Yeah I'd agree to that. One thing you need to keep in mind when arguing with boo boo about indie though is he's boo boo and probably hasn't even heard the artists he's arguing about, and if he has, he certainly has heard enough of the music he's claiming it sounds like to intelligently make the claim :P

Id say Indies a sound. You can can definitely say, "Oh that band sounds indie" or whatever. It just a different, more basic (like Albert said) form of a type of music, folk, pop whatever.

Yeah, it's not important but I think it served as a good example. I didn't take anything Boobs said seriously.




I think Joanna Newsom might be the perfect artist for this actually. Could anyone actually say that Joanna Newsom and Elliott Smith are the same genre and sound anything alike?

I just had this weird image of Elliott Smith with a harp. God that would get me off.

And I really don't here this. If this is true how would you explain experimental or prograssive so called indie bands? Like The Dear Hunter, Deerhunter, Xiu Xiu? Maybe some indie assosciated bands are basic but doesn't every genre or movement have basic or generic bands in the far corners?

'Indie' is a word that was coined by the media. It was a genre created by the media in the early 80's to pigeonhole emerging bands like The Smiths and Orange Juice for example who were playing a particular style of music and just so happened to be on independent record labels. The term just stuck over the years and was used by the media to pigeonhole bands with that 'indie' sound (which itself has evolved a bit over the years) regardless of their record label status. The right use of the term 'indie' should really be applied to bands on independent record labels but that would cover a lot of musical styles and would make it difficult for the media to pigeonhole bands.

I just feel uncomfortable using "indie" to describe an artist's sound. It's like using "classic rock" as a genre. It's not really a genre, it just refers to rock music that was made during a certain time period. Similarly, "indie" refers to an attribute of the music that isn't necessarily a descriptor of its sound.

Me, I would have loved to see the term be stuck with a way of promoting music with no help from the majors, but as you can see, it was never going to happen 100 percent of the time. I hope the following can help lead to some understanding of "Indie" as a genre term...

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that the whole connection with Indie to any kind of sound can be traced to the Indie-Pop C-86 generation which tried to jangle it's way into your heart, following the trail of the Smiths, although only very few succeeded even at the slightest. From what I remember, this may have been the first "Indie-anything" movement and even then there was some very slight confusion after a short while as the Pre-cool Primal Scream were on Elevation, which was a Creation wing that connected itself to Warners for a very short while, but most of it was pretty removed from the majors. Some of it tried to follow the footsteps of The Smiths, others not so successfully trying to re-create American Garage Punk (more like a Garage Folk sound as if someone just bought a 13'th Floor Elevators album and took it from there), but there were some good sounds here and there, although you had to have the time and money (especially if you were living on Imports) to choose for yourself.

Next, of course, were the Class of '91/'92 class of bands that really was one of the first major cases of confusion as the term Indie was really just a fancy way of saying Alternative. Although there was a sound, there was clearly nothing purely Indie about bands such as The Senseless Things (Epic) and possibly best known a band called Blur who were hooked to a once-pure Indie called Food (it kind of was until it hooked up to Parlophone/EMI). This generation was to me the start of the confusion, with some UK Indies that continued a tradition of dealing with the majors but at a far more intense level (Creation was pretty much that scene's Mute in my opinion - MBV and Primals to Sire, Adorable to SBK - all before Oasis to Sony) or sometimes just going for the brass ring and usually only getting 10 Minutes of fame at least.

The Early 90's also saw a rise in Major Indie wings that hardly fooled anyone unless they got one of the few class bands, trying to follow up on the interest of Grunge or then-small cult of British music followers in The States, but fall flat on it's face most of the time. Most Rock and Pop sounds that were different from what was accepted by the US AOR/Top 40 stations was at first branded College Rock, but then had the Indie brand on it to help sell the music better for a "cooler" sounding name.

I usually put the opinion based on The Late 80's and Early 90's Music Business as to why there's a confusion, leading to the recent mix ups with both the public, usually helped by the media's use of the term, and the promotion of the music as to what is Indie. Of course, this led to the over-use of the term for all kinds of music with an "Alternative" edge to help sell it quicker - Irritating, but in an age of generalizations, not that bad of a thing if it helps get some musicians better known.

Apart from the 9 singles & album they put out on Way Cool Records, What Goes On Records & Decoy Records between 1988 & 1990 :)

Thanks for the correction. Any is welcome! Over where I'm at, I just remembered the Epic releases. You could say that they were one of the many who used the Indie scene as a step up to major support (and it's not a bad thing). Going through The Great Rock Discography report, they recorded on their own under the Yo Jo Jo banner (The "I'm Moving" debut), Red (The "Up and Coming" single), Way Cool (The breakthrough "Girlfriend" single), and Decoy (Is It Too Late and the "Can't Do Anything" single").

Trivia Edit: The Things and Blur had a few cool trivial connections, not least being friends with Jamie Hewlett who did cover art for The Senseless Things and later being part of Gorillaz.