Re-blog : 10 Things Indie Musicians Do That Make People Hate Indie (from Monitor Down, 2009)

 

This one by Peter Kimmich is too good not to re-blog. It's sad that an article almost two decades old still remains so relevant. Unfortunately, all it takes to ruin the fun for everyone else is a handful of insufferably bad apples, but when it's "the norm", well...that's soul-draining. This might hit close to home for some, but those who see it on the reg can appreciate both the brutal honesty AND the humor (intentional and otherwise). Enjoy!

First of all, I love indie. I love it like a 15-year-old boy loves Megan Fox, sans anything involving posters on ceilings. So before you get up in my face with loud, defensive, aggravated comments about how great it is — I know, I know. Mellow.

But again like our halter-wearing temptress, there are a lot of seemingly reasonable people who HATE indie. And when you start to talk to these people about their hatred (once they get past the asinine jabs about hipster jeans, beards and technical guitar skills, like those even matter), you start to realize they may actually be on to something. Because even though indie is awesome, it’s only really awesome if it’s done right. And sometimes, you just have to take a loved one by the collar and tell them when they’re not doing something right. Right?

Here are some of the things indie musicians do that piss off people who otherwise have good taste in music. (Subtext: if you hate indie because the only style of music you like is speed metal or radio country, then this list, and my entire blog, will probably mean nothing to you.)

1. Whine a lot more than necessary. Most people understand that songwriting is about expressing emotions, so like-minded listeners can identify when their parents get divorced and they’re shuttled back and forth like a fake ID at a sorority house. But those alleged “genuine” emotions shouldn’t cause stool to run soft in the bowel, and those “genuine” lyrics shouldn’t have to become ironic Facebook status updates. Despite the majority of indie songwriters who express their inner ingénue at an appropriate level, a lot of them tend to dwell on the idea of adult male vulnerability, riding it like the bow of the Titanic until people in the crowd are considering dialing a hotline. The result: indie rock that is backed only by overdramatic 14-year-old girls and moms who are just glad their kid isn’t listening to Insane Clown Posse. And the woe in my heart bleeds like yesterday’s undercooked pot roast.

2. Sing like the deaf. Okay, part of being vulnerable and “real” is not having an overtly superior singing style. No one expects to be empathizing with Bono, or relating on a personal level to Axl Rose. (Yikes.) Still, there are a couple of fundamentals that are just part of singing — like pitch control, and not making the audience laugh out loud. So when the biggest Clap Your Hands Say Yeah single sounds like Joe Assface got up on karaoke night and ran a schoolbus over the solfege scale, it’s tough to hold the contempt in check. It’s even worse when it’s a cover of a song people are already familiar with, like Clem Snide’s abhorrent version of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” or Ben Gibbard’s cringe-inducing take on Bjork’s “All is Full of Love.” I don’t care how cute his own songs are, taking on Bjork’s most well-heard single with his northern-accented po-boy whimper is like climbing Mount St. Helens in a T-shirt and Converse low-tops. When the tone that comes across is “this didn’t sound like it did in my head, but oh well,” something is probably lost.

3. Shamelessly imitate other musicians. How many more indie lead singers are going to try to sound like Ian Curtis before someone devotes a top-10 list to it? Even though the Interpol/Editors/White Lies/Horrors/She Wants Revenge singing style is still cool almost 30 years after the end of Joy Division, indie bands with that sound are about as rare as lice at a Phish concert. At least there’s the rejuvenating presence of the Libertines/Arctic Monkeys/Bloc Party/Larrikin Love/Paddingtons/We Are Scientists “reckless” sound to remind us that anyone can roll out of bed in the morning and record an album between snorting lines and scraping the paint off vintage Telecasters. (And they’re all better than the Panic at the Disco/Fall Out Boy/Paramore/The Academy Is…/MCR pseudo-indie outfits with pop-punk mafia ties. )

4. Fail to grasp playing instruments. Once again, the everyman’s musician doesn’t need to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen. (Or Blake Mills, formerly of Simon Dawes.) It can even be a point of pride to be “self-taught” … but it shouldn’t come into question whether the guitarist is using his hands or his feet. Case in point: Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty and his zombie-esque guitarist Mick Whitnall are a page out of the “Make Sure You’ll Be Able to Remember the Recording Session” manual. As talented as Doherty is, his band has released possibly the two worst-sounding albums in music, and yes, that crashing sound at the end of Down in Albion is him falling on his wasted ass. But even musicians who are too bombed to employ the musical skills they have are still superior to the ones who are not wasted, and just try to play like they are. Even worse, there’s the whole sub-layer of completely un-musical local musicians who try to get away with “unconventional” techniques, like playing the guitar like a stand-up bass, relying on “tones” or feedback to create music, or literally just holding the guitar throughout a show only to play two strings during the loud part. Just learn a song, butterfingers.

