Here's a piece I wrote for an encyclopedia called "Music in American Life" (ABC-CLIO, 2013). Feel free to visit their site and spend $415 for the set.
Indie Rock
Indie Rock
Defined
“Indie” rock
began as a structural movement by musicians in the 1970s and ‘80s to free
themselves from the constraints of the major label dominated recording industry;
“indie” is short for “independent.” The
defining characteristic that set early indie artists apart from others,
especially in the decade leading up to the success of Nirvana, was that they
did not make records for any of the big six major labels of the time: Capital, CBS, MCA, PolyGram, RCA, and WEA. While the structural requirements for being
“indie” faded in the post-Nirvana rock world, a recognizable “indie” genre
emerged with the presentation of independence as its key feature.
As a structural movement, indie rock was a
direct descendent of the Do It Yourself (DIY) ethos of punk rock from the 1970s
that stressed artists’ rights to control their own products. Punk and indie artists perceived that major
label production and distribution methods compromised musicians’ artistic integrity. Major labels, the story went, have vested
interests in creating marketable product rather than works of art.
Independent labels like SST in Southern California,
Dischord in Washington, D.C., and SubPop in Seattle spearheaded the indie rock
movement of the 1980s. The ethos of
these labels was to empower artists to make uncompromising music. The people who ran these labels believed that
rock is about more than just product, it is about a self-supporting community
of musicians, labels, venues, fanzines, and fans.
In the nineties, with the success of
Nirvana, the major label music industry developed strategies for marketing
indie artists on the major label level.
At this point, indie rock became as much musical genre as structural
movement.
History
In the
pre-rock and roll late 1940s and early fifties, the music industry was overrun
by independent labels releasing music by new artists. Costs for these labels were low because they
were usually operated by one person, didn’t hire union musicians and didn’t pay
royalties. Because independent label
owners captured a share of the market major labels weren’t exploiting, the
label head didn’t have to know the entire record market to be successful. A short list of these early independents
includes Sun in Memphis, Chess in Chicago, King/Federal in Cincinnati, Imperial
and Aladdin in Los Angeles, Atlantic in New York, and Savoy in Newark, New
Jersey.
Independent labels, then, put out the
first rock and roll records. By 1955,
however, major labels began putting out covers of independent label hits that
outsold the originals. Kids preferred
the original rock and roll songs, but the independents couldn’t compete with
the majors’ larger promotional budgets. In
1959, major labels out-grossed independent labels in the rock and roll market
for the first time.
In the wake of the payola rulings in 1959,
major labels managed to wrest control of radio programming away from individual
disc jockeys in favor of playlists created by major label-friendly program
directors. Also, the major labels now
controlled a large portion of America’s record distribution system. Independent labels had to contract outside
distributors to get their product to market, major labels owned their own
distribution networks. Therefore, by the
end of the sixties the major labels controlled most of the rock music production
and distribution market.
By the mid-seventies the major recording
labels had firm control of the rock market in two more ways. First, with the internationalization of the
rock music market brought on by the British Invasion, major labels benefited by
exercising their royalty and distribution agreements with their major European
counterparts. Second, because the cost
of the now popular 12-inch LP was significantly more than for the once popular
7-inch single, independent labels couldn’t compete. The initial investment to produce such records
was too much for them.
Punk rock in the late 1970s was an
explicit structural reaction against the centralized major label market that dominated
the rock music world. Punk rockers
rejected major recording and distribution companies, constructing independent companies
of their own. Because of an
industry-wide economic slump, and because they were still more interested in
disco than punk rock, the major labels were leaving these new independents
alone. The number of independent labels
was on the rise. The stage was set for
the burgeoning of a new rock scene based on an independent market structure
separate from the major labels.
Modern Indie Rock
Keeping with the DIY ethic of punk rock,
labels such as Alternative Tentacles in San Francisco, Epitaph in Los Angeles, and
Touch and Go in Chicago ushered in a new indie label movement in the 1980s. The early to mid-eighties also saw the
formation of a number of bands considered crucial to the coming indie genre: Bad Religion, Meat Puppets, Pixies, and R.E.M.
to name a few. It was also around this
time that another important structural component in the indie rock music scene appeared,
college radio.
