Okay so it's a Monday night and there are a shit ton of things I could be doing right now for school but I really wanted to write something like this, dammit! This is how we write best I think.
Of course, I have to come back in a way that's appropriate, so I'll once again be *ahem* "borrowing" a topic from Cat. I'll be using some different rhetoric, of course, since I like to try and appear...understanding of both sides. You might recall a post I did waaaaaay back about the lack of "rock stars" in this day and age. Well, this is kind of an update on that.
I've been kind of inclined to get back into music lately. I'm blaming it on my friend Wes, who invites me to be in a band of his once every few months. Once he invites....he's persistent, and I could go on and on about how I really believe in him and the things he's trying to do musically. Anyway, when he called me and asked me to be in his latest project, I asked him what type of music we'd be playing, and he used the one word I'd fear would come out of his mouth. He used it twice in fact. The word was "indie." It was kind of disappointing since I know how Wes likes punk music and bluegrass and anything that sounds good, and I was really up for being into something punky. But alas, when I heard he and his two fellow recruits a few days later, they were indeed, very very indie.
Let me preface this by saying they weren't bad musically. I was pretty impressed by their vocal togetherness and the way they were able to keep the song(s) together with tempo and everything, since personally I'm shit without a drummer. This isn't even really about them as much as it is about ideas and themes and sounds.
Earlier today, I was thinking about what a record might look like if I put one out today. I had a bit of an interview with myself, and I ended up trying really hard to contrast the "record" with indie music. I figured my record would be an amalgamation of punk, rock, alternative...whatever I felt like. It'd be about stupid shit like Facebook friends and Youtube comments and aviator glasses. It'd be raw, imperfect, and full of dirty, scratchy guitar. I'd want it to have sounds that range from Foo Fighters style hard rock to the quirky raps of Gorillaz. Apparently though, the last thing I would want it to be is indie.
The first word that came to mind was "sterile." Indie music is so so clean. The guitars are always clean, if they ever stray from being acoustic. There's not a hair out of place. The vocals try their damndest to avoid emotion. It's not dirty or punchy or action-packed. In a way though, that's brilliant. Indie is a good indicator of where we are as a race. Right now, we're a bunch of germaphobes, afraid to let our kids play outside since even the fricking sun can give them cancer, let alone the millions of invisble organisms that are floating around that we can't even see. Our food and water has to be specially processed to be considered safe. The five second rule no longer applies. On a human level, showing emotion is a sign of weakness. Indie music very much represents us right now. The emphasis here is on intelligence and cleverness, rather than the raw emotions and feelings that other music channels.
It's interesting because when you look at popular music, all of them are about dancing. Rap is so huge today because that's the thing everyone shakes their ass to. It's why dubstep and techno are so popular. What the hell was disco? Something to dance to. How about jazz and swing? How about trumpets and drums? Shit, way way back when, music was used for two things: celebrations and marches. Even rock was part of a huge dance craze...I mean, that's kind of what the Beatles were before they'd been famous long enough to get bored with the same old song and dance. See, even that cliche puts song and dance together. The curious thing is that you really can't dance to indie music...it's slow and doesn't really have a beat.
Maybe we as a people don't have a beat, and that's why indie is creeping up on us as a dominant genre. Maybe we are shedding our emotions and dirty minds for cooler heads. I mean, think about it. Indie musicians are all about their own integrity and talent. It's supposed to be them, an acoustic guitar and the truth....and maybe a guy with a beard playing bass, but that's it...and maybe a violin....and maybe a female singer with short hair...but that's it. Oh and maybe a flutist. But that's all. None of this computery, autotune bullshit...just my Mac for recording. And then what you end up with is droning vocals that barely go outside of a certain range because that'd be too risky. Trying to avoid computers, technology, and electronics ultimately and ironically makes the resulting music sound...very robotic.
That's part of the gimmick and intelligence of it though. Think about it. There's probably an indie song out there that's about genocide in Africa, and the whole thing is done in typical indie style: acoustic guitar, keys, bearded bassman, and maybe some brushes on a drum. It's sung in monotone. Dissonant? Cleverly. Why? Because the song is supposed to represent how lackadaisical the world is about the topic. The way the vocals are sung are indicative of public opinion...it expresses that we don't really care about what's going on. That's true, and it's very clever, yes. But you're not going to get people to a) think about it long enough to understand that THAT's what you were trying to say, and b) do a damn thing about it without explicitly including the genocide hotline in your lyrics somewhere.
See, music is used very much like therapy today. Something like the Foo Fighters is basically catharsis: you yell, you scream, you throw yourself around and air-drum until you almost barf and then you kind of crash afterwards. Science says it doesn't solve problems, but it sure feels pretty fucking good. Indie, on the other hand, is kind of like real therapy: it's this long, painful, sensical solution to problems that you probably should use to help you get better in the long run. It also costs 100 bucks an hour. Here's the thing with music: it ain't therapy and I'm not paying 100 bucks for a CD. I listen to music because it FEELS good and it makes me kind of want to DO something, not because I'm looking for insight or like...permanent solutions to my problems...this is a terrible metaphor.
The fact of the matter is that indie doesn't really have the things that I personally want in music. It doesn't really have what the general population wants either, since I can't really shake my ass to it. I guess maybe some people do want to spend a little time interpreting the symbolism behind lyrics about someone getting up and shaving their beard or whatever. It sure won't be the bassist doing the shaving however. One of the things I can't fathom is how this translates into a fun live experience. I mean, you do get a whole lot, and I mean a WHOLE LOT of "Ooooh"s in the choruses of an indie song since that seems to be the only word they can fill a big vocal with. I mean, that Gotye song, "Somebody that I used to Know" or whatever? I can't understand why someone would feel the need to hear that one live since there's so little going on in it and it's not really exciting. Are you challenging yourself to see if you can stay on your feet while rather unexciting music plays for an hour? I respect indie in the ways that I've mentioned, but I really can't place what puts an indie band show on par with a show from a few decades ago...yknow, which is apparently the last time before indie that music had any integrity.
Okay so back to the rock thing. I always get nervous about rock dying, largely due to people confusing it with indie. Look at this year's Grammys. What do Foo Fighters and Mumford and Sons have in common? They were both nominated for best rock album of the year...in the same category...implying they're similar. How does that work? Especially since Chris Rock or Kanye West or whatever was probably nominated in TWO DIFFERENT categories for the SAME record. Seriously indie...if you're going to be indie, go be indie. Leave the rocking to people who aren't afraid of the distortion switch.
I really, really want to see another hard rocking band come along...kind of like the successor to Foo Fighters. If I were to make an album right now, it'd be a compendium of things that are all very true and human...stupid shit that we're all too proud to admit we care about. I really want to write an old-school MCR song about a friend deleting their facebook like it's some big tragedy. I want to write a song about how people frigging text other people whilst stiting right next to you. I won't pretend to give a shit about the big things. Instead, I'll write a song about how Pop Tarts are the greatest invention ever for a starving college student, and I'll do it in the style of someone who's climbing Mount Everest with the aid of a jetpack.
We need a good band who can rock out hard in the name of how self-absorbed and silly we are.
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