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The conflict of indie

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Talk about conflict? Believe me. You know who I don't want to be? I don't want to be an indie snark purist. You know the ones, the ones who drop a band like a hot potato the moment they get a sniff of success; the ones who when you cheerily mention how much you like a track off a band's third album, say, will sniff at you and state that the only good track they ever did was a cover of a Jesus Lizard track which was the b-side to an early single which is 7" Japanese import only, unless you count the 2-track demo for a label sampler which was A&R only, or maybe the flexisdisc given away at one gig and one gig only where the singer changes the words omg at which point you punch them right on the bridge of the glasses that they don't even need to wear, the twunts. And quite right too.

And yet, and yet..

Look, I think we all have an indie snark-merchant knocking about, maybe we need to make peace with them. Mine popped out this evening when I noted to my horror that apple were using Cake's "Short skirt, long jacket" to shill iphones. And all of a sudden the indie purist leaps out screaming wait a minute, you bastards, I had to put the hard yards in at record fairs, grimy second hand shops, trawling weird websites, watching hundreds of awful, awful bands. I've done my time, and the payoff is I get to listen to stuff which the people who didn't do all this pointless indie nonsense don't get to. I get to have a sense of ownership of my record collection, I feel I've earned it. And here you, Mr Apple, are just giving shit away, letting people know about it, without a care.

I know, awful, irrational, and wrong. Why shouldn't they like it? And yet, and yet...another example: Hocus Pocus by Focus. Not their best, but a thoroughly enjoyable bit of prog craziness nonetheless. Or at least it was until it was being used for some videogame advert and all of a sudden Chris Fucking Moyles is playing it, and it's become a "thing" and y'know, you can NEVER listen to it again without thinking of a sniggering audience of dullards. Which is, of course, horrible horrible elitism but come on, throw me a bone here. Have you ever had something which you thought was yours, you've discovered it, you hold it close, it's a part of you, and then before you know it hey, it turns out that the vox populi think it's pretty neat, too. Which is probably good because it confirms what you already knew, but simultaneously ruins and cheapens it because you, at heart, are an elitist indie snob who's horrified at the thought of anybody else liking what you like? Of course you have.

I don't want to be that person, believe me. But I suspect I probably am, and now I'm going to have to submit myself to a load of Godspeed you! Black Emperor just to prove it, except in certain circles they're probably the equivalent of U2, so maybe I should just go and listen to a tramp shouting at a can and snort derisively at him for selling out because ten minutes ago he was yelling at a pile of shit, which was way more real, now that we COULD have put out on Jeepster...oh bollocks...

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