College radio existed in one form or
another for many years, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that it became the
backbone of indie rock by providing a rationale for its existence. College stations promoted indie shows, played
indie records, and had indie-savvy DJs who, rather than playing music dictated
by a program director, picked songs themselves.
Because college radio was funded primarily by the schools in which they
were located, they were economically independent from, and thus worked outside
of, the major label commodity system.
Another important structural
feature of the 1980s indie scene was fanzines.
Small, local, independently run magazines like Flipside, Maximumrocknroll,
and Forced Exposure were the
literature of the indie rock world. Fanzines
were where indie rockers could read about new releases and local shows by their
favorite indie bands as well as find other like-minded people with whom to
start bands. Fanzines weren’t concerned
with pleasing sponsors, they were only concerned with presenting a genuine
indie voice. Because the writers were of
the indie scene, and not professional journalists, they wrote in a language to
which indie fans could relate.
With the
help of college radio and fanzines, and because indie labels were relatively
small, put out a lot of 7-inch vinyl singles, weren’t overly concerned with
making money, and sold to indie shops using indie distributors, they invested
less money in their bands than did major labels. Thus, the indie world became as efficient at
producing and distributing their artists as the major labels were with theirs,
effectively becoming a shadow system to the major label industry.
By the early 1990s a number of
bands that were successful on college radio stations with their independent
label releases made the leap to the major labels: Husker Du, the Replacements, and Sonic Youth
to name three. The success of these
bands drew the attention of executives in the major label world. Major labels began raiding the rosters of
independent labels, relegating them to a sort of minor leagues for the major
labels, the indie labels taking chances on new artists, the major labels
snatching up those that were most successful.
Along the way, college radio also went from being personal and
idiosyncratic to being a breeding ground for record executives. The end of indie rock as structural reaction
was near.
In the early 1990s eighty-percent of
compact discs and singles sold were by major labels. Major labels dominated the production,
distribution, and promotion of the market, keeping indie labels and bands at a
disadvantage. Many indie labels were
dependent upon major label distributors to get their product on the
market. Consequently, the rise of the
indie industry in the 1980s had a conservative effect on indie rock in the
1990s. They were working with, rather
than against, the major label industry.
Nirvana
With the
release of Nirvana’s Nevermind in
1991 the indie world became mainstream.
Nirvana, a band with strong indie credentials (their first album, Bleach, was released on SubPop), was
suddenly the world’s most popular band, and they were taking advantage of the
financial resources which only major labels could provide (Nevermind was released on the major label DGC). In Nirvana’s wake, aesthetically “cool” indie
bands could be successful at the major label level.
In the post-Nirvana music world indie rock
lost its place as a structural reaction to the mainstream major label industry. Since indie (now called “alternative” and/or
“grunge”) was selling, indie artists saw that they could make money in the
industry they previously rejected. Signing
to a major label was done with a shrug by post-Nirvana indie bands. Being on an independent label was simply seen
as a career step toward being signed by a major label.
Indie as Genre
After Nevermind,
indie rock became a mainstream music genre.
The immediate precursors to the indie genre were punk and alternative
bands like Black Flag, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, Butthole Surfers, Big
Black, Dinosaur Jr, Fugazi, Mud Honey, and Beat Happening. These are all bands with beginnings in
various punk scenes around the United States, but with varying musical styles. As such, indie in the eighties and nineties
was anything but a coherent sound. What
lumps these punk, alternative and indie bands together is an expressed (though
not necessarily practiced) rejection of mainstream music norms.
Modern indie genre presentations emphasize
musicians as ordinary, average Joes, flaunting mainstream conventions of rock
musicians as stars. Indie bands are seen
as “real.” They wear “real” clothes and
sing in “real” voices in an attempt to dissolve the distinction between audience
members and artists. In being “real,” indie
bands often record their own music, do their own artwork, and distribute their
own records. Their sound is often
“lo-fi” or under produced.
