Last week I read Petridis’s fashion column without any ill effects. It was about aftershave. I also read Langam’s or Mangam’s or whatever, and came out of it similarly unscathed. Both were entertaining enough. I am looking frorward to reading tomorrow’s offerings.
I also read Langam’s
“Now, if you’re anything like me, you love raping a few children now and then.”
i found his remarks on aftershave unpleasant. i am too indie for any kind of fashion/male grooming writing though. in his article petridis says the metrosexsual is a myth. he says that, in his article about aftershave...
in the guardian
GQ head music critic Alexis Petridish said that?
Both Petridish and Mangan make me pray for NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST IN ONE SECOND
mangan is amusing.
ie, on a student rag mangan would be STAR WRITER, and she is very diverting on g2, but it feels slightly odd to see her frisky humour used so much. i don’t mind her though!
mangan is amusing.
THAT’S WHAT THEY USED TO SAY ABOUT HITLER
ilx0rs tend to be the kind of people (or indeed the exact people) who were involved in student papers. so know where barton-mangan is coming from. but i do wonder what other people make of it, cos it’s *just* like a student paper, only daily, and all year round, and without the excuse of being 19 years old.
Perhaps 19-year-old students are the Grauniad’s target demographic.
thanks to that Five docu about Hitler the other night i learned that he WAS amusing, constantly taking the piss out of Goerring and his other commanding officers.
it’s *just* like a student paper
it really, really, REALLY is exactly like this—a very high-quality one, mind (some of the dross i used to see &c &c), but the tone of...EVERYTHING is just entirely lifted from the student mag ethos.
I never did anything on my student paper. I did, however, write briefly for the Exeter one when I started working here.
i mean that’s not surprising given that most of their writers (two known to me personally) used to write for the student press; BUT you might expect they’d switch up a bit? and most of them do. but not so much with mangan-barton.
xpost
i was all over my student paper.
andrex wasn’t included in hall of residence budgets
lol at the guardian employing the current uk student journalist of the year for less than the average production line worker gets paid.
you lot should be paying the guardian for t’privilege for writing for ‘t!
So far they’ve bought me a headphone amplifier and a new pair of headphones, plus a few indian takeaways.
a new pair of your headphones is probably a c-note at the very least tho.
£9.99 @ Currys Digital
$100, handmade in NYC, no import tax.
i guessed right!
http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/laurabarton/story/0,,1976919,00.html
same shit, different photo
“My Bestest Christmas Ever” by Laura Barton age 11.
it barely makes chronological sense. all the all saints songs she says she hates were released ‘never ever’ which was probably like their third ever single? so she hated them based on simple prejudice but liked lots of old fucking motown records ooh and ‘cannonball’ and ‘babies’ which let’s face it are not titles that will be immediately recognized by her readers.
Yeah, I thought it seemed iffy but I didn’t check the dates. Apparently she hated a bunch of songs they hadn’t released yet. Prescient that.
Summary: “My name’s Laura Barton and I think I’m totally fucking cool. And now I ”get“ popular music as well so I’m better than you—even though everyone else got it before me because their heads are jammed so far up their own arses”
(weren’t several of the other records she mentions “chart songs” as well?)
xpost re chronology, isn’t she just being revisionist about it well after it had had its day when people with less pretensions liked it the first time round?
their heads are jammed so far up their own arses
aren’t, that should be.
It’s like when Mark Radcliffe used to suddenly play Zoom by Fat Larry’s Band in a set full of the Fall and Teenage Fanclub. [...]Or the night England went out of Euro 96, when the local DJ put on Three Lions and all the goths and the riot grrrls and the fey little indie kids danced about together joyously.
it’s like two things i, laura barton, have experienced. (nb: goths, riot grrrls, and ‘fey little indie kids’ — lady knows her zeitgeist.)
‘never ever’ was their SECOND single, so she must have REALLY hated ‘i know where it’s at’ for this article to make a shred of sense; and even then, yes, martha reeves did sell a few records.
Sadly I think it’s just that G2 or whatever it’s called now is basically “I Heart Being a Student in the 90s”.
I also call bullshit on “my grandfather’s greatcoat” (what is this, a Hovis ad?) and her knowing who the Pastels were in 1997.
I really did heart being a student in the 90s, but I’m not getting to be all “I really liked things you wouldn’t expect me to like, woo, me all subversive, love me love me” about it for money. Is that even a *thing* any more, to be unironic in your wuv for pop?
