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CHAPTER 1

What Is “Indie”?

This is the definition of my life … The Beta Band

This chapter examines the definition of “indie.” It describes the indie community, indie music, and indie’s ideological foundations. Defining a collective within a complex social system is not just an exercise designating one’s province of study; it also delineates how one conceives of cultural groups. However, attempts to characterize a category of music are fraught with difficulty. Defining a category like indie is not only problematic for scholars who seek to understand culture; it is also difficult for community members themselves (Frith 1981, Kruse 1993). Fans and members of the British music industry often struggle to come to terms with defining something they feel they can recognize intuitively. They cannot articulate general principles without excluding some music and performers they think should be included or including some they feel should not be.¹ For the indie aficionados, what comprises indie appears to be self-evident. For example, when asked to define indie music, one fan stated, “I don’t know how to describe it, but I know it when I hear it” (M.K. age twenty-two). As with many cultural categories and practices, recognition in the absence of a clearly articulated definition is common among fans and professionals alike.

Why is there confusion in defining indie? In part, it is because indie is not a thing at all and is therefore not describable in the same manner as a stable object. Although indie has no exact definition, the discourse and practices around the multiple descriptions and definitions of indie detail a set of principles that reveal the values and issues at stake for the community. An attempt at self-definition is part of the process of forming a cultural grouping. To form a group, members need to create a set of boundaries between what constitutes and what excludes membership. Creating a boundary means creating an identity for oneself. Differentiation is at the heart of the process of definition.

Indie music has been considered by insiders to be: (1) a type of musical production affiliated with small independent record labels with a distinctive mode of independent distribution; (2) a genre of music that has a particular sound and stylistic conventions; (3) music that communicates a particular ethos; (4) a category of critical assessment; and (5) music that can be contrasted with other genres, such as mainstream pop, dance, blues, country, or classical. The indie community’s arguments over membership deal with the nature of the ownership of musical recordings and their mode of distribution to a larger public, the nature of musical production practices and their relationship to musical forms, and the relationship between audience members and the music. I consider indie to be precisely this discourse, and the activities that produce and are produced by this discourse, as well as the artistic productions and community members who participate in and contribute to this discourse.

The strongest voice in indie is the British weekly music press. This press, which at various times has included New Musical Express (NME), Sounds, and Melody Maker—the “inkies,” as they were colloquially known—dominates and crystallizes the indie community.² Just as a magazine such as Mix-Mag is seen to cater to the dance community in Britain, or Vibe to the hip-hop community in the United States, NME speaks to the indie community.

The weekly press is powerful in shaping indie’s discourse. It provides a forum for indie fans to debate issues in prominent letters pages and accompanying op-ed pieces, and it is read regularly by professionals and fans. As one reader characterized it in a letters page, “I read the NME avidly—it’s what Wednesdays were made for” (NME, February 26, 1994).³ For young fans, these papers are highly influential in shaping their opinions. Often, they directly paraphrase the weekly press reviews when giving their opinions about bands. For younger fans in their early teens, the music press is like a rare and exotic fruit, as well as a point of entry into a world they initially know very little about. Indie fans purchase music by bands they have not yet heard more frequently than any other British music consumer. They attribute their purchases to recommendations from the weekly press and from friends (IPC Music Press 1993, EMRIG Report 1993). The indie community has a rapid turnover of bands, in part because of the furious pace of a weekly press; there is a constant need for new bands and trends to fill copy. They are the de facto source for information about indie music.

The weekly press is not the only means of learning about indie music in the United Kingdom; there are radio programs, television, the internet, and local fanzines, the photocopied publications by fans. However, in many ways, when fans stop reading the weekly press they move out of the indie community and soon disconnect from the music scene. To see an unknown band appear on the cover of a monthly music magazine or to hear new singles air on the radio by a band that one has never heard of would be unacceptable for an active member of the indie community, which prides itself on knowing about the “music of tomorrow, today.”⁴ The indie community has a love/hate relationship with the weekly press, regarding it as a vital link to the indie music world but often furious at its distinctively vitriolic and opinionated journalistic style. When there were two inkies, many indie members, angry at the opinions of one paper, would profess allegiance to the other, a decision rendered ironic by the fact that both NME and Melody Maker were published by the same company, IPC Press, and operated on adjacent floors of Kings Reach Tower.⁵ Indie is constituted by a distinct discourse, a discourse typified and consolidated by the British weekly music press.

Indie … What’s at Stake?

Some of the arguments of indie regarding production values, clothing, and musical style may seem trivial or hairsplitting to an outsider. It serves well to remember Jonathan Swift’s two empires, Lilliput and Blefuscu, whose members fought to the death over which side of the egg to crack first. Swift parodied the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, the arbitrariness of ritual, and the significance placed by members on ritual procedures. If the differences between indie style and practice and other musical genres were solely stylistic, indie’s insistence on certain modes would be as absurd as the figures Swift satirized. However, indie’s ideology reproduces a significant and unresolved ideological conflict in Western culture, one not unrelated to Swift’s own satire.

The core issues of indie and its practices are in essence the arguments of a particular sect of Protestant reformers within the secular forum of music.⁶ The goals of both Protestant and Catholic churches were essentially the same: to experience a true relationship with the divine. The various sects of Christianity in Europe at the time of the Reformation had a common goal in the fundamental notion of redemption through a moral and mystical experience. The primary difference was the means of reaching this goal. The debates between Protestants and Catholics dealt with the fundamental questions about the nature of how a congregation connects with the divine: where religious authority is located (individual/independent parishes vs. centralized papal authority); how the divine is accessed (directly vs. mediated); how ritual fosters an experience of the sacred (austere vs. baroque); and how one’s elite status is measured (asceticism vs. aggrandizement). Which side of the egg does one crack first?

Within indie, we find similar arguments regarding the nature of experience, but in this case experiencing the divine is displaced onto the experience of “true” or “authentic” music. Should music be produced by a centralized authority (major labels) or by independent local operations (independent labels)? What form should music take to promote the experience of true music (the generic characteristics of indie vs. the generic characteristics of other genres)? How should listeners experience music to foster a true encounter with music (live vs. recorded)? How is one’s authentic musical experience measured? Indie’s arguments replace the experience of the true spirit of the divine with that of the true spirit of music. The common goal set forth for music listeners within indie cosmology is to have a communion with the sacred quintessence of music. Differences in musical practices are interpreted through a moral frame, producing an aesthetic system based on moral values.

Indie’s core values promote and replicate the doctrine of a particular brand of Protestant religiosity: Puritanism. The central tenets of Puritanism are simplicity of worship, asceticism, a high regard for education, high standards of morality, and democratic political principles based on the autonomy of individual congregations (Knappen 2005: 7518). Puritans did not reject the liturgy but instead what they perceived as the Catholic Church’s corruption of it. This corruption was seen in superfluous rites, intervention by a hierarchy of clergy, excessive adornment, outward pomp, and pandering to the worldliness of the body. The beliefs of Puritanism and its critique of perceived Catholic excesses are echoed in each of the defining aspects of indie music, a secular amusement that would have been banished, ironically, by the Puritans. Within indie, we find a Puritan distrust of authority, a preference for non-corporate, independently owned commercial operations, an avocation of simplicity in musical form, production, and style, a promotion of high moral standards regarding issues of sexuality and conduct, an emphasis on education, and an underlying theme of austerity and abstinence. Like the Protestants of the Reformation, indie fans continue the rebellious narrative first put forth by the punks, the paradigmatic British music reformers. They present a narrative of the deviation from true musical encounters through a hypertrophic growth of institutional machinery to benefit corrupt executives who exploit the faithful and debase music itself. As David Cavanagh writes of the “indie dream,” indie “described a culture of independence that was almost a form of protest” (Cavanagh 2000: viii). This protest was against the church of mainstream music. Indie calls nostalgically for a return to and restoration of “original” musical practices and ideals.

In general, the indie ideology’s appropriation of the theological arguments of Puritanism is not overtly recognized within the community. Rather, indie fans consider their participation to be wholly secular. There is some latent awareness of the Puritan foundation of indie ideology, particularly in the use of the terms “purist” and “puritanical” by indie fans and journalists regarding themselves. However, the notion that at the heart of indie lies what many feel to be a conservative and repressive religious ideology would be distasteful to those who embrace one of the fundamental and widespread folktales of youth culture, namely, that participating in a music scene constitutes a form of rebellion rather than a recapitulation of the dominant cultural ideology and narratives.⁷

Also within indie ideology is a parallel strand of Romanticism, with its characteristic cultivation of emotion, passion, and the spirit, its interest in artistic movements of the past, its preference for the natural, its acclaim for the exceptional man in the guise of the musical genius, its respect for local identities and the working class, and its distaste for middle-class society while being itself middle class. This Romantic manifestation is what Colin Campbell refers to as the “Other Protestant Ethic.” In his remarkably insightful book The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, Campbell argues persuasively that the Puritan abnegation of sensual pleasure and the Romantic valorization of extreme emotion are interdependent: “The very practice of one kind of conduct creates the circumstance necessary for the performance, as well as the positive valuations of the other” (Campbell 1987: 221). In indie also is the dissonance of these two complementary theological strains. Indie ideology lives within these culturally produced complementary and conflicting impulses by finding the uneasy common ground between them.

It is the persistence of these metaphysical cultural narratives that creates such consistency in the indie community’s discourse despite the changes in its personnel, the variations in its music, and the crossing of national borders. In the 2004 film Our Time, which looked at the American independent music scene of garage rock and the New York City music scene, issues and narratives are expressed by musicians and professionals that have consistently characterized indie music. The musicians claim that they are real and “organic,” while other forms of music are artificial and disconnected to local interests. They discuss the importance of DIY (“do it yourself,” a well-known phrase from the British punk movement) and how their experience is a return to the true excitement of the 1970s New York underground scene.⁸ In an economic and institutional sector considered by participants to be free from religious ideology, one finds the recapitulation of religious drama and a community shaped by similar concerns regarding authority, exploitation, and the nature of “authentic” experience. Indie ideology is generated by the cultural principles of the wider society. Indie is a musical community centrally focused on how an audience can have the purest possible experience of music. In this endeavor, indie fans locate themselves as the anointed disciples of music who, through their own system of authenticity, recognize true value in music. Indie aficionados are not called “purists” without good reason.

Indie as a Mode of Distribution: An Industrial Definition

Play me a song to set me free Nobody writes them like they used to, So it may as well be me … Belle and Sebastian

Indie, as a colloquial abbreviation of the term independent, reflects this community’s historic association with the products of small, independently owned record companies. Independent music is a category that is widely recognized by the British recording industry. From the industry standpoint, records or artists are considered independent if their music releases can be included on the independent retail chart. The charts are a weekly ranking of singles and albums in order of sales from retail outlets throughout Britain. Records with independent distribution, despite the size or nature of the ownership of the record label, are eligible for inclusion on the independent chart. In other words, if the artist’s record label utilizes a distribution network that is not owned by one of the four major transnational corporations, it appears on the independent chart.⁹ Releases by independent distribution companies such as Vital, Southern (SRD), or Pinnacle are eligible for inclusion on the independent chart. Therefore, the music industry defines independent music by a specific set of practices regarding the nature of ownership of the mode of circulation to the public.

One needs to turn to the history of the British music charts to understand why distribution is the key feature in determining independence. The history of the independent chart is intertwined with the national chart and the role of charts as a tool for marketing bands to the public. Having a record appear in one of the national charts is seen both as a means to and a measure of success. In Britain, industry personnel discuss a band’s success in terms of its highest chart placement and how many weeks it stayed there. In the United States, industry personnel evaluate a band’s success primarily in terms of “units” sold. While both of these criteria are indications of success, neither is an accurate evaluation of the profitability of a release. The bottom line is the amount of income from records sold, less the company investment in the project. These two disparate assessment strategies are pervasive in everyday verbal interchange. In London, industry personnel will say, “We got that single to number two,” whereas in the music capitals of Los Angeles and New York, industry personnel will say, “We’re at one and a half million units,” though they may have only sold 300,000, using shipping figures rather than sales figures in order to hype the success of a release to their colleagues. Thus, charting in Britain is the dominant dialogic gauge of a band’s success.

