Legitimate forums and authentic speakers.

Before I even started this blog I noticed and intended to blog about the facebook of local indie/electro club night, Pistol Whipped. Pistol Whippd facebook page is set up as a person, not an 'event' - so it has a wall, can add friends, send private messages and stays the same regardless of when the next club night is scheduled for. It is managed by a person or persons unknown (at least to me).

I added the club night's profile as a friend because I meant to head along to it (and still haven't gotten around to it, admittedly), so its status updates started showing up on my feed. I noticed that while many of these were simply promoting the next event, a few seemed aimed at generating discussion about various music related topics. Click here to see a flickr set of screenshots I took of these discussions. The updates and comments cover such topics as what music people are listening to right now, whether they like a new song, and whether they think tickets to Splendour in the Grass are too expensive. One question about a Crystal Castles song turns into a discussion about another festival, Parklife, and how well it was organised.

These discussions are good examples of those Wendy Fonarow talks about in her book Empire of Dirt - those that form part of the constant negotiation and redrawing of boundaries, which she sees as defining indie. The facebook page also posts plugs and links to other subcultural institutions, such as other club nights, gigs, and a new street culture. This support between venues, club nights, magazines and so on can be seen as maintaining and strengthening the network - allowing various parts of the local indie infrastructure to gain customers and therefore survive. This kind of activity is referred to again and again in scholarship that uses the 'scene' framework, and in many is emphasised as being crucial to subcultures on a local level. Based on that, I would consider the facebook page relevant for creation, negotiation and maintenance of the local indie scene, its particular boundaries and proclivities.

I do wonder though, would everyone agree with me? Would some people consider the Pistol Whippd page less relevant or influential because it is a marketing tool? Is it somehow less authentic because it is prompted by someone carrying out ad hoc market research? I know (from reading and from common sense) that subculture is inseparable from corporate and capitalist structures. What prompted me to ask these questions regarding marketing and authenticity was a discussion at the music blogger forum at elbo.ws. Check out the thread here. To give a summary, poster and blogger 'SFCritic' takes issue with a new poster called 'Bea', who is asking ethnographic questions of the bloggers (for academic research, as it turns out). 'SFCritic' does not think the Bea should be allowed on the forum, as she may be a market researcher, and that such people turn music fans into commodities owned by economists.

So presumably, 'SFCritic' would not reply to any of Pistol Whippd's facebook statuses. Or would he? For someone with his point of view, is market research only inauthentic and not allowed if it is carried out by a large corporation? Is it okay if the questions are being asked by a local business person, trying to gain information to conduct a local night for indie enthusiasts? Or should these discussions about interests and taste only happen between music consumers or musicians - not organisers or entrepreneurs?

I find this tension between indie authenticity and market necessity terribly fascinating - so much so that I think I'll do my essay on it. I'm off to get started!

This has achieved the impossible - a Grizzly Bear song stuck in my head.

Here is another interesting thing I found: Grizzly Bear's Foreground 'remixed' by Phoenix. Click on through to see why I call it a 'remix'.

My first thought on seeing that was 'wow, that's a really new way of using YouTube'. Well, turns out it isn't. Nonetheless, it was a 'why didn't I think of that?' moment. We have mashups, and video mashups, and trailer mashups, and fake subtitle humour, and this, for chrissakes. Still, it seems that every fun new way of recombining media takes me by surprise.

So, Phoenix's 'remix'. The idea, at least as they've presented it, is that everyone will hear a different mix. I started Eno first, hit play on Grizzly Bear 00:24 in, and let it play out. It sounded really good! I find Grizzly Bear a bit forgettable and wallflowery (though very pretty) and thought that having Eno's instrumental piece in the background added drama and buildup to the whole thing. Come to it, that is one thing that a mix can do really well - I find that remixes can often bring an element of momentum and drama to indie music - particularly when it's cute indie pop or that driving New York thing. So for me, the gimmick worked, and in a way I often expect a remix to work.

