Spector are to indie what Stewart Lee is to stand-up
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/24/indie-music-back-to-2007
What a hopeless, hopeless article. What's happened is someone's running an indie anthems clubnight in Dalston and Hard To Explain and The Rat are proving more popular than, say, the Vaccines. What's not happened, yet has ended up as the centrepoint of the piece, is 2003 has been mythologised by hipsters, going entirely on where it is. The fact the night is called I Wanna Be Adored, like some makeweight student union pound-a-pint night, is a clue otherwise. GUARDIAN, RUN AN ADVERT ON THAT PAGE INSTEAD.
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It's an example of the narrow focus of the British media
'Here's something that happening in a club at the end of my road in East London so therefore must be a hugely significant cultural moment of significance to the whole country'
The same phenomena is an entire explanation for whatever career the odious Spector might have. I dread to think how insulted Stewart Lee is by that comparison.
How many pages of broadsheet newspapers are given over to discussing the popular tunes at a single club night in (say) Bradford or Bristol?
Also, doesn't the whole article just boil down to:
"'Hard to Explain' and 'The Rat' are really good and really popular". Would the Guardian pay me to write something that insightful?
What an amazingly pointless article indeed.
I'm not even sure what we're supposed to be discussing.
haha what a strange article
I wonder if it's true though, about London hipsters semi-ironically loving 'indie anthems' from the last decade. It seems pretty unlikely, but if so, I don't really get the tone of the article- surely it's GOOD news for new bands, as it signals the beginning of a revived interest in indie bands? Most bands these days are pretty drearily non-committal; songs by the Vaccines or Yuck are hardly going to match Bandages or Apply Some Pressure in an indie disco setting.
There used to be a semi-ironic noughties clubnight in Newcastle called 'Can't Stand It Now', I wonder if the Guardian would like to cover that?
Broadsheet newspapers have never published an interesting piece of writing about music.
And they never will.
I know that you are exaggerating for comic effect
But there is good writing on music in broadsheets.
That piece comes from the Guardian's Saturday 'Guide' which has always been by far the most irritating part of the paper.
I used to really like Laura Barton's column in the Friday review. Shame it's finished.
I loved 'Hail, Hail Rock 'N' Roll' too
In fact I think I started a Laura Barton appreciation page on Facebook a few years back. At some point the writing seemed to become kind of self-parodic to me though... You could have devised a HHRNR piece generator quite easily.
I know what you mean.
She writes beautifully and managed to capture the sheer joy of those moments when you fall in love with a piece of music better than anyone. She did start to repeat herself though.
Any time she wants to come round my house and talk about Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver over a candlelit dinner she will be very welcome though.
Can't stand Laura Barton
pretentious bullshit guardian wankery about nothing. She is the human embodiment of the Stool Pigeon's Achingly Beautiful section
I like the inference that tabloids, by contrast
print regularly enlightening articles on music
Please, enlighten me
Tabloids are transparent.
They don't pretend to do, or be, anything they're not.
i.e. the inference was entirely yours
The guardian at its worst
Some of the assumptions here are spectacular. If someone IRL held the same opinions as this article then they'd just be an irreparable gimp. The idea that theres this group of people who've been beamed from the future to guide us into better, more culturuly valid experiences. That the events of this one night in one area of London holds some epochal connotations for the rest of us plebs , that we can but attempt to replicate their dazzling taste. That this is somehow given credence by a national broadsheet - and it's about some fucking people listening to maximo park? Eh? Wtf? They might As well be writin about me sitting here scratching my balls whilst listening to Roger Troutman if they're gonna write about that
i think someone had a deadline, and no inspiration
its the only possible explanation.
:(
I think I just heard the sound of Stewart Lee shooting himself in the face.
That must be the worst comparison ever.
Anyone who sees the intellectual rigour, originality and courage that Stewart Lee brings to comedy and thinks 'Hey, that's a bit like Spector!' should never be allowed to write again (except maybe with crayons)
just someone writing a puff piece about his mate's clubnight, surely
Which would be ok in a student newspaper
but is a bit shit in a national broadsheet.
indeed
but attempting to analyse it any further seems redundant
There probably is a limit to what you can say about it.
Fair point.
Nah. This is DiS.
There's scope for at least 300 posts.
But only if we can somehow get the topic round to which of Radiohead's albums is best
Hmm. A couple of points.
First, I don't see why there's anything strange with an indie club playing these songs. They're all pretty much staples, and have been since they were released. Focussing on them is just hugely selective - I'm sure a mass of new stuff is played as well, and a bunch of older stuff.
