Gage Katz
Eric Dinsmore
English 114 B
April 23, 2012
The Independent rock
scene is an ever changing genre within the rock world. Having its roots set in
the early 90’s and having influence date back as early as the 80’s, Indie rock,
as it is called, has lasted through multiple generations, and continues to define
many young adults.
The
first Indie bands, then just noted as Independent bands, were mainly played on
college radio, as their abnormal and unique sounds played on a common youth
culture need to separate themselves from the generations before them. The
culture of a rebellious nature is not one that is new to our society; in fact
any cultural group over the years can trace their source to a need to separate
themselves from the ideals of their predecessors. Elvis Presley and early rock
is an obvious revolution against the ideals of their time, and later bands like
Anthrax and Black Sabbath, though they rejected a new standard, were shaking
things up in popular culture, and forced society to embrace new ideals, new
concepts, and new ways of life.
Bands like The Pixies
and The Smiths recorded and performed songs that differentiated heavily from
the music of the time. These bands went on to influence some of the most famous
grunge bands of the 90’s. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana has openly praised The Pixies
as the band that influenced him to write Smells Like Teen Spirit in an
interview with David Fricke for Rolling Stone magazine.
While
the Indie bands of the 80’s influenced many genres of the 90’s, the genre has
stayed in the focus of young people, and continues to be a mainstream success. Today
bands like The Fray, The Mars Volta, and Manchester Orchestra still have claim
to the Indie rock genre, and while their sound has shifted from unusual and
strange into light and easing, their claim to being independently operated has
stayed somewhat intact. When considering
Indie rock, it is important to note that though many of these bands have found
mainstream success, their lyrical content and overall style still reflect the
bands of the 80’s.
The
influence of these bands, then and now, has remained focused on youth culture,
as A. Earles notes in his book “The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who
Launched Modern Rock”. As noted above, these bands found success in adhering to
youth’s desire to separate from older generations and be identified as hip,
young, and artistic. If we look at today’s Indie market, we can still see these
ideals. The modern day ‘hipster’ happens to be the target audience for many
Indie bands, however to say that this market is one that the genre attached to,
would be to mistake a culture born from a genre, with a genre targeted at a culture.
The
modern day hipster is the self-proclaimed antithesis of conformity. It may be
interesting to note that this ideal was also held by the 00’s ‘emo’, but there
is a very specific distinction between the two. Though these genres have
similar roots, they differ in that the ‘emo’ was conced with lack of identity
and loss of quality of life, while the ‘hipster’ and modern day indie is more
concerned with the strife of the individual. Simply put, the emo lacked
identity, while the hipster focuses itself on crafting one.
A Hipster of today, as
portrayed in Matt Hrodey’s article “What is a Hipster?” is well read, listens
to massive variety of music, and claims to be cultured in ways that surpass
their non-hipster counterparts. While there is a lot of other musical influence
going on in the indie rock listener’s life, the genre in question is often an
underlying similarity among all of these pseudo nonconformists. Where the
hipster defines themselves is in doing what is offbeat. The hipster will read
books that won’t be made into movies, wears clothing you wouldn’t find at
Abercrombie and Fitch, and most importantly, won’t listen to music found on the
radio. The idea of music that pleases the masses just doesn’t sit well with the
hipster, and it is here where indie rock finds its audience. The whole concept
of indie is to be offbeat and different, just like the hipster.
The question then is
how the music affects the hipster. As stated above, the themes of these
lyrically conscious bands tend to be focused on issues of identity. More
specifically, they focus on concepts of relationships, ways of life, and
struggles that the average 99% percenter would have. These concepts in songs
are not different from most other genres, but it’s the way the indie bands go
about it, the way their lyrics are filled with strange unexplained metaphors
and their compositions that separate themselves from the crowd. Manchester
Orchestra’s opening line to Simple Math reads “Hunter eyes, I’m lost and hardly
noticed, slight goodbye.” These lyrics are not straightforward, but a little
cryptic and ambiguous, the rest of the song is needed to get a full
understanding of the piece, and even then there are some questions left by the
listener. This gives the hipster something to analyze and understand something
to question and answer, something to fiddle with in the recesses of their mind.
The hipster defines
themselves as a seeker of knowledge and understanding, however not in the
empirical sense. Rather the hipster looks to understand and know art, often
through the lens of a camera, or with a spray paint can rather than accepting
academia’s definitions of composition and art. The hipster looks at composition
and style and finds ways to separate themselves from histories main stream
success.
In their lives you may
find things that go unused by most of society, record players, tape decks, and
all sorts of analogue trinkets that have long since been replaced by more
modern technologies. Even with the newer pieces of techs that they use, a mac
laptop, an iPhone, even modern cars, are being hipped with older tech, or at least
the appearance of older tech. We can walk into many hipsters’ bedrooms and find
covers for iPhones that look like cassettes, big studio headphones that plug
into mp3 devices, laptop cases that sling over the shoulder and Billy Holly
glasses.
The hipster of today is
a throwback to things less known, less produced, and less culturally popular,
like the indie. They look towards the simplistic and stylish, finding interest
in bands that feature banjos, like Mumford and Sons. The music and the life
style go hand in hand, a genre for the eclectic and interesting that is both
eclectic and interesting, a genre that focuses on separating their identity
from the masses, for a group that separates themselves from the masses. And of
course there is a contradiction in that they are a mass that separates them
from the mass, but contradictions are a part of the American tradition. This is
not a point I care to back up here further then pointing out that our most
prominent contradiction is in the idea that any of the 99 percenters may be
able to make it into the 1 percent, though we all know that it is physically
impossible, given the number of 99 percenters and the exclusivity of the 1
percent.
In short, the modern
day hipster is defined by the indie scene, and vice versa. They are two groups
founded on the same principles, and adhere to similar lifestyles. To say one
created the other is false, rather each feeds into the other.
Works
Cited
"Manchester Orchestra." Simple Math Lyrics. AZ Lyrics,
10 May 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/manchesterorchestra/simplemath.html>
Hrodey, Matt.
"What is a hipster? - Isthmus | The Daily Page." Madison, Wisconsin's source for events, news, movies, music,
restaurants and more: Isthmus|The Daily Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2012.
<http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/article.php?article=34485>
