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Indepdendent of
Courtney Smith has a hard time explaining
to major labels why she can’t showcase their
bands on “Subterranean,” MTV2’s show dedi-
cated to independent and alternative music.
“It can be prickly,” said Smith, manager of
label relations for MTV, in a telephone inter-
view. Smith programs music for MTVU, a
channel that colleges and universities pay to
get for their schools’ cable packages, as well as
“Subterranean” on MTV2, the cable network
launched by MTV with the intention to focus
on music videos. But apparently not everyone
can cut it on the show.
Jim Shearer used to host “Subterranean,”
and interviewed featured bands and intro-
duced music videos. Shearer said that being on
a major label, a criterion which is sometimes
used to group bands as not being independent,
is not necessarily what differentiates the
show’s bands from more mainstream acts.
“A lot of the bands that came in were signed
by major labels, but I think the major label
understood that their uniqueness was that
they were kind of creative and had their own
little fan base,” he said in a telephone inter-
view.
“The Bravery on ‘Subterranean’?” Smith
asked. “Absolutely not. But it’s hard to articu-
late why.” Smith said that the defining charac-
teristic for the type of music that
“Subterranean” features is a mindset of what is
“indie.”
“It really just comes down to aesthetic,” she
said.
The DIY ethic
This indie aesthetic is an idea or set of prin-
ciples valued by fans of this genre. Holly
Kruse, assistant professor of communication
at University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, takes a
look at this aesthetic in her book “Site and
Sound: Understanding Independent Music
Scenes.” According to Kruse, the indie aesthet-
ic is derived from the stripped down produc-
tion values and non-professionalism of the
punk Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic.
In her book “Site and Sound,” Kruse also
said that the rise of independent music
occurred during the early to mid 80s when col-
lege radio was playing records from small,
independent record labels. Punk had hit the
United States in 1979, and the DIY aesthetic
included the idea that anyone can produce a
record without the money involved with sign-
ing to a major label.
“It’s an attitude, and you can apply that to
any kind of music,” said Lee Thomson in a
telephone interview. Thomson is the drummer
for the popular indie pop band Camera
Obscura, based out of Glasgow, Scotland.
For bands, this “attitude” included touring
alternative clubs, using their own equipment
and identifying with fans ideologically.
Smith said that the unique aesthetic of
these bands is in part a mentality for fans.
“There’s a bit of preciousness on the fan
side about what’s indie and what’s not,” Smith
said. She also said that indie music is at a place
where there is a tension between the fans’
desire for the indie aesthetic and the bands’
desire for commercial appeal.
“The Arcade Fire is not about keeping it
indie,” Smith said, referring to the currently
popular indie rock band. “They want to be the
biggest band in the world. Whereas with indie
kids, they want to own it. They want to set the
tone for what indie is and isn’t.”
Ryan Kattner, front man of pop/rock band
Man Man, agrees that this indie aesthetic is
not a priority of his band, either.
“We want to get big,” Kattner, whose band
is currently touring with successful indie rock
band Modest Mouse, said in a telephone inter-
view. “I don’t want to keep sleeping on floors
all the time.”
Shearer, host of “Subterranean,” agrees
that the fan mentality can differ from the
mindset of the band.
“I think because it’s not everywhere like a
mainstream act, people kind of feel like it’s
their own special genre or their own special
band,” he said.
“A lot of indie is the hipster idea,” Smith
said. Brandon Lichtinger, general manager of
WARC, Allegheny College’s radio station in
Meadville Pa., agrees.
“I think the idea of indie rock is kind of
more important than the actual indie rock,”
Lichtinger, 22, said. “The idea that you could
start a band or you could write some songs.”
The problem with dissemination
This sense of accessibility is important to
fans. Relation to the music and the Do-It-
Yourself ethic are crucial parts of the indie aes-
thetic. But while the dissemination method for
indie music used to be college radio and the
College Music Journal (CMJ) the popular
indie web site, Pitchfork Media, has made the
search for these obscure bands much easier.
However, the power that Pitchfork wields
among indie fans is called into question by
many music enthusiasts.
“We call it indie rock or independent music,
but with each year I see more and more [prac-
tices] looking like major label stuff,” said Chad
Matheny, music fan and musician who records
under the name Emperor X. Matheny said that
today’s common system of indie artists paying
promoters to distribute their music is still sim-
ilar to paying a major label to do the same
thing. Such practices are still a violation of the
DIY aesthetic. Matheny himself released two
Emperor X albums with one such promotion
company, Fanatic Promotion, and said it was
worth every penny. But it’s still a hegemonic
system.
“I agree that it’s better (than working
through a major label), but I don’t think it’s
great,” he said.
Matheny is also critical of Pitchfork Media’s
reviews as a mode of dissemination.
“Pitchfork is – and they’re reluctant to
admit it – the new hegemonic thing,” Matheny
said. “A solid Pitchfork review will mean a lot
more to a band than being 80 on the CMJ
(College Music Journal) charts.”
Perhaps replacing CMJ as the telling medi-
um for which new indie bands will be popular,
Pitchfork Media has indeed been the deciding
factor for the popularity of now major indie
bands. A few examples of indie bands who
have become popular from a positive Pitchfork
review include The Arcade Fire, The Go! Team
and Girl Talk, the popular electronic music
producer, who has many indie purists like
Matheny turning their heads. Girl Talk’s new
album, “Night Ripper,” is comprised of over
300 hip hop and top forty song samples edited
together to form dance songs.
With artists like Girl Talk, the atmosphere
in the indie community indeed seems to have
changed.
Including Girl Talk
In a telephone interview, the man behind
Girl Talk, Gregg Gillis expressed surprise at
how well his album did on Pitchfork Media’s