5. Create noise experiments. Lou Reed tried it with Metal Machine Music, an album consisting largely of feedback – and even that was regarded as a joke. Imagine, then, the impact your crappy, untrained garage band will have on the musical landscape when you unleash your new brand of electric-drill-inspired, ultra-distorted noise music for all to appreciate. Will it be “refreshing” when the opening notes of your first performance sound like a large train trying to shove through a small tunnel? Will the squeaky chair hooked up to a loose guitar pickup break anyone out of their sad, close-minded funk? Will they “get it” when you finally chop the head off your guitar with a bolt cutter at the end of your set? Probably not, you ridiculous excuse for a musician – please fuck off, and refer to number 4 above.

6. Selectively hate major labels. Indie musicians take pride in being independent, and in getting their music noticed without the aid of the big, soul-sucking music industry monster. They enjoy picking apart bands they’ve heard of who have “sold out,” changed their sound a little, and started touring with Velvet Revolver and Jane’s Addiction. “Damn, the Frog Bots get one deal and they change completely, and now they’re only playing for meatheads and teeny boppers at $75 a ticket. Way to betray the scene, man.” Unless, of course, it’s a friend of theirs. In that case, “did you hear about the Narwhal Endeavor? They just got the deal of a lifetime, and now they’re touring with Pearl Jam. That’s awesome.” And finally, what happens when a suit comes to knock on their own door? Everyone and their roommate shits a brick, that’s what happens. So much for integrity, I guess.

7. Have obscure-band-offs. Sports guys like to rattle off stats, car guys like to compare engines, and techies like to talk about the latest gear they bought. But somehow, none of it is as infuriating as the veiled contempt in an indie rocker’s voice when he (or she) name-drops an ultra-secret underground band he (or she) is hoping you’ll be stumped by. “Yeah, we (.2) were handing out CDs at the Glimmering Sock Muppets show last night. Killer band.” This is followed by an expectant stare. The only way to respond gracefully is to name-drop the primary influence of the Glimmering Sock Muppets, or at least point out how awesome it is that they poached the lead singer from the Kitten Tossers last week. Though the former is preferable. Of course, if you don’t recognize them, your only hope of staying cool is to actually be in a more noteworthy band — in which case your non-recognition might even cause the questioner to question his own sense of band judgment. Then again, you could always do some research in the used section at Amoeba, you poseur.

8. Go for the “indie look.” Wearing frayed vintage stuff isn’t necessarily the biggest fault of indie musicians — but then there are the ones who try to out-indie everyone by sporting every indie fashion trend at once. They usually end up looking like one of Lou Pearlman’s sadistic boy-band experiments: greasy, deliberately tangled hair; the light stubble that says “I’m not overly focused on my outward appearance;” the prerequisite all-weather scarf; the mod hat no one wears outside of an Urban Outfitters catalog; suspenders; the collage of concert wristbands; the v-neck that almost exposes nipple, for that subtle feminine mystery; the obligatory women’s fur-lined jacket, just to make it clear they don’t care what you think of them. And of course, no indie look would be complete without the nearly constant semblance of posing for something — something such as the inevitable barrage of Myspace photography that comes after the first round of dirty martinis. The only justice here is the notion that, according to historic fashion norms, these guys will be trying to pull off “bohemian vogue” until well after senility has set in. Eff that, ya whipper snapper.

9. Idolize their genre above all others. I’ve met metal guys who are into reggae, and hip-hop guys who are into funk and disco. There’s even an entire segment of punks who get into country. But for indie musicians, the only thing better than indie rock is indie rock and beer. Just take an indie rocker on a long road trip and they’ll have something to say about everything that comes out of your stereo until you start playing Muse, the Smiths, or something that sounds like Muse or the Smiths. I’ll admit that I’m living proof of this, if not to the degree that’s possible when you put someone with musical opinions into one of the most clique-y genres ever created. At least it’s easy to start up a conversation with them at a party: just mention the undeniable production benefits of auto-tune. You’ll start a landslide.

10. Worship Radiohead. Actually, I can’t blame indie guys for this, because Radiohead is awesome. But hey, some people hate them. Makes sense to me.

Original article found here: https://www.monitordown.com/2009/10/28/10-things-indie-musicians-do-that-make-people-hate-indie/

Power-Duos : We're "Bands" Too!

 

Much like saying that a DJ is NOT a "musician" and that "singers" who rely on auto-tune should be ran out of the village by a mob with torches and pitchforks to be forever shunned for their lack of musicianship and integrity, this blog will likely get under some folks' skin and I will be accused of "gatekeeping" or something. But fuck it. Call me what you will, but what you CAN'T call me is a "liar"...