Within the British music industry, having a single in the Top 40 is perceived to be an essential component of a band’s success.¹⁰ Historically, Britain had few media outlets for music and few radio stations that played contemporary music. Until the 1960s, there were only four national radio stations, supplemented by a meager number of stations broadcasting to local regions and a varying number of pirate broadcasters.¹¹ The BBC’s Radio One was the chief national media outlet for contemporary popular music. Radio Two played music that was characterized as more “middle of the road” (Hunter 1977: 130). Radio Three played classical, and Radio Four featured news, current affairs, and dramas. Since Radio One’s daytime playlist consisted primarily of songs that charted in the Top 40, this chart showing was deemed to be decisive for a band to gain national radio exposure.¹² This connection between chart position and media exposure was further augmented by the national television program Top of the Pops, a weekly show featuring artists with top-ranking singles performing live or lip-syncing their current hit. Thus, a single charting within the Top 40 would result in both national radio airplay and national television exposure, making the chart a key focal point for marketing strategies.

Getting a single to chart nationally is still seen as so crucial to a band’s success that most major record companies plan to lose money on singles and treat the endeavor of releasing a single as part of the promotional expense for an album’s release. Singles are sold to shops in bulk deals, “Buy one, get one free” or “Buy one, get four free,” so that the new single will be on sale in retail outlets in an attempt to bolster a band’s presence in the national charts.¹³ Hence, it is far more likely that a new single will be on sale in retail outlets rather than older singles, which are not promoted to achieve chart placement. The fact that companies are willing to give away their product in order to get a single to rank in the national chart demonstrates the importance placed on a chart ranking in marketing a musical group.

Before the institutionalization of an independent chart, the national chart was the only chart that enabled one to get airplay and national exposure. The method of reckoning national chart placement played a significant role in the perceived need to establish a separate independent chart. In the mid-1970s, during the development of an independent chart, there were far fewer chart return shops and an inefficient system for accounting sales.¹⁴ In 1977 there were 750 chart return shops in Britain, with 250 outlets recording their sales for the singles chart and 450 outlets recording their sales for the album chart. The UK charts were compiled from data on purchases made at selected outlets of major chain stores such as WHSmith and Woolworths, which also sell a broad variety of other goods, as well as from some of the megastores, such as Virgin, HMV, and Tower, which primarily sell music. Up until the mid-1970s, the weekly press was not yet specialized. Instead, it covered a broad range of music, with sections for various genres, such as blues, jazz, and folk. Music purchases made at small, independently owned specialty record shops such as Rough Trade and Rock On in London, Edinburgh’s Avalanche, or Liverpool’s Probe, were excluded from the chart altogether. These specialty record shops catered to a collector’s market and carried older recordings and more obscure releases. Additionally, with so few retail outlets controlling the charts in an industry in which the names and locations of chart return shops were widely known, record hyping was rampant. Record hyping occurs when vested interests—a record company or a band’s management—go to chart return shops and purchase a large number of an artist’s single to bolster its position in the charts.¹⁵ The combination of hyping and the lack of chart return coverage of the independent stores meant that the buying proclivities of specialized customers were excluded from participation in the national charts.

National charts were featured prominently in all of the music papers. In October 1975 Sounds, which was considered by many to be the most adventurous of the three weekly music papers, replaced their Capital Radio chart with an “Alternative” chart.¹⁶ This chart was a straw poll listing the top-selling records at a selected independent retail shop. These chart lists were very informal and not necessarily accurate reports of sales. Often it was information made up on the spot by the owner or the clerk who answered the phone. The first week’s Alternative chart was a reggae chart supplied by Intone Records from Peckham, London. The Alternative chart would cycle through various genres, such as country, oldies, West African, and writers’ picks. Ironically, it was the oldies chart, which came from stores with a large number of resale records, that featured some of the newest acts, such as the Stooges, who would become prominent in the burgeoning punk scene.

An “independent” chart debuted in the pages of NME in October 1979.¹⁷ The weekly began to call selected independent retail outlets such as Flyover Records or Rough Trade to get a list of the top-selling releases at each record store.¹⁸ Hence, the independent chart was designed to reflect the purchasing habits of those who patronized the independent specialty shop rather than the large chain establishments. Until June 1996 the independent chart listed in Melody Maker was still put together from a straw poll of a chain of independent specialty record shops called the Subterranean chain, affiliated with Southern Distribution. After June 1996 Melody Maker switched to the music industry’s official independent chart using scanned data.

The industry followed suit with the magazine Record Business, establishing its own independent chart using the criteria of independent distribution. David Cavanagh attributes the impulse to create an official industry Independent chart to the owner of the independent label Cherry Red, Iain McNay (Cavanagh 2000). This official chart appeared in Record Business in January 1980. To understand why the industry selected distribution as the key factor in determining independence, one needs to look back to the development of the independent sector. Independent companies have been a constant since the inception of recording technologies. The history of independent labels is often traced back to the postwar years of the 1950s, when small independent labels proliferated in the patronage of rock and roll. However, the current crop of British independent labels have their strongest genealogical roots in the period of punk of the mid- to late 1970s, when small labels were set up under the auspices of punk’s DIY manifesto.

During the punk period, many bands set up their own labels to record and release their material. Punk’s rallying call of “do it yourself” was translated into the practices of these new labels: “do it simple,” “do it quick,” and “do it cheap.” For example, the Chiswick label recorded and manufactured 2,500 copies of an EP for £700 in 1977 (Laing 1985: 10).¹⁹ The band the Desperate Bicycles produced a single where the entire venture, including studio time, mastering, and pressing five hundred copies, came to £153.15 (Melody Maker, August 20, 1977). In the late 1970s key independent labels such as Fast Product, Rough Trade, Postcard, Zoo Records, Stiff, Factory, Mute, Beggars Banquet, Some Bizzare, Cherry Red, and Fiction were established in the musical wake of punk.

However, while recording could be done rather easily and cheaply, the biggest obstacle for nascent labels was securing a mode of distribution to get their records into shops for people to purchase. Some small labels obtained distribution deals with one of the major corporations. However, this had many drawbacks, including the loss of control over their release schedules. As often as not, it resulted in the label losing its separate identity and appearing to become a mere satellite for the larger corporate label. As Geoff Travis of Rough Trade said in an interview with David Hesmondhalgh in 1992: “The thing to do is to get your own distribution network, then you’ve got control, you’ve got power. You can decide with musicians what gets out to the country and give people alternate means of information” (Hesmondhalgh 1997: 265).²⁰ Distribution was seen as tantamount to control over access, and therefore control over expression. Since distribution seemed to be the major stumbling block for aspiring recording companies, it would in turn become the defining characteristic of “independence” in the British recording industry.²¹

Already in existence at the time of punk were two independent distributors, Pinnacle and Spartan, which distributed smaller specialty releases. However, it was Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis, who opted to form a new distribution company independent of the majors, who would have the most significant impact for the independent community. Rough Trade formed its own label and distribution network, called the Cartel. The Cartel was a conglomerate of regional telesales teams that sold to retail outlets in each regional market. Each market had an independent specialty record store, including Revolver (Bristol), Red Rhino (York), Probe (Liverpool), 9 Mile (Leamington Spa), Fast Forward (Edinburgh), Backs (Norwich), and Rough Trade (London). (See map.) Each team would call orders into a main warehouse in London, where records would be packed for distribution to each region. The Cartel would sell the recordings of the Rough Trade label and other budding independent companies, as well as one-off projects by bands.²² In the early days of Rough Trade distribution, records would be delivered on the backs of motorbikes and from the trunks of cars. However, Rough Trade soon became a viable option for those who wanted to put out their own recordings—provided that Rough Trade approved them. Though it was not the largest independent distributor, Rough Trade was felt to embody the values of independence and therefore was actively sought by new independent labels to distribute their releases.

Rough Trade was initially organized as a cooperative that stood in stark contrast to the structure of major corporations. Initially, all Rough Trade employees, from directors to those working in the warehouse, were paid the same. All company decisions were made at general assemblies, and all employees were allowed to have a voice in company decisions. If Rough Trade was distributing a record that someone did not like for political reasons, the employee could bring up the issue at a company-wide meeting and inform other workers of his or her concerns. Employees felt that they were involved in a historical undertaking designed to actively combat the organization of multinational media conglomerates and the values they represented. Rough Trade actively sought to circumvent the indulgences of those involved in the record industry. They would not send out promotional copies of records to radio stations or journalists, nor would they have guest lists at their artists’ shows. Several independent labels would flourish in the early 1980s, including Mute, Factory, and the label considered by many to typify the indie sound, Creation Records.

Map of the United Kingdom with Rough Trade’s Cartel.

The independent distribution networks initially served the small independent labels. As Cavanagh put it, “The independent label dream … was that romantic notion of going it alone, pure and untainted by hype and multinational marketeers” (Cavanagh 2000: viii). Independent labels were seen to value unmediated artistic vision, facilitating rather than intervening in an artist’s release to the public. Many of the themes of independent culture were associated with the independent label: a lack of concern for popularity, an interest in autonomy and local character, the rejection of the large corporations based in London, and an emphasis on direct artistic expression above all else. Many of the early labels represented the talent and flavor of their local principalities—Factory Records for Manchester, Zoo for Liverpool, and Postcard for Scotland. London, on the other hand, was the seat of centralized power. Going to London for a record deal was often viewed as selling out, a journey with hat in hand to beg for patronage from the power elite, who had no concern for local interests. For independent labels to persist, they needed a means to connect their art with an audience.

The independent distributors also favored independent retail outlets. Major chain retail establishments cut deals with distributors for exclusive releases or price discounts because of their large bulk purchases, enabling major chains to acquire records at lower prices. These deals put the independent retail outlet (or “mom and pops,” as they are affectionately known) at a significant disadvantage in competing for customers. It was under the auspices of Rough Trade and the Cartel that the significant Chain With No Name was established.²³ The Chain With No Name, later affiliated with Rough Trade Distribution’s progeny RTM-Disc, was an aggregate of independently owned record stores that was then large enough to secure deals, special formats, and exclusives on releases.²⁴ Rough Trade’s development of the independent chain was an attempt to undercut the retail hierarchy and remove the advantage that the major corporations had over small specialty stores. As other distribution companies developed, each organized its own chain of independent stores to secure the advantages available to a large corporate chain: the Network for Pinnacle, Subterranean for SRD, Vital Stores for Vital, and Knowledge for 3MV.²⁵ However, an independent retail outlet can participate in more than one chain. Thus, a single specialty retailer, such as London’s Sister Ray, Manchester’s Piccadilly, or Nottingham’s Selectadisc, can be a member of five or six chains, each affiliated with a different independent distributor.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s the situation became more complex for the independents. Heretofore, independent ownership and distribution had largely coincided in practice, but in this period the line between independents and major companies blurred. It was not uncommon for indie bands to have crossover success and to perform well on the mainstream charts. Megastores such as Virgin Records on London’s Oxford Street, which had consistently stocked independent releases, now added special indie display sections highlighting the newest indie releases. Indie had developed a high profile from its coverage in the weekly press. As the independent chart became well established, it provided another way for a new band to chart, resulting in print coverage and airplay. Independent record labels became known for effectively breaking unknown bands. Professionals and fans alike turned to the independent charts to identify new talent.

