SpectralJulian

I don't know what the hell is wrong with you people. Kim Kardashian looks freaking great without makeup. Soft looking skin, big bee-stung lips, big brown eyes, nice set of boobs. Maybe her jawline is slightly masculine, but not incredibly so. Looks like a hot Indian chick to me. I think a lot of those pictures are unfair to the actresses too. It's "hot picture of them with make-up" vs "totally unflattering picture where they were most likely having a {censored} day after drinking all last night & didn't even have a bath or wash their hair" You guys sound like this to me:

Yeah 250k in sales. Subtract parts costs Utilities Tool maintenance Employee costs & cost of living in Seattle Seriously. . . if you think Devi's making bank think again. She might have a lot of sales, but I could easily see how she could be broke. Also I don't think gender reassignment's super cheap. She's probably pouring any profit she has into increased production & R+D. Small business is hard.

Devi alluded to making north of $200k last year in a thread awhile back so it's kind of mystifying why she'd need to raise such an absurd amount to produce one pedal. That's probably gross sales, not net profits.

I think that's more a byproduct of the type of distortion it is. You can get that when playing clean. I think it is a speaker artifact.

Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker are cool. Never heard of this Hawley fellow.

good choices btw, I love FUGAZI, Daniel Johnston, and Polvo. I'm just getting into Liars. I've listened to a little bit of Tortoise, but I have a hard time listening because I tend to think Slint and The For Carnation are better. The S/T by The For Carnation is soooo good.

fix'd. You only need the code part that looks something like v4G4W3UFv0k

It's all bad, sorry for not coming off as TOO intelligent, this is the internet, intelligence is irrelevant. I don't care if it's a stupid term, if it communicates what I'm trying to communicate than it works, if it doesn't someones comprehensino is failing or they've never been aurally raped by the experience that is indie/hipster music. You're totally coming off as someone who doesn't know anything about underground/alternative/independent music and are looking like a total dumbass. There is NO sound that defines indie music, or the music that your hipsters listen to.

In designating indie as hipster and hipster as somehow inherently bad, without explaining either why they're connected or why either is necessarily bad, you're not really coming off as two clever, or even making much of a coherent argument. Hipster is a stupid term that was revived by an ad agency in the '90s to sell something or other. Lots of indie music is good. Lots is bad. Lots is mediocre. There's a hell of a lot of it out there. Totally. Hipster is a stereotype for young fashionable people who like indie rock, whole foods, ipods, H+M, vans shoes, have liberal leaning politics, like ironic humor, etc. It has a negative connotation, even when used by fans of alternative/underground/independent music. I'm just a tall guy with a beard and messy hair. I like music that I find to be artistic and moving- whether it is rock music or classical music. I generally like artsy, dissonant, noisey stuff, and abrasive stuff but I have an appreciation for pop as well and I enjoy bands like Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, and Polvo that can pull off both. I think organic food is a pretty good deal, I'm liberal, I like Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Michel Gondry, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and Spike Jonze movies. But I also like Kubrick, the Coen brothers, Hitchcock, and Sergeo Leone films. I think Bill Murray is a really good actor. I think Scarlett Johannsen is hot. I'm poor. I play noisy fuzzed out guitar in alternate tunings. I like cities. I think H+M clothes is made like crap, and I don't dress metro. I wear very drab clothing- dark colors. I've probably spent 2 hours total in my whole life shopping for clothes. I think Pabst Blue Ribbon is god awful and I refuse to drink the stuff. Trucker hats are retarded, and I hate Ashton Kutcher. I feel delay is an incredibly over-rated effect. I thought Little Miss Sunshine was a god-awful movie. I liked Juno and Me, You, and Everyone We Know. I like foreign film. Amelie, Run Lola Run, City of Lost Children, Goodbye Lenin!, Alphaville, Seven Samurai. I like sports. I own several hockey jerseys- Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Chicago Blackhawks. My glasses are not your tortoise-shell rimmed and very Ward Cleaverish as opposed to the stereotypical Rivers Cuomoish. I find Bukowski, Dostoevsky, Roald Dahl, and Phillip K. Dick to be intriguing writers. I don't dye my hair, I don't have any piercings, I don't have any tattoos. I'm a carnivore. I'm a privately practicing Christian and draw my philosophies heavily from Descartes. Am I a hipster? I don't think so. You might. I do what I like, not what I think is fashionable. If I wanted to be fashionable I'm completely barking up the wrong tree. Most of the people I know are punk/hardcore or into math rock.

