A BRIEF MESSAGE TO THE INDIE-ROCKERS

A quick message to the indie-rockers, the psychedelic folksters, the underground garage punks.

Some of you are ridiculously talented. Some of you write beautiful music that the pop machine will neither accept nor embrace. Some of you are lovely, vulnerable things that speak unique languages. Some of you are Indie now, but you will soon be well-known with good representation and a huge fan base if you continue your work and continue improving your craft.

Some of you.

To the others:

It is not good music to sing off key. Your voice is an instrument. Even when letting loose or screaming, you should still be in control of it. Also, harps, auto-harps, flutes, cellos, accordions, and other instruments rarely found in bands do not automatically make you talented. You have to be able to actually play the instruments. It is not enough to half-ass being a flutist or a pianist; if you suck at the toy piano, do not pull it out onstage.

It is not always clever to use your instrument in a way it was not intended. Plucking piano strings one by one may be different, but it takes a long time and I am not here to watch you try to remember which string is which. And please, no more dumping water on toy pianos. I have seen enough water-covered toy pianos to last me a life time. I do not know who started this trend, but it is a stupid one. The piano doesn’t sound aquatic or denser when submerged or covered in water. It only sense softer.

On volume: it is not achieving an artistic point of view to sing so softly that I have to pump my speakers up to the max. That is called you need to stop whispering and learn to use your freaking diaphragm. Soft is okay (when called for), but inaudible is not pleasing to the ear. It’s just inaudible. Conversely, do not just scream. Bjork could scream well (especially in her very very early days). The Beatles could scream well. Part of their success in screaming was in using it sparingly or in contrast to something else. Think about why you are screaming next time.

It is not fun for us to listen to you when you adopt a thick (and fake) accent. You are not a faerie, you are not from Scotland, and you are not from Turkey, stop pretending like you are (unless you really are, in which case, right on). Adopted accents and dialects are rarely executed well and are therefore very hard to listen to because we cannot understand your lyrics.

Lyrics. Your lyrics: they are important. They are part of the music vehicle. Please stop singing incomprehensibly. It only makes me think that you could not come up with a good lyric and are now mumbling your way through things to hide the poor writing. If the eight cellists backing you up are drowning out your lyrics, then maybe you should lose a few cellists.

As for presentation, never, never, never play your sets completely or mostly naked just because. The human body is a complete miracle of nature, but I am here to listen to your art, not see your naked body. It is distracting. Do not dress in random fruit, vegetable, animal, or monster costumes. Hellogoodbye did it, and they were amazing for it (seeing Santa, Satan, an Apple, a Shark, and a Kangaroo battle onstage was awesome), but they sort of broke the mold, and it is time for people to stop trying to rip them off. Anyway, you aren’t probably as charming as Hellogoodbye’s four-man-power-synth sound. Not when you’re copying them, at least.

Finally (this is the hardest part for me to say), there is a reason Indie bands are Indie and Pop bands are Pop. Indie means Independent, as in no label or no major representation. Pop means Popular, as in yes labels and also major representation. Pop bands are popular for a reason: because they are put together (usually) and honed. Indie bands that stay Indie forever are Independent for a reason: they are bad (in some way) at what they do. It could be their image, it could be their sound, it could be their attitudes, but they are definitely not accepted into the mainstream music world for a reason. If you are over fifteen years in the making and still Indie, it is not solely because your sound is different: it is because you are doing something wrong. Please stop blanket-blaming the music industry for your own deficiencies as a performer. If you want to make it, you have to be a mercenary, so stop crying over it.

Fondly,
A listener of all music,
Kyle

TEXT, part 2

I was hunting down a brace of rabbits, when the hair on my hindquarters stood on end. The air currents shifted and there was the scent of sulfur on the air. I turned to my left to investigate this new aroma and saw – where a small juniper bush ought to have been – two floating words flapping in the wind lazily. The words were backward, like looking in a mirror or pool of water, and the writing was rough and scratchy, as with that of a quill. I circled it and noticed the words were shifting. The writing was becoming loopier and more calligraphic, the text becoming clearer.

When I reached the opposite side of the floating text, the words had become clear and crisp: juniper bush. And then below these words, several more appeared, first in the same rough writing then in clearer and more elaborate script: blooming fully and completely in the sun’s bright rays.

As I admired this phenomenon, there came a scratching sound, like that of a quill on parchment, and then a popping noise, and the words were gone; in their place sat a juniper bush, blooming fully and completely in the sun’s bright rays. Sulfur hung heavily on the air, and the rabbits were gone. The brace was saved not by the bell, but by the bush.

TEXT, part 1

In telling this, I the word “Meta-literature,” comes to mind. It is the only phrase I can imagine that accurately describes my discovery that I am not actually who I think I am: that I am a character in a children’s fairy story.

