I know a few weeks is an eternity in blogging time, but it’s worth drawing some attention to Frank Kogan’s intervention in the Sasha Frere-Jones/Carl Wilson ‘problem with indie’ debate that was raging a fortnight or so ago. He makes some hugely pertinent points, especially about one particular elephant in the room – the fact that in yr actual mainstream pop charts, “crosstown traffic” is alive and well: “An answer to the question “Why isn’t black music the model for today’s bohemia?” could be “because it’s the model for the modern mainstream.” “
And if you’d rather pull your own teeth than think any more about this subject then there’s some great no-meta critical stuff on the Stones in the piece’s first half too.
“An answer to the question “Why isn’t black music the model for today’s bohemia?” could be “because it’s the model for the modern mainstream.”
Ahh…isn’t this why indie started in the mid-80s anyway?
Carl himself didn’t ignore the elephant… er, Mark says he’s tired of elephant-in-room metaphors… didn’t ignore the pink tarantula in the pillbox, kind of mentioned it at the end, but didn’t highlight it… but the real point I think I was trying to make (was not the clearest piece I ever wrote) was that I think, for particular reasons having to do with right now, the particular indie subset that Carl was pinpointing is having trouble taking its voice from any contemporary models.
Which is to say that I actually don’t think that “’cause it’s the model for the modern mainstream” is a very good answer.