indie" So Maligned?

May as well ask.

Since we have
Why is The Genre Of 'Metal' so maligned?
Why is The Genre Of 'Country' so maligned?

Because of the Gyres?

it's not. more like post-2000

Not round here (in the uk because of Britpop)

We cant even blame That whole Placebo/Mansun/Rachel Stamp/King Adora late 90s aesthetic

ha, well that's a different story. i'm sorry you guys have britpop. then again, i tend to think brits have slightly better taste in music than most americans, though much more good music comes from here.

Guilt

But in 2001 on ILM, indie was hated.

Or maybe the pinefox wants to defend indie?

Indie pop at least. I liked a LOT of 90s indie rock.

But in 2001 on ILM, indie was hated.

they were being IRONIC

hah

Post 1990 indie is maligned on ILM, but luckily not elsewhere.

<sigh>

OK, an answer (of sorts)

When I was younger and more foolish, I hated The Smiths because they started the retrogressive conservatism that led to a million no-mark indie bands that sounded like pale copies of older bands.

Now I like The Smiths and think that blaming them for what followed is wrong but I do think there seems to have been a general point where white English guitar music (and yes I know there's a LOT of exceptions) seemed less interested in innovation?

But why does music has to innovate all the time? I like 90s indie exactly because it does not do all those "innovation" attempts and instead stays with styles and genres that have proved to work.

Basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

that have proved to work.

prove it you clown

Because you end up creating as I said (and you chose to ignore in your response) pale copies of older bands. Music dies without innovation and ceases to 'work'.

I actually kind of agree with Geir although I don't like the type of music being talked about on this thread. I do like 'genre music' though where (to outsiders at least) lots of things sound the same, and there isn't the overt feeling of trying to innovate away from the core, but a feeling of reinforcing the core, a sound of cohesion.

If i like one particular sound/style I like to hear a lot of it and I don't get bored of it, I don't personally look for (overt) innovation

what blueski said

The Ramones were kinda dull.

oops, that was for the rarest opinion thread

A lot of people, even ILM'ers who dislike most current indie, are into Powerpop, a genre that is sort of built upon retro as the core of the entire genre. Already at its beginning (Badfinger/Nazz), Powerpop was retro, in that it rejected psychedelia and wanted to go back to the classic mid 60s pop of, say, Rubber Soul. And funny enough, a lot of the people here who write off guitar bands tend to be into powerpop. Maybe because powerpop is less popular....??

UK indie is so maligned because the most visible stuff is just bad Britpop in skinny jeans.

And US indie is so maligned because much of it is self-conscious, amateurish, over-serious, or just plain too cool for school.

what sort of bands are you asking about here?

Because a lot of "indie" bands in the 90s actually "made it", and that sort of goes against the indie values, doesn't it?

i.e. "indie" is supposed to stay indie.

The Smiths had hit UK Top 20 three times by the autumn of 1984 already. Didn't they betray the ideals of "indie" then?

Plus "indie" built punk and new wave. Already in 1977, "God Save The Queen" made #2, and the year after saw Ian Dury and Boomtown Rats go all the way to the top. English "indie" has never been opposed to hitting the charts, rather indie fans have applauded when "proper" music was able to compete with the "shit" in the charts.

"Indie" built ON punk and new wave, I mean

Guilt cant just be the answer. That would just be lame. You don't get guilt about other genres do you?

What insight do you hope to unearth on this topic that 250 other threads have not yet revealed?

new ones

Also why is indie corny as lots seem to mention?

Because some indie is corny?

and other music isn't?

No, no other music is corny at all. Only indie.

Why Is "Post 1990 Indie" So Maligned?
May as well ask.

why 'may as well ask' anyway?

and maligned by WHO?

Errr, does anyone on here like powerpop, as Geir claims? I can't say I've seen any evidence of that over the last decade, but then maybe I don't look at these threads.

does anyone apart from geir actually use the term 'powerpop' to describe any music from the last 30 years?

I think it's a sort of "oh sunshine pop and/or return to pre-psychedelia as per groovy pop music" which is probably well served on some retro-board somewhere.

If Geir went there, he would find many like-minded souls who like The Nazz, The Turtles, Byrds, um um um...