So, what did other people hear? I did a search for the 'Phoenix Eno Grizzly Bear' on elbo.ws and found 9 posts relating to the project. Interestingly, they didn't give me much insight into what other people heard when they played the track. Most of the results, like this one, post the link and invite the reader to judge for themselves. Some praised it highly, whilst one site declared Phoenix the 'worst remixers of all time'.

The positive review was also the only one to describe how they played (mixed? played with?) the track - and he did it very similarly to me. I wonder though - wouldn't most people? The Eno track is placed to the left, making it the 'first' if you're reading L-R. I figure an indie fan is also more likely to have heard the popular Grizzly Bear more recently than Eno's song - if they've heard it at all, being a B-Side instrumental off a 1975 ambient album. So if they're anything like me, they're going to click it first out of curiosity to see what they're mixing Grizzly Bear with. I'm also of the opinion that although this is framed as an 'aleatory' experience, an experiment with chance, it might sound more or less the same however you play with it. The Grizzly Bear track has a steady tempo and nothing much like a verse/chorus structure, with a slow sort of build. The Eno track is constructed of orchestral phrases overlapped at random, so that it is difficult to discern a tempo, beat, or tune. It also gradually crescendos. The tracks are well matched - both lack any major variety in rhythm or sound that would need to be carefully accounted for when mixing.

So, what do we call Phoenix's.. thing? Is it a mix? A toy or a rudimentary soundboard? A does the mix make a whole new 'track' like a mashup? If so, is it Phoenix's track? Or mine? Phoenix claim they "never found the boldness to mess with [Grizzly Bear's] beautiful songs". I'm going to be a little bold and say that yes, they did. Their mix was easier to put together than a conventional one, and lacks the playful, beat driven and idiosyncratic nature of most mashups. But owing to the lack of variables in the songs and the website as it is presented, I think we're hearing the 'remix' pretty much as Phoenix intended us to. And for my money, intent = art.

(Two more points I scarcely have space for - according to some quick research, Eno's ambient music was intended to be used as a background - for a space or for another musician. The Grizzly Bear song is called Foreground. Cute.)

Introductions.

Well hello, and welcome to my blog for MSTU2000 - Music subcultures and the Media. I've chosen the name 'indie nation superfly-way' for this blog, and the word 'hipsternet' for the address. I hope that these are sufficiently clever little cues for the fact that I plan to talk about indie and the internet!

While we could look at practically any modern music subculture within the context of the world wide web, I find indie to be a particularly interesting case. On the one hand the internet has the potential to be an absolute boon to the serious indie fan. The ability to find out about artists, shows, venues online, to collect records or show posters, and to download music - and to do all of this sooner or better than other hipsters - makes the internet a veritable treasure trove for subcultural capital (to borrow Sarah Thornton's term). On the other hand, the indie fan's activities are unlikely to be restricted to solo internet browsing. The acquisition of this subcultural capital only forms one side of the equation - the other being the act of displaying or passing on this superior knowledge.

This brings me to my particular area of research interest. I plan to use this blog to look at ways in which:

1. The internet is used to mediate or facilitate real-life activities relevant to the indie subculture.

2. The ways that online resources popular with this subculture have been set up to facilitate 'indie discourse'. That is, how websites and other tools allow fans not only to find music, but to regulate the boundaries of their subculture - engage in discussions of 'who found it first' or 'what is good taste'.

I'm also particularly interested in comparing what I find with articles from the not-so-distant past. Essays that I have read so far for this course - such as Sean Ebare in 2004 and Ryan Hibbett in 2005 - have much to say about how the internet has played a role in subculture, or may do in the future. What is astonishing (and a little scary) about reading these articles is how in half a decade, the online examples they refer to are dated or completely obsolete. However, I'm mindful of the fact that the concepts they discuss may still be absolutely relevant - or even that predictions academics make about the online landscape may come to pass. The beauty of a project such as this blog and the resultant essay, compiled over a short period of time by a rank amateur undergrad, is that I can draw upon peer reviewed scholarship to comment on online developments almost as they are happening.

That is to say, I'm looking forward to this blog project and to writing my essay!