what is true indie music?

lufties

I noticed that every now and then these bands come along and everyone and their dog raves about them for 5 minutes, then they become unfashionable again. My mate is into 'indie' music, which seems to be arcade fire, kings of leon, the white stripes.

Sometimes I think indie music is what we are told is edgy at a particular time and is supposed to be hip to listen to. As an avid fan of house/techno/progressive, I can tell the difference in fad djs and true quality. Indie music to me seems a bit wishy washy and more about style. Perhaps I just don't get it :cool:

Insect Overlord

Arcade Fire have made 4 amazing albums. 7 years is a loooooong "5 minutes".

Links234

I'm a metal fan and those bands don't appeal to me so I just don't worry about them, let people listen to what they like without judgment and I'll listen to what I like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ3kVtd2CCA

Sky King

Indie = independent record label I always thought....?

Birneybau

You wouldn't like it...

It was originally, as said above, bands signed to small, independent labels but when, for some reason, the likes of the Kooks, Razorlight and Keane were bestowed with the name it stopped making sense and became a convenient shorthand for bands with guitars, to be used by middle class, middle aged journalists.

livinsane

I would have thought Indie was originally short for Independant, i.e not released on a major label. The word now seems to describe guitar-lead, non offensive catchy tunes by skinny bands.

Tokyo

True Indy Music...

lufties

livinsane wrote: »

I would have thought Indie was originally short for Independant, i.e not released on a major label. The word now seems to describe guitar-lead, non offensive catchy tunes by skinny bands.

Pop music for snobs

lufties

Birneybau wrote: »

You wouldn't like it...

It was originally, as said above, bands signed to small, independent labels but when, for some reason, the likes of the Kooks, Razorlight and Keane were bestowed with the name it stopped making sense and became a convenient shorthand for bands with guitars, to be used by middle class, middle aged journalists.

Suede, elastica and menswear were thought of as indie back in the 90s..jesus wept.

The kooks, them little ****ers I hate em.

Sky King

lufties wrote: »

Suede, elastica and menswear were thought of as indie back in the 90s..jesus wept.

Are they clothes or bands?

Birneybau

Sky King wrote: »

Are they clothes or bands?

Don't forget Felt and Denim.

SilverScreen

lufties wrote: »

I noticed that every now and then these bands come along and everyone and their dog raves about them for 5 minutes, then they become unfashionable again. My mate is into 'indie' music, which seems to be arcade fire, kings of leon, the white stripes.

Sometimes I think indie music is what we are told is edgy at a particular time and is supposed to be hip to listen to. As an avid fan of house/techno/progressive, I can tell the difference in fad djs and true quality. Indie music to me seems a bit wishy washy and more about style. Perhaps I just don't get it :cool:

With any genre it's easier to sort the fads from the good stuff through retrospect. When I look back on indie music from the 00's I tend to think bands like Broken Social Scene, The Microphones, The Shins etc rather than the bands that were hyped for about 5 minutes and faded away like The Kooks and The Paddingtons.

Indie is a vague umbrella term for a multitude of musical styles and not all of them guitar-based. It no longer really refers to independent music.

Ruu

Well lookie here, we have a Music forum. Moved.

lufties

SilverScreen wrote: »

With any genre it's easier to sort the fads from the good stuff through retrospect. When I look back on indie music from the 00's I tend to think bands like Broken Social Scene, The Microphones, The Shins etc rather than the bands that were hyped for about 5 minutes and faded away like The Kooks and The Paddingtons.

Indie is a vague umbrella term for a multitude of musical styles and not all of them guitar-based. It no longer really refers to independent music.

Exactly, never heard of the bands you mentioned which is sad indeed. I might even like the genre if I did..it annoys me when people go around saying that the libertines ars their favorite band because it sipposedly makes a statement about them being cool and edgy

darkdubh

Indie was originally applied to bands like the Smiths,Orange Juice,Jesus & Mary Chain etc in the 80s.Always a bit vague but it did derive from Independent as most of those bands were on then Independent labels(Rough Trade etc).Its become a kind of meaningless term since around the mid 90s really though when you have it applied to major label acts.

lufties

darkdubh wrote: »

Indie was originally applied to bands like the Smiths,Orange Juice,Jesus & Mary Chain etc in the 80s.Always a bit vague but it did derive from Independent as most of those bands were on then Independent labels(Rough Trade etc).Its become a kind of meaningless term since around the mid 90s really though when you have it applied to major label acts.

Kinda like david guetta comes under the umbrella of house music, whereas in the 90s it was only exclusive mainly to talented artists like sasha and digweed.

Irish Guitarist

It originally meant music that was on an independent label. Another related term is C86 after an NME cassette that featured bands signed to independent labels.

For a while it seemed to mean Beatles/Byrds-inspired jangly guitar or 'shoegaze' music (so called because the bands featured a guitar player who used a lot of effects pedals and was constantly looking down at his feet).

I'd say Oasis was the band that once and for all made the term 'indie' meaningless. They were supposedly on Creation Records, which was originally an independent label, but had been bought by Sony before signing Oasis.

Declan A Walsh

When the term "Indie" was first used, alternative artistes, i.e. non-mainstream acts, were on independent record labels. Since then, some have crossed over to major record labels. The label "indie' tended to be a convenient way of describing edgy alternative rock-oriented acts.

To most people today, "indie" represents a style of music that is an alternative to the more regular mainstream stuff and usually rock-oriented but not always. So does the record label matter anymore as regards the definition? I don't think so. It's more about an attitude to music. I used to think of "Indie" as alternative rock music that was a follow-on from the punk and new wave scene and attitude. I would have thought of The Cure, New Order and The Smiths, for example. Things have moved on a lot since then, so, for example, grunge would figure in the "Indie" category - edgy and an alternative from the norm.

lufties

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

When the term "Indie" was first used, alternative artistes, i.e. non-mainstream acts, were on independent record labels. Since then, some have crossed over to major record labels. The label "indie' tended to be a convenient way of describing edgy alternative rock-oriented acts.

