Indie Rock History Books
 

CITIZENS OF MUSIC BANTER:

I'm looking for a written history of Indie Rock's evolution, impact, movement, and all that jazz. Preferably in published form. Anyone have any suggestions? I'd really really appreciate it, as I'm currently bored enough to count hair follicles. Really.

I kind of think you'd be better off just look for books on noise, garage rock, post-punk, etc I mean "Indie Rock" is such a broad term nowadays it doesn't really hold much weight to it.

Not sure if it's what you're looking for but My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize : The Story of Creation Records by David Cavanagh is a good one.

It starts right from the beginning starting out as a tiny label to being a cult indie label in the late 80s , to being made bankrupt waiting years for MBV & Primal Scream to finish Loveless & Screamadelica , and then onto becoming mainstream with Oasis , Primal Scream & others in the mid 90s , right to the end with their buy out from Sony and it's collapse.
It might only be about one record label but it really gives you a good picture of the climate & the music scene they were involved with at the time.

'Our Band Could Be Your Life' is about 80's underground music - it obviously leads up to 90's Indie Rock. Seriously, really fun book to read.

I really need to read this.

it's a fantastic book, check it out for sure.

the chapter on the Butthole Surfers is particularly funny.

This is actually the exact book I was looking for... I lost the name a while back, and retrieving it was the basis for this thread :)
Thanks

Well I did that whole prog ed, and prog can be pretty broad too.

Maybe you guys could do an Indie ed thread. Or do we already have one?

Hookers is did one but I think it could use revising.

Ok, if you're looking for a definitive history of alternative music from 60s to present times (and this will include "indie"), look no further: this man, Piero Scaruffi (actually a real historian and not some moronic critic), has written the most comprehensive book I have personally ever seen. And the whole thing, all 550 or so pages, is up on his website:

The History of Rock Music

not so much indie rock, but Julian Cope's Japrocksampler is well worth a read if you ever find yourself the slightest bit interested in the history of japanese psychedelic music...and let's face it, most people go through a Jap-psych phase at some point in their lives.

i'm trying to hunt down his Krautrocksampler, which looks at German experimental music. I imagine that's worth reading too.

Let me do it. :D

In the 90's Spin Magazine published 100 most influential alternative records. In the book a brief bio is written & makes an informative review of both well known artists & some lesser known indie / underground artists.

Glad I could help - I truly did enjoy reading This Could Be Your Life, despite growing up in the 80's & being aware of a lot of the bands it made things click & better understand how the music started & how it led to indie rock.

I think I'd point out also that "indie rock" was never a movement at all - not in any homogeneous sense anyway. "Indie" is really just the term that came to replace "alternative" after the latter began to be applied to every post-grunge idiot's band and his dog, and indeed, most oddly, every other mainstream commercial rock band since. Alternative rock, originally, referred to real *alternative* rock bands of all sorts of the 1980s ranging from New Wave/Post-Punk, the neo-folk rock of R.E.M., the "College Rock" of Pixies and Dinosaur Jr, the "grunge rock" of Green River, the American Underground noise rock of Sonic Youth, and so forth. Pretty sonically diverse, and I don't think those bands saw themselves as part of any one single movement.

It is true though that "indie" is now perceived, even by those who listen to that sort of music, as being a sort of single homogeneous community with pretty similar stock tastes. But as a real evolving movement, it really cannot be thus described.

Great point. "Indie" replaced "alternative" when the mainstream hijacked the term for themselves.

And now "indie" is being hijacked by commercial marketing. UK bands like The Hoosiers (RCA, Sony) are being called "indie", although they were never ever indie and weren't even HEARD OF by the indie community when they first emerged.

There will be truckloads of other manufactured "indie" bands to hit the airwaves in the future. But there will always be an underground movement of music whatever it is called or labeled.

Speaking of which, I guess that's ONE word that can't ever be hijacked. Not in the sense of calling yourself an "underground" band anyway.

You never know....

Now?

They were doing that 18 years ago with Blur

To me Blur always had the label "Brit Pop" attached to it.

This was pre-Britpop when they were doing their whole shoegazer thing.

I may be mistaken but I believe they did at least begin as a band on the indie circuit and didn't go major until after Parklife.

Nope

First album came out on Food Records , an EMI subsidiary.

Eh, my mistake. So yeah, seems this little marketing technique's been in place for quite a while. BTW Urban do you know if Oasis were ever really indie?

go to the last page of the krautrock thread in avant garde/experimental, immediately.

Oasis were signed to Creation Records just before Sony bought out half of the company. But without Sony's money the label would have gone under and Oasis would never have been able to make a record.

So they signed to an indie label but released records on a label that Sony owned 49% of.

Are they indie?

I don't have a clue , i'll let everybody else argue that one :D