(aye, I lived in *Glasgow* and rarely heard the Pastels played at any indie-studenty nights)
i would do that for money, is the sad part.
but my dates would be tight an’shit.
xpost re chronology, isn’t she just being revisionist about it well after it had had its day when people with less pretensions liked it the first time round?
I didn’t explain that very well. I meant, this mythical night when she listened to the Pastels and Pulp and then the scales fell from her eyes re All Saints, Never Ever had been around for a while and she had thought she hated it along with all the other songs she also hated by them, but hearing it again in a new context and realising that people in neckerchiefs who listened to Belle and Sebastian liked it meant she could throw of her indie shackles and like it too.
xxxpost
Yeah, this is what’s so rofflicious about it: the confessional tone. “I know I like proper music like The Smiths and The Breeders, but would you believe I like (some) silly Pop records too? Now I’ve admitted this, you can feel good about yourself when you sing along to East 17 at your Office Party today.”
Puh-leeeeeeeze.
xpost
But she doesn’t. She says she heard it in 1997, about a month after it had been released and before every other song she mentions.
Actually, I am talking shite because she says it was New Year 1997 and Pure Shores didn’t come out until 2000. She’s just a shit writer.
(xpost, obviously)
Or the night England went out of Euro 96, when the local DJ put on Three Lions and all the goths and the riot grrrls and the fey little indie kids danced about together joyously.
wait, does she mean these people all danced joyously because they all hated football and were glad England were out?
this would make slightly more sense (i.e. slightly more than zero)
(tenner says she means the night England beat Scotland in Euro 96, but she knows fuck all about football so couldn’t grab onto any reference other than “I’m pretty sure England didn’t win the whole thing so they must have got knocked out”)
Or the night Beckham got sent off in Euro 96, when the local DJ put on “Back Home” and all the goths and the teddy boys and the fey little indie kids danced about together joyously.
omg i hadn’t even thought about it that way! this goes two ways:
1) “indie” nites c. june-july 1996: not a great time for the abovementioned subcultures. more of a ‘cast and OCS’ time — iirc — so no great celebration at england going out. scenario not very plausible.
2) “indie nite” c. june-july 1996 that miraculously comprised bang up-to-date belle & seb types or i guess 80s vets plus erm early 90s vets and more 80s vets (she was a student — but no matter) — anyway these guys would not have dug ‘three lions’, but they might well have disliked football etc and wouldn’t have cared that england went out. but dancing to ‘three lions’ to show this? hmmmm. scenario not very plausible
OH GOD I JUST SPEND THREE MINUTES WRITING THAT :O(
I just went out and keyed every BMW in the street.
(contrary to stereotype, large amounts of twee scarf-wearing indie types like football, also Three Lions = Ian Broudie therefore the acceptably indie face of football songs*)
* the first time round, not the 8 zillion reissues and updates when it took over the fucking world
xpost I laughed because I am neither big nor clever.
I just went out and keyed every BMW in the street.
— Fat Lady Wrestler (noodlevagu...), December 22nd, 2006.
i read this as ‘because article was shit’ not ‘because england went out’. bad luck on the conviction btw.
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY FOUND HANGING IN CELL
(dude’s recent photos don’t look that much like me, happily)
I hereby resign from the concept of poppism.
i liked kitty empire’s lady sov review in the observer yesterday.
ha i just skimmed this tedious thread again for no reason whatsoever and the inept myspace stalking of “ilx’s most widely read journalist” is still amusing
Predictably, I agree entirely with that Observer piece.
my god lady sov is bad.
um nick snow patrol are not indie. the piece made no sense.
in fact none of the bands she mentions are indie.
how are snow patrol not indie? what do you mean by ‘indie’? they’re indie to me.
it’s a bit like calling u2 a post-punk band cos they did a record with martin hannett.
xpost
well yes.
“snow patrol are not indie”
eh?
they don’t sound indie, they don’t play indie venues, they don’t sell indie records...
I saw Snow Patrol live in Leeds circa 1998. They were perhaps the most indie thing I have ever seen.
Once an indie band, always an indie band.
nah.
