JUST GIMME INDIE ROCK began its life over a decade ago when I produced a television segment called “The Kids Are All White: The State of Indie Rock 1999 (or whatever the hell you want to call it)”. It featured 90’s indie rock heavyweights Pavement and Built To Spill, cheekily focusing on the confusion around what indie rock was or wasn’t at the time, the differing opinions of the very bands and fans that assembled its world, and indie’s dubious significance as its world seemed to be spinning down at the end of the century.
At the time, summarizing with “So what is indie rock? I guess we’ll never know” might have seemed like lazy journalism, a punkish admission that we had just wasted the past eight minutes of your life. A dozen years later, “never” never seemed more appropriate. Indie’s world hasn’t faded away but supernova-ed into a much larger celestial body, visible in the bright light of day, from across all corners of the globe. Yet even as indie rock has evolved and expanded through time and space, our cultural understanding of it remains in the dark ages. The creation of America’s independent label scene is thirty years behind us, a mainstream pop-culture indie-pop juggernaut stretches out before us, and still it seems the only possible way to approach such a documentary is to once again ask: “What is indie rock?”
The answer to that question is, of course: subjective. Truly, objectively, uselessly, subjective.
When I say “indie rock” the shape and texture those two words conjure in your mind’s eye depends on where, when, and how you live/ came of age/ experience music and culture. What indie is, is up to you and the only thing we have to agree on is to disagree. But does it have to be? If we assemble all those unique individual snowflakes of ideas and perspectives, might they snowball into something grand and singular? What if we take the 80’s independent label scene, 90’s indie rock, and today’s indie-pop, and view them not as competing ideas, but as beginning, middle, and end? I don't want to give away all the juicy bits our forthcoming documentary has in store for you quite yet, but I can tell you that when looked at through this wide angle lens, from this vantage point of history, the indie rock landscape is full of revelations and wonder.
Here's a few minutes of interviews we have shot so far. We haven't started editing the documentary yet, but I thought I'd cut something presentable for you folks, as opposed to just posting raw footage. You will see, the ideas start flowing pretty quickly when people are asked to ponder indie rock. And these are just tiny bits of hours we have shot so far. We're excited, let us know what you think...
First up is Lou Barlow and a recent live performance from Sebadoh. Lou was there at the beginning of indie with Dinosaur Jr in the 80's, and then, as Sebadoh, sealed indie rocks fate with the 1991 historical epic Gimme Indie Rock. The song featured here is Rebound from the Bakesale LP...
Next is one of 90's indie rock's most prolific artists, and least fond of the term "indie rock", Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, Gothic Archies, 6ths, etc...
And then we have the amazing Submarines. These indie rock veterans take us through the ins and outs of working and playing in this strange new land we call Today...
And Ill have a clip up soon from the great Henry Rollins....
If opinions about indie rock are like snowflakes, JUST GIMME INDIE ROCK! is a goddamn avalanche. If you would like to see indie rock given the proper celebration and consideration it deserves, then please help us get the ball rolling. Contribute your ideas, stories, theories, opinions, diatribes, good wishes, and mean spirited fuck yous (its the interweb, just being realistic) here, on twitter, or facebook.
Perhaps most importantly, we need your donations. Indie rock is a grassroots movement, the American do-it-yourself spirit incarnate, the battle of art against a cynical commercial machine, and we choose to forge ahead in that same tradition. Go to kickstarter.com and truly become part of the JUST GIMME INDIE ROCK! experience. Spread the word, contribute your thoughts, and donate your dollars to help us tell the epic story of indie and join us in making rock and roll history.
Brad Katz
At the time, summarizing with “So what is indie rock? I guess we’ll never know” might have seemed like lazy journalism, a punkish admission that we had just wasted the past eight minutes of your life. A dozen years later, “never” never seemed more appropriate. Indie’s world hasn’t faded away but supernova-ed into a much larger celestial body, visible in the bright light of day, from across all corners of the globe. Yet even as indie rock has evolved and expanded through time and space, our cultural understanding of it remains in the dark ages. The creation of America’s independent label scene is thirty years behind us, a mainstream pop-culture indie-pop juggernaut stretches out before us, and still it seems the only possible way to approach such a documentary is to once again ask: “What is indie rock?”
The answer to that question is, of course: subjective. Truly, objectively, uselessly, subjective.
When I say “indie rock” the shape and texture those two words conjure in your mind’s eye depends on where, when, and how you live/ came of age/ experience music and culture. What indie is, is up to you and the only thing we have to agree on is to disagree. But does it have to be? If we assemble all those unique individual snowflakes of ideas and perspectives, might they snowball into something grand and singular? What if we take the 80’s independent label scene, 90’s indie rock, and today’s indie-pop, and view them not as competing ideas, but as beginning, middle, and end? I don't want to give away all the juicy bits our forthcoming documentary has in store for you quite yet, but I can tell you that when looked at through this wide angle lens, from this vantage point of history, the indie rock landscape is full of revelations and wonder.
Here's a few minutes of interviews we have shot so far. We haven't started editing the documentary yet, but I thought I'd cut something presentable for you folks, as opposed to just posting raw footage. You will see, the ideas start flowing pretty quickly when people are asked to ponder indie rock. And these are just tiny bits of hours we have shot so far. We're excited, let us know what you think...
First up is Lou Barlow and a recent live performance from Sebadoh. Lou was there at the beginning of indie with Dinosaur Jr in the 80's, and then, as Sebadoh, sealed indie rocks fate with the 1991 historical epic Gimme Indie Rock. The song featured here is Rebound from the Bakesale LP...
Next is one of 90's indie rock's most prolific artists, and least fond of the term "indie rock", Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, Gothic Archies, 6ths, etc...
And then we have the amazing Submarines. These indie rock veterans take us through the ins and outs of working and playing in this strange new land we call Today...
And Ill have a clip up soon from the great Henry Rollins....
If opinions about indie rock are like snowflakes, JUST GIMME INDIE ROCK! is a goddamn avalanche. If you would like to see indie rock given the proper celebration and consideration it deserves, then please help us get the ball rolling. Contribute your ideas, stories, theories, opinions, diatribes, good wishes, and mean spirited fuck yous (its the interweb, just being realistic) here, on twitter, or facebook.
Perhaps most importantly, we need your donations. Indie rock is a grassroots movement, the American do-it-yourself spirit incarnate, the battle of art against a cynical commercial machine, and we choose to forge ahead in that same tradition. Go to kickstarter.com and truly become part of the JUST GIMME INDIE ROCK! experience. Spread the word, contribute your thoughts, and donate your dollars to help us tell the epic story of indie and join us in making rock and roll history.
Brad Katz