Several independents were making a good return on a relatively small investment. Independent record companies traditionally gave smaller advances to the artists in exchange for a greater share of points (percentage of profits) on sales of recordings, resulting in a smaller initial outlay of funds. The ability of independents to return a profit, as well as their ability to sign and nurture new talent, made these companies acquisition targets for major media corporations. Consequently, many independent companies were bought by, incorporated into, or funded by major music corporations. Majors would sign acts after the initial legwork had been done by these smaller companies. Purchasing controlling shares of independents was a natural extension of the process. The pilfering of talent from independents extended to industry personnel, who often moved to the major music conglomerates for higher salaries.

The result of independents’ transfer to major corporations was that bands, labels, and personnel that were considered independent were now part of a major’s roster. For a significant period of post-punk and early indie, a band signing with a major label was seen as an immoral act. Cavanagh puts it this way:

The decision to take the independent route represented an emotional rejection, based on ethics and political beliefs, of everything the major labels stood for … major labels were greedy corporations staffed by uncool straights who maltreated and undermined their artists, and thought nothing of diluting the art itself to make it commercially viable … here was the righteous indie band making interesting music without compromise; and over there was the banally ambitious, morally capitulating group that had sold its soul to a major label for money. (Cavanagh 2000: 38–39)

Major labels would offer more money and greater exposure than independent labels, and the money they offered was seen as a pernicious temptation and corruptor that would undermine music as art for art’s sake.²⁶

For the broader community, independence was thought to refer only to the practices of small record labels. However, since a record’s distribution network determines whether a record or an artist appears on the independent chart, corporate record companies exploited the loophole. Any major corporation could have an independent band by distributing the record through one of the independent distribution companies. Many of the acquired independents thus retained ties with their independent distributors. Creation Records sold shares to Sony in 1993 but maintained its independent distribution so that its albums could continue to be counted on the independent chart. Thus, many “independent” acts have the financial resources of a major corporation at their disposal but are still classified as independent.

Many corporations thought that developing a band as independent was an effective means of introducing it to the marketplace. Therefore they developed a number of “independent” labels (crypto-indies) that were fully funded by the major corporation but utilized one of the independent distribution networks. Thus a label like Dedicated, funded by BMG, had its records counted in the independent chart because its recordings were distributed by Vital.²⁷ For many bands, the opportunity to be on the independent chart was a large factor in choosing a label to sign with. However, a small, independently owned company run from one’s bedroom, but using a major’s distribution network would be excluded from the independent chart.²⁸ Thus, the industry use of a definition of independence based solely on distribution resulted in a chart that included artists signed to major labels.²⁹

For the industry, membership in the independent community is constituted by the use of independent distribution, and the ideals and structures embodied within the system of independent distributors are essential. When RTM merged with Vital, Martin Mills, who owns a majority share of RTM, stated, “What is crucial is that both companies (RTM and Vital) have retained the philosophies which drove the Cartel” (Music Week, June 21, 1997). Through special arrangements offered exclusively to affiliated retail outlets, the independent distribution company consciously and overtly advocates independently owned specialty shops belonging to local entrepreneurs over chain establishments run by distant corporate executives. It privileges individual entrepreneurship over bureaucratic corporate structures and affiliated independent stores over retail cells that answer to a centralizing authority. Additionally, the decisions made by independent distributors are thought to be based on moral and aesthetic grounds, not just solely on commercial success. As Mills put it, “Being an independent distribution company, you kind of have a moral obligation.” Thus, the practice of independent distribution in its ideal form is thought of as a moral, aesthetic, and egalitarian enterprise with authority vested in local members.

The industrial definition of independence echoes the Puritan value of individual congregations. Indie and Puritan reformists expressed a similar concern about the effect of hierarchy and bureaucracy on the relationship between patron and subject. One is a relationship between music fan and music, the other between congregant and the divine.

Indie’s organizational principles parallel those advocated by the Puritans, who required a move away from papal authority toward individual parishes with their own elected pastors. Similarly, the Cartel was an affiliation of distinct local districts held together in a loose, Presbyterian structure. In addition, an independent distribution network provides the means for the independent record label to remain an independent entity, pure and untainted by the authoritarian organization of the “Industry.” The model of Rough Trade’s Cartel advances an anti-absolutist stance that values the local over the remote, egalitarianism over hierarchy, and theocratic over unprincipled capitalism. The philosophies of independent distribution are the organizational and infrastructural foundation of the Puritan stance of indie.

The Romantic ethic is also found in indie’s infrastructural values: its revolt against established social and bureaucratically entrenched institutions, its perception of the power elite as corrupt and untrustworthy, its love of the local “folk,” its values of freedom, individualism, and individual entrepreneurships. More than anything else, the independent community holds the romantic belief that self-expression is paramount.³⁰

Indie as a Genre

pure and simple every time … Lightning Seeds

Utilizing the nature of distribution as a mode of reckoning has meant not only that major labels can appear on the independent charts but that any type of music can be counted as independent as well. Various musical genres, particularly subgenres of dance such as techno, house, hardcore, and jungle as well as some mainstream pop, have been included in the official independent chart. Many indie enthusiasts, however, feel that indie does not reflect merely a mode of circulation but a particular genre of music as well, with a recognizable sound and collective conventions that distinguish it from dance, country, or R&B, for example. From this perspective, the boundaries of indie result from an adherence to specific musical conventions and specific practices in the production of music. In its generic characteristics, indie’s issues of inclusion and exclusion center around concerns about musical form, musical production, and style. Permeating the indie tradition is an espousal of simplicity and austerity, a hypervaluation of childhood and childlike imagery, a nostalgic sensibility, a technophobia, and a fetishization of the guitar. As ex-NME journalist Simon Reynolds puts it, British indie “has itself settled into stifling orthodoxy: an insistence on short songs, lo-fi, minimalism, purism, and guitars, guitars, guitars” (Reynolds in Kruse 1993: 36). Adherence to indie’s generic features allows bands that do not have an independent label or independent distribution to be considered by some to have membership within the indie community.

Indie music is generally played by slender young white males in their late teens to early thirties. Most indie bands are basic four-piece combos with electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Although other instruments such as strings, keyboards, organs, or horns do appear, the four-piece combo is the primary structure for indie bands. In the mid- to late 1990s it became more common for acts to have more members, more elaborate instrumentation, and less technophobia. Yet bands like the Smiths, Travis, Bluetones, or Bloc Party are fairly typical examples of indie bands, and they all consisted of young, beat combos with guitar, bass, drums, and a penchant for vocal harmonies.

However, the indie community also welcomes female performers. The Pixies, an American band from Boston that was considered to be an important influence on indie music, featured Kim Deal on bass. New York’s Sonic Youth, just as influential, had a female bassist, Kim Gordon. In Lush, an indie band from North London, women played guitars and sang. My Bloody Valentine had female musicians on bass and guitar. Elastica had a female singer-guitarist, bass player, and guitarist. The Primitives, Echobelly, Sleeper, the White Stripes, Quasi, Kaito, and Stereolab, among many others, have also had either female lead singers or female instrumentation or both. In many ways, indie has been a pioneer in the trend of the co-ed band.

A majority of the terms used to describe indie as a genre are gender-coded as feminine: “fey,” “wimpy,” “weak,” or “effeminate.” For example, in his book on Britpop, John Harris describes a series of key 1980s indie artists as “anti-macho shrinking violet,” “terrifyingly fey,” and having a “melancholic take on indiedom’s bookish wimpiness” (Harris 2003: 386). In describing a fight between some indie band members, a fan was quoted as saying “Indie boys don’t fight so much as have flirty, fumbly scraps” (NME, January 8, 2005). Indie is often associated with a more feminine stance than that which was evoked by the American term “Alternative.” Particularly in the United States, indie music fans differentiate themselves from Alternative fans. Indie is defined as the more harmonic pop sounds of British bands, and Alternative designates the more abrasive and heavy sounds associated with nu-metal, grunge, and punk.³¹ Within the British indie music scene, however, punk, grunge, and garage musical styles associated with laddish masculinity are included in indie despite the fact that indie is generally represented as feminine in most public discourse.

Indie is also a category characterized by a particular sound. Indie music is primarily guitar rock or pop combined with an art-school sensibility. The sound of indie is characterized as “fey jangly guitar pop” (L.P., age seventeen), “chiming melodic guitar pop” (Harris 2003: 17), “wan, sappy boys with guitars and vague poetry” (NME, May 12, 1992), or “anoraky Sarah bands” (R.G., age twenty-five). The anorak, also known as a parka, is a simple jacket considered to be synonymous with wimpiness (Thorne 1993: 124). Sarah was a record label based in Bristol that released one hundred singles, most of which were considered to be delicate, effeminate, sugary pop songs, often criticized for being cloying. Still another indie music fan described the genre as “badly played and poorly sung, because the emphasis is more on the overall sound rather than on musicianship” (M.C., age twenty-eight).

Some of the bands that are considered exemplary of the indie genre use feedback and effects pedals (equipment that modulates the sound of the electric guitars), such as Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, and Sonic Youth. Indie also includes the melodic and intricate Smiths, Madchester’s Stone Roses and Happy Mondays (guitar bands that used dance rhythms), and the stripped-down and intelligent Folk Implosion and Pavement.³² Other notable bands are the melodic Teenage Fanclub and Belle and Sebastian, the zeitgeist-hopping Blur, and bands with falsetto vocalizations, such as Radiohead, Suede, Muse, and Coldplay. Bands influenced by the artists of the 1960s are also part of indie’s heartland, such as the Boo Radleys, the La’s, and Oasis, as are garage artists such as the White Stripes, the Strokes, and the Hives. Others include danceable art pop bands such as Franz Ferdinand or Artic Monkeys and pretty much anything that had been released on Creation Records.³³ Indie has been claimed to be typified by the C86 compilation tape put out by NME in 1986 that featured bands such as Primal Scream, the Pastels, the Wedding Present, Big Flame, the Soup Dragons, the Wolfhounds, the Shop Assistants, and the Weather Prophets.³⁴ Other C86 bands, such as the Servants and McCarthy, later mutated to become the successful indie bands the Auteurs and Stereolab. These bands, many of whom were Scottish, had short songs with an underproduced, introverted quality that was characterized as “shambolic.”

Simplicity is a dominant motif permeating indie musical practices. The indie genre values little elaboration in technology and in presentation. Indie generally places a high premium on the guitar and a low premium on production values. Much of indie music has a raw, underproduced quality, and occasionally even established and popular performers release four-track or eight-track recordings as opposed to the industry standard of twenty-four tracks.³⁵ There is also a financial aspect to releasing eight-track recordings; some independents do not have the funds to finance extravagant high-end studio productions. However, that established artists with resources also choose a deliberately underproduced sound demonstrates that simplicity is a feature of indie style, not just a function of necessity. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this anti–lavish production bias: My Bloody Valentine spent several years and well over £100,000 making their second album, Loveless, which nearly bankrupted then-independently owned Creation Records.

