Dubbel Mono

zondag, december 07, 2003

 
An Alternative Universe
(uit The Village Voice)
Why should indie-rock bands go pop when webzines everywhere think they’re so cool?
[...]
This ought to be indie-rock's moment. Downloading hurts indies as much as majors—given Web demographics, maybe more. But the decisive drags on CD profits—bootlegging, overhead, and debt service—touch the indies hardly at all, and the club circuit remains healthy while arena-rock chokes on its own extortions. With teenpop cycling down, the farm-system model has staged a comeback—the Strokes and the White Stripes and Dashboard Confessional aren't as mega as Spin hopes, but they're hot enough to convince corporate capitalists that similar bands might be worth exploiting. Structurally, the scene should be poised for takeover. But it isn't, and it doesn't want to be.
[...]
Our old pal alt snobbery, which sucks, meets our new enemy friendly fascism, which sucks worse—sucks as bad as boho exclusionists always think the prevailing culture sucks, so bad that it may be unfair to expect the virtuous to want in. But alt snobbery predates the war on democracy and the writhings of the RIAA. Indieland broke off relations with the actually existing pop world years ago, reconceiving it as an evil empire so despicable that its inner workings could safely be reduced to the gross clichés that alt folk favor.
|| 4:22 a.m.