This isn't a debate in case you haven't worked it out. If you like indie your opinion is not valid hence I do not recognise you as human, therefore you cannot debate this topic, I have already won any 'debate'. Indie is not a reference to independant labels, rather the monotonous, terrible attempts at music also known as hipster, you will know it and hate it when you hear it, if you don't do the world a favor and hang yourself. Arcadesonfire - you officially forfeited your membership to the human club. Indie doesn't classify any one kind of music. You can be indie rap or indie metal. Around the turn of the millennium it started being used as a genre title to define a certain sound. Which is ridiculous. Punk didn't necessarily mean bands that played fast power chords at the end of the 70's. It also embraced bands like Television, Gang of Four, Pere Ubu, DEVO, and a bunch of other stuff that sounded nothing like the Sex Pistols. All of these following bands are considered Indie: [YOUTUBE]150yyU3i73o[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]jdMDcG3zAEI[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]_PVB7TqS9Gw[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]2T4BsnXmJaI[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]DVl-doNlOsQ[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]73qBnuzrjx0[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]zN9x6zckn18[/YOUTUBE] They musically all sound very different from each other. And none of those bands sound like the corporately raped version of indie. Dashboard, Death Cab, and Postal Service do not define the sound of indie rock no matter what you may hear.

Oh i'm quite aware that invading of other people's land has gone on throughout history and continues today by people all over the world... by "Europeans," i meant people of European decent, which includes the settlers who pushed west, and that's got to be one of the most dramatic examples of invasion in history... while colonialism is to a great extent over in African and Asia, people of European decent still control North America and Australia... though, I don't know much about Asian or African history, so there may be larger examples there that didn't involve Europeans that aren't coming to my mind... ok, back to the music debate... People are brutal to each other everywhere. Read about the things that warring native American tribes did to each other. They'd do absolutely brutal things.

I don't think he's arguing against independent music and DIY. I think he's just saying "music used to be better." I think it is a slightly narrow way to view things but it isn't far from the truth. The 50's had countless rock and roll and rockabilly musicians The 60's had the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Pink Floyd, countless psychedelic garage bands The 70's had Bowie, Iggy Pop solo, T. Rex, Led Zeppelin, WIRE, The Clash, Roxy Music, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Television, the Ramones and countless punk and post-punk bands The 80's had Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, Rites of Spring, Minor Threat, Big Black, Naked Raygun, the Misfits, Scratch Acid, Slint, The Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain and countless bands on SST, Homestead, Touch and Go, K Records, and Dischord. The 90's had Pavement, Polvo, Sonic Youth, Shellac, The Jesus Lizard, My Bloody Valentine, Guided By Voices, Don Caballero, Modest Mouse when they were good, and a ton of stuff. The 00's: Mission of Burma reunited Sonic Youth Deerhoof TV on the Radio Polysics Shellac Liars Shellac was active in the 90's, Mission of Burma the 80's (and late 70's too actually), and Sonic Youth in the 80's and 90's. Take out those bands and you have the best band of the 00's being Polysics. Now as much as I love Polysics, they don't compare to Pavement, Polvo, Sonic Youth, The Stooges, etc. Of course there are thousands of bands releasing stuff every year, so I'm probably overlooking a few that are of that caliber.

Trail of Tears. Exactly why Andrew Jackson should NOT be on the 20 dollar bill.

Haha, I just went to Pitchfork just to remind myself why I hate it so much, and there was actually something useful on it. Apparently all of Mission of Burma's old albums are getting reissued and are going to include live performance DVDs with them. Yay. But my hate for Pitchfork has more to do with their shoddy reviews and their reappropriation of mainstream musical artists like Justin Timberlake just for the sake of it.

