Indie Rock: our little baby's growing up...

Though they have been at times rhetorically numbing and ridiculously semantic, the recent go-rounds about black influence on indie rock have been compelling to me. They're not particularly exciting but at the very least curious. I'm just glad that conversations like this are happening.

Briefly, it started with Sasha Frere-Jones' October article in the New Yorker, A Paler Shade of White. Then Carl Wilson, of The Globe and Mail, replied with an article in Slate called The Trouble With Indie Rock. Then a slew of opinions came, including this from Frank Kogan of the Las Vegas Weekly, and this from the lovable dork of the New York Times Op-Ed crew, David Brooks along with countless bloggers. There was also an article this week from the LA Times that I refuse to link for it is profound in its missing of the point. There is some very interesting and personal stuff on Frere-Jones and Wilson's respective blogs, including a great raw diatribe by Wilson called "Indie, Class, and the Death of Bohemia," and SFJ's reply to a letter he got from Will Butler of Arcade Fire. The gist of the argument is Has black influence disappeared from indie rock? Is it race? Class? Does anyone care? We've heard from cultural commentators and music critics from most of the major bastions of indie rock, New York, Toronto, LA. But I'd like to hear something from Portland, indie's veritable home.

At the risk of adding to the din, I'll add a couple cents. My leanings are mostly toward Carl Wilson's, but, briefly, the biggest fault I find with the arguments themselves is that it is sometimes neglected that "indie rock" is no longer a symbol of a state-of-mind (or rather a lo-fi, low-energy kind-of-counter-culture) but is actually the moniker of a specific musical genre with its own genesis, evolution, influences, aesthetic, thematic elements, range of sound, audience, etc. It is a particularly malleable genre, but specific nonetheless. Perhaps it is that a good deal of the artists in the genre are expressing certain things at the moment that take on forms that don't resemble Pop as we know it. Other influences like classical or chamber music (which give the impetus for such projects as The Wordless Music Series, a great thing) or minimalism may be more appropriate sensibility to the subject matter, emotional texture, whatnot.

I'm excited that discussions like this are going on, and I commend Frere-Jones for being forward with his bold, albeit flawed, observations. It sparked an intellectual fire that I think needed to be lit. And while I find these conversations interesting, my real question is this: Why the fuck is it so hard for indie rock fans to dance? In 9 out of 10 shows I go to, it is mildly infuriating.

mark.

oh my goodness, oh your goodness

Here we will be exploring all things Good. Good--not in the sense of agreeable or passable or satisfactory-- but "of goodness." We are interested in looking at things, usually works of art, that are created out of genuine goodness. This is not to say that all worthwhile work is born from this place. Indeed, a lot of great work, probably the most impactful, has come from places very different. We're not going to talk about those. We're talking about Good and the many forms it takes and what it spawns. This is also not to say that there is an objective Good. Oh my, no.

We will also focus on things that happen in the world that we find particularly inspiring in the way that they operate against or without regard to pre-existing models of operation. As we look around, we notice at an alarming rate well-established models starting to fail. From the record industry to non-profit arts to the two-party political structure, our conventional wisdom is disappearing. This is exciting. We want to explore things that go by their own models and use the inspiration we get from them.

There will also be an emphasis on music here. It seems as though deep listening to music and thoughtful criticism have become devalued in our culture. So we are going to explore music in hopes of engaging with those who see it as a serious art form and who not only study the music intently, but also look at it in the context of the culture at large. We may even give some thoughtful criticisms of our own. Since we are all studied art critics. For real.

So these things plus whatever else we want will be the focus here. Yes, we are interested in presenting thoughts and ideas, but we are much more excited about the discourse to hopefully come. Interested?

One last thing.
A note on operations: Because blogs are fundamentally meaningless and can have no actual, tangible effect on the world, we will make it a point to talk about the things we post before we post them, to put them into the universe in some other way than the blogosphere and to encourage connection beyond it. This will give us a chance to refine our thoughts, as well as make the posts recollections of things that have already happened, as opposed to fooling ourselves into thinking that posting on a blog is in some way beneficial to humanity.