This simplicity of production is extended to indie song structures, which are often basic verse-chorus alternations: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, bridge, and chorus.³⁶ Indie bands generally favor a traditional three-minute pop song format, at times even omitting middle-eights and bridges. While the guitar is the most highly valued instrument in indie, there is a pride in the avoidance of the guitar solo—or any solo, for that matter.* The guitar solo is strongly associated with other guitar genres, such as progressive rock and heavy metal. Indie’s streamlined song structures are one of the ways that indie differentiates itself from other rock genres that utilize the same instruments and exhibit a proclivity for the guitar. The rejection of guitar solos is descended from punk’s negative reaction to the use of guitar solos by mid-1970s rock bands. Punk’s response to progressive rock’s expansionism was to call for a return to the primal traditions and excitement of rock and roll—to be direct and short (some songs were just a minute long), with simple verse/chorus structures performed with speed and raw power. As characterized by Dave Laing, who took his book’s title from an Adverts song, the punks became One Chord Wonders (Laing 1985). Indie bands could be characterized as three-chord wonders: in an end-of-the-year roundup, Melody Maker summarized 1994, which was dominated by Merseybeat fundamentalism and a call for return to “authentic” music, as “three chords on yer Rickenbacker, three stripes on yer shoulder, and clichéd sub-Lennon ‘attitude’ ” (Melody Maker, December 23, 1995). The reference to the “three chords on yer Rickenbacker” suggests the prevalence of indie’s three-chord song organization and guitar orientation. “Three stripes on yer shoulder” refers to the popular style of Adidas athletic clothing (the plain shirts with three white stripes on the shoulders that were worn by many indie bands and fans in 1994 and 1995). For indie, a raw, simple, underproduced quality to sound suggests closeness to the wellspring of musical authenticity. Though it certainly expands on punk’s call for the most streamlined musical productions, indie continues the punk legacy of simplicity, directness, and avoidance of extravagance in musical forms.³⁷

Simplicity also extends to indie’s musicianship and performance. Many indie bands are considered lacking in technical proficiency, but this is viewed as a positive attribute within the indie community, because musicianship is viewed as formal training that distances a performer from the essence of music. As one writer characterized the indie sound, “The groups were spirited rather than skilled instrumentalists—indie records often sounded as though they came from a place beneath musical society—an austere underside to the affluent city life above” (Cavanagh 2000: viii). Formal musical training is seen as a form of mediation between musician and music. One of the most damning insults that can be leveled at a musician is to be called a “muso,” implying a technically proficient musician without spirit or emotional attachment to the music he or she plays. Formal training, like priesthood, is thought to take the musician down the known pathways of the establishment, to stand between the artist and true creativity. For example, Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order attributes his development of a totally unique bass style to the early days when the band had “crap” equipment. He would play his bass at the top end of the fret board so that he could hear himself. For indie, music of value is self-taught rather than learned in elite, sanctioned institutional settings. This distaste for formal codes is also a characteristic of Romanticism, where the creative spirit is more important than an adherence to traditional procedures.

According to indie values, live performance should be simple and straight-forward also. Indie is often represented as lacking stylization, dramatics, or exaggeration in the presentation of the band during shows. This simplicity of style is often made fun of in the press and by members of the community themselves: “They look like an indie band—glamour-free four-piece with girl bassist seek gig in litter bin.” (NME, September 25, 1993); or “Tonight, they play a gig that could be sent on video to a far-off star system as a definitive explanation of indie rock: three anonymous blokes and one mildly charismatic woman play songs with verses and choruses on guitars while bouncing up and down in front of a similarly bouncing crowd of people wearing T-shirts advertising the band or other bands like them and sweating a lot” (Melody Maker, February 2, 1995). While these reviewers are critical of the bands they cover, both point out the generic convention of austerity in indie’s style. Showmanship is thought to reside in the aesthetics of the music and the attitude projected by performers, rather than in theatrics.

Indie’s overall style can be characterized as dressing down with a particular ethic that favors conspicuous poverty for performers. It is extremely modest. Often performers do not look much different from their audiences, usually selecting T-shirts and jeans to perform in, with some bands even stating that it would be inappropriate to wear clothes onstage different from their everyday wear. As one musician put it, “People wear street clothes and let the music talk. Not all this pretense” (L.B.). The general staples of indie dress are items bought at charity shops, band T-shirts, tatty jeans, and a penchant for the color black (Polhemus 1994). Charity shop items and band T-shirts are often too large or quite tight. The look of the everyday is the characteristic style of indie. For example, the Wedding Present, a band once called “the Princes of Indie City,” was described as follows: “They talk ordinary. They dress ordinary. They embody the proud discredited dream of indiedom, namely that in every no-hope English ghost town there lurks a poet laureate of disaffected adolescence” (NME, January 14, 1989). Even mildly dressing up is considered glamorous. For example, in 1994 indie fans and the press touted a resurgence of glamor among indie bands. This new fashion traded the oversized T-shirts for a tighter, form-fitting style, the inclusion of athletic clothing (“three stripes on yer shoulder”), and an increased number of people wearing moderately glittery clothing. When comparing indie’s version of glamor to other musical movements such as glam, punk, and metal (all genres that included stylized make-up and highly altered clothing), indie appears very tame indeed.

The “shoe-gazer” musical movement of 1991 reflected paradigmatic indie style in many ways. The shoe-gazers wore plain clothes, relied heavily on guitars, and maintained the typical indie haircut, the “straggly-haired bob” reminiscent of a schoolboy (Melody Maker, October 9, 1993), worn unkempt and somewhat unwashed (although from an American perspective, unwashed could describe most British hairstyles).³⁸ In the shoe-gazing style, performers often stood in the same location during shows. Journalists claimed that the shoe-gazer band Slowdive actually looked down at lyric sheets rather than their effect pedals because they were so raw and unseasoned that they had not even memorized the words to their own songs. The downward look of the shoe-gazers also suggested the introverted and inward-looking quality often attributed to indie music.³⁹

Indie’s styles of dress embody its themes of childhood and nostalgia. As Simon Reynolds noted in a central work recognizing the conventions of the indie scene:

Mixed with these items are overtly childish things—dufflecoats, birthday-boy shirts with the top button done up, outsize pullovers; for girls—bows and ribbons and ponytails, plimsolls and dainty white ankle socks, floral or polka-dot frocks, hardly any make-up and no high heels; for boys—beardless and bare-eared and tousled fringes. One garment above all has come to represent the scene—the anorak…. Some hard-core activists on the scene will go all the way and sport a satchel or duffel-bag and then they’ll really look like a Start-Rite kid. (Reynolds 1989: 251)⁴⁰

As Stephen Pastel of the band the Pastels put it, “The anorak was a style statement. It was saying: everything else is fucked up and we’ve got to get back. Closer to the start of things. Being children” (Cavanagh 2000: 190). The change from oversized clothing (resembling hand-me-downs from older siblings) to undersized clothing in light colors (reminiscent of clothes one has grown out of) was a resurgence of the “cutie pie” style of the mid-1980s with its tatty babydoll dresses, a style that “concentrated on asexual, preadolescent garments and accessories in soft pastel shades” (Polhemus 1994: 122). The adoption of charity shop items continues this nostalgic principle of indie, in which different periods of resale clothing are renovated and reintroduced as stylish. Indie’s sartorial style owes much more to the mod tradition than to punk with androgynous males and females, a childlike sexuality, prevalence of anoraks, and the so-called ordinariness of their look (Laing 1969). In fact, at fairly regular intervals indie has mod revivals. Segments of the indie community dress up in finely tailored 1960s suits similar to those sported by the Beatles in their early days. In the early 2000s, there was another resurgence of 1960s fashion. Performers dressed uniformly, in suits (the Hives) or striking red and white colors (the White Stripes). Indie’s clothes typically do not fit—either the person or the time.

The childlike conventions of indie extend not only to clothing style but to modes of physicality as well. Simon Reynolds observes: “Against the mainstream image of a desirable body—vigorous, healthy, suntanned, muscled for men, curvaceous for women—the indie ideal is slender, slight, pale of skin, childishly androgynous” (Reynolds 1989: 251). Producing this wan look requires a particular type of bodily discipline: a renunciation of food, exercise, and outdoor activities. The standard dress and physical style of the thin, clean-shaven, pouty-lipped schoolboy and the slender, androgynous, shorthaired female evoke a childlike appearance in the young adult. Indie bands may wear tailored suits that recall the 1960s or uniform clothes, but these are not representations of contemporary adulthood. Essentially, indie is a return to the past, either the past of one’s own childhood or the past of the early 1960s, which, as Simon Reynolds astutely notes, is seen by the indie community as “like pop’s childhood, when the idea of youth was still young” (Reynolds 1989: 254).

The very name “indie” indicates a community aligning itself with childhood: the word itself is a diminutive, and diminutives suggest smallness, childhood, affection, and, at times, derision.⁴¹ Diminutive names are the appellations of childhood: Billy, not William; Robbie, not Robert; Nicky, not Nicholas. Indie is the diminutive community of independence. The rebellious clarion call of punk’s reformation is made diminutive and humbled in the name “indie.” Each of the associations of diminutiveness pervades indie ideology, even its tendency to ridicule itself. The American Alternative is spelled with a capital “A,” while indie is spelled in the small, modest lower case. Diminutive indie longs for a return to an imagined childhood.

Indie’s valuation of the past over the present and future is evidenced by its technophobia. The anti-technological stance that permeates many aspects of indie results in indie fans being called Luddites by outsiders as well as insiders.⁴² For much of its history, computer-generated sounds were not welcome in the genre. Using a drum machine is still considered somewhat heretical, although there have been a few notable exceptions to this rule. As electronic music has persisted, it has presented less of a threat as the new, and more indie bands have begun to incorporate electronica in a lo-fi style.⁴³ The indie sound emerged after a period of great innovation in the use of new electronic instrumentation. At the time of their debut in 1983, the Smiths’ musical approach and use of a traditionalist four-piece beat combo was considered a deliberate return to earlier, simpler forms, a “back to basics” (Melody Maker, July 20, 1983). They were cited as being in stark contrast to the other popular electropop bands of the new wave era, who used cutting-edge electronic technology to produce their sound (NME, May 14, 1983). Indie’s aversion to synthetic sound is revealed in its criticism of dance music’s use of samples and programmed drum beats, which I will address later.

However, indie does not shun all technology. The electric guitar is the most highly fetishized element of indie music, and effects pedals (which digitally modify the standard tone of the guitar) are used extensively. Within indie, the use of the electric guitar is not considered a use of technology. In fact, the electric guitar is the traditional instrument within the genre. One therefore needs to consider indie’s technophobia in terms of a dialectic between the future and the perceived past, between new and old. Past technology is taken for granted as traditional. It is new technology, new synthetic forms, that indie eschews, and because the new eventually becomes the old, the bar regarding what is acceptable continually moves along.

Several of the most popular indie bands of the mid-1990s, such as Pulp, began to resuscitate synthetic sounds and synthetic clothing fabrics for the indie music community. However, contemporary indie artists use synthetic sounds in a nostalgic manner. When artificial sounds are employed, indie bands prefer the earliest versions, such as the early Casio machines, Hammond organs, or 1970s synthesizers—the sonic equivalent of polyester. Pulp’s use of synthetic sounds revitalized an earlier sound form. Interestingly, a number of the early prototypical independent artists and labels were not technophobic but were innovators in the use of electronic synthesizers and electronic sound. Factory, with their maverick upstart New Order, employed digital technology to dazzling effect. Goth, a music rage after the demise of punk that was often featured on independent labels, was not adverse to using synthesizers. Depeche Mode, Erasure, and Yazoo were trailblazers in the use of new digital and synthetic technologies on the powerful independent label Mute. That so many technologically advanced bands are considered forerunners of a genre that, at its core, opposes digital simulation sound technology is a provocative contradiction.

The anti-technological stance of indie is pronounced in the community’s reluctance to fully embrace CD technology. Indie fans’ preference for vinyl records over CDs is a principal reason they are so often considered Luddites. Many indie fans are self-styled vinyl junkies. Vinyl—specifically the seven-inch vinyl single format—formed part of the identity for the indie community in much the same way that the twelve-inch single was associated with dance music and deejaying. However, it must be noted that while indie fans are most likely to buy the seven-inch format, most indie fans have huge CD collections as well. Nevertheless, the indie community both nurtures and supports the continuance of vinyl; as I noted earlier, indie labels often put out limited-edition vinyl recordings. There were even singles clubs like Sub Pop or Creation that released singles exclusively in the seven-inch format. Whereas most majors release singles in three formats—CD1, CD2, and MC (cassette)—labels that cater to the indie audience release a vinyl format in lieu of one of the others.⁴⁴ For example, Domino Records in South London releases recordings primarily in two formats: CD and vinyl, as do City Slang, Big Cat, and Duophonic. Record labels that consider themselves part of the indie music community make a point to release on vinyl whenever possible.

