Empire of Dirt. Wendy Fonarow
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Records sold shares to Sony in 1993 but maintained its independent distribution so that its albums could continue to be counted on the independent chart. Thus, many “independent” acts have the financial resources of a major corporation at their disposal but are still classified as independent.
Many corporations thought that developing a band as independent was an effective means of introducing it to the marketplace. Therefore they developed a number of “independent” labels (crypto-indies) that were fully funded by the major corporation but utilized one of the independent distribution networks. Thus a label like Dedicated, funded by BMG, had its records counted in the independent chart because its recordings were distributed by Vital.27 For many bands, the opportunity to be on the independent chart was a large factor in choosing a label to sign with. However, a small, independently owned company run from one’s bedroom, but using a major’s distribution network would be excluded from the independent chart.28 Thus, the industry use of a definition of independence based solely on distribution resulted in a chart that included artists signed to major labels.29
For the industry, membership in the independent community is constituted by the use of independent distribution, and the ideals and structures embodied within the system of independent distributors are essential. When RTM merged with Vital, Martin Mills, who owns a majority share of RTM, stated, “What is crucial is that both companies (RTM and Vital) have retained the philosophies which drove the Cartel” (Music Week, June 21, 1997). Through special arrangements offered exclusively to affiliated retail outlets, the independent distribution company consciously and overtly advocates independently owned specialty shops belonging to local entrepreneurs over chain establishments run by distant corporate executives. It privileges individual entrepreneurship over bureaucratic corporate structures and affiliated independent stores over retail cells that answer to a centralizing authority. Additionally, the decisions made by independent distributors are thought to be based on moral and aesthetic grounds, not just solely on commercial success. As Mills put it, “Being an independent distribution company, you kind of have a moral obligation.” Thus, the practice of independent distribution in its ideal form is thought of as a moral, aesthetic, and egalitarian enterprise with authority vested in local members.
The industrial definition of independence echoes the Puritan value of individual congregations. Indie and Puritan reformists expressed a similar concern about the effect of hierarchy and bureaucracy on the relationship between patron and subject. One is a relationship between music fan and music, the other between congregant and the divine.
Indie’s organizational principles parallel those advocated by the Puritans, who required a move away from papal authority toward individual parishes with their own elected pastors. Similarly, the Cartel was an affiliation of distinct local districts held together in a loose, Presbyterian structure. In addition, an independent distribution network provides the means for the independent record label to remain an independent entity, pure and untainted by the authoritarian organization of the “Industry.” The model of Rough Trade’s Cartel advances an anti-absolutist stance that values the local over the remote, egalitarianism over hierarchy, and theocratic over unprincipled capitalism. The philosophies of independent distribution are the organizational and infrastructural foundation of the Puritan stance of indie.
The Romantic ethic is also found in indie’s infrastructural values: its revolt against established social and bureaucratically entrenched institutions, its perception of the power elite as corrupt and untrustworthy, its love of the local “folk,” its values of freedom, individualism, and individual entrepreneurships. More than anything else, the independent community holds the romantic belief that self-expression is paramount.30
Indie as a Genre
pure and simple every time … Lightning Seeds
Utilizing the nature of distribution as a mode of reckoning has meant not only that major labels can appear on the independent charts but that any type of music can be counted as independent as well. Various musical genres, particularly subgenres of dance such as techno, house, hardcore, and jungle as well as some mainstream pop, have been included in the official independent chart. Many indie enthusiasts, however, feel that indie does not reflect merely a mode of circulation but a particular genre of music as well, with a recognizable sound and collective conventions that distinguish it from dance, country, or R&B, for example. From this perspective, the boundaries of indie result from an adherence to specific musical conventions and specific practices in the production of music. In its generic characteristics, indie’s issues of inclusion and exclusion center around concerns about musical form, musical production, and style. Permeating the indie tradition is an espousal of simplicity and austerity, a hypervaluation of childhood and childlike imagery, a nostalgic sensibility, a technophobia, and a fetishization of the guitar. As ex-NME journalist Simon Reynolds puts it, British indie “has itself settled into stifling orthodoxy: an insistence on short songs, lo-fi, minimalism, purism, and guitars, guitars, guitars” (Reynolds in Kruse 1993: 36). Adherence to indie’s generic features allows bands that do not have an independent label or independent distribution to be considered by some to have membership within the indie community.
Indie music is generally played by slender young white males in their late teens to early thirties. Most indie bands are basic four-piece combos with electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Although other instruments such as strings, keyboards, organs, or horns do appear, the four-piece combo is the primary structure for indie bands. In the mid- to late 1990s it became more common for acts to have more members, more elaborate instrumentation, and less technophobia. Yet bands like the Smiths, Travis, Bluetones, or Bloc Party are fairly typical examples of indie bands, and they all consisted of young, beat combos with guitar, bass, drums, and a penchant for vocal harmonies.
However, the indie community also welcomes female performers. The Pixies, an American band from Boston that was considered to be an important influence on indie music, featured Kim Deal on bass. New York’s Sonic Youth, just as influential, had a female bassist, Kim Gordon. In Lush, an indie band from North London, women played guitars and sang. My Bloody Valentine had female musicians on bass and guitar. Elastica had a female singer-guitarist, bass player, and guitarist. The Primitives, Echobelly, Sleeper, the White Stripes, Quasi, Kaito, and Stereolab, among many others, have also had either female lead singers or female instrumentation or both. In many ways, indie has been a pioneer in the trend of the co-ed band.
A majority of the terms used to describe indie as a genre are gender-coded as feminine: “fey,” “wimpy,” “weak,” or “effeminate.” For example, in his book on Britpop, John Harris describes a series of key 1980s indie artists as “anti-macho shrinking violet,” “terrifyingly fey,” and having a “melancholic take on indiedom’s bookish wimpiness” (Harris 2003: 386). In describing a fight between some indie band members, a fan was quoted as saying “Indie boys don’t fight so much as have flirty, fumbly scraps” (NME, January 8, 2005). Indie is often associated with a more feminine stance than that which was evoked by the American term “Alternative.” Particularly in the United States, indie music fans differentiate themselves from Alternative fans. Indie is defined as the more harmonic pop sounds of British bands, and Alternative designates the more abrasive and heavy sounds associated with nu-metal, grunge, and punk.31 Within the British indie music scene, however, punk, grunge, and garage musical styles associated with laddish masculinity are included in indie despite the fact that indie is generally represented as feminine in most public discourse.
Indie is also a category characterized by a particular sound. Indie music is primarily guitar rock or pop combined with an art-school sensibility. The sound of indie is characterized as “fey jangly guitar pop” (L.P., age seventeen), “chiming melodic guitar pop” (Harris 2003: 17), “wan, sappy boys with guitars and vague poetry” (NME, May 12, 1992), or “anoraky Sarah bands” (R.G., age twenty-five). The anorak, also known as a parka, is a simple jacket considered to be synonymous with wimpiness (Thorne 1993: 124). Sarah was a record label based in Bristol that released one hundred singles, most of which were considered to be delicate, effeminate, sugary pop songs, often criticized for being cloying. Still another indie music fan described the genre as “badly played and poorly sung, because the emphasis is more on the