Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Indie rock's white burden?

Saturday, Oct 20, 2007

While I could go on about Sasha Frere-Jones’ white-indie-rock guilt piece in the New Yorker, I’d leave it to three smart scribes for a response.  First, is Margaret Wappler’s piece for the Los Angeles Times (Turning the beat around again) covering how dance music is indeed making a comeback in the indie world.  The other is Grace Brodie Cruz (of the great Playlist blog) who proclaimed: “Shocka: Rock Music Made By White People Is Surprisingly White.”  Best of all is Carl Wilson’s article in Slate, where he not only parses out some worthwhile things in the article but he also nails what’s off-base or just plain wrong about it too and shifts the argument to class conflict.


Honestly, you’d think that SFJ would have stopped after calling Stephen Merritt a racist and then having to apologize (somewhat).  I was mad enough at him already for making Fiona Apple look bad.

Comments
Now on PopMatters
A Painting Come to Life: 'The Mill & the Cross' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 4:00 pm]
A Far Too Safe... and Strained... 'House' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 9:00 am]
'Safe House' Is Ersatz Edgy (Reviews) [Fri, 8:06 am]
The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 7:50 am]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  3. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  4. The Best Games of 2011 (Features)
  5. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  6. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  7. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  8. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  9. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  10. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  11. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  12. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  13. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  14. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  15. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  16. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  17. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  18. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  19. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  20. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  21. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  22. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: A Rock Star’s Midlife Crisis or Valid Literature? (Features)
  23. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  24. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  25. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  26. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  27. Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (Reviews)
  28. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  29. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
  30. After Cease to Exist: The Far-from-Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (Features)
Categories
PM Picks
Music Archive
Announcements

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.