Deathshow for Non-Indie Guy

Let me start with this first. Nothing gives me more pleasure than walking down the shadiest section of Chinatown with my love at my side en route to quite possibly someplace that is not in the location we were led to believe it was. Being in Boston, in general, is simply 5 to 8 percent more beautiful when Reba is prominently involved. What were we doing there? For our anniversery Reba treated the both of us to a "Deathcab for Cutie" show. I will admit in any forum to borderline loving "Transatlanticism" so I was sufficiently geeked about the show. However I was not prepared for Deathcab's dearth of exceptional pre "Transatlanticism" material and I was certainly not prepared for the onslaught of alien-human hybrids, or as they're called in non X-Files circles: The Indie Kid.

So it breaks down like this. The "True Indie Kid" progeny synthesizes like so: High School Graduate/Someone in Highschool - > Someone who thinks they have a broad appreciation of "good" music - > Someone who dislikes mainstream music, but is scared off by bands like The Stooges, MC5, Television, Any band that appears in one of the 2 Nuggets collections etc. - > Someone who agrees with the term "Indie" as a legitimate genre of music/film/art - > Someone who can agree with most ideals of the Democratic Party - > Someone who "doesn't get" the fuss about Pavement - > Someone who snubs people like PJ Harvey, Mazy Star and Beck as "not Indie" - > Someone who is openly emotional but will get extremely pissed if you call them "Emo" - > Someone who regards either The Replacements, Echo and the Bunnymen or The Jesus and Mary Chain as "The Beginning" - > Someone who was at the "Deathcab" show last night or would have been there

Let's start with the last part first. The Replacements, Echo and the Bunnymen and The Jesus and Mary Chain are probably the greatest bands the 80's gave us but they are not where Indie started. The term "Indie" can be inferred to mean something that has select appeal for it's edginess or niche subject matter. This apropos word is being hijacked and perverted. Indie started with The New York Dolls and The Velvet Underground. It started when someone was listening to the radio and said "hey...I don't really like this" and then they got in a band.

One thing you find out about "Indie" kids, "Goth" kids, or any "kid" with a label attached to their persona is that they hate labels. It's that label hating that drives them to be different but it's also what ends up driving them to uniformity. You ever notice that the people that are labeled as being "Indie" or "Punk" or "Goth" genuinely look similar? That silence is agreement I'm sure. The psychological oddity with human beings is that despite their insistance on wanting to be different we love things that are familiar. In this respect it's quite obvious that we are descendents of simian origin because the word "Ape" literally means to copy, and in a sense we're always copying one another. Mendolsson copied Bach to repopularize the Baroque era. Jimmy Page copied every American blues riff he could get his hands on to popularize the Blues. As human beings we yearn for acceptance in anyway we can. We define our originality by the little things we do differently. For example Willie Dixon never wrote a song with a long sustained driving hook because that wasn't him, but, Jimmy Page loved the Blues even though the straight up 12 bar wasn't for him. Each generation puts it's own twist on an old idea but we still come from a long line of marginal originality. We like familiarity as a whole because it's comfortable and doesn't require any leaps of exploration or jumps from our safety zones.

The problem with today's "Indie" kids is that in about five years they're going to suffer the fate of the first wave of "punks". When a word that by it's very definition symbolizes a break from the mainstream then becomes a term for a way to dress/act/create music, the "indie" culture itself becomes inherently hypocritical. When people start music/art/film projects by setting out to make something "Indie", that's when a problem arises. Last night I think I saw about 3 different people in a venue that sat 2,000. Does this suggest a movement of uniformity? Ya damn right. I'm not saying that everyone who loves "Deathcab" is hypocritical I'm merely proposing that there is a huge sect of society that puts forth their unique personality by being exactly the same as everyone else.