For the indie community, CD exemplifies technology and vinyl represents its antithesis. This distinction is related, in part, to the nature of each medium. CDs are digital and vinyl is analog. Many indie fans feel that analog sound is superior to digital sound. I was often told by members of the indie community that CDs sounded either “metallic” or “too clean” and that vinyl sounded “warm.” However, even this difference in sound is complicated, because most recordings are mastered digitally and then reconverted to analog to put on vinyl. Many indie fans find that even the addition of scratches and minor skips are an enjoyable part of listening to a vinyl music recording.⁴⁵ A skip on a CD results in a high-pitched, repetitive pulse that makes the track unlistenable; by contrast, minor augmentations to sound on vinyl recordings were likened to the “aging of a fine wine” (C.W., age twenty-five).

The physical appearance of CDs is also criticized within the indie community. The shiny metallic discs look high-tech compared with the matte-black surface of standard vinyl. For many indie fans, there is a certain amount of fetishism in the enjoyment of the purchase of a vinyl recording. Many fans discussed the smell and other sensual qualities of vinyl, its inner sleeve, its cover. Vinyl junkies inspect their records carefully before playing them. I was told, “Vinyl gives more information about the recordings. On vinyl, you can look at your record and you can see how long the songs are. You can see changes in music, and how much music there is on the record, by looking at the grooves” (R.G., age twenty-six). CDs have surfaces that are uniform to the naked eye and that impart only a fraction of the information that vinyl does. To the indie fan, CDs look anonymous, slick, and undifferentiated.⁴⁶

The anti-CD position advocated by indie enthusiasts is evident in the discourse of bands. In an interview, the members of Flying Saucer Attack, a band on the independent record label Domino who had slogans such as “CDs destroy music” and “Buy Vinyl” printed on their CD-format releases, summarize their antipathy for the CD format:

“I hated that Eighties rock sound, and it’s sort of spilled over into an irrational hatred of digital,” says Dave. “I don’t even own a CD player. I just can’t relate to CDs. It’s not so much the way they sound as the things themselves, those horrible plastic boxes.” “A piece of vinyl is a physical object—you can see the songs,” concurs Rachel. “With a CD, it’s like a satellite’s beaming the music into your room.” Continues Dave: “I am a very miserable person, right. Records are your friends. You can look at the song you’re hearing; it’s physically there in the spirally groove.” (Melody Maker, October 14, 1995.)

Flying Saucer Attack differentiates between the two mass-produced, technological objects, emphasizing a semiotic dichotomy that identifies the CD as plastic and inorganic and the vinyl as organic. While both vinyl and CD are composed of plastic, CDs, composed of aluminum acetate, are generally packaged in a clear plastic jewel case while vinyl is generally in packaged in the more organic paper or cardboard. Flying Saucer Attack also contends that the vinyl recording brings the listener into intimate contact with the recording, while the CD is unrelated to the music produced from it (“beamed in from a satellite”).

The desire to hold on to vinyl is not merely due to the technophobic stance of indie: there is a nostalgic element in maintaining the format of cultural artifacts associated with one’s introduction into a field of interest. Flying Saucer Attack’s comment that CDs are associated with the music of the 1980s indicates that, for them, vinyl harkens back to the era prior to that technological boom. Vinyl is thought of as the original form of musical recordings, and though it is a technologically mass-produced object, it has become traditional when contrasted with the newer CDs. For indie, as for many cultures, most individuals believe tradition is what one did in one’s own childhood. While indie fans wax lyrical about seven-inch singles (the format in which most of the indie fans during the tenure of this project had bought their first records), indie fans do not romanticize 78s or other early forms of recording technology. Thus, as indie ages and the community becomes composed of younger individuals with little experience of vinyl, there is a great likelihood that the seven-inch will disappear. One indie label boss commented to me that “there is a romance to vinyl that CDs don’t have.” Allied with the associations of tradition, analog, and nostalgia and contrasted with the metallic, synthetic, digital, modern CD, plastic vinyl has been transformed by the indie community into an organic, originary art form.

Indie’s eschewing of the technological is not confined to sound and format. Indie possesses an overall ethic of technological nonproliferation. Live performance is championed over prerecorded music. This is a continuation of a punk ethic that privileged live music as direct and immediate over musical recordings as constructed and removed (Laing 1985: 53). Bands are considered “proper” if they perform convincingly live.⁴⁷ Bands that cannot deliver onstage even when they have fine albums become objects of speculation and commentary: though occasionally excusable, this inability typically indicates that the band is a sham. The use of synthetic sound under the guise of being a live ensemble is regarded as a form of moral turpitude.

One thing about Jesus Jones that sticks in the throat is how little has been made of their dubious image as a band. In some puritanical corner of my mind, this carefully nurtured rock and roll fallacy indicates some kind of moral corruption. The fact that multi-instrumentalist Mike Edwards works in solitude, flanked by banks of technology as opposed to his hired hands (which is all, in effect, the rest of the band are) seems a bit of a con, really. Big deal, say you. This is 1993, Mr. Indie Saddo, not a world of residencies at the Reeperbahn and paying your dues. (NME, January 23, 1993)

The reference to the Reeperbahn, the district in Germany where the Beatles had a residency prior to their success, points to the idea that a “real” band is generated by performing in front of live audiences. The performance of music in a live setting is a measure of a band’s authenticity within the genre.

While many of its traditional generic components represent a longing for, a connection with, and an appreciation of preceding eras and musical antecedents, indie does not advocate the wholesale restoration of previous musical trends and eras. While it is nostalgic, indie is not revivalist. The reintroduction of previous styles is to be met with a contemporary sensibility—the present longing for the past is not the same thing as the past itself. Although indie has a playful, youthful quality, it is constantly undercut with melancholy: “Although the cutie look was essentially fun and playful, underlying its childlike innocence was a deep-rooted sense of gloom and doom” (Polhemus 1994: 122). The indie fan wears black on the outside because black is how he feels on the inside. Indie aspires to a return to a childlike state of innocence for those who are on the brink of adulthood. This unappeased longing is the wellspring of a melancholic lyrical focus: loss of love, loss of innocence, loss of the 1960s. Although traditionalist and nostalgic, the indie community nevertheless emphatically believes that it is a domain of artistic innovation and originality while still calling upon the values and tools of the past.

Puritan tenets permeate the generic conventions of indie. For Puritans, lavish ritual, stately dress, and non-essential embellishment created distance between the individual and the divine. Puritans removed ornaments from houses of worship, substituted ordinary dress for clerical vestments, and held simplified services. Similarly, indie bands perform in everyday wear. Indie advocates simplicity in songs, modesty in adornment, modesty in consumption, and a particular type of physical discipline to acquire a look that suggests an aversion to worldly pleasures. Even the use of the lower case “i” in indie suggests modesty. Indie advances a program for music that is basically simple, in structure, in production, in accoutrements, and in style, in order to foster a pure, unmediated experience of music. In indie’s generic characteristics, we find again the underpinnings of Puritan ideological practice.

Romantic tendencies also sit in an uneasy reconciliation within indie’s Puritan conventions. In indie, we find none of Romanticism’s fanciful exaggerations, opulence, or imaginative posturings. Yet a Romantic strain does exist in indie’s tendency to value the natural or organic, in its introspection, and in its preference for ordinary people. The untrained artist combines the simplicity of Puritanism with the Romantic notion of the untrained artistic genius whose intuition, instinct, and spirit govern his artistic creations.

Indie promotes a return to basics: the simple, the ordinary, and the untrained. All superfluous elements should be stripped away to purify music. The Puritans, too, called for a return to basics, a restoration of the moral ideals of Christianity, a purification of the Church of corrupting excess and a return to a true, unmediated relationship between the divine and the congregant. A desire for a return to the past informs the beliefs, styles, customs, and practices of indie. Indie’s childlike style is a longing for a vanished past. At its core, indie’s generic features correspond with Puritan metaphysics—it is anti-technological, anti-futuristic, and longs for the presumed purity of the past.

Indie as an Ethos

Complete control, even over this song … The Clash

In the broad strokes I have used to paint indie as a specific sound with generic conventions, I have not yet discussed the very real elements of diversity that exist within the indie category. For each of the general principles there have been bands that defy the conventions and are still considered indie. There are indie bands that top the mainstream charts, indie bands on major labels, indie bands with major distribution, indie bands that utilize complex studio-produced sounds that cannot be played live, and indie bands that make eight-minute songs. There are even a few indie bands that do not use a guitar. If indie is a genre of music recognizable by a sound or mode of distribution, then how are bands that defy these conventions incorporated into the category? The Tindersticks are a fine example. They were signed to This Way Up, which was owned and distributed by a major company. Numerous members played a variety of instruments, including strings. The band did not have a typical indie sound but instead featured music that suggested a combination of soul and crooning, rarely written in 4/4 timing. The members wear subdued suits. Since a band like the Tindersticks can defy indie’s generic conventions yet still be considered part of the indie world, it is clear that there is more involved in the constitution of indie as a genre than a distinctive sound, fashion, mode of production, and performance style. Indie is an ethos, an attitude. Indie, much like hip-hop, is a way of life.

For many, indie is the spirit of independence, being free from control, dependence, or interference. Self-reliance, not depending on the authority of others, has been the guiding value of indie music, as has the autonomy of the artist. For indie, its paradigmatic models are the “independent” record shop, the “independent” distribution company, the “independent” record label arising from individual entrepreneurship, and the indie band appearing on the roster of an independent label, at least in its formative stage.⁴⁸ Independence in music means actively eschewing a centralized corporate hierarchy where decisions are made by distant executive bodies. As Tony Wilson, one of the heads of Manchester’s Factory Records, put it, “The theory of independence was discovered in the act of putting out your own records, doing very well, being friends with your artists, and not ripping them off. And by 1981 we were all doing it” (Harris 2003: 8). Independence, the notion of self-expression and self-control, pervades all aspects of the indie community.

Artists’ control over their music has been a central element in the notion of independence: “The propelling idea, at least since 1976, can be summed up in the one simple phrase: ‘release your own records’ ” (NME, February 8, 1986).⁴⁹ On one’s own independent label, musicians have total control over the recording, artwork, and whatever else went into the particular production, with no intervention by establishment professionals. Therefore, the record that appeared in stores would be the unmediated musical vision of the artist.

While it has become less common for indie bands to set up one-off labels to release their own records, the independent record label is considered to continue the fight for the performers’ artistic control. As one label boss remarked, “Indie is an attitude and dance labels are the indie ones now. Where someone will put out a record from their bedroom and it will sell something like 3,000 copies. This is what indie has been” (NME, July 18, 1992). This comment points to individual entrepreneurial spirit in a nonconventional setting and smallness as both being constitutional elements of indie. Indie is the commitment to individual artistic expression. The individual is able to envision an idea, produce it, and then distribute it to the public without intervention. The independent label is seen to have the same agenda as the artist, delivering unmediated music to the public. One of the reasons bands sign to independent labels is the expectation of artistic control and limited intervention by the independent record company.⁵⁰

There are other general characteristics about indie’s ethos. Indie is generally a middle-class phenomenon, yet it idealizes the working class with its supposed “authentic” experience. Bands, in particular, are criticized if they are perceived as coming from a background of affluence. Those from the upper class or upper middle class often obscure their backgrounds. The indie fan is usually educated and paradigmatically is a university student. In Britain, most fans range in age from about fifteen to twenty-nine, with 80 percent under the age of twenty-five.⁵¹ In a general way, the discourse of indie is politically liberal, reflecting the middle-class value of empathy; there is little tolerance for racism, sexism, or homophobia. The letters pages of the indie press and magazines are constantly filled with diatribes against racism, the BNP (British Nationalism Party), and the rise of neo-Nazism, despite the fact that very few members of the indie audience are ethnic minorities. NME and Melody Maker were regularly characterized as having a middle-class, white male, liberal agenda. These positions are fairly characteristic of student populations in England, as well as other youth music communities, and are not particularly unique to indie. However, a unique component of the indie ethos is the representation of indie as miserable and pathetic.