But if he was to mention Genesis, he'd probably get banned oh wait....

Errr, does anyone on here like powerpop, as Geir claims?

Posies, Matthew Sweet and Wondermints have lots of fans here.

OK, fans of those artists: Make yourself known.

The Wondermints - C or D?

Very short thread.

The Posies - Classic or Dud?

Also, quite short (There are 5 other Posies threads, all short)

Matthew Sweet : Classic or Dud?

A little longer than those, still short.

Admittedly there are longer threads on bands that have more pro- and anti- opinions, but if you were to pick a band that had generally favourable opinions on them...

World Domination Enterprises - Classic or Classic?

You could do worse...

Note very few negative opinions on the Matthew Sweet thread. Of course this is partly down to powerpop being so obscured that those who are into dance and hip-hop don't get exposed to it, and thus don't end up saying how much they hate it. Very much unlike Britpop. Britpop didn't have a lot of critics before the summer of 1995 either.

yes it did

I didn't actually notice any negative thoughts. Of course fans of dance or hip-hop wouldn't give a damn. It wasn't "their" music and they had no interest in what indie used to be before Britpop either. But the first major critical backclash against Britpop, from critics that were actually into "rock", appeared when they discovered it was actually "pop" rather than "rock". Which was fine as long as it stayed in the underground, but not once it started invading the chart.

Then, dance fans would also come out with criticism, because Britpop trashed the idea dance/techno fans tended to have around the early 90s, that rock was dead, and that drone based electronic dance music represented the future.

Why are you unable to grasp the idea that thousands of people who liked dance and hip-hop at the time also liked UK indie and pop-rock (plus all kinds of other stuff)?

can you keep your paranoia to one thread at a time please geir

does anyone apart from geir actually use the term 'powerpop' to describe any music from the last 30 years?

For something other than the The Pleasers or The Rubinoos he means

Why are you unable to grasp the idea that thousands of people who liked dance and hip-hop at the time also liked UK indie and pop-rock (plus all kinds of other stuff)?

Of course, there were some. And even more once a more "artistic", less dance oriented and at the same time crossover oriented electronica scene arrived in the 90s (Orbital, Leftfield, Orb, Prodigy, Underworld etc.). But generally, if there wasn't a huge gap between those genres, there would have been more melodic/none-drone-based electronica at the time.

This is what happened....

One band made records, eventually catching on with the general public because they had some links stylistically with the beatles.

Large sales for that band.

Other bands went "whoa!" and dropped their iggy fascinations for a slice.

That was Britpop, and that was the bus that went over the ravine.

Hello Everyone I liked Tindersticks and Richie Hawtin. The Britpop music made a noise that I didn't like so much so I turned it off and then I never heard it again.

Other bands went "whoa!" and dropped their iggy fascinations for a slice.

One of the band that was accused of doing this, because they got famous in the wake of Oasis, was Dodgy.

They had been making the same kind of music since 1993, only by then it was very unfashionable and hardly sold at all.

posies are ace, matthew sweet's 'ghirlfriend' rools. but seriously, in as much as i love power pop, its mostly as a retro curio and perhaps a guilty pleasure (not guilty to love the posies tho, they are ace). in many ways, the fact that pretty much every power pop group sells nish-all records, is proof that the public's tastes have moved on and that they aren't, in general, interested in a band who sound like 1965 beatles.

in many ways, power pop is like fan fic/historical re-enactment for people who didn't get enough of that sound when the beatles were around. tho again, i'd argue the posies transcend that.

in many ways, power pop is like fan fic/historical re-enactment for people who didn't get enough of that sound when the beatles were around

Those people have long sinced moved on to Jose Carreras and Norah Jones. They are not the ones who get into powerpop. Most powerpop fans were too young to be around for The Beatles at the time.

Jose Carreras?

Most powerpop fans were too young to be around for The Beatles at the time.

as am i - but powerpop bands mainly serve people for whom the beatles' already extant catalogue isn't enough, is my point.

Yeah it was great when people stopped accusing Dodgy of having Iggy Pop fascinations, that was so undeserved

The main reason is that, after decades of uncontrolled hype by the British press, there was a backlash against indie music from people who began to notice that both the NME and Melody Maker had an approximately 3-week rotation period for "the best band in the world", "the new Smiths" etc. It became intellectually insulting and then just a fairground scam which only the gullible took seriously.