There are critics who say we are all characters, and aren’t we all just acting out our destinies as written for us by whomever, but those critics are speaking in a metaphysical sense. And also, they are real. As in they are really living people. I am not.

This is not a metaphor.

This is about scope. It’s about seeing the tiny threads within a tapestry one moment and seeing the whole design the next. So, it is a metaphor but also a conundrum.

LACOSTE V. AMERICAN RAG

I'm standing in the aisle at Macy's. I was sent home from work at Joe's Crab Shack early after making astoundingly good tips. I have decided to treat myself: I'm shopping at the mall.

I never go to the mall. It makes me feel like a consumer. Like maybe I'm consuming the water and air and creating fiscal debt and inequality just by being there. And I certainly never buy new things for myself. I trick other people into doing that for me.

So I'm at Macy's, and I've been enjoying being there alone, because I feel all growed up. Here I am, looking at men's suits (maybe I should buy one for that big board meeting coming up?). Here I am looking at dress shoes (new shoes for the trip to Aruba?). Here I am talking to a sales associate (no, I don't need help, thank you, I am not looking for anything specific, just anything that strikes my fancy; I'm wealthy enough to just toss money around like this, yes, I am famous, of course).

And here I am in the aisle at Macy's between two diametrically opposed sections of the menswear area. On my left: Lacoste polos of every color. On my right, American Rag and Levi's messy-trendy-college-chic-I-rolled-out-of-bed-and-put-on-these-designer-clothes.

I'm standing on the border of Bosnia and Yugoslavia.

Each section has different music. The Lacoste area features something upbeat and new age. There is a saxophone solo, some piano. It's very Windham Hill. The American Rag/Levi area is all switches from Dave Matthews Band to pumping techno to Jack Johnson. It sounds like any typical college guy's IPOD on shuffle.

Each section has different sales associates, both dressed appropriately for their areas, and both glaring at each other.

I browse each section, and consider buying a Lacoste down vest when I realize that I can buy a hat, a pair of jeans, and a nice tee shirt for the same price with American Rag. And I can do it all without feeling like I'm masquerading as something I'm not. I can pull off ripped jeans and a camo shirt. The pink polo with the collar flipped up is not really my style.

As I work toward the exit, bag of clothes in hand, I am assaulted by a sales associate bearing a tiny vial of cologne. She sprays it in my trajectory, I cross through it, and she says, "CAN I INTEREST YOU IN SOME RALPH LAUREN FRAGRANCES TODAY?!"

"No, thank you," I reply.

"HOLD ON? TRY THIS ONE?" She says this as if it were a question. Try this one? She sprays another fragrance at me without hesitation.

"That's nice, but no, thank you."

"COME TO THE COUTNER? WE HAVE MORE FRAGRANCES FOR YOU TO SAMPLE?" I invent an excuse to escape.

"I'm sorry – Karen, is it? – but I have pressing matters to attend to. I have to get these clothes home for my nephew. He's going off to Burma today, and I've just purchased him some parting gifts. Maybe another time. Thank you!"

I leave Karen to stew in the cloud of cologne and escape Macy's (quick, before Karen realizes I am wearing a Joe's Crab Shack uniform and am not rich or famous at all!), and, as I exit, my cell phone beeps. Someone has text messaged me.

I pull the phone out, pretend it is ringing, and answer it.

No one has called me, but something within me decides that it would be a good idea to pretend someone has called. So I stand outside the mall for thirty minutes pretending to talk with a friend from London. In this conversation, I am from London. Part of my faux-conversation goes like this:

"Cor! She did not! That Tina is a right slag! It don't matter if she's knackered or not, she can't be holdin' out on Tommy, innit! He's a man, and he has needs. Right? Right? Am I right?"

I am copying a dialect I heard while in London. It's sort of a street slang. In Britain, they call people who talk like that Chavs. In the USA, we call them wiggers.

Families, couples, strange single men. All pass by me and stop to stare. Who is this odd British man talking on his cell phone at this mall in the Midwest of America? I start to run out of conversational things to say and start shouting out random words and phrases I learned while in London a few years ago.

"Blimey!" (shit!)

"Sarnies, we ate sarnies." (sandwiches)

"No, I'm out of cash, I need to get to a hole-in-the-wall." (I need to get to an ATM)

"Am I bovered?" (Do I sound angry?)

"Alright?" (Are you okay?)

"Innit!" (No way!)

When I exhaust all my phrases, I hang up my cell phone, and march off into the parking lot, looking for the entire world like a rich and famous British Chav, off to give some clothes to my nephew, who is headed to Burma, didn't you know? Except I am wearing a uniform for an American restaurant. And I am driving an American car as if I have always driven in America. And I own an American cell phone (which I call a cell and not a mobile, like Brits mostly do). And I drive back to my modest American home where I plan to go see an American film with my American friends. American.