Ever since just before the Revelator trainwreck imploded several years back, I've been focusing a lot of my original songwriting and performing energy on a "power-duo" format. In fact, the spark of interest of doing a power-duo came from that failed project, when I found myself having to come up with an interesting and plausible means of covering for our bassist at some live performances due to some scheduling issues--we didn't want to cancel the shows, and I really didn't want to have do them as acoustic shows, because I prefer playing electric. So I got to thinking about a few of the songs that had simpler bass guitar parts, and started coming up with ways that I could fake the bass guitar part along with what I'm playing on guitar.

I started doing some deep diving on bands that only had two members (a guitar player and a drummer), like Local H, The White Stripes, the flat Duo Jets and a couple others. But then I also had recently been turned on to the British group Royal Blood, featuring a bass player and drummer. In comparing Local H and Royal Blood, the formula is basically the same, except the instruments are reversed. In Local H, Scott Lucas uses a separate pickup mounted just underneath his lowest two or three strings and he runs a separate signal out to a different pedal board or whatever and into a bass rig, while still having the regular guitar pickup going to his guitar pedal board and into his guitar rig. I'm still not entirely sure if he uses some sort of octave effect to create a bass note, or if he just turns the bass frequencies up on the amp EQ, but in my head, I was thinking to myself that if I can somehow drop that signal an octave so that it's a legitimate bass note, it would sound pretty authentic. Even listening to some of the live performances by Local H, I can't quite figure out if he's actually doing a low octave on his bass, but that's the special sauce that I was going for. Royal Blood did the same thing, except for basically the guy just runs a stereo signal into two different setups, and he uses some effects that can not only create the octave higher, but in some cases also a fifth, so that it creates a power chord sound, and he runs that side into a guitar rig, while running his standard bass guitar signal into a bass rig. I also through a little bit of consideration in there for the Presidents of the United States of America, because between the two of them (Chris Ballew and whichever other guitarist was in the band at any given time), there are only five strings on the guitars in the entire band, one guy has two and the other has three, but aside from the higher octave third string, they're playing the same octave even, and they managed to make it sound huge. So I had a lot to consider and work with.

After I determined what songs we could still do if I could pull it off, I started getting into the mad scientist part of it. The first one I built was kind of roughly based on the Stratocaster that Scott Lucas plays sometimes with Local H, which had half of a Fender Precision Bass pick up mounted at an angle under the lower strings, ran to a separate jack (I would later refine this to a TRS cable, with the "tip" going from the guitar pickup to the guitar rig and the "ring" from the "bass" pickup to a bass rig thanks to a splitter I made in a pedal enclosure). The first setup I used for this purpose, I used a cheap little processor that I would set to a pitch shifting effect to get my low octave for my bass guitar sound, and then I would just run the guitar portion into a standard amp (later I moved to two dedicated small pedalboards with guitar and bass uses, respectively). It worked spectacularly, and we did a number of shows where nobody really gave any thought to the fact that we didn't have a bass player on stage with us. There were even a couple of bass guitarists in the audience at most of the shows, and they couldn't believe how decent it sounded. So we had our fix for when our bass player was out of town. And thus, the seed for me using the setup for my own music and performing was planted, fertilized and starting to sprout. It didn't sit well with Revelator's self-proclaimed "leader", and I believe that was one of the things that actually ended that project shortly thereafter...because, after all, he was allowed to collaborate and have several vanity projects going on at any given time, but Heaven forbid the rest of us do the same. Digressing...

To make it work and still sound like a full band, you have to abandon complex basslines and counter-melodies on guitar for the most part, and forget about any outrageous flashy guitar heroics, because you have to keep everything together since both guitar and bass are coming out of one instrument, but if you write songs or pick and choose covers that have no guitar solos or that something can be done in place of the guitar solo, or in those instances where, for example, I can pedal an open E or A string and play a solo on the other strings, and it works. Surprisingly well, actually. In my early days with Idle Minds in the early-to-mid '90s, our longest-serving bass player could play a root note and a couple of accents here and there but did not really know the fundamentals of bass guitar, and kept it largely very, very basic. Hell, even other working bands I gig with in most cases the bassist is not the most technically proficient bass player out there either. So again, expectations are low in that regard from both audiences and even with other musicians. With one or two exceptions, I've spent a lifetime trying to compensate for bass players who were just playing it safe and simple, so how was this any different? I would just dumb down the bass parts and simplify some of the guitar playing, or change some chord shapes or whatever, and basically, I just became literally almost every milquetoast bass and rhythm guitar player around here, but still better in some cases, and on one instrument to boot---so this never has, nor will it ever, just sound like "a guitar and drums but no bass". And doing a few little tricks here and there to show that I've got a little bit of a command of not just the instrument but also of the songs themselves definitely makes me stand out a little bit without looking like I'm trying to show off too much. Sometimes just being solid, consistent and relentless is the best way to "show off" anyway. But "what's the point?", you might be asking. 