The arrival of the internet, where you don't have only two or three sources of information and where you can easily isolate yourself from the current state of music and look back at what was done decades ago, has made these disingenuous tastemaker journalists practically irrelevant, and the entire genre that they champion- indie- has now to face a permanent state of skepticism from people outside the indie pond life scene.

Besides, the "art school confidential" aesthetics of many indie groups and movements (that is, maximum pretention and posturing and minimum talent for either songwriting or playing) no longer goes unchallenged; people see through it and rigthly ridicule the stuff. Most indie bands cannot play, period.

Finally, the reality of music nowadays is too fragmented, sometimes artificially so in order to create the illusion of novelties offered for commercial consumption; all the new rave, new grave etc fads become just noise after a while. So basically the current indie movement is ridiculed and maligned because it ends up believing the lies it creates.

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/Entertainment/Clarissa/ceia.gif

Derek Dull lives!

That's a pretty decent analysis from Vision, though!

I also think the malignment might have something to do with the fact that post-Britpop, suddenly it wasn't just the inkies and the monthlies covering guitar-based alternative rock music/electronica/etc - it was absolutely bloody everyone, from the Financial Times to the Dingletwit & Fotherworth Bugle.

As a result of this, the perceived "underground" nature of much of the music was frequently (and generally rightly) called into question and, to put it crudely, the "strength" of the "indie" "brand" was diluted to the point of inconsequentiality. In short, many emperors were revealed to be parading round in the buff.

How dat?

this thread is brit-centric. In the US mainstream people have only recently started talking about "indie". Beforehand it was either "college rock" or "malternative"

I blame Emily out of Big Brother

There's a new Emily going around..

Whozat?

but i remember this

from 1991!

Yeah, but Sebadoh weren't journalists from the Financial Times.

Lexis search for indie rock before January 1, 1991: 23 results
Lexis search for college rock before January 1, 1991: 265 results
Lexis search for alternative rock before January 1, 1991: 606 results

Remember also that Barlow's version of indie rock is Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Husker Du.

but powerpop bands mainly serve people for whom the beatles' already extant catalogue isn't enough

Now that is true. Personally I will never ever get enough of that kind of music. No matter how many new records are being recorded within it. I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.

Do any (modern day) powerpop bands try to do something different and experiment with their sound?

I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
I want nothing different, I just want more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.

Geir between that and "More is more" you are dropping pearls left and right.

Do any (modern day) powerpop bands try to do something different and experiment with their sound?

Then they wouldn't be powerpop anymore.

Why not? They could still have the basic elements but still add to the sound somehow.

Well, Posies and Lemonheads did their share of adding "grunge" elements. Posies were better back when they didn't though.

Frosting On The Beater is the best Posies album!!

Damn straight.

Post-1990 indie? You mean Pavement, MBV, Pulp, Unrest, Disco Inferno, Super Furry Animals, Wolf Eyes and 300,000 other randomly listed bands universally loathed by ILX, right?

Only one of those bands is indie and was formed in the 90s.

only one? really?

Yes, but all released significant work after 1990, so there.

Only one of those bands is indie - OK, you are having a different conversation than myself, then, so proceed accordingly.

If you mean indie as in the style then I wouldn't count Wolf Eyes, leaving Super Furry Animals as the only 90s indie band in there. Of course that is being somewhat pedantic since as you say they release a lot of material in the 90s.

in what sense is pavement not a 90s indie band?

They were formed in the 80s is all I'm saying. And if you're going to use bands as examples of the thousands of post-1990 indie bands who are popular on ILM maybe it would help if you could find more than one that was formed in the 90s.

it's more about when the bands were most popular

How many records did Disco Inferno release in the 80s?

maybe it would help if you could find more than one that was formed in the 90s. - OK this is ridiculous. Is The Cure a 70s band? The Beatles a 50's band? Anyway, I just picked a few random examples off the top of my head. There are many, many more "indie" bands, formed post-1990, who enjoy enjoy much fanfare here on ILX, thus qualifying them for your seemingly arbitrary set of criteria. If you don't believe me, please give cursory glance around for confirmation.