Has this article ever been discussed?

The original is almost ten years old now. I am more curious on your take on its accuracy in describing the time period it does that this turning into another "indie c/d" clusterfuck. Am I asking too much? We shall see soon!

http://books.google.com/books?id=0CFqCHZcgUMC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=rockerdammerung&source=bl&ots=plRZUpg4t9&sig=qDWf2DdH2s6yv5jJ6bz0nJnSNvI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA182,M1

I disagree.

I disagree

.....with YOU!!

wow, the baffler. should have spotted the style.

I think this pretty accurately conveys the way indie rock was seen at the time by some of us who bought into the notion that indie rock was primarily a political and oppositional counter-practice to the majors, rather than a burgeoning minor league farm team system. If you can put those blinders back on, the argument of the essay follows quite naturally. Those blinders were part and parcel of the thrill of enjoying 80s indie rock for me. So I agree that the essay captures certain delusions I shared.

do you think that the idea was, in hindsight, always delusional, or have changed circumstances made it seem that way?

Agree with much of what's said along the way, but don't at all buy the conclusion. Don't accept that the mainstreaming/defanging of once-radical outsider styles had all that much to do with rock's loss of market share. It might be interesting to suggest that the moral bankruptcy of alterna-culture essentially gutted rock's ability to speak as an authentic voice ... if rock hadn't weathered so many other, similar emperor's-no-clothes cataclysms in the past. O'Flaherty insists that we view this story strictly in terms of rock music, treating all other forms as footnotes at best. But the waning of rock is as much a footnote in the rise of hip-hop as vice-versa. Refusing to accept that is just myopic.

Re: Dad & Shh:

"Delusional" is too strong a word, though delusion figures into it. By believing that they were doing something more than participating in a farm league system, the artists and fans of the 80s indie era essentially made it so. The death of that belief, I think, struck a much bigger blow to subcultural indie rock's sense of self and purpose than it did to rock music as mainstream market entity. American indie rock was born when fans got cynical about rock as a corporate product, and it died when they got so cynical about EVERYTHING that they ceased to care one way or the other (sometime in the mid-to-late 90s). That sounds like mythologized nostalgia, but I believe there's some truth to it.

First off, you are right about other genres, and it makes sense that, from what I can tell, NYLPM was founded around the same time and Tom E.'s openness to pop became a more prevalent opinion.

Secondly, I think there is some truth to your story, not just mythologized nostalgia, though I am curious about that mid-late 90s period, and everyone becoming more cynical. I know my own feelings at the time, but I really wasn't in contact with anyone else who was even thinking about this stuff then.

founded around the same time the article was written I mean

"I am curious about that mid-late 90s period, and everyone becoming more cynical."

-- shh!

Author touches on it in the Baffler article: the mainstreaming of the undie inderground made it real damn hard to take its putative radicalism seriously. From this compromised position, a comfortable sort of malaise arose, where indie music was allowed to be as "radical" as it wanted to be (or not), with the understanding that it was all just play acting and none of it really mattered enough to get worked up over. In part this is just my point of view, reflective of my own coming of age, but I believe that a larger shift of sorts occurred around this time in American culture, when the makers, observers and arbiters of indie rock just kind of threw in the towel on their own importance.

...And then again, it's all bullshit, 'cuz there's still an active, thriving, at least partially rock-based underground of rabidly anti-corporate types making unholy parent-killing racket music for fellow travelers in more-or-less secret. Plus your Chemical Romances and Slipknots selling t-shirts to the kids. Goes around, comes around, etc.

NYLPM was founded around the same time and Tom E.'s openness to pop became a more prevalent opinion.

That openness can be traced at least as far back as Morley/Penman.

"By the year 2000, rock's market share had dwindled to a feeble 24.8 percent."

There must be some articles out there that link this decline to the rise of filesharing and the demographics of its early adapters.

yeah I know Tom wasn't necessarily the first but I think that the writing that surrounded NYLPM and this board in the very beginning of the decade is probably more influential to what has happened since than Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Does this really depend somewhat on whether this radicalism is defined as anti-traditionalism (of society, not music as such), or anti-capitalism?

If we take punk as anti-traditional (and therefore an agent of capitalism) - then how does this change during the 80s and 90s (perhaps more so in the UK)

With regard to American indie culture, the anti-traditionalist / anti-capitalist (or "anti-corporate", a softened version of the same) distinction is is an important one, but I'm not sure what you mean when you limit punk to an anti-traditional stance. A great deal of late 70s/early 80s punk was explicitly anti-capitalist, both in theory and in practice, and I think this was much more true in Europe and the U.K. than in America. The politics of early American punk were often incohate or incoherent, more addressed to the idea of a self in opposition than to any specific political argument. (Then again, DKs/Alternative Tentacles, and later Minor Threat/Dischord, so it's not like that thread wasn't present in the American version from fairly early on.)