I recently did a less-than-gratifying covers gig with my duo in a bar I play with another group (believe it or not, we've managed to come up with 4 hours of covers that sound pretty amazing as a two-piece), and I think a lot of why it didn't go as great as it could've was a mix of the regular-ol'-dive-bar-bullshit mentality and some folks confused by the format. I think we got some weird looks because there was just two of us and people were expecting something maybe lower-key, "chill" and did NOT expect us to sound like a full band ; that was literally one of the "complaints" from the bar manager: "loud as a full band"---I mean, thank you and all, but that's a problem WHY??? Did they WANT only the sparse, incomplete lo-fi sound of just a guitar, drums and vocals? I think that fucked with people, but I'm still not sure "why". I went into the gig thinking the average bar crowd wouldn't care about such things---after all, we were doing a handful of songs I've played in that very same bar with another group that always go over great, AND this is the same kind of audience who doesn't understand the ingredients to a band, or why asking a power-trio to play Chicago or Lynyrd Skynyrd songs (requiring keyboards, horns, multiple guitars, etc.) is kind of silly and inappropriate. So surely they'd appreciate two guys pulling off some familiar covers and sounding as good as (or better than) they typical shitty Friday night cover-band they're used to seeing. But for whatever reason, I believe this particular crowd had some preconceived notion that we would sound different, quieter or something. Okay, the night sucked, to be perfectly frank, from a double-booking debacle we encountered while setting up to the very last note. Even when we did some absolutely killer versions of some songs (especially in the second set, where we put our "A"-list stuff and after the mix was dialed-in), aside from a pocket of folks over at one table and a few dudes across the bar at another table, people were unresponsive. Uncomfortable silence. This was also the same venue that hosted acoustic duos and even a corny-as-FUCK duo featuring a literal karaoke singer, a dude with a guitar and a goddamned LAPTOP playing---no shit---PURCHASED BACKING TRACKS (not even backing tracks they recorded themselves). Yes, this venue let some act with a laptop that you would be mortified to host in your fucking living room for a New Year's party play there---and they were regular performers there---yet you put a competent guitarist/vocalist and drummer in there doing organic, fully-LIVE music and people act like we were violating some kind of sacred taboo. We even tried to keep the overall volume down in the first set (even had to be asked to turn the PA up a little, instead of down), but there was seemingly no way of pleasing this crowd.

We sounded every bit as good as a trio I also play with (and in a lot of cases, BETTER), and again, at least we're not in there doing some douchey double-acoustic-guitar "unplugged" performance or prancing around like a couple of poseurs to prerecorded backing tracks, so I think it came down to simply the audience's perception about what they were seeing and them believing it should've sounded less-full or somehow "not quite a much like a full band". I feel like this is strange, because audiences never seem to notice when a trio is doing music that usually features a second guitar, or keyboards, etc. They never seem to notice when you play a clean electric guitar where it should be an acoustic guitar. They often don't even notice glaring mistakes on an instrument or vocal (or forgotten lyric). Half the time people can't even distinguish the difference between "bass" or "lead" guitar. But I believe they let these things get a pass because they see what they think is a "full band" (i.e. "three or more people"), and it has nothing to do with the sound entering their ears at all (which is wild, particularly with "laptop as band member" thing). Their eyes had already made their minds up for them. 

Don't do that.

It's a crime to shortchange an honest live performance because it's not a format you're used to. Truth be told, if a musician is using a synth, or a bunch of pedals, it could be a one-person act---I'd even go so far as to say one of those semi-douchey looper pedal situations where the musician builds the song as they go, because at least they're creating all the sounds themselves---and that should suffice just fine for a Friday or Saturday night performance. Especially when it's a well-rehearsed performance with a good selection of songs. At least it's not a "DJ", right? And lookit, I'll even give a DJ a pass if they're truly making their own music (i.e. The Prodigy, Daft Punk) and put in the work themselves, and aren't just inserting pre-canned samples and noises into prepackaged loops/beats.

Listen with your ears, NOT with your eyes. Unless there's a goddamned laptop or iPad doing 90% of the performance. Then you can be utterly insulted that someone would think they're "entertaining" you by pressing "play" on their keyboard. But a couple guys making good, honest rock-n-roll racket? Give 'em a chance. They're as good as (or better than) any of the other milquetoast bands you go see at your local dive, so be cool.