Indie as Pathetic

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation—and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetic tones…. Edgar Allan Poe

wishing for a time that never was…. Doves

Indie is strongly associated with the mien of pathos. Indie fans are often represented as being depressed, obsessive loners. Invoking the image of the anorak, as one indie fan did in his definition of indie, not only aligns indie with childhood but also associates it with trainspotting. In Britain, the trainspotter is an emblematic image of pathetic obsession. Trainspotters can be seen in anoraks at the end of rail platforms, waiting to glimpse trains and record their sightings in ledgers. While it is important to the trainspotters, the meaningfulness of this obsession eludes outsiders. For many, indie connotes a similar compulsive obsession with esoterica.

Many indie fans have comprehensive collections of their favorite artists and/or favorite label releases. Indie and dance both have audiences that purchase recordings by label without knowing the particular artist or song. For many indie fans, a comprehensive collection includes not merely a copy of every track, but every track on every format in which it was released. Record companies have been able to exploit the purchasing habits of obsessive British fans. The general recognition that some fans want to have complete collections resulted in rampant multi-formatting, in which recordings are released with different tracks and versions of songs for each format.⁵² Since the collector fan often purchases a copy of each format, releasing a single in several formats can bolster a single’s position on the charts. This process was later curtailed by limiting the number of formats that would be eligible for inclusion in the charts.⁵³ The practice of comprehensive collecting of what appears to the outsider to be obscure and irrelevant materials generates the comparison with the trainspotter.

The indie community parodies its own proclivities and outsiders’ criticism of them, demonstrating a community enmeshed in self-referentiality. Indie fans will at times call themselves dull or boring because of their obsession with the small details of their records or record collections. The press as well as indie fans use the term “saddo” when referring to themselves; a saddo is a sad and lamentable person. The term “indie” itself is, at times, applied in general conversation to indicate a shortcoming or something small and not particularly well done. The image of indie as pathetic is so prevalent that an international conference held in Dublin in 1995 on the topic of “the pathetic” suggested indie music in its call for papers.

Indie ideology is indeed characterized by pathos. The word “pathos” is the hybrid of the Greek roots path (feeling), pathia (suffering), and patheikos (sensitivity). Pathos represents being prone to suffering and the quality of evoking a feeling of pity or compassion. The most common characterization of indie fans and artists is that they are prone to extreme suffering because of their sensitive, introspective natures. Dele Fadele of NME characterized indie as an “inward-gaze” (NME, December 12, 1992). This quality of introspective sensitivity has Puritan resonance: the internal and passionate experience of the numinous was essential in Puritan philosophy. As Ed Ward points out, “In Puritan religious thought there was originally a dynamic equipoise between two opposite thrusts, and tension between an inward, mystical personal experience of God’s grace and the demands for an outward, sober, socially responsible ethic, the tension between faith and works, between the essence of religion and its outward show” (Campbell 1987: 219). Thus, the inward experience of profound personal sensitivity is part and parcel of indie’s Puritan metaphysics.

There are certain topics that recur as themes and tropes within indie song lyrics and reflect the motif of pathos in the indie community. Indie songs are often brooding and contemplative and address the issue of not belonging:

What the hell am I doing here? / I don’t belong here—(“Creep” by Radiohead)

I’ll be the corpse in your bathtub / Useless—(“Newborn” by Elbow)

I sit all alone / Alone is all I’ll ever be—(“Season” by Ash)

i can show you sadder poetry / than you ever dreamed there could be / i know all the saddest people / most of them are dead now—(“Save a Secret for the Moon” by the Magnetic Fields)

I think I’m drowning / asphyxiating … —(“Time Is Running Out” by Muse)

So you go, and you stand on your own / and you leave on your own / and you go home and you cry / and you want to die—(“How Soon Is Now” by the Smiths)

These are a mere sampling of the vast compendium of depressed, despondent, and disconsolate lyrics that characterize indie’s core. Many indie song titles also convey a sense of despairing paralysis: “Isn’t Anything,” “Nothing Much to Lose” (My Bloody Valentine); “Nowhere,” “Decay,” “Paralyzed” (Ride); “She Is Suffering” (Manic Street Preachers). More aggressive or angry lyrics reflect angst, an introspective mode of aggression (see the Guardian, July 7, 1995). This second mode is best summed up by the band Nirvana’s often-quoted title “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.”

Indie’s introspective pathos and obsession is reflected in its playful self-mockery. Nowhere does this acknowledgment and ironic self-criticism manifest itself with more regularity than in the weekly press:

Readers, let me tell you about my life. I’m called David, and I am an Indie guy. Every day, I play my Indie Records and put on my “Captain America” T-shirt, just like the one Kurt Cobain used to wear. I like to be called Dave, but the neighbors call me sad. Nobody understands me, but I am a fun person. When I am not hanging outside the Camden Falcon hoping to get a glimpse of Steve Lamazq [sic], I spend time advertising in the music papers for pen pals to go to gigs with…. The lyrics are pretty profound too…. Do you think if I carry their record around it’ll help me get a girlfriend? (Melody Maker, January 29, 1994)

Stereolab are now just about the perfect indie art rock band. That’s not necessarily a compliment. It means they don’t sell millions of records, you can’t dance or mosh very well to it, and shagging to it is a bit of a tall order. But they are so many of the things wet dreams are made of for wannabe art-pseudish young people with skin problems. (NME, September 25, 1993)

Instead of sharpening their wits on illicit sex, drugs and joy-riding, they chose to stay in their bedrooms, wank and listen to their Poppies, Neds, and Megas records. (NME, March 20, 1993)⁵⁴

Here, being a member of the indie community is presented as highly unattractive. The last passage in particular speaks directly to the image of the pathetic indie fan, isolated in the private space of the bedroom, with music as his only sexual outlet.⁵⁵ The bands that are referenced—Pop Will Eat Itself (Poppies), Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (Neds), and Mega City Four (Megas) were all known as “T-shirt bands,” thus characterized because of the bold slogans on their T-shirts and their fans’ habit of sporting them. T-shirt bands were described as outgoing, effusive, and fun. However, the NME passage above demonstrates that even though there are some lively and exuberant movements in indie, in postscript they too are represented in terms of the “pathetic” indie fan isolated in his bedroom. Both serious and comical, indie’s self-parodies play with a negative caricature of its own identity. Indie accuses itself of being “elitist and insular” (NME, February 5, 1994), “pitiful, tedious, hyper-elitist indie saddos” (letters page of Melody Maker, November 6, 1993), or, most comprehensively: “Congratulations, you win a year’s subscription to Luddite Muso Indie Saddo Magazine” (NME, January 2, 1993).

Clearly this introversion and valorization of pathos and melancholy are expressions of the Romantic thread in indie music. In indie, one finds the exaltation of emotion and sensitivity, the sorrows and sufferings of young Werther, the privileging of creative spirit over an adherence to formal rules, and an interest in specific cultural/local identities.⁵⁶ Colin Campbell accounts for the development of Romanticism in terms of a cultivation of emotional sensitivity and responsiveness as “a further evolution of that essentially pietistic current of feeling” traceable to Puritanism (Campbell 1987: 179). This sensitivity luxuriates in the pleasure of emotional experience, and the more acute the emotions are, the more profound and morally validating the experience is:

The later Romantics … widen[ed] the range of emotions from which pleasure could be obtained…. In this respect, the Romantics came to emphasize that algolagnic sensibility, or “agony,” which Praz considered unique to them; a delight in the “Medusean” beauty or the pleasure that comes with pain…. Disillusionment, melancholy, and an intense longing for the perfect pleasure that will not die, thus become characteristic attitudes of the dedicated romantic pleasure-seeker. (Campbell 1987: 192)

In indie, this Romantic thread meets with the Puritan thread of asceticism, nostalgia, and intense moral rigor and helps us to partially understand indie’s pleasure in pathos. Indie fans love their music. They get an inordinate amount of pleasure from listening to it and talking about it. They see depth and value in the examination of personal suffering. The Romantic/Puritan duality manifests itself in the elevation of pathos and melancholia as the highest forms of experience. Indie does have songs about happiness, enjoyment, and playful youthful pursuits, but these are far less valued than the songs of pathos. When I asked informants for examples of sad or melancholic songs, they could all tell me lyrics right off the top of their heads, but when I asked for examples of happy or upbeat songs, I was invariably told that they would have to get back to me (which they seldom did). The Puritan distrust of sensual pleasures and valuing of the profound internal emotional experience of the divine finds its common ground with the Romantic in emotional melancholy. While Romanticism exalts the experience of all of the senses, indie fetishizes sensitivity and suffering. Unrequited longing is held as superior to physical satisfaction. Emotional Puritanism and Romanticism overlap, producing pathos as the most elevated form of emotional experience.

Indie’s ethos can be summed up by two major spirits—independence and pathetic melancholia. The Puritans and Romantics were nonconformists, born of rejection. This spirit of nonconforming independence suffuses the infrastructural and generic characteristics of indie. Within indie, independence conveys rejection of the status quo and an embrace of the spirit of rebellion. However, indie’s relationship to melancholy is even more interesting. Pathos and melancholia function as badges of worthiness indicating that one is a genuine disciple. For indie, suffering is the sign of elect status—it demonstrates sensitivity and depth of character. Because of their contemplative melancholia, indie fans view themselves as the elect who can recognize the truth in music.

Indie as a Mode of Aesthetic Judgement

Can you feel the sadness in our love? It’s the only kind we’re worthy of … The Divine Comedy

While indie fans prefer indie music, other styles of music are at times embraced by the independent community. To understand how and why indie includes the music that defies its own conventions, one must understand that one of indie’s motivating principles is its assessment of value in recordings and performers. Indie conceives of itself as discriminating; community members maintain that they possess the ability to assess the true value of music. Viewed from this perspective, indie is a mode of evaluation that assesses the relative value of various types of music and bestows critical acclaim on what it believes is the best. Indie fans’ preference in music is not thought to be due to their own personal tastes but arises from their belief that there are objective criteria to support their claims. It is not that they believe indie is the only music of value; rather, indie members consider themselves anointed music disciples whose acute sensitivity allows them to recognize any music of value. It just happens to be that most of the music that they consider valuable is the music of their own community. As an NME journalist put it in an article discussing the meaning of indie, “At its best, ‘indie’ is this strange industry that flourished and is still flourishing in the aftermath of punk, and has made half or two thirds of all the most interesting music in the world … mountains of good music” (NME, July 18, 1992). Indie is not merely a sound with generic conventions but a discursive practice of critical judgment as well. Indie divides the world into a musical hierarchy in which indie aficionados identify themselves as those who can recognize quality in music. Hence, their music of standard preference, indie, must be the music of the highest quality. As one of my informants put it: “I know what indie is: if it’s good and I like it, it’s indie” (L.F., age twenty-eight).

At times, other clearly different styles of music are embraced and incorporated into the indie aesthetic canon. Strikingly, American hip-hop and rap bands often come to Britain and find themselves with an indie audience. Public Enemy, Kayne West, and Gangstarr have appeared high on the bill at the Reading festival, the annual and preeminent indie music festival since 1989.⁵⁷ Bands such as OutKast and Cypress Hill have a large indie following in the United Kingdom in contrast to their hip-hop fan base in the United States. Rap’s perceived “realness” and radical form attract indie critics and fans alike. The music of other genres accepted into the indie canon generally conforms in either its production or attitude to one or more of indie’s values.

