They have indie awards now

Does winning prizes makes you less indie? But what if the prize itself if an indie one? Well, look at this years Mercury Music Prize. For those not in the know, the Mercury Music Prize was set up by a bunch of people who thought the other music prizes weren't indie enough and only rewarded popularity not musical awesomeness.

This year's winners, Elbow, are indeed awesome. Check out their stuff here and here. It only took them 18 years to get some nice recognition of what their doing. Now that's indie.

And the lovely live photo of them is by Matt Hobbs.

Anti-social Networks

Popularity has always been a game in life for some. On the internet it's a religion. So let's look at the main offenders.

Facebook:

The Wall Mart of communication. The main goal of this network seems to be to add as many applications to your profile so as to render it useless and of no actual value to the world. It's the equivalent of carrying around with you all the personality and aptitude tests you've taken in your entire life and before introducing yourself to someone asking them to review these tests and take one themselves for a comparison. The interface is the easiest to use, though they don't allow for much creativity in the page layout (which can be a good thing).

Bebo:

If you went to your local pound store (or 99c store) and bought a social network, this'd be it. To win at this social network you have to show off better than everyone else. As soon as you do anything, comment on a photo, update your profile or look at a page the wrong way Bebo will inform everyone you know (and maybe some of those you don't) what you have done as if it were some sort of amazing revelation you had that the world needs to know about.

It's for a generation of people who seem to have equal interest whether celebrities kill someone or go to the toilet.

Myspace:

Give the world a webpage, and allow them to edit the code. The result, one in four pages are unreadable. But at least they're allowing some creativity.

To win at MySpace, fill out all the information it requests (height, weight, schools attended, job), then fill out and place on your profile all the surveys, tests and chain letters you receive. Flourish with large oversized pictures until opening the page causes browsers to crash.

Even with overlord Rupert Murdoch owning this and about 10 billion profiles on it, it still is the most useful for finding bands (though nothing else). I couldn't help feeling that the whole thing is just one big experiment to see how many ads people can be exposed to at once.

http://thosearentmuskets.com/sketches/internetparty2.html

"God Hopping" and vegetable shopping

"people are scum". unfortunately by definition, perfectly acceptable indie folk like myself are grossly out numbered by people that evolution forgot. while i wish no ill will to these people, i would like to spend as much of my life as possible in places i'm never going to have to see them. libraries, museums and indie record shops are confident hang-outs to someone who wants to avoid the cultural vacuum of these meaningless shells of people. sadly we cannot avoid them forever.

every human irrelevant of there greater or diminished intelligence does have to eat. which is what brought me to the shopping centre today. The scum of humanity seem to gather in large numbers at very particular times and places, such as:

a) A protest; where they might get a chance to throw a stone or shout an obscenity. Generally done when the people actually involved in the protest have returned home to watch the unfolding stupidity on the news.

b) A concert by a popular rapper; it's a well known fact that if a bomb where to go off in the middle of the a 50 cent gig crime would easily be reduced by 40%.. this figure of course does not include the possibility that the rapper himself is murdered. Because for something to be murdered it must at least be sentient.

c) a shopping centre; who knows... maybe hanging out around a book shop for a few hours a day might increase the chance that these people might accidentally read something, for instance a "No Loitering" sign.

It is of course part c in which the everyday indie folk must cross paths with the "majority". For many of us.. this is not easy, indie folk risk various terrible side-effects from these places. With that in mind i have decided to show how anyone can come out unscathed from this culture void.

Step 1)
your going to need music, but this is no time for Iron & Wine or even Belle and Sebastian your going to need something with non-stop melody and loud vocals. Dogs die in hot cars or The Crocketts are my preference. if your a level 5 indie-vegan and so only listen to soft acoustic music. Have no fear your just going to have to plug your ears somehow.

Step 2)
head down, walk fast. doing this will prevent any cigarette vultures pouncing. DON'T MAKE EYE CONTACT. they can use this to move in and perhaps innocently ask for directions!

Step 3)
do your best to stay way from the frozen food section, the easier the food is to prepare the more likely it will have several zombie-esk patrols trying to make sense of the microwave cooking instructions. if it's unavoidable then your best bet is to make strikes into the section from beside the spice rack.

Step 4)
Your almost home free.. but don't spoil it by starting up a conversation with the person at the till. although it could be the case that the till person is that most unfortunate of people. and indie person who must "deal with the public". These people are a lost cause and conversations on indie topics can only give them false hope that perhaps they have not been as corrupted at the first thought by intellect sucking conversations with the masses.

you should have made it home in one piece and are now free for another week from that strange pop-universe.
now eat, be happy and enjoy some music that will make you proud to be a minority