website.
“It’s very funny to me that that crowd
endorses it,” Gillis said. “In my mind the cliché
of indie rock is ‘too cool for school,’ where you
listen to one specific thing and hate main-
stream music.”
The willingness to include an act like Girl
Talk, an artist who uses popular mainstream
songs as part of his music, is probably the
biggest change in indie music today.
“There are more entry points because there
are more things being allowed to fall under the
banner (of independent music),” Smith said.
These things include acts whose sound can be
classified as metal, country, hip hop and other
sounds that do not fit the criteria that was used
to identify indie music in the past: guitar driv-
en pop and rock melodies.
“I think it’s fascinating that all these things
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are indie,” Smith said. “There was a time when
there’s no way these hip hop bands would’ve
been allowed into the indie club. There was a
time when those two worlds would have never
mingled together.”
With acts that would typically be classified
as metal, such as Mastodon and HORSE the
band, Smith said that they are not accepted by
fans of “Headbanger’s Ball,” the television
show on MTV2 that features harder rock
music such as metal and hardcore.
“That’s the case with this metal,” Smith
said. “They’re not accepted by their own com-
munity, so they kind of live in our communi-
ty.”
Smith said that the trends with indie music
on “Subterranean” right now are focusing on
dance music and indie or “backpack” hip hop,
-more subgenres that would not traditionally
be included in the indie genre by fans.
“Hipsters right now really like dance
music,” Smith said of indie fans. “That stuff
doesn’t fit in with what indie has traditionally
been.”
Gillis points to the Internet and the accessi-
bility of music as an explanation for this
change in taste, stating that we are heading in
a post-genre direction with music.
“With Myspace and Youtube, we’re
approaching this era where it’s cool to be into
everything,” he said. Genre walls are not up as
much as they used to be because the Internet
allows ideas to be passed more easily. In this
sense, Gillis said that he just happened to be
doing the right thing at the right time with Girl
Talk.
Zach Overking, program director for an
alternative channel on Worldspace Satellite
Radio, said that the Internet does not only take
power away from music journalists. It also
takes power away from the record labels.
“Our choices as to where you get the next
big thing are everywhere,” he said. “People are
now avidly searching for something different.”
However, Overking also said that the accessi-
bility of music has changed indie music as
well.
“Really what opened it up was the web,” he
said. “Now people are hearing bands that may
not even have small independent labels -
before they even get to that stage.” But when it
comes to the variety of music in the genre of
independent music, Overking has a totally dif-
ferent explanation: Genres are tools for labels,
and sound varies by region.
“In my estimation, record labels have tried
to spend the better part of the decade trying to
focus and label genres of music, and I think
what you’ll find is it breaks down,” Overking
said. “I think it’s very regionalized. That’s why
you have such different types of sound.” For
instance, Overking cites the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
as a New York-sounding band, grouping them
with other bands from that city.
The importance of college radio
Popular trends in indie sounds are used as
tools by industry people such as Overking and
Smith to see what will become commercial
later. According to Smith, MTVU’s program-
ming for college students can be used to gauge
7
which bands will eventually be popular on
MTV, listing Matisyahu and Fall Out Boy as
current popular bands who became popular on
MTVU.
“College kids can be really good about
determining what is going to be big these
days,” Smith said. Smith also said that
MTVU’s programmers look at the College
Music Journal’s (CMJ) charts for reference.
Overking agrees.
“College radio to me is just a jumping off
point of what’s going to be the next big thing,”
he said. “What do I need to really keep an eye
on that’s going to be big?”
However, to college students such as
Brandon Lichtinger, this characteristic of indie
music and college radio is part of the appeal.
Lichtinger said that young people enjoy being
the arbiters of cool.
“It’s cool to find the new band that nobody
knows about,” he said. “The other thing is that
it’s probably a little bit weird and a little bit
weirder than other stuff.” Lichtinger men-
tioned bands such as TV on the Radio, which
receive critical acclaim, but are still not played
on mainstream rock stations and are consid-
ered indie.
“There’s always going to be people who
have this need to make music and listen to
music and be in touch with rock,” Lichtinger
said. “I think the whole indie rock aesthetic
makes it accessible to everybody.”
-Melissa Muenz

WHAT?
“I think the lines are just completely
blurred, and I think that makes people almost
more sympathetic towards pop artists,” he
said.

The power of blogs

Smith does not agree that the accessibility
of music is what’s causing the variety of music
now found under the genre of indie. She
instead points to the blogosphere.
“With blogs, it became that really and truly
for the first time there was a global communi-
ty,” she said. Smith points out that in the 90s,
before the blog boom, electronic music

As the state of
became popular; however, it was not consid-
ered part of the indie genre.
“Music journalists were controlling the
message then,” Smith said. However, now that
all of the music fans are blogging, people need
more to talk about.
“They had to start finding new content to music changes, fans
and artists wonder:
fill up their blogs so everyone’s not talking
about the same thing,” Smith said. Smith her-
self struggled with this when she began the
“Subterranean” blog after the blog boom had

What does it mean

already happened.
“It’s been hard trying to find an angle to
write about,” she said. “It’s hard to find what I
can say that’s not already being said.” This

to be independent?
blog issue influences indie music by shifting
the power when it comes to who is controlling
the message about the music.
“Now bloggers have that microphone that
journalists used to have,” she said.