Indie Now and Then
Indie has become a lifestyle choice. That’s indie music, in case you were wondering, not indie cinema, or The Independent, or Indiana Jones. Back in the 1980s, during the C86 heydey, indie was essentially all about the music. Sure, indie bands and fans adopted a certain ‘look’: unkempt hair, dark and shabby clothing. But this was by its very nature non-fashion, a visual statement of outsiderness in tandem with what was then outsider music, despite its essentially conservative heritage (rock music, specifically ’60s art rock like the Velvet Underground). Indie bands were anti-mainstream, anti-pop: minor chords, miserable lyrics; The Wedding Present, McCarthy and so on. Indie was for those of us who felt like square pegs in society’s round holes, who couldn’t afford ‘cool’ clothes and felt awkward in them anyway.
I’m sure that many of The Kids of today feel the same way, except that now it’s possible to adopt wholesale a strand of ‘indie’ as a lifestyle, complete with specific uniform and hairdo. Day-glo and daftness for Klaxons fans; hoodies and mad hair for Maccabees fans; black drainpipes and gothness for Horrors fans. Clothes are cheaper now, the demarcations are clearer: get yer indie clobber ‘ere, all-in-one uniform straight off the rack. The internet and social networking has cemented the various indie cliques. It’s much easier now to find like-minded people, to join a gang. You need never go to a gig alone again.
Are there kids who fall between the indie clique gaps? I’m not sure I see them at gigs if there are. Everyone is neatly slotted into a round indie hole. Where’s the turmoil? Where’s the doubt? Where are the stumbling stuttering C86 misfits? Today’s Kids seem cocksure by comparison.
Having said all that, indie music has been fucking fantastic over the last few years, a period of excitement and energy we haven’t seen since post-punk. And yeah, that includes C86 and Madchester. So what the hell.