Second, even if there is some emphasis on these songs, that's not so surprising. People who fapped off about these songs when they were 16-18, in their salad days at school and university, are now in their mid-twenties, running clubnights (and writing shit for the culture pages of the Guardian) and are going to have a natural fondness for this music. I think Maximo Park are great. I'm cool with that. We have threads on here all the time about shit which hasn't been cool for a decade (nu-metal, pop punk). It's just what people do, innit.
But I also think
2003 was probably the last time some mid twenties hipsters last enjoyed something without wondering how relevant it was. So theyre bound to love it
Was coming on here to flag this up
(Thanks for stealing my thread thunder!) Nostalgia just seems to be the only booming enterprise at the moment - maybe it's something that happens in economic down-turns, looking back at "better" times or something - but to be attempting to mythologise music from 5 years ago is absurd. It's the equivalent of getting sentimental about your full-english from that morning as you sit down to lunch.
yawn
it's not really nostalgia, is it? As hip_young_gunslinger says, it's nothing strange. There aren't many of these type of songs being released anymore, so clubs still play the tracks from five years ago. In 2002, I'm sure loads of people were still dancing to Common People without actively wishing it was still 1995.
Also, the whole "it's something that happens in economic down-turns, looking back at "better" times" is a massive cliché which I'm sick of hearing (and you nicked it pretty much word for word from a pointless broadsheet article about bands reforming I remember reading a while back)
Never read that article
Was just an admittedly rather lazy thought. My issue isn't with the club night - there's hundreds just like it and I love dancing about to Date With the Night as much as anyone. The issue is more with the article, which is taking the run of the mill indie night and attempting to spin it as though it's some celebration of a by-gone era, which seems a bit bizarre seeing as most of these bands are still going.
What about the 1980's and early 90's when there was recession.
That was a great time for music in terms of innovation.
Agreed
And there's great stuff being produced now. My issue isn't with the music that's being produced, it's that there's a tendency at the moment to mythologise and eulogise everything that's gone before - and doing that about music that's not even a decade old seems quite absurd.
2003 was REALLY fucking boring
The Darkness, The Thrills and the White Stripes. 2004 was when things got interesting (or at least, interesting from the point of view of a 14 year old boy)
to be fair
most indie club nights around the country never stopped playing that shite.
exactly
this shit just gets added to the indie club repertoire.. some shit Cure single followed by I Wanna Be Adored followed by Live Forever followed by Last Nite followed by We Are Your Friends. Horrific.
^ this. even in Germany ffs.
shocked and appalled of walsall
i have played those songs when I dj. why have i never had a feature written about me?
And somehow, astonishingly, Battle will still fail to make it, so I don't care.
oh god, just realised he's talking about Battle without the S
as in, that horrific indie band with excruciating lyrics from 2000 and whatever. Remember first reading about them in some NME article focusing on bands that sounded like Joy Division (along with Editors, Apartment and some other band). Played a gig with them supporting Kubichek! in 2007. The singer was a twat from what I remember.
The other band was probably The Departure
http://youtu.be/iMwcWGpjGoE
I was thinking about the Departure just the other day!
and not in a fond way. I remember seeing them at Middlesbrough Music Live, 2005, sandwiched between We Are Scientists and Editors. They had this really embarrassing short, stout, bearded guitarist who kept going down onto his knees and jumping in front of the singer and stuff. Even worse than Battle.
I saw them in at the Global Cafe in the Student Union in Newcastle.
They also did a tour with the Killers and DFA1979...
Did anyone ever read this piece about how gay pop 'lost its edge'
ok some of the example of it's supposed gay edge in the first place are interesting, but after that just turns into the biggest load of bizarre, nonsensical assumptions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/28/how-pop-lost-gay-edge
Tuesday 28 February 2012
>"Nicky Wire..."
And, as the second comment points out, it's nothing more than an advert for the journo's evening of chin-stroking.
As I was saying, broadsheet newspapers have never ... etc.
But to get back to your topic:
http://thequietus.com/articles/06921-electroclash-fischerspooner
has more to say about the influence of sex/sexuality/gender/campness on music, imo.
Can someone please confirm that the following lines do actually appear in the lead para, and I'm not being trolled:
-"If you've been taking notes on 2012 you might expect them to be listening to intelligent house, revivalist jungle or some other strain of dance music without choruses. As it turns out, everyone is losing their shit to Maxïmo Park".
?