NME is just a tad pro Brit isn't it? Wowee Zowee and Red Medicine should be higher on that 1995 list. I too feel that Closer was a pretty week album by Joy Division. I like the rawer sound of Unknown Pleasures better.

What's your definition of indie Loner? All indie means is independent label. Everyone's definition varies.

Have you ever listened to Bacchanale? Absolutely wonderful piece of music by John Cage. And it is 4'33" Also listened to Paris off of "Piano and Voices" by John Cage and Meredith Monk. Absolutely beautiful classical composition.

Yeah, see, that's the problem with YOU though. You're the one who's getting all butthurt over someone saying that they disagree with an opinion. In my case, I just say that it flat out sucks. Does that mean I'm right? {censored} no. You can call me a dumbass and we'll have an argument. It'll consist of condescending remarks and tons of copping out. If you came into a thread about Nirvana and said they blew nuts and Nevermind was an incredibly overrated album I wouldn't get all pissy, I'd call you a retard and continue to pick apart your own musical taste to prove to myself as to why your opinion doesn't matter. That's musical elitism 101. The old Nirvana forum I used to go to was the biggest hive of musical elitists on the face of the Earth, believe it or not. It doesn't sound plausible but the elitists don't talk about Nirvana, they talk about how Steve Reich and John Cage are awesome and how they wish Slint would come to North America or, if they wandered into the Nirvana portion of the site, they'd tell all the Nirvana noobs and kurdt-kids how they'll hate Nirvana in a year and realize how retarded they were. It only happens to about 5% of them. I don't know whether or not it was a good thing that it happened to me. I don't go there anymore. That place sucks. A member on here goes there I think. Poppin' Fresh is his name on there and it's in the user's sig on here. I dunno the user though. John Cage is awesome. And I do wish Slint would have played near me when they got back together. I'll always respect Nirvana as the band that is partially responsible for me knowing about all the music I now love. But I'd never rub a Cobaininite the wrong way, because when I was a long haired ripped flannel shirt over a stained t-shirt wearing teenager I was just like them and wanted a DS-1, a Jaguar, and a Marshall stack. And anyways Nirvana was a good band, even though they aren't as great as I once thought.

So let's make some more pronouncements: -Joy Division were {censored}, are {censored} and will always be {censored}. There is no more precious hipster band than Joy Division. It ticks all the right boxes: non-mainstream sound, non-mainstream singer but you know that there's many within their clan that don't actually like the albums. I can't stand their albums! I hated them when I was 16 some 14 years ago and my friends and I would meet up round each other's houses and play stacks of vinyl. {censored}, I should have liked them as I adored the Manic Street Preachers, especially the Holy Bible LP. But everything about Joy Division turned me off. Ian Curtis is much like T.S. Eliot to me in that their prose is moribund and people elevate them upwards purely because they sing of death and how useless life is etc etc. It's no different to the emo kids saying how 'emotional' the emo singer is, everything Bowers complained about in the reviews above. My own theory with Joy Division is that the music press decided that they needed to hype a new 'Old Icon'. Punk had been done to death, the Smiths revival was back in town so post-punk was the logical step. Death sells and so Curtis was ideal. Mark E Smith is a more important and vital contributor to the world of music than Ian Curtis ever was. So there. I'd have to disagree with you there about Joy Division being {censored}e. I agree that they are over hyped because of the whole "suicidal singer in a gloomy sounding band kills himself" type deal (AKA the Kurt Cobain factor.) Also the movie Closer looks like a POS. Instrumentally they are very appealing to me. Peter Hook is probably one of my favorite bassists. Ian Curtis's vocal deliver was very often detached sounding, which you don't get too much in music. The drumming and the guitar parts were also superb. What struck me more about their music was their sense of texture rather than their sense of darkness. The first Joy Division song I've ever heard was Digital, and I've always loved that song and I feel that it is a very happy song.

