Indie Jones

It seems like every damn day I have to listen to Bob Mondello (however you spell his name) reviewing some "indie" music on NPR. Here's some horrible simplistic plinkity-plink of someone playing a toy piano, and here's some breathy overproduced vocals by a woman who claims to "enyoy" it, and then right on cue there's Bob Mondello. I'm paraphrasing him, of course, but what he seems to say with every review is "Though this sounds like simple, annoying crap, the mere fact that it's indie makes me gush like a Texas oil well about its wonderfulosity." I can't offhand think of a single music group that he's reviewed that left anything more than a lukewarm "well, that didn't suck too badly" impression on me. Most of the time I sink to the level of shouting at the radio "take that horrible music off before I listen to a CD!" Nasal, whiny post-grunge; nasal, whiny post-Bob Dylan; breathy ethereality accompanied by toy pianos; it's disgusting. But because it's indie, it's somehow automatically good - the assertion being, I suppose, that individuals don't make terrible music, big record labels make terrible music.

Not that big record labels don't end up producing a lot of terrible music. I think we can all agree (or at least I think I can all agree) that modern "power pop" is a product of major record labels and that it's an unrelieved desolation of crap. But to argue that only big record labels produce crap is to take the point too far. Witness the endless restless hordes of would-be Bob Dylans out there in Indie-land who warble and strum their guitars and whine about dad-gummed soulful they are.

You'd think extreme metal would be right up Mondello's alley, it being largely free of the shackles of major music labels and, for that matter, largely free of commercial success period. But I'm sure he thinks he's too good for metal. It doesn't "deconstruct" musical forms into "head-spinning" new forms or whatever. Everyone's too good for metal, and that's fine. I don't feel the need to apologize for what I like. I just wish I didn't have to listen to what Mondello and everyone else likes every day on the radio. Hey, how about talking about something I like for a change??

But what can one expect of me? I'd rather drive toothpicks into my gums than listen to Bob Dylan or go to a Dashboard Confessional concert, and despite thirty years of trying, the music industry has yet to make a jazz fan out of me (is it really just me? I mean, am I the only person on the planet who finds jazz music painful and grating?).

(And yes, if you must know, I'm crabby tonight.)