Indie Vs. Mainstream

[Guest Kinetic]

That's true, but any conversation like this has to take place in a cultural vacuum. And anything with classical composers is moot, because there was no means by which to record sound at that point, so greedy multibillion dollar corporations were not as of yet charging upwards of $19 for shitty albums.

[Guest Kinetic]

That's if you want to listen to artsy farsty bullshit to begin with.

There are a lot of bands making music without the pretense of art on independent labels. Indie rock has become a catch-all phrase to descibe a certain type of music, but there are all different sorts of music under that umbrella.

[Guest J*ingus]

No, instead greedy theater owners and music patrons were charging ridiculously high prices for seats at a performance, no matter what the quality of the music happened to be. Nothing ever really changes.

[Guest Incandenza]

You guys know where indie people get the most shit from? Other indie people. There's a ridiculous amount of petty bickering amongst fans of the all-encompassing term that is "indie." I'm fairly certain the same thing occurs within the metal and rap fields, too.

[Guest Kinetic]

Nor will it ever. But there's something a lot more sinister about megacorporations basically dictating to people what they're going to be allowed to listen to. And that's more or less what happens in mainstream music. It's fascist.

[Guest Kinetic]

You guys know where indie people get the most shit from? Other indie people. There's a ridiculous amount of petty bickering amongst fans of the all-encompassing term that is "indie." I'm fairly certain the same thing occurs within the metal and rap fields, too.

I've never understood why. It's a term with a concrete, non-negotiable definition. If something is released on an independent label, then it's indie. If it's released on a major label, it's not. Stylistic things don't even come into play.

[Guest Incandenza]

The bickering I was refering to was more of the "all indie sucks, except for indie pop and noise rock" variety, the kind of which you'll see in places like the Pitchfork board.

[Guest J*ingus]

It's not much different than the WWE's monopoly of wrestling, actually. They pretty much dictate what kind of wrestling that 90% of wrestling fans see. Then you've got the indies, who often times do it out of love instead of money, but that can have its negatives too (let's face it, without proper mixing & recording gear, some garage bands sound so rough & unpolished that it's almost impossible to get into their stuff).

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Very few Techno folk are on major labels either, and intra-genre bickering is constant. I'm a huge Trance, Progressive, and House advocate, and DETEST Drum and Bass, Jungle, and Hardcore.

[Guest Incandenza]

Shitty production isn't the only problem. Far too many bands feel that actually not knowing how play your instruments shouldn't be a deterrent from making an album. They all saw Pavement--a band that made sloppiness into art--and thought they could do it, too.

[Guest Kinetic]

I'll readily admit to that. And that's where the conflict comes in. Signing to a major label means better production values and vastly superior distribution, but you could potentially compromise your vision and end up like, say, Husker Du: alienating your existing audience by signing to a major and streamlining your sound, but still being too peculiar to find a new audience in the mainstream.

[Guest J*ingus]

There are fairly major artists who don't compromise. This might be a bad example, but I bet that no record company has told Michael Jackson how to make his music in decades. Alanis Morisette seems to do whatever the hell she wants to. Eric Clapton just keeps quietly chugging along, being the little guitarist who could. Half the rappers out there would beat the shit out of any micro-managing executive not named Suge Knight. Second-tier artists like Tom Waits and Tori Amos have kept true to themselves while still making a decent amount of cash. There is commercial music out there which was made without the businessmen interfering in the creative process.

[Guest Kinetic]

Not all artists are in positions of power like Michael Jackson, Alanis Morrisette, or Eric Clapton, though. Tom Waits and Tori Amos are one of the token arsty bands on every major label that I referred to earlier. But it just doesn't make any sense that certain bands are allowed to release album after album of uncompromising material, and yet Reprise suddenly targets Wilco and says "No, you can't release this album. It's uncommercial." Things like that make me wonder just how often the business of marketing music gets in the way of making it. There's definitely a direct correlation between the point at which almost every great band of the 80s signed to a major and when they started to go downhill.

[Guest Incandenza]

But it just doesn't make any sense that certain bands are allowed to release album after album of uncompromising material, and yet Reprise suddenly targets Wilco and says "No, you can't release this album. It's uncommercial." Things like that make me wonder just how often the business of marketing music gets in the way of making it.

Well, as the movie I Am Trying to Break Your Heart shows, the day Wilco turned in the completed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to Reprise, a new boss came into power. The old guy had been a staunch defender of Wilco, and, if they had turned in the album one week earlier, none of that would have ever happened. Still, your point stands.

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Mainstream music is a mixed bag, as is the independent scene. Listen to what you dig. Don't like Slayer? Then go listen to your Dave Matthews, or whatever it is you listen to.

 

I understand, and actually agree, with the heart of your argument, y2jailbait, that indie fans throw too much shit at mainstream artists (that is, at least, how I see your side of the discussion), but when the mainstream is heavily populated by acts that are more style over substance (*NSync, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park), it becomes easier and easier for holier-than-thou indies to say that their scene is better than the mainstream.

[Guest y2jailbait]

Thank you for having an open mind. Thats all i wanted with this topic.

[Guest nl5xsk1]

Incandenza, there's just something very right about someone with a Songs About Fucking pic in their sig talking in an Indy-vs.-Mainstream thread.

 

Steve Albini rules all.

[Guest Incandenza]

Steve Albini isn't quite the indie elitist that the rock press makes him out to be. He simply believes that trying to appeal to the mainstream will involve a lot of artistic compromises--a point which has already been covered in this thread--and, economically speaking, it isn't necessarily a smart move to sign to a major label. Just because some label will get your record into more stores doesn't mean that there are going to be more people to buy it, and you're still gonna have to contend with the label bosses who won't be happy that you aren't turning a profit.

 

Outside of that, Albini doesn't care about labels, which is why he's produced bands like Nirvana and Bush, in addition to numerous acts that are lucky if they sell more than a couple thousand records.

[Guest nl5xsk1]

I don't mean to imply that Albini is the epitome of Indy or anything ...

 

basically I meant that Songs about Fucking is one of the albums that got me through high school, and I went to school at a time when bands that were definitely NOT alternative/indy/original were considered as such. One of the first times that I ever caught shit just for a Tshirt was due to a "Big Black Tools" shirt that I wore to school. (From Chicago's Finest Forges ... Power When You Need It)

 

I still feel like the Dischord/SST/Alternative Tentacles/Taang! guys did a good job of staying true to the indy scene. Some better than others, obviously.

[Guest Incandenza]

I know you weren't implying it, but he actually belongs in a thread like this, even if only a couple of people have heard of him. He is like indie personified.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

You guys know where indie people get the most shit from? Other indie people. There's a ridiculous amount of petty bickering amongst fans of the all-encompassing term that is "indie." I'm fairly certain the same thing occurs within the metal and rap fields, too.

Oh lord..bickering metalheads...

 

The weird thing is, Metal bands ALWAYS, as a rule, end up doing the bigger shows with a bunch of Hardcore bands, and shit can get stupid.

 

Not to mention bitching between Grind weirdos and Black Metal followers. This asswipe I used to know had a black metal band, which is the kiss of death in America in terms of getting a fanbase, and he refused to listen to an album that had more than three groove breakdowns on the thing. For the record, his band is awful. Pseudo-classical riffs abound, and it ends up sounding less like black metal and more like a really bad Metallica-infulenced suckfest.