FREE AT LAST

I'd like to officially commemorate this week in the annals of music history (until of course, the coming days when the seas burn and tundra melts, the world floods and we all go insane in a giant round-robin Darwinist tournament of survival to be the last humans alive, assuming nukes aren't set off in the ensuing fracas) as the week the lumbering albatross of a marketing ploy and vague aesthetic and sound cluster known as "indie rock", one I used to enjoy back in 2005, finally had it's Pitchfork/Stylus/Onion/Spin/Blender/NY Times forged armor of incessant critical claim and musical McCarthyism dented.

Thank you, Sascha Frere Jones, for doing with one article what I've been trying to do for a year and a half on message boards and the BrooklynVegan comments section. I didn't think anyone would take it seriously or care, but you've seemingly ignited an internet shitstorm of epic proportions that is causing those with rational minds and decent tastes to question the hype and undeserved praise of the plethora of boring, bland "indie rock' bands being touted every second by whomever deems themselves a taste maker. Being that this is almost 2008 and we've already survived nu-metal, faux-garage rock, southern rap, Kanye West, 50 Cent, metalcore, second wave emo, second wave black metal, technical death metal, tween pop, hipster-fied club music, myspace careerists, and whatever other social and musical trends I may have missed (electroclash? I guess.), I would hope that along with deathcore, L Magazine falseXgrind, Tila Tequila, Dane Cook, Vice magazine, network television, the movie and record industry, marriage, the "pro-life" movement, ironic racism, and tabloids, indie rock would be deemed obsolete or be flushed out of the ether by the start of the new decade. Shit, if I'm going to be immolated by Zarasthrusta in 2012, I'd like to not have the "Scrubs" soundtrack fucking accompanying the implosion of my skull into my heart. I'd hope my doom on this planet won't come with fifth rate post-punk disco drum rip-offs and the infernal jangling of twee fucking Telecasters and bemoaning liberal arts twats.

So bigups to the bloggers and writers and columnists opening up about this stagnant, self-fellating shithole of a "genre" and having the guts to admit that VOXTROT FUCKING SUCKS. At least an avenue for discussion is opening now. Hopefully.

New Ghostface
New Wu
New Three 6 Mafia
New Jay (to laugh at)
New Scarface
New Lil' Wayne
New Nas (to laugh at)
New Saul Williams

Fuck I look like giving time to a dead scene? Shit, watch me crip-walk on the ashes of Matador records.

Oh, and the L Magazine can suck my dick. Why read some inferior Manhattan/Williamsburg smugness when the Village Voice writers actually have talent and a degree of objectivity? Thank you, L Magazine, for writing like indecisive 17-year-old trend-chasing scene girls. Thank you for having the balls to spend a paragraph mocking grindcore as a genre and name (Yes, it is funny sounding. But what genre name isn't?) in your pathetic Pig Destroyer blurb for their show a few months ago. And thanks for writing off the Jesu/Torche show, because "...we don't know how anyone could take this stuff seriously. All that yelling and posturing...it's just so exhausting". Apparently the options with metal is to take it too seriously or act smug about it. I'm glad I learned something about music criticism from you, L Magazine; if you don't get something, it must be considered dumb, ironically commented about, and taken on face value.

Brilliant. As opposed to the Arcade Fire or anything else sold to me. Because none of these bands are over-dramatic, posturing and histrionic, no.



Rapcat>"Indie"