Archery!

Glyph

Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.

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10 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    There is a rather strange part of me that wishes I was in my early 20s during the 1990s and the first wave of indie rock.

    This might be because I saw Singles and Reality Bites as a was very impressionable 12 year old.Report

    • aaron david in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I think you would need to be in your early 20’s in the ’70’s to really catch the indie rock thing. I was in my 20’s in the early Ninties, and I was missing a ton of stuff.

      Great memories revived, thanks Glyph.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      “Indie Rock”, as a record label descriptor, really starts in the late ’70s and ’80s – Mute, Rough Trade, SST, Twin/Tone, Factory, 4AD, I.R.S., etc. But the music generally wasn’t CALLED “indie rock” then – it was “alternative” or “new wave” or “post/punk” or “underground rock” or “college rock”.

      “Indie Rock”, as a genre descriptor (I think krogerfoot called it “loud guitars and inept singing”) is probably dated more from the ’90s – Sebadoh released “Gimme Indie Rock” in 1991.

      Since I am not a fan of Sebadoh, but I like self-referential ’90s US indie rock and this post is about the Archers:

      Sebadoh was of course founded by a former, and future, member of an 80’s SST band. Though there was still a fair amount of variety in the “genre” (yeah, it was mostly guitar-based, but it could cover anything from your instrumental post- and math-rocks, hardcore-derived stuff, jangly stuff, psychedelic or garagey stuff, 4-track lo-fi, etc.) the term still worked, because the bands, regardless of their styles, were mostly in fact also on small independent record labels.

      Then things got ALL screwy – the Brits started calling anything that was even vaguely musically indebted to the Smiths (who WERE on an independent label, Rough Trade) “indie”, regardless of the major/independent status of that band’s record label; and in the US, Nirvana happened, SY got signed to Geffen, and there was that feeding frenzy of bands going to the majors and independent labels signing deals with the majors, so nobody knew what the hell was going on anymore. Instead of East/West Coast gangsta rap beefs, you had your cries of “sellout” and Stephen Malkmus and Billy Corgan catting at each other and the Archers lamenting that “the underground is overcrowded”.

      Ah, memories.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      The eighties seem like an interesting time to be a teenager and the nineties to be in your twenties. For some reason the eighties do not seem like a good time to be in your twenties even if your a cis-hetersexual white man. I can’t explain why.Report

      • Glyph in reply to LeeEsq says:

        LeeEsqFor some reason the eighties do not seem like a good time to be in your twenties even if your a cis-hetersexual white man. I can’t explain why.

        After the start of the AIDS epidemic, but before the availability of effective treatments for it? After the sexual revolution was over, but the second Summer of Love hadn’t yet made it to the US?

        And the drug fashion was crap – pot was out of style, except amongst holdout hippies and heshers (in retrospect, they look so much better), while cocaine was in. Blergh. In the early 90’s young people started to get their heads on straight (or not) again, what with pot and proper entactogenics/psychedelics making a right comeback. 🙂

        In fact, to tie it back to this post, Sebadoh’s “Gimme Indie Rock” makes the case that the genre (like grunge, somewhat) is what happened when punk rock and hardcore kids started smokin’ pot, slowin’ things down and gettin’ weird. I’m under the impression the Archers were pretty avid smokers .

        Ah, dangit. Like I said, not a Sebadoh fan – but as a history lesson, this’s sort of worthwhile:

        Report

  2. LeeEsq says:

    Glyph, you probably have it right. The 1980s was also not a great time for urban living in the United States. All the factors that led to our current urban renaissance did not exist or were infancy. Cities were still relatively unsafe places. This would make city living not fun for a lot of people in their twenties during the 1980s.Report