Monday 13 August 2007

Indie Show-Down

It's a clear, cold night.
the further you walk, the more you seem to notice it becoming more lonely, as people are appearing less and less... The night is pouring in around you. Even the street lamps fighting it seem to be surrendering to it's persistence. Just then, as if from the shadow itself, steps an Indie guy.. He walks towards you with purpose and determination. he stops, stares and asks "So what kinda music are you in to".... You've just been called out to prove your Indie Cred.. what do you do?
luckily, i have some helpful hints!

1) First Response:

The first thing you say could determine if you win or lose, so be careful!
What you need to do is name off some pretty obscure bands, but ALSO throw in some red herrings here is the formula, the order is important: (a+x)+(b+y)+(c+Z)

here is how it works. a,b,c are your red herrings: these are indie in name, but in reality they're the at the popular end of indie. x and y are your relatively unknown bands and finally so they know you mean business Z, this is a VERY obscure band, but not your Ace, you need that for later.. here is an example of how it might sound:

"Well, i like Belle and Sebastian, Sparklehorse and umm.. Sufjan Stevens, dEUS i was just listening to Eels and also John Shelly and the Creatures"

what you want is for them to ask about your Z band, that is when you can cut him where he stands with the Kryptonite of Indie retorts "Oh.. you wouldn't know them, they're pretty underground" sadly any self respecting indie follower wouldn't fall for that. they'd remember the name and look it up in their own time.

2)The Rally

This is where your true colours are shown, and your first few Indie-Cred-Clashes, will be a short clean defeat. The Rally is more about experience than actually Indie knowledge. Here is how most Rallies will develop.
a) Testing the water:
during this period of the Rally bands will be thrown around between the two of you until someone breaks with mention of a gig.. something like this:
...
"Yeah.. i liked the first album, did you hear the Arcade Fire album"
"In fact i did, and i saw them live last year..."

b) Live Show.. Show Down
Things just got complicated.. you have gotten over the first hurdle and you have proven that you KNOW your stuff. but have you seen it? it's no longer just about how indie the band is.. it's about how indie they were when you first saw them play.. SO lets welcome back the red herring bands that we used earlier. now these guys are going to win it for you.. this is the round where the lesser known bands don't mean crap.
A popular band that you saw years ago before they where big is exactly what you want here.. not too popular.. you don't wanna be saying stuff like "i saw Take That before they broke up.. "..that sorta crap will get you killed!
this round will last until either one of you has aced the other OR until someone changes back to indie bands again...

c) Last Stand
remember that Ace you where saving.. this is where to throw it out.. the situation is desperate and if you've made it this far then the guy is good.. really good.. it's like a western quick draw.. the one that gets out their Ace first will have victory and the other will fall in disgrace..

lastly.. be careful out there...

9 comments:

zul- said...

sweet post berko, there isn't much indie gigs here in my country however, there are people who do listen to indie and follows it real good so that might come handy to me. heh.

have you ever listen to "beulah" i only heard one of their songs, "popular mechanics for lovers" quite good i'd say.

Anonymous said...

b) I saw Bloc Party on their first gig outside the UK.
Oh yeah, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Their cd wasn't available anywhere, but hey, the concert was quite good back then...

:) zul-'s right. sweet post :)

zul- said...

i'm a huge fan of bloc party, i actually have their old Silent Alarm album. heh. never seen them live before but from their videos, they're awesome.

Seb Berkovich said...

i saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, love there music. never really had much interest in bloc party so never went to see them.

i'm going all alt-country the next while, seeing Joanna Newsom and Iron and Wine, looking forward to them!

Unknown said...

Did any else see the spice girl’s last gig! Amazing! I sure hope the make a come back album. GIRL POWER

Unknown said...

haha love it! thanks for using John shelly and the creatures as your z band!! lol hopefully ppl will look us up! :)

Anonymous said...

Howdy would you mind stating which blog platform you're working with? I'm looking
to start my own blog in the near future but I'm having a tough time selecting between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your layout seems different then most blogs and I'm looking for something unique.

P.S Apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!

Also visit my web blog - orquesta atraccion

Anonymous said...

Because the admin of this web page is working, no doubt very shortly it will be famous, due to its quality contents.


Feel free to visit my homepage musicos

Anonymous said...

After looking into a handful of the blog posts on your site,
I seriously like your technique of blogging. I saved as a favorite it to my bookmark site list and will be checking
back soon. Please visit my web site as well and let me know what you
think.

Feel free to surf to my web site ... musicos artistas