To most people today, "indie" represents a style of music that is an alternative to the more regular mainstream stuff and usually rock-oriented but not always. So does the record label matter anymore as regards the definition? I don't think so. It's more about an attitude to music. I used to think of "Indie" as alternative rock music that was a follow-on from the punk and new wave scene and attitude. I would have thought of The Cure, New Order and The Smiths, for example. Things have moved on a lot since then, so, for example, grunge would figure in the "Indie" category - edgy and an alternative from the norm.

The kooks and the blizzards were regarded as indie..thats why I perceive it as wannabe edgy music. style and no substance, a bit like whelans on a saturday night.;)

porsche959

lufties wrote: »

Suede, elastica and menswear were thought of as indie back in the 90s..jesus wept.

I wouldn't put Suede and Menswear in the same universe. Suede were one of the most interesting bands to come out of the UK in the 1990s, Menswear were basically a record industry publicity stunt, a bit like Sigue Sigue Sputnik in the 1980s. Elastica, well, they had a promising beginning with a few decent singles but were quickly destroyed by heroin.

noby

The thing about indie music in it's true, original, sense is that it wasn't tied to a certain genre or any notion of a certain quality.

Where indie had a true meaning was in the indie charts. It was literally just to give the smaller labels, and smaller bands some recognition on the pages of NME etc.
This all started to fall apart in the early 90s when debates started about which bands were truly indie. You had the likes of Nirvana, signed to Geffen (considered an indie label) top of the indie charts, while at the same time all over MTV etc. - so the argument was they no longer *needed* the recognition the indie charts afforded them. Around the same time I can remember the likes of Peter Andre topping the indie charts because the big record labels were creating indie labels for certain acts. That's not to mention a lot of the indie labels, like Creation, were now owned by the majors. So about this time the indie charts became pointless.
It just so happened that some of the stuff signed to indie labels at the time was slightly edgy alternative guitar based music, so the indie term kind of stuck (as with the C86 stuff as mentioned earlier). Of course the actual indie charts at the time were a lot more diverse, with everything from early house music to dub appearing alongside the jangly guitar groups.

EDIT: AS anexample, here are the no.1 indie singles for 1989 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_Indie_Chart_number-one_singles_of_the_1980s#1989
Quite diverse.

SilverScreen

'Pump Up the Volume' by M/A/A/R/S was the first ever indie to have a UK number 1 I believe, and that was an acid-house track.

You'll actually have your mind blown by what can technically qualify as indie. Jive Records was a label whose roster included pop artists like Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Steps and NSYNC. It was an independent label until 2002. So by the true, original definition those artists were essentially 'indie'.

Muahahaha

Does anyone know is the term 'indie' when referring to an independent label a British or an American coined slang? I'm thinking that the whole Madchester scene with the likes of Joy Division, New Order, etc would have fallen under the indie label because of Factory Records, a somewhat ramshackle record company that somehow produced leading acts. Prior to Nirvana was there many American acts who were signed to indie record labels and then made it big? Or is a small fish independent record label hitting the big time with an act more likely to be a British phenomenon ?

noby

It was a British thing alright.
The American equivalent would have been college radio. That's where the likes of REM would have made their name before going massive.

bodhrandude

A good pointer towards what was indie back in the 1980s anyway would have been the John Peel show and to a certain extent the Andy Kershaw show on BBC radio, labels such as Alternative Tentacles which originally housed bands like the Butthole Surfers and the Dead Kennedys, 4AD label which sprung the likes of the Cocteau Twins with their jangly ambient vibes and a mad assortment of stuff, of course like everyone else is saying that sort of blurred in the mid 1990s. I suppose indie came out of punk and new wave, The Ruts, The Jam, the Undertones and the like were edgy three chord music of its time, but now its all popular. I suppose indie nowadays is considered as something not involved with X Factor or Britain's got Talentless, in dance music Aphex Twin, psi trance, reggae to an extent, James Holden would be considered indie. Fcuk I'm gonna stop here, too much thinking involved.

Edit: Having thought a bit more about it I think a better term is alternative pop or rock or even niche. With niche though that can fall under jazz, traditional and what not, Arcade Fire I suppose would be considered mainstream now after headlining the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, but they are not sh1t mainstream and still have alternative roots to their music. With Aphex Twin he could come under niche electronica although he did have moderate chart success, Windowlicker being the most commercial of his singles, but obviously he is not everyone's cup of tea, he does have a huge cult following that can guarantee a packed 10,000 capacity marquee at a music festival, that applies to a lot of bands and electronic musicians that play festivals, they might not have mainstream success but have succeeded in pushing their albums more than singles and can fill out a stage at a festival.

nlgbbbblth

I'm old enough to remember the PWL releases hitting #1 in the indie charts. That was good.

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s Hot Press used to publish a top 10 indie chart every second issue.

They basically went to Comet or Freebird and asked them what were their top selling albums for the last fortnight.

You had a mix of major label and independent stuff. I remember The Wedding Present being on RCA and featuring.

Birneybau

Muahahaha wrote: »

Does anyone know is the term 'indie' when referring to an independent label a British or an American coined slang? I'm thinking that the whole Madchester scene with the likes of Joy Division, New Order, etc would have fallen under the indie label because of Factory Records, a somewhat ramshackle record company that somehow produced leading acts. Prior to Nirvana was there many American acts who were signed to indie record labels and then made it big? Or is a small fish independent record label hitting the big time with an act more likely to be a British phenomenon ?

Wouldn't exactly call Joy Divison 'Madchester'