‘once a skiffle band always a skiffle band’
you come up via indie routes = you have indie roots = you are indie in the broad sense of the word (as opposed to pop or dance or hip-hop)
also, wtf are they if not indie? they’re obv treated as a pop group now but by that reasoning everyone of similar stature is pop, regardless of how they sound or where they come from
tell me more about ‘indie roots’, lex.
they are AOR, not so much pop. punk was a myth. indie was a fad.
if only
They used to be on Jeepster and sing songs about polar bears. NONE MORE INDIE. (that version of Snow Patrol bears little resemblence to this current one though)
Indie roots:
Stadium Indie
meanwhile Harris does the required fortnightly ‘no more heroes anymore too much choice today bloody apathetic kids life is too cosy for profound punk statements’ whinny.
it doesn’t feel like such a long time ago that we had the last revival of interest in punk.
soysaucegirl
February 10, 2007 1:24 AM
Wakey, wakey John. The rebellion of rap, being born when Sid Vicious was still alive, was far more internationally influential, creative and sustained than punk. Oh I forget, it was made by BLACK people in the US, so you don’t have a handle on it, right? So therefore you can act like nothing significant has happened since punk?
White folks keep banging on about punk because they can afford to wallow in the past. Black music, by contrast, has been for the past 25 years fiercely competitive and therefore keeps re-inventing itself. Too busy fighting for the present to keep whining about the good ol’ days of 30 years ago.
I do like it when people combine trolling with being right.
but hip hop is dead?
Nas lied to you through song.
I’ve been saying for ages that “indie” is an impotent, redundant and meaningless term. “Indie” in 2007 (and since about 1995, at a guess) has actually meant “rock”. All the bands listed in the Empire piece are Big Rock Bands, no matter their routes. Very few artists start out massive and corporate from the get go, whatever genre they’re in. Not everyone plays pubs and makes lo-fi records, admittedly, but, you know, Dizzee Rascal as analogue to Arctic Monkeys in terms of creation, discovery and reception of music.
That doesn’t mean I disagree with what Empire’s saying though—that bands are in way too much of a rush to go UNIVERSAL these days in terms of sound and appeal, and that perhaps some of them would be better off with more creative rather than commercial ambitions.
If Snow Patrol had “more creative rather than commercial ambitions” they’d still be playing third on the bill to Mull Historical Society and Salako in front of a crowd of 200. Rather than, you know, now sleeping on a mattress stuffed entirely with $1000 and gold bullion.
People were having these discussions about the meaninglessness of the term “indie” in 1992, probably earlier. Plus ca change or something.
“Too busy fighting for the present to keep whining about the good ol’ days of 30 years ago.”
trudat — rappers never dwell on the past. cough.
I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. I’m hoping that, say, the Patrick Wolf record goes mega.
Colonel Poo—true, doubtless, but did so-called “indie bands” in 1992 shift 1.6m units? The term may have been debated for an age but it’s never been quite as brutally abused and meaningless as it is now.
How many copies did Nevermind sell?
I don’t think they were described as indie were they?
Sometimes, yes.
I remember an article in Select called What Is Indie? from about 92/93 that decided they were too rich to be indie, though.
“The Queen Is Dead” must have sold over a mill worldwide. Same as “Bossanova” and the Violent Femmes S/T
the smiths were indie though.
it was probably easier to call nirvana “indie” than snow patrol as well. the game has changed a lot and i suppose punk/alternative signifiers are even easier to come by now; but all the same, nirvana surely had the power to alienate people in a way snow patrol don’t. (obviously snow patrol alienate people, but not in the same way.)
yes (xpost), they were on rought trade. the rules kids: the smiths, erasure, kylie and rick astley = indie. the cure, the pet shop boys, madonna and morrissey = not indie.
no, that’s silly; but the smiths were just more indie than snow patrol. it isn’t simply about record labels, that’s just one possible indicator.
But in the beginning it was! The word was first used to denote type of label then PWL (and others) made everything confusing by being indie but not “indie”. Or so I have been told.
there were indendent record labels before rough trade and whatnot, holmes. it was never just about labels.
“Bands that sound like they ought to be on an independent record label”. i.e. not Coldplay.
yeh but the mythology round independent records changed sometime in the 70s. indie labels meant a certain type of music being released that otherwise might not have been released. so yeh it wasn’t really about labels but it was about labels.
xp
PUT YOUR HANDS UP FOR RIGHT-WING FARMERS—THEY DIG POST-1988 RAP!
in fact none of the bands she mentions are indie.
Arcade Fire not indie?