Sinister: Why we hate indie kids
1) They like indie music. Obviously. 2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at the bridge. How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to "kick my ass". Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight: any slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual masturbation. 3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any 'community' or 'scene' of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I think this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty. 4) Societal standards of anything are bad, pretty much. Unless it gets you a shag. Or earns you - or more likely your parents - the vast amount of money needed to get through college on some no-mark computer games degree AND buy a billion useless identical records. 5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least distracts them from listening to indie music. Or making it. All indie kids are in indie bands. 6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream. No sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will reassure you of that. 7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them - cool, huh? 8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts. Some are, like, really expensive. 9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music to spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste. 10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the indie kid's strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people. As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border's they feel solidarity with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza delivery companies all across the nation. 11) They don't feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though. Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true, obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.) 12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool Powerpuff Girls? 13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you heard one of them use the word 'man' or 'woman'. Nope, it's always 'boys' and 'girls'. Some girls are 'cute'. Some boys are 'cute' too. The more incurable indie kids use the words 'grrrl' and - shudder - 'boi', for all the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped. 14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are in theory bisexual, of course. Just don't ask them to do anything about it.) they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web pages ("I am SUCH the geek"). This is because they are very sensitive, not as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional dwarves with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot. 15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The gene pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977, thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the critical equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest. 16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool. 17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed with a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual kinship to indie are acceptable - no attempt is made to take these musics on their own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop or dance records - that would after all be 'tokenism'. 18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even being indie kids. After idling their college years going to 'shows' every other day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or writing a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie kid's sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like the Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other - after all that they suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask you is the fucking point? Tanya Headon and Tom Ewing with additional material by Maura Johnston 2 January 2001 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
1) They like indie music. Obviously.
Clearly.
2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at the bridge.
Hours of fun there then, you funny guy you.
How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to "kick my ass".
You are thinking of either 'Trendies' or 'Sk8r Goths' an indie kid would probably just stand there looking intimidated then start to cry.
Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight:
The reknown indie/good eyesight gene.
any slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual masturbation.
3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any 'community' or 'scene' of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I
And what, may I ask, is wrong with perpetual masturbation? think
this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty.
Isn't this more prevelant in the 'Trendy' or 'Lib-Dem Sk8r Goth' (Korn boys/girls) community? I'd say that, since these two communities are by-and-large the only other ones widely embraced by teens, that this is a teenage phenomenon.
5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least distracts them from listening to indie music.
I thought indie kids did it all the time, see point 3.
Or making it. All indie kids are in indie bands.
Which is bad because...
6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream. No sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will reassure you of that.
URL please.
7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them - cool, huh?
Would the fact that they have to dress exactly that way to be classed indie kids have anything to do with that? There is usually only one vaguely stereotype indie kid in any 'indie' group.
8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts. Some are, like, really expensive.
And some are, in fact, either long or short, and tend to look different and be different colours.
9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music to spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste.
Really!? I think you're thinking about moneyed morons.
10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the indie kid's strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people. As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border's they feel solidarity with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza delivery companies all across the nation.
Most of my indie friends are too lazy to get jobs...
11) They don't feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though. Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true, obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.)
Are they worse? Explain.
12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool Powerpuff Girls?
Huh? Are they an American band or something?
13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you heard one of them use the word 'man' or 'woman'. Nope, it's always 'boys' and 'girls'. Some girls are 'cute'. Some boys are 'cute' too. The more incurable indie kids use the words 'grrrl' and - shudder - 'boi', for all the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped.
Maybe they call each other boy and girl because they are teenagers and 'man' or 'woman' would be biologically incorrect. Oh, and I've only ever seen grrrl used as in 'Riot Grrrl' and never seen boi anyway... if I did see it I'm sure it'd be met with screams of derision from most indies.
14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are in theory bisexual, of course. Just don't ask them to do anything about it.)
I think you're getting confused with 'Sk8r Goths' again.
they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web pages ("I am SUCH the geek"). This is because they are very sensitive, not as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional dwarves with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot.
AT LAST, a good point. This is true (apart from the writing it up on websites bit), but Radiohead probably makes indie kids more sensitive...