Other forms of music are covered by the indie music press, but in general only as a token sampling to justify to the community that the press really has surveyed all forms of music and to assert indie as the arbiters of artistic value. As a reader wrote to the letters page, “I think the Melody Maker has given music of all types a fair hearing and I hope it continues” (Melody Maker, March 12, 1994). This version of a fair hearing means that on occasion one finds a review of the re-release of a John Coltrane album or a feature piece on a jungle artist. Only one or two of the fifty-two covers a year of the weekly press are devoted to black or Asian artists that specialize in other genres of music. As one letter writer eloquently put it, “While your coverage of indie, dance, and U.S. rock is as good as anyone could reasonably expect, I do think that any claims you make to a diversity of coverage will always carry with them a hollow ring until you finally deal with that big bad booga [sic] man that is black music” (NME, October 9, 1993). Interestingly, it was during the time of the punk reformation of the mid-1970s that the weekly press began to specialize. Previously, the weekly press had large sections devoted to jazz, folk, blues, country, and rock.

Publications nurturing indie music articulate a discourse of quality, not genre. Perhaps the nature of indie’s critical discourse of aesthetic assessment is best examined by looking at NME’s list of the one hundred greatest albums of all time (see appendix 1). In justifying its list, as well as preparing for the inevitable onslaught of outraged letters regarding oversights, the introduction stated that “the results show that the NME is still a remarkable broad church, happy to welcome Coltrane, Sinatra, Marvin, Beefheart, and Dusty as well as the many illustrious guitar abusers that have defined this paper’s heartland” (NME, October 2, 1993). In this move, the NME journalists position themselves as evaluators of a broad range of music who can then use their expertise to judge the relative merit of all artists’ productions. It is more accurate, however, to call the list indie’s most influential records. The top ten on this list strongly favor bands that are most often named as influences on indie musicians. Nevertheless, the list also includes a perfunctory and superficial sampling of other genres. Here, the legendary indie band the Stone Roses is located at number five, while the only recording of Michael Jackson on the list, Off the Wall, is at ninety-three. This rhetorical strategy crystallizes most visibly when reviewing albums of the 1980s, the decade during which indie emerged as a distinct category of music (see appendix 2). More than 50 percent of their top fifty albums of the 1980s were indie, and Manchester’s Stone Roses was given top billing for this decade.

Since indie’s discourse of aesthetic evaluation privileges indie as the very embodiment of quality, indie fans often balk when other genres of music get significant airtime on the radio or television. Thus, when both fifty- to eighty-page weeklies simultaneously introduced four-page sections devoted to dance and clubs, an avalanche of protest letters arrived from outraged readers suggesting bandwagon jumping or abandonment of indie music. A journalist’s response: “We’ll continue to cover the best music from both fields. We’re no more likely to give house room to an uninspired, formulaic club cut than to a bunch of talentless guitar droners. We crave excellence, whatever the genre” (Melody Maker, February 26, 1994). When an occasional letter writer points out the discrepancy between this assertion and the quantitative content of the paper, the token sampling of indie’s broad church is hauled out and recited in litany.

The privileging of the indie community’s ability to recognize value in music is starkly illustrated by NME’s campaign that “the BRITs” should be “the BRATs.” The BRITs is the name of the annual awards ceremonies of the British Phonographic Institute (BPI). Here, critical recognition is bestowed upon musical artists in a British equivalent of the American Grammys. As in the United States, there is often a great disparity between what music critics think is worthy and what the BPI thinks is worthy. NME decided to create its own set of awards, called the BRATs, insisting that their nominations were the truly deserving award recipients.⁵⁸ A reader criticized this move in the typical exuberant inkie letter-writing style: “You miserable losers. Just because none of your sad, derivative, outdated indie bands received BRIT awards, you deem them to be a failure and a music industry marketing fix” (Melody Maker, March 5, 1994).⁵⁹ The quality of the acts that had won BRITs was critiqued by a Melody Maker writer: “Whether this was because record companies find it easier to flog recognized (and crap) brand names, or because most people have inherently bad taste, is still to be determined” (Melody Maker, March 12, 1994). For the indie fan, a preference for popular music outside the indie canon is synonymous with poor aesthetic judgment, while appreciating indie constitutes enlightened taste.

Ironically, the BRAT awards soon appeared superfluous, because a year after their inception, the BRITs and the BRATs overlapped for the winners in many categories. Several bands that had been championed in the weeklies had crossed over to mainstream chart success with the explosion of Britpop. This resulted in several of the inkies’ favorite indie bands winning BRITs. Additionally, the music industry had inaugurated the annual Mercury Prize for best album of the year, the musical equivalent to the Booker Prize in literature. The Mercury Prize habitually goes to bands championed in the indie music weeklies. This award was won by Primal Scream (1992), one of the C86 bands; Suede (1993), a band dubbed “the Best Band in Britain” on the front page of Melody Maker before even a single had been released; M-People (1994), a dance band that had consistently received good reviews in the weeklies and had close connections to the independent music scene in Manchester; Portishead (1995), a trip-hop band, another favorite of the inkies that was initially supported by the indie fan base; and indie stalwarts Pulp (1996).⁶⁰

Indie is often privileged in the broader media as the genre where music and art overlap. A discriminating art-school mentality permeates much of indie. Indie has often been associated with aesthetic movements in the fine arts, where music is combined with an intellectual perspective. Many indie bands form during musicians’ tenures at art institutions, and the education that performers receive in those settings is considered to influence their musical productions. Indie music often issues from the same wellspring of ideas that generates other aesthetic movements, and this connection can be seen in the intellectual and artistic reference points scattered across indie lyrics—surrealist films, underground books, existential philosophers, modern art, performance theory, Romantic poets, and Shakespearean plays. Indie music’s points of reference are other elite forms of artistic expression that share the same belief that artistic expression takes precedence over commercial concerns. Independent labels and bands often self-consciously apply intellectual, philosophical, and semiotic concepts. At the same time, their love of the working class means that these serious highbrow pretensions are met with a playful dismissiveness. This combination of high art and no-nonsense disregard of traditional values echoes punk’s combination of situationalist art and vulgarity (Hebdige 1979, Marcus 1990).

Indie’s modes of assessment of artistic merit closely parallel the academic and commercial art establishments’ discourse on value in artistic production. Indie’s criteria are often applied to rock and pop in general. The result is that the music that indie enthusiasts prefer is then regarded by much of the general media as having the privileged position of art, and a small specialist community secures an extremely strong voice in the public discourse about music. While there may be just as many (or more) dance fans or mainstream chart fans, their aesthetic value systems do not dominate the public discourse on music. The indie community has been very effective in asserting the legitimacy of its critical valuation system, garnering a great deal of coverage in print, on radio, and on a significant number of television programs to boot. The extent of indie’s print coverage is quite impressive. The weekly press is devoted to indie. Select, Q, and Vox give premium coverage to indie bands.⁶¹ Additionally, the weeklies are an important training ground for music journalists and public personalities. Many journalists, radio disc jockeys, literary music writers, and television presenters who cover music have been writers for NME or Melody Maker at some point in their careers.⁶² It is little wonder, then, that the aesthetic system of the indie community is often conflated with the aesthetics of musical discourse in Britain in general.

The weekly press plays a commanding role in establishing the discourse around any artist within British music criticism, often taking the first critical stand. For example, when Primal Scream released the album Give Out But Don’t Give Up, the follow-up to their wildly successful and critically acclaimed dance album Screamadelica, a journalist in one of weeklies called the band “dance traitors.” This description was reformulated as a question (“Are Primal Scream dance traitors?”) and discussed in subsequent reviews in monthlies and in broadsheet papers. The stance taken in the weeklies is often the defining position to which other journalists respond in their commentary on a particular artist, in part because journalists read other journalists. Moreover, press officers compile press coverage and then send an artist’s previous press clipping to different journalists to prepare for a new article or review. Thus, there is an insular recycling of commentary on early press coverage. A small incident related by a band in an early article or review can snowball and dominate a band’s interviews for years. The weekly press’s publishing timetable produces the earliest articles read by subsequent journalists.

The voice of indie is also strong internationally. Music industry personnel and music fans in other countries read the British weekly music press. NME is available in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Most American record companies have an NME sitting on a desk somewhere. Press packs are sent to journalists in all markets. An example of weeklies setting the tone of international discourse is the characterization of the Boston band Sebadoh in Spin. Lou Barlow, a member of the band, was described in Spin as “the most sensitive man in indie music”—a moniker bestowed on him by the weeklies after a particularly stupendous display of sensitivity at the Reading festival in England.⁶³ What becomes apparent is that the specialist indie music community has a huge influence in the transnational discourse on popular music.

It is important to understand that this discussion of critical assessment is not just about music journalism; rather, it is a discursive practice of the indie community itself. At a fundamental level, indie music fans consider themselves to be music critics. The letters pages of the indie press are filled with correspondences from indie aficionados who are outraged by reviews that contradict their own opinions. These are often followed by cogent (although most journalists might beg to differ) arguments in support of their claims. Critical analysis of music is also rampant in fanzines. British indie fanzines parallel the weeklies’ format style. Fanzine writers evaluate music, performances, and artists and assert that their own assessments have more validity than the judgments of professional journalists.

The discourse of artistic assessment that includes the music of other traditions within the indie canon is the result of the indie members’ desire to position themselves as the true scholars of music. In the domain of artistic assessment, indie asserts to the world that its members are the true disciples of music, with their ability to ascertain true music as opposed to false idolatry, to identify the authentic and eschew the counterfeit, to embrace quality and reject worthlessness. Hence, in their discourse of aesthetic value, indie fans designate themselves as the anointed ones who can recognize, through their own system of authenticity, the truth in music.

Perhaps nowhere else does indie’s underlying theology manifest itself more than in its self-positioning as the arbiter of taste; in this way, members designate themselves as the spiritually elect. The ability to recognize beauty and value serves as an indicator of virtue. Once again Colin Campbell’s discussion of the development of Purito-Romanticism is particularly apt as he traces the development of “taste” and ethics in the form of sensibility as a crucial moral quality. In Romantic theocracy “taste” becomes the essential indicator of spiritual merit: “The key attribute of taste became transformed into a capacity for seeing into the nature of sacred truth, relabeled ‘imagination,’ and used to link the aesthetic with the spiritual rather than the ethical. In consequence, the perception of beauty became linked to gaining of privileged insights” (Campbell 1987: 182). Later, he continues: “The middle classes, by contrast, true to their religious heritage, regarded taste as a sign of moral and spiritual worth, with an ability to take pleasure in the beautiful and to respond with tears to the pitiable, equally indicative of a man (or woman) of virtue” (Campbell 1987: 205). Correct aesthetic judgments are direct evidence of virtue. Thus “good taste” demonstrates one’s elect status. Indie has been effective in that much of the community’s musical taste has attained the privileged position of “art” in the broader cultural arena, as its successes with the Mercury Prize have shown. In defining themselves as arbiters of artistic merit, indie fans effectively portray themselves to both their own community and, less efficaciously but still influentially, to the transnational congress of musical producers and consumers, as true visionaries able to recognize music of real value.

The Mainstream Is a Centralized Hierarchy

An identity is often forged in opposition to the contrived images of others. To demonstrate what indie is, proponents advance images of others to show what indie is not; indie creates a representation of others to conjure an image of itself. The two categories that indie invokes most frequently are the over-generalized and under-examined category of “the mainstream” and the wildly diverse category of “dance.” Indie’s representations of dance and the mainstream are not necessarily accurate, but they are a means by which indie constructs an image of itself. The characterizations I describe below are indie’s own, not ethnographic descriptions of dance or mainstream audiences or cultures.

