Sara definitely called me on my “harsh stereotype of indie rock”. I agree. It was a little off the wall but I attribute it to the Monday morning talking. Really, I enjoy indie rock and it should not receive such a blatant accusation as I have given them. I retract that statement.
But I hate, hate, hate the label of indie rock. As Sara pointed out in her comment, the only distinguishing feature of ‘indie’ is that the band is not signed to a major label. Well, what does ‘indie rock’ have to do with the musical label associated with it? You can’t honestly tell me that if my band is indie rock, that we will sound the same as the other dude who is labeled indie rock who sounds nothing like us but is still deemed indie rock because they are not signed to a label.
Somewhere, some long time ago, someone went a little haywire with the musical genre naming convention. It most likely started with ‘alternative’. Let’s go to Wikipedia for its all knowing source of knowledge:
Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative; known primarily in the UK as indie) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. The term “alternative” was coined in the 1980s to describe punk rock-inspired bands on independent record labels that did not fit into the mainstream genres of the time.[1] As a musical genre, alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s.[2]
Let’s talk about this for a bit, shall we? Back in the nineties, if you said you were into Alternative music, chances are you liked the heavy guitars associated with grunge, or something of that form. But then in a few years after, rock just morphed its way from being the hair metal rock that we all know and love, to some decent music coming out of the Britpop scene or just straight out rock that just didn’t fit into the 80s scene. It started getting wishy-washy. Then alternative became this weird term…”Do you really like the alternative music (the underground) or do you like the alternative music on the radio (Oh, Nirvana, how the mighty have fallen).
Take a look at the definition of alternative in the UK. So is their indie music the same as our indie music?
Wikipedia says that in the United States (Indie):
During the first half of the 1990s, alternative music, led by grunge bands such as Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana broke into the mainstream, achieving commercial chart success and widespread exposure. Shortly thereafter the alternative genre became commercialized as mainstream success attracted major-label investment and commercially-oriented or manufactured acts with a formulaic, conservative approach. With this, the meaning of the label “alternative” changed away from its original, more counter-cultural meaning to refer to alternative music that achieved mainstream success and the term “indie rock” was used to refer to the bands and genres that remained underground.
So I guess the bands I used to listen to in the 90s were indie rock, but as soon as they signed to a major label, they just shifted to Alternative, or in my case, grunge rock. Fine. At least I knew what I was getting into if someone told me I was listening to grunge, although I sure hope no one labeled The Smashing Pumpkins as such.
So now we are in here in the year 2008 and the music genre naming convention is a mess. Look at some of the terms found in Wikipedia under indie rock: post-punk, garage rock, no wave, baroque pop, new prog, post-rock, dance-punk, post-punk revival, post-post rock, psych folk, post-post-post rock. Is there no end? Even Indie rock doesn’t even know what the heck it is anymore in terms of definition. So why the heck are we still using these really nonsensical terms to describe a type of music?
When someone asks me what The National is like, I really can’t pinpoint it. I suppose there’s a beauty in that considering not all music has to be the same (unless you want it on the radio of course!) but it does make it hard to define. I would not define The National as indie rock as the other bands which form my general stereotype of that musical genre are definitely different than The National.
Is anyone else out there frustrated with the naming conventions of musical genres? Or are you loving the fact that in this day in age, everything flies and in the end, they are beyond naming conventions and when it comes down to it, it’s all about the music, man.
