AFFLUENT WHITE KIDS CELEBRATE SUCCESSFUL GENTRIFICATION OF UNPOPULAR NICHE MUSIC CULTURE

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I'm writing this preface in retrospect. I read about and watched some video and listened to some performances from the "Our Band Could Be Your Life" show in Brooklyn (which you are required to refer to as "Brooklyn" now and not just "New York", which smacks of the pomposity of "Manhattan" getting all specific about being "Manhattan" in the 1980s. I'm still cranky about that). Then I wrote the following screed in a particularly dark hour. I think that my own involvement in indie culture for the past 15 years (as an enthusiastic/reticent/self-hating fan and failed musician) makes me reluctant to make such unkind observations, based largely on upsetting friends, acquaintances, and relations still actively  involved in the increasingly interconnected and psuedo-professional "scene" and whatever their feelings might be. Of course, even writing the preceding sentence makes me scratch my head, since I'm sure I spend more time thinking about their feelings than they spend thinking about mine - since I've bankrupted out of that particular Monopoly game and have little to offer. Still its worth noting that my unbalanced and unfairly negative opinion of indie rock is based primarily on a couple dozen people who were pricks rather than the hundreds who were kind.

Without further ado, my rant about "Our Concert Could Be Your Life" or whatever it was called:

Our Concert Could Be Your Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqww-dIya2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqsDRD_4j7Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QglS4p-72c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHMNRAkASsw&feature=related
http://pitchfork.com/news/42604-report-our-band-could-be-your-concert/

I'd like to reiterate that the crux of my frustration and resulting contempt for the self-congratulatory sanitization here is simple jealousy. There's some other frustration that I can't quite articulate - mostly about how the American Punk/Indie Scene was really emotionally damaging and wholly noninclusive place for me from 18-24 years old (from 25+, I just became bitter and scornful towards it - which the kind of endlessly unattractive quality in a person that I like to cultivate in order to remain friendless). I've watched some YouTube videos of these performances and focusing solely on the audience for a second: isn't this a bit of theater? Spouting expected behaviour - in response to Black Flag, Minor Threat, Big Black, The Replacements. - is this a posture of excitement, of violence, of wall-toppling liberation that the audience is invoking? This is the same audience who would spend $20 to watch a St. Vincent show with an air of arm-crossed indifference and clock-watching ennui - yet they start shoving each other and shouting along for The Replacements?

Living in Austin TX - and surprising people with my negatory answer to the Austin-booster/SXSW-attendee rhetorical question of "Isn't Austin awesome?" - has only amplified my cynicism. The amazing thing about late-00's hipster culture is its myriad indicators: the glasses, the beards, the bikes, the denim cut-offs, the cowboy boots, the selvedge jeans, the tattoos (a friend of mine, recently turned 30, remarked "I'm so proud to be a woman born in the late 70s/early 80s and to have made it through my 20s without getting a lower back tattoo"), the continued popularity of Chuck Taylors (a shitty and increasingly badly-made sneaker; that's just a fact), the mustaches - my god - the fucking mustaches! The thing is: the signposts are so carefully codified, it would be a cinch to truly rebel. (Of course, then there's the quandry: I have beard, even as I write this I'm thinking "I'll shave this off when I get home tonight, so no one will mistake me for a hipster - I'm 35-years old! I was a scenester and a poser, sure, years and years before  hipsters." But by allowing hipster sartorial and grooming codes to dictate my appearance, I'm providing them enormous influence - even in a reactionary sense. I have a bike, but for fuck's sake, I wear a nerdly helmet and I have lots of flashing lights on it! I mean - we're still in Texas: every dumbfuck in giant, extra-wide pickup - with a sticker of Calvin kneeling before a cross and pissing on a Darwin fish - is embittered about the space on the shoulder you're taking up that rightfully and constitutionally belongs to the fifth and sixth wheel of their truck). Every hipster hurriedly denies their hipsterism - points to first growing a mustache in '99, declares "What? This vintage Bianchi frame? I just happened to find it at the Goodwill... I know... I couldn't believe it either!", swears up and down that they're wearing Chuck Taylors for the comfort - but who are they kidding, ever? And the word "hipster" has lost all meaning and was annoying and nonsensical to begin with, like "emo" or "grunge". I read somewhere recently that the underlying pejorative implication of "hipster" is the same that applied to "Yuppie" in the mid-80s. Really - what's wrong with being a young urban professional? Nothing really. But everybody hated the yuppies. So, perhaps I'm getting all use of the word "hipster" out of my system now.

I've recently come to believe that the fashionably-attired, academically-astute, music-connoisseur brand of hipster (last time I use the word, promise) that has become prevalent in the past 5 or so years is the modern equivalent of this: a truly dedicated Dave Matthews fan, circa 1996. Not in strict terms of musical taste but in terms of this is what happens when suburban jocks and 2nd-tier popular kids go to college. Its the modern equivalent - move to the city, smoke a little pot, untuck your shirt, leave behind a little nerdiness, snatch up a little cool, become blinkered and blindingly passionate about (largely mediocre) music, all while appearing to proclaim loudly and proudly - to the rest of the world, at least - that you're an unrepentant asshole.

And yes, I'm being a total dick. My outlook on music is completely shaped by how embittered I am. That's the joy I get from music these days - or at least that's how I interact with the music community, in the form of the Internet: because its become a weird, snide, elitist place where music criticism is more popular than music. So I wrap the squishy, glowing E.T. heart of my love of music in a crass, hard, cynical shell. Though mostly I'm jealous or unhappy that I'm not part of this continuum and these people are. I've been to shows or own records of almost all the bands that took part in this (as coverers and coverees). I actually wrote my Onion-y headline and subsequently this entire post in response to a friend of mine posting a link to the NPR story about "Our Band Could Be Your Concert" on his Facebook - perhaps with sincere interest, perhaps with a sneer; I don't know - but it felt too mean to be derisive of this kind of thing directly on his Facebook page (is that modern manners?) I didn't even try to go to a recent Arcade Fire show in Austin because I wasn't sure that I'd feel anything but anger and frustration at their carefully crafted sincerity and the audience's contractually weepy, emotional response; I'm skipping Fucked Up because I can't bear watching another generation of audiences go through the motions of being punk rock. I've often self-identified as "punk rock" - despite missing its American hey-day, despite never really playing music that explicitly qualified, despite having friends who would helpfully and studiously remind of all the  political, musical, and fashionable reasons that I really truly wasn't punk at all. The definition of "punk rock" as some nebulous, tough, American (and "punk" is a decidedly American music to me - just as its celebrated by Our Band...) version of "To Thine Own Self Be True" is significantly less popular than defining "punk rock" in terms of clothes and accessories and a few rows of magic-markered bins in the record store. But most of all, I'm just being a jerk about this and counting on the fact that no one cares what I say or write, and feeling sorry for myself about that. Some small part of me is worried that Ted Leo and Titus Andronicus are going to read this and come to my apartment and beat me up. They would probably be in the right, though it would a hilarious thin-armed slapfest all around.