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When did indie music go tits up?
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Spaceship mark
Spaceship mark
1686 posts

Edited May 03, 2013, 09:43
Re: When did indie music go tits up?
May 03, 2013, 09:42
'Indie' (defined as what? Codpieceless-guitar-music?) seems to me to have been born of punk and was/is part of a rebellion against 'manufactured pop music'. Of course, womblelike, the underground eventually moves overground. The question is, is this any different to (excuse me if I get my terms a bit wrong, I don't have the Book of Rock Taxonomy to hand) when blues/country/rockabilly displaced croony-swingy-expensive-band music in the form of Rock n Roll. And were those who were into rock n roll when it was still underground moaning it had died when Elvis got popular?
Similarly with the late 50's early 60's Liverpool scene. Lest we forget that many of the bands who were and are such a huge influence on the guitar bands which followed were as much pop acts as anything else. We can wax as lyrical as we like about the Beatles, Stones, Who and their lesser known contemporaries, but they all took the pay cheques.
Is an underground 'indie' alternative like a cyclical universe? Growing bloated and fat until it eventually im/explodes to start again? The guitar underground seems pretty healthy at the moment, but whatever emerges (if it emerges) into the mainstream isn't going to be a new Smiths, in the same way the Smiths weren't the new Sex Pistols and the Beatles weren't the new Tommy Steele.
So does the question 'when did indie music go tits up?' really mean 'when did 80's guitar music go mainstream?' which is much less loaded and much easier to explain. Like most music genres, if it becomes popular thee bandwagon shall be jumped upon and there are those consumers (cuz by this point they are consumers as opposed to, I dunno, aficionados) who are unable to differentiate between genuinely creative musicians and record company constructs.
In the history of pop music (1950-2013) could it not be said that longer periods of time have been dominated by melodic guitar based pop music than not? And if so cannot it not be said that the periods where this music was driven underground are anomalies and ultimately doomed to go tits up?

(Edited to correct some spelling)
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