Despite the expressed rejection of
mainstream norms, the mainstreaming of indie rock as a genre is evident in many
places in the twenty-first century. In
2011, SiriusXM Satellite Radio has a station called “Sirius XMU: Indie/College/Unsigned” devoted to indie
rock. The title alludes to indie rock’s
anti-mainstream history grounded in college radio and independent recording
labels. There are at least two “professionally”-run
websites that deal exclusively with indie rock:
“Indierockreviews.com” and “Indierockcafe.com.”
Even with its mainstream and major label status,
indie rock’s most consistent code remains the presentation of anti-mainstream
structure. An article on
Indierockcafe.com, for instance, states that the site has a treasure trove of
music to share from “bands and artists most of you have never heard of before,”
because they know that we “love hearing music from talented artists you are
unfamiliar with” (“7 Bands”). The
emphasis here is on the obscure and underground as opposed to the
mainstream. The same website provides a
list of bands that fall under the indie rock moniker: The Decemberists, Bright Eyes, Drive By
Truckers, Smith Westerns, the Strokes, and Radiohead, bands with a tangled web
of independent and major label connections.
Musically, modern indie rock is often a thickly
layered mashup of traditional instruments juxtaposed over electronic beats and
samples. The band Arcade Fire, for
instance, includes not only the rock music staples of guitar, bass, and drums,
but also mixes violin, viola, cello, glockenspiel, French horn, and hurdy-gurdy
into their sound, with most of the band members being proficient at multiple
instruments.
Writers on these websites describe “good” indie
songs as “good” pop songs. They are
danceable and hummable and inviting for audience members to join in the
singing. Good indie songs are described
as “unbridled pop bliss” (Bear, “Echo”), having “infectiously driving hooks”
(Justman), “music to move to” (Witt), and having a “powerful beat” (Bear,
“Interview”). They are, despite indie’s
history, mainstream pop songs.
Conclusion
Modern indie rock has a history reaching
back to the beginnings of rock and roll.
It has always been seen as an alternative. In the fifties and sixties it was an
alternative to mainstream smoothed-over rock and roll. In the seventies punk rock, a direct
precursor to modern indie rock, was an explicit structural alternative to
mainstream rock stars and the major label system. In the aftermath of Nirvana and into the
twenty-first century, indie rock is itself a mainstream rock genre, with one of
its main codes being a presentation of being an alternative to the mainstream.
Further Reading
Books
Arnold,
Gina. 1993. Route
666: On the Road to Nirvana. New York:
St. Martin’s.
Azerrad,
Michael. 2001. Our
Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the
American Underground 1981-1991. New
York: Little, Brown and Company.
Felder,
Rachel. 1993. Manic
Pop Thrill. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press.
Palmer,
Robert. 1995. Rock
& Roll: An Unruly History. New York:
Harmony Books.
Smith-Lahrman,
Matthew. 1996. Selling-out: Constructing Authenticity and Success in
Chicago’s Indie Rock Music Scene.
Northwestern University: PhD
Dissertation.
Ward, Ed,
Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker.
1986. Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone
History of Rock & Roll.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Rolling
Stone Press/Prentice-Hall.
Web Pages
Indie Rock Café. <http://www.indierockcafe.com/>.
Indie Rock Reviews. <http://www.indierockreviews.com>/.
Works Cited
“7 Bands
You Gotta Hear, Vol. 1: Golden Dogs, Rec
Centre, Smoke & Feathers, Boogie Monster, The Wind, El Santo Nada,
M&JC.” Indierockcafe.com. Web. July 24, 2011.
Bear. “Echo & the Bunnymen-The Proxy-MP3
Download/Song Review.” Indierockcafe.Com. Web.
July 24, 2011.
Bear. “Interview:
A Lull-Confetti.” Indierockcafe.Com. Web.
July 25, 2011.
Justman,
Alexis. “Kitten: Sunday School EP Review.” Indierockcafe.com. Web.
July 25, 2011.
Witt,
Britt. “Holy Ghost! Full-Length Album
Review.” Indierockcafe.com. Web. July 25, 2011.