Being that indie labels are what they are, I think they are less focused on appealing to people and more focused on selling CDs. It is true though that they have a demographic. Less we forget, The Clash were on a major record label, and The Moon And Antarctica (their best album) was released on a major record label as well. The Moon and Antarctica was good, but I think I like the Lonesome and Crowded West a little better. Maybe after the Moon and Antarctica came out the A + R guys were upset that it didn't sell very much and asked them to make more marketable music. I don't know. All I do know is they started to majorly suck when Good News came out. Also, labels are all different. Some indie labels are worse than major labels. And not all contracts are equal. Some bands are on a major label on a good contract just to give a label cred. Sonic Youth on Geffen.

Also to me the word "hipster" has a negative connotation. Similarly the 60's counterculture despised the word hippie. In both cases the subcultural movement suddenly became in fashion and cool. Who's in it for the fashion and who's in it for art and philosophy is always arguable.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rs/sonicyouth-07.php The reason that SY and other bands in the 80's were annoyed by Christgau had more to do with the bands not liking him, not him not liking the bands. Apparently Christgau classified {censored} Galore, Big Black, The Butthole Surfers, and Sonic Youth under the label "pig{censored}er" because of the dissonant aggressive sounds. That pissed off Sonic Youth.

Spectral Julian- I agree that the bands you listed are sort of dumbed down versions of other bands, with the exception of modest mouse (considering that johnny marr is now in the band). Do you actually consider these to be hipster bands? When i think of hipster bands i think of xiu xiu, animal collective, aids wolf, melt bannana, shit robot, etc. I dont consider those bands to be hipster at all, because everyone listens to them. Yes, a lot of times hipsters can be pretentious, but hipsters tend to innovate a lot as well. I think sometimes people take pretentia for someone being an asshole. Well I think there is a distinct difference between being hipster and being hip. It all really goes down to the old argument of which bands are punk and which bands are poseurs. Generally I draw the difference at how the band approaches music. It is about corporate exploitation of the underground that in the 90s was known as indie rock, in the 80s as alternative or hardcore in some circles, in the 70s was known as punk, and in the 60s was known as garage, and in the 50's was known as rock and roll. When Modest Mouse went major they completely fell into the world of corporate exploitation of subculture. Adding Johnny Marr totally solidifies that. Major labels and some indie labels care about targeting audiences, and IMO that is what really kills music in my opinion, and why MTV is the devil. As far as I can tell Xiu Xiu and Melt Banana are both bands that work on the principle of Ars Gratia Artis. And it translates in their music.

"Hipsters" are frequently making more original music on a day to day basis than anyone else. The music scene has changed completely because of these "hipsters." I don't quite know about that man. A lot of "hipster" music is just a more bubblegummy poppy rehash of yesterday's art rock. Franz Ferdinand = dumbed down Gang of Four Interpol = dumbed down Joy Division The Strokes = dumbed down CBGBs stuff new Modest Mouse = dumbed down U2 and the Smiths mixed with dumbed down Polvo and Pixies lots of stuff = dumbed down Radiohead How's that progressive at all? The only thing that has changed the music scene is the mass availability of free music and internet networking, making getting a fan base much easier. In the 90's hipster was called alternative. There were bands trying to cash in on things that Nirvana and other bands had made popular at the beginning of the 90's, and there were bands that appreciated what happened in the 70's and 80's underground communities and wanted to move forward.

Maybe a little bit, but I think the David Byrne influenced vocals on your stuff throws it off of that "I'm trying to introduce instant nostalgia by singing in a really sappy voice" vibe that a lot of hipster music has. Your friend's music is a bit more hipster. I think it is kind of odd that you say you are "trying to break into that scene." Because it sounds like you want to play more for the audience. I just play what I like, and if my audience doesn't like it I'll get a new audience. With alternative/indie/punk whatever you want to call it you're always treading a fine line. Personally I find a lot of newer indie to be utter garbage. But I do like some of it. I think TV on the Radio and Liars are both pretty good, and TVOTR's style isn't that far removed from stuff that I dislike. A lot of it comes down to vocals for me.