From its very inception, indie music was considered to have an antithetical approach to the mainstream production of music. Here, “mainstream” designates the majority of music that appears in national charts and appeals to a broad cross-section of the public. The need to differentiate indie from the mainstream, particularly mainstream rock, is crucial, since many of the stylistic elements that define the indie genre could be used to describe rock generally (four-piece combos, the emphasis on the electric guitar, etc.). It is in the nuances in the application of standard instrumentation that indie differentiates itself from the mainstream. This difference is particularly evident in indie’s production style. The DIY ethic of punk stood in stark contrast to the lavishly produced studio bands of the 1970s, the contemporaries of the punks, who would often take months to record an album and utilize all forms of technical wizardry during production.⁶⁴ Punk’s bias against elaborate production was inherited and embraced by the indie community. Indie opposed mainstream’s many stylistic flourishes, such as studio overdubbing or pre-programmed dance rhythms, hence indie’s persistent lo-fi production style.

A key element that distinguishes indie from mainstream music is its “size.” Indie connotes small, personal, and immediate, while mainstream evokes all that is enormous, distant, and unspecialized. Indie bands are seen to use grassroots campaigns and fanzine promotions, while mainstream music uses multimedia campaigns to achieve market saturation. Smallness for indie is a trope in its performance spaces, budgets, and popularity. The mainstream is stadium music, while diminutive indie is the music of small, intimate venues. The majority of successful indie bands play at venues that hold five hundred to two thousand people. However, festivals such as the Carling Leeds/Reading Weekend, Glastonbury, the V Festival, or T in the Park, where multiple bands perform, are exempt from this size prohibition. Indie fans oppose traditional large-scale arenas. Indie bands that become popular know that if they play a large stadium, many indie fans will see this as a conversion to the mainstream and will no longer patronize the band. Thus, the most popular indie bands attempt to circumvent this prohibition by playing their large shows in non-traditional locations that suggest a festival atmosphere or a one-off event. Blur, after it achieved massive success, arranged a stadiumsized show with multiple acts at Mile End, a non-traditional stadium often used for football matches, rather than at Wembley, where mainstream acts often perform. At the height of their popularity, the Stone Roses arranged a performance on Spike Island, another non-traditional large-scale performance space. In 2002, Pulp played a series of gigs in national forests.

Indie gigs are about being near to performers. Indie bands often mingle in the crowd before and after shows, and artists are easy to meet in these settings. Audience members regularly approach band members at shows. Several fans said having direct contact with performers was one of their favorite aspects of indie music. Indie also attempts to maintain an equal relationship between musician and audience member—hence the everyman trope and the similarity of dress between audience and performer. A major reason for indie’s denigration of stadium shows is the distance created between the performer and the audience member, which is seen as an impediment to the direct experience of music.

This size distinction between indie and mainstream is not confined to the size of a venue but also extends to the relative success and popularity of a band. As one NME journalist put it, “Ever since the advent of ‘Independence’ as both a musical and business proposition, massive success has always been frown [sic] upon. The logic goes that if you reach millions of homes, you must have tailored your music for that very purpose, sold out to the corporate ogre and diluted any sparks of real life you once had” (NME, February 5, 1994). Indie’s distaste for arenas such as Wembley is largely due to their size, although it has also to do with the community’s occasional, but by no means consistent, distrust of popularity. As John Harris notes, “The most hard-bitten indie disciples seem to view mass market success as a pollutant of artistic purity” (Harris 2003: xv). In a particular segment of the indie community, once a member personally discovers a great band, he feels a certain proprietary right to the band. He will try to get other friends to like the band, but at the same time he feels that the band is “his.” When the band becomes successful, his ownership feels diluted, as if some personal control over the artist has been lost. He will stop counting the band in his personal repertoire or will remind people that he liked it before anyone else did. It is common for people to brag that they saw some wildly successful band years earlier in a venue holding only one hundred people. Other indie gig goers continue to like a band after it has become successful but will refrain from seeing it at large venues, because they miss the intimacy of the small club setting. An indie band that becomes successful and plays stadiums instead of clubs may be transforming devotion into a mass production and is necessarily suspect. Turning away from a band merely on the grounds that it has achieved popular success is not a uniform reaction among indie fans. However, successful bands are scrutinized to make sure that they have remained true to their roots and have not been transformed by their success. The community looks to see if a band has been polluted by its exposure to the corrupting influences of the mainstream. Thus, indie sees popularity as an ethical issue, a perspective that includes a belief that a band is “morally superior because they are not successful” (Cavanagh 2000: 177).

Indie’s proponents view indie as a rebellion against the mainstream and its morally bankrupt value system. Indie cultivates an image of rebelliousness as an alternative to corporate consumerism. Indie is not the only music genre that celebrates the image of the rebellion, however; because indie is a subcategory of rock, one would expect some of the same images to prevail in both.⁶⁵ This connection between rebelliousness and postwar musical productions that come under the rubric of rock and roll has resulted in a certain consistency in musical iconography. The leather jacket was popularized by Marlon Brando in the film The Wild One (1953). The use of working-class imagery within the film produced a sense of iconoclasm and seductive danger that remains a potent image associated with rebellion. Similar connotations are evoked by the Doc Martens boots associated with punk, some phases of indie, and American grunge. Despite being a primarily middle-class phenomenon, indie considers itself to be “down with” the working class, perceived as a wellspring of authenticity that is denied to the bourgeois class. Therefore, the behaviors and stylistic tropes of the working class are fetishized by the comfortable classes (a phenomenon common in academic settings as well). Manchester, home of several of the most important indie movements, is viewed as working class, and therefore bands with Mancunian dialects are valued for their “authentic” voices.

Indie’s ideological stance contrasts with its own image of the mainstream as bloated, safe, clichéd, and banal. In this view, the mainstream is seen to produce “products” that are overprocessed and slick. Indie invokes the mainstream as a bogeyman full of avaricious Frankensteins, large corporations with their legions of men in suits, manipulating the gullible public by pandering to their worst instincts. As one Melody Maker journalist put it in a viewpoint piece, it is “music made with anaesthetized suburban housewives in mind—the same people their friends sell washing-up liquid to, with an equal amount of aesthetic concern” (Melody Maker, March 12, 1994). Indie, in contrast, creates an image of itself as taking the intellectual high ground, privileging aesthetic concerns over commercial interest. Often bands pride themselves on giving the audience not what they want but rather what the band thinks they need: My Bloody Valentine’s 1992 tour show featured twenty minutes of modulated guitar feedback that sent many fans into venue lobbies. Indie finds the music of the mainstream hollow; in the words of a Smiths song, it “says nothing to me about my life.” Indie, on the other hand, is meaningful. Indie music is filled with specific literary and political references, while the mainstream uses bland, repetitive clichés peppered with absolutes such as “never,” “always,” and “forever.” Within indie’s aesthetic discourse of evaluation, indie music reproduces the high art/low art dichotomy that marginalizes the study of popular music in the first place.

These contrasts do not occur in a vacuum but are part of an ideological drama played out within a moral universe. Thus, indie views mainstream’s use of lavish production style, and its popularity, as corpulent, unoriginal, impersonal, and unspecialized. Indie sees its own lack of elaboration and its love of live performance as lean, personal, immediate, raw, and human. Each of the contrasts in musical practices between the different communities is submitted to subjective evaluation as an ethical concern. Thus, these contrasts in definition are reinterpreted by a community in value-laden terms that usually privilege the community doing the defining.

What emerges from this portrait of indie contrasted with the mainstream is an ideological system with implied moral stances in musical practices. These contrasts can be mapped out in Lévi-Straussian fashion:

INDIE	MAINSTREAM
independent labels	major corporations
gigs	stadiums
independent	centralized authority
local	global
intimate	distant
personal	impersonal
simple production	elaborate production
no guitar solos	guitar solos
modest	self-indulgent
live	prefabricated
self-made	other-made
authentic	phony
original	generic
specific	general
lean	fat
transit vans	tour buses
unprofessional	muso
raw	slick
austere	lavish
intelligent	insipid
substantive	empty
art	commerce

Indie positions itself in relation to the mainstream as an oppositional force combating the dominant hegemony of modern urban life. Any band that is seen as “chipping away at the facade of corporate pop homogeny” (Melody Maker, April 1995) is a positive addition to the indie fellowship.

One telling difference between indie and mainstream rock can be glimpsed in the importance that indie bands place on the avoidance of the guitar solo, which I discussed earlier. Some fans joke that indie bands can’t do guitar solos because they can’t play their instruments well enough, noting the contrast in the professional abilities of rock performers and young indie upstarts. However, eschewing guitar solos is regarded by most as a moral issue. Guitar solos are seen as self-indulgent, pretentious, narcissistic displays often likened to masturbation. The avoidance of guitar solos places indie as modest and unpretentious.⁶⁶ In general, indie inhabits a position of leanness and sexual austerity, though the latter waxes and wanes within indie. The “Madchester” scene of 1986 combined features of indie with dance’s openness to drugs and sexual expression. Being tight, taut, and lean are positive attributes when noted by reviewers in their discussions of indie bands, and most bands manifest this notion of thinness physically as well.⁶⁷ In this sense, the emphasis on slender performers is a simulacrum of the ideological stance of indie in contrast to the mainstream. Indie views the mainstream as slovenly, bloated, corpulent, clichéd, excessive, sexually promiscuous, overripe, and rotting from decadence. Contrasts in genre function in the community as barometers of virtue.

The mode and manner of indie’s debate with the mainstream is not new in British history. While the topic is different, indie’s stance about appropriate music practices is analogous to arguments over the nature of appropriate worship set forth during the Reformation. Indie and the mainstream play roles in an ancient and continuing religious drama between Protestants and Catholics, Swift’s Lilliputians and Blefuscudians. Indie fans are the Puritan reformers against the established Roman Catholic Church of the mainstream music industry. In its ideological endeavor, indie paints the mainstream in a manner similar to the Reformation’s portrait of the Roman Catholic Church. The mainstream, like the Catholic Church, is depicted as a corrupt bureaucracy of clergy who are susceptible to bribery and appointed by higher authorities who are unrelated to local interests. It creates a caste of businessmen who exploit the masses for their own personal advantage. It is tantamount to a church that has deviated from the original purity of the musical experience. Indie views the mainstream as filled with empty rituals, featuring excessive flourishes and ridiculous costumes. The mainstream and majors are represented as a Catholic church filled with unscrupulous, dissolute men in suits who exploit the faithful and encourage indulgences. The mainstream is held to be a force that desecrates music by turning it into a commercial enterprise devoid of its sacred character.

Indie traces its heredity to the inception of protest in the music industry: the punk movement. The moment of punk itself was a reenactment of the philosophy and religious warfare of the Reformation, the moment when the corrupt autocratic and hierarchical “church” of the music industry was assailed by local organizations wishing to establish their own independent congregations who were able to (s)elect their own ministers. Punk assailed the existing church of music and demanded reform in both the production and the consumption of musical forms. Both indie and punk demand the purification of the existing liturgical order by stripping away the excessive accoutrements of the dominant system and replacing them with the lean and austere music, production, performance, and style, to become the “purest incarnation of the spirit of music” (Laing 1985: 23).

NME journalist Stuart Bailey once asked in a column soliciting views on indie, “Why are indie kids so tight-assed and elitist about their music?” (NME, July 18, 1992), but he may as well have asked why Puritans are so puritanical. Being “tight-assed and elitist” are fundamental tenets of the ideological system that produces the specific form of music and ritual practices he was attempting to define. The Puritans believed that they had purified their form of worship from all traces of Catholic and pagan influences. Indie is also a drive for purification. Indie attempts to free itself from anything that debases, pollutes, or contaminates music. The language of indie’s musical discourse is peppered with religious overtones. Indie fans are called the “indie faithful” or “disciples.” Various marketing reports characterize indie fans as “musical evangelists” who attempt to convert others to this style of music (IPC Music Press 1993). Indie fans are characterized as “purists” in their own discourse, as well as in marketing reports (EMIRG UK 1993). Indie’s purists take up the Puritan gauntlet and continue the battle of reformation and transformation through the act of reform in the milieu of music.