American indie culture, arising sometime in the early to mid 80s, was ostensibly both anti-tradional and anti-corporate by definition. To be independent was to be not-beholden-to, even to be contemptuous of, popular culture and the economic mechanisms that sustained it. In the long run, this "by definition" radicalism seems to have been something of a sham, since few of the key bands involved maintained a clear political stance in the long run. I suppose that to declare oneself radical by definition is to discard the burdens and sacrifices involved in active radicalism. It's more a form of cultural self-ostracism, or elitism, than a political position.

...and leaves the door open for someone to come along and like your music without having to engage in politics because they are implicit?

Yes, but that's true of most political art; indie just made it easier by generally leaving the politics of the project silent or abstract.

contenderizer is OTM and on fire throughout this thread.

yes contenderizer thanks!

Thanks for the props, but I have to admit this feels like very well-traveled ground. Only thing that seems new to me is my own willingness to accept that the radicalism of 80s indie was at least half delusional. In the past, even here on ILM, I've gotten all butthurt about the meaninglessness of contemporary, mainstream indie culture (Shins, Death Cab, Fleet Foxes, etc.), and how hollow it seems in comparison with the "real thing" that preceded it. I still think that's true, to a limited extent, but it's hard to get worked up about the distinction.

More I think about it, though, the more odd a lot of that Baffler article seems. Poignant focus on the "fall" of Urge Overkill, for one thing, but I suppose that's a consequence of ye olde Midwest. I find it hard to imagine, though, that anyone could ever have seen the love of big, dumb 70s rawk that crept into indie culture in the late 80s as anything other than authentic (i.e., only superficially mocking and ironic). Taking here about Urge Overkill, the "Seattle Sound", Pussy Galore, Halo of Flies, Dinosaur Jr., etc. I honestly don't see all that much difference between Jesus Urge Superstar and Saturation, and neither seems better or more honorable than the other.

I don't know enough about UO to say anything. I remember "Sister Havana" coming out and I remember it being catchy but I didn't feel compelled to explore any further. I guess I am a bit of a geek; I was always more attracted to heart-on-its-sleeve music than cooler-than-thou. For Amerindie/Alternative liked Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Superchunk a lot back then, and never thought I could "hang" with UO or, especially, JSBE.

to me the logical end-goal of 80s Amerindie culture radicalism (ie, anti-major labels, populist/anti-elitist, etc.) was that music would end up being free and created by everybody. There would be no more major label system, no more star system, no more payola, no more distinction between audience and performers. Honestly, this has kind of happened. Whether or not the end result is actually all that great is debatable (I'm of two minds about it) but it seems to me like technology basically realized radical indie cultures' goals - the music industry is pretty much destroyed at this point, there's a bazillion bands, and there are really no barriers to the means of production or distribution.

Shakey Mo OTM

Except only kinda. Miley Cyrus, I mean.

Who was pretty great at the AMAs, but I guess that's another thread.

Except only kinda. Miley Cyrus, I mean.

yeah this stuff is still there, but it seems to occupy an increasingly smaller cultural space - basically the only captive audience the majors have at this point are easily manipulated pre-teen girls with disposable income who don't have the time/inclination/patience/skills to find their entertainment elsewhere.

(see also: High School the Musical)

Maybe teen girls just like sharing their entertainment with one another and with the world at large, but yeah, general agreeance. The problem, sometimes, is that you do get what you want (or, at least, what you said you wanted).

yeah I don't mean to mean to be overly dismissive of current teenpop phenomenons - I don't care about them personally (but then they aren't targeted at me) - clearly they fulfill a fairly deep-rooted need for their particular demographic.

"yeah this stuff is still there, but it seems to occupy an increasingly smaller cultural space"

I think this is def. true. Half of the time there is a thread on chart-topping pop music on this board, I have no idea who it is. Granted, I don't seek this music out, but I don't avoid it, either. If it were twenty years ago, I doubt I would have to do research on who Michael Jackson was, whereas I had to do that for the Jonas Brothers, Daughtry, etc. Granted MJ was a bit more famous but still...

pre-internet chart-topping megastars were more omnipresent because there were fewer media outlets and anything outside of the mainstream actually took a little bit of work/effort/money to find out about. This is no longer the case. It is fairly easy to avoid what doesn't interest you and become wholly absorbed by what does.

Yeah, and maybe one of the reasons that contemporary indie rock is relatively less radical, compared with its recent forebears, is that the battles are simply no longer there to fight. Again, makes me feel a bit silly for ever getting worked up about this stuff in the first place...

I don't think it is silly at all.