Indie Music

Sean Nelson wrote an interesting post about the concept (and history) of indie rock:

Sasha Frere-Jones of the self-hyped funk band, Ui, attempts to take to task the apparent “whiteness” of today’s indie rock and understand how it came to be in his New Yorker article, “A Paler Shade of White.” The first sign that things might be a little off is in his analysis of the origins of indie rock: “The indie genre emerged in the early eighties, in the wake of British bands such as the Clash and Public Image Ltd.” Nevermind that The Clash was originally signed to CBS Records, aka Columbia, or that indie isn’t really a genre - It just means all the music associated with being outside of the major labels, which just happens to be most music. Or that his lamentation of the death of rhythm is easily upended by Deerhoof. Or that The Field’s “From Here We Go Sublime” is composed entirely out of The Flamingo’s “I Only Have Eyes for You.” Read it if you want to laugh at some misplaced Sufjan Stevens references (who, by the way, makes about a thousand references to black folk music on his albums), and a conclusion that sees racial equality as the cause of indie segregation.

Source