15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The gene pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977, thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the critical equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest.
Sleater-Kinney sound like Belle and Sebastian? Katheryn Williams sounds like Godspeed You Black Emperor!? The Eels sound like Looper? Richie era Manics sound like They Might Be Giants? Red Hot Chill Peppers sound like Radiohead? Do you have ears? Which other genre has more variety?
16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity.
Subtlety? Restraint? Limp Bizkit are extreme for christ sake and they sound aweful.
They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish.
Point taken.. wow... doing well here.
Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool.
Point destroyed in previous section.
17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed with a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual kinship to indie are acceptable -
Are you talking about quality here?
no attempt is made to take these musics on their own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop or dance records - that would after all be 'tokenism'.
18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even being indie kids. After idling their college years going to 'shows' every other day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or writing a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie kid's sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like
A LOT of indie kids like Hip Hop, see Jurrassic Five. As for dance... well, most of it's shit but... 'Massive Attack', 'Idioteque' by Radiohead, 'Portishead', 'Dj Shadow', 'Unkle'. Is Trip Hop not dance? Would you not class 'Geometrid' as at least partially a dance album? the
Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other - after all that they suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask you is the fucking point?
It's called being disillusioned. Since when did indie kids like the Spice Girls (shouldn't that be Grrrls?). Nevertheless, despite glaring errors, I found this quite funny. Steven Wells, is that you? "You better think twice or life will kick you in the ass" - Albert Camus The Happy Reaper +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Hello, So *that* was the article about B&S. I read through the first paragraph and after realizing it was some sort of dissertation on why Mr. Fitchett is far too obsessed with 69 Love Songs, I stopped reading. Now having skimmed over the bits where he goes on and on about creating mobiles of pictures of Stephin Merritt to put over his bed, I find that there is actually some mention of Belle & Sebastian in there. This sort of thing infuriates me to no end. Critics. People who seem to think that they are illuminating us about our own opinions. Most people realize there cannot be objective standards for music. Since I do, here's mine, but keep in mind I am guessing that a lot of other people liked 69 Love Songs more than FISHYCLAP by the looks of things. And that's fine if that's the way they feel. However I seem to have taken the opposite tack. In love with Fold Your Hands and disappointed by 69 Love Songs. I respect that 69 Love Songs is very interesting conceptually. But the bare fact is that no one is capable of writing 69 quality songs in that short a span of time. So as a result we get joke songs as filler, moments of brilliance and lots of mediocrity in between. It's all very interesting as a concept but piss-poor as an album if you ask me. Like if in the VU boxed set they would have mixed the album tracks in with the unreleased demos. I don't fault the Magnetic Fields for releasing this record but I find it difficult to imagine anyone liking this record enough to tout it above their heads, comparing contemporary albums spuriously. In the article Mr. Fitchett asks the reader how many times he or she has actually listened to FISHYCLAP and how many all the way through. For my part I could probably answer more than any other album which came out in the year 2000, whereas I only managed to listen to the entirety of 69 Love Songs once, the first time I brought it back from the store, and subsequent discs found their way onto my CD player quite sparsely. I see it as a great shame that such great songs as "Ferdinand de Saussure" are featured on the same album as "Punk Love." And as for the Magnetic Fields being driven by Merritt and B&S being a collective due to Struan's seeming reluctance to be a frontman. This is very true, but if Belle & Sebastian were to release 69 of Struan's songs I think I would feel the same way. I would really like to see Stuart Murdoch be more of a focus in Belle & Sebastian, and I don't think I am alone in that. But to see Belle & Sebastian become a vehicle for his whims of fancy would be far too much of a good thing. If we have to endure the Ringo-like musings of other B&S members' songs, so be it. Take it part & parcel. I always did like Octopus' Garden anyway. -- Brian Pennington, aka Mick McMick | cellophanesky@mac.com | ICQ# 39021436 Sandcastle Records: <http://www.indiepages.com/sandcastle/> the Cellophane Sky:<http://home.earthlink.net/~cellophanesky/the/index.html> "Better a tear of truth than smiling lies." - Duncan Browne +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
participants (3)
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Brian Pennington -
Peter Carter -
Tom Ewing