JustDave

I have been on a mission recently to try to define the type of music I make for the benefit of providing a description which will actually convey something useful to other web users if it comes up in a search. I am sure that this is a dilemma that every band experiences when they set up a page on the web.

I initially described my music as Pop/Rock but then added PowerPop to the description as my stuff can have a bit more edge to it in places than what most people perceive as simply Pop/Rock. The trouble is that a small group of words like this isn’t able to convey what a twelve song album is actually all about with any degree of accuracy and can tend to put you into a pigeon hole you shouldn’t necessarily be in and by that give potential listeners the wrong impression and therefore make them still only potential listeners.

The reason I say this is that while trying to define my own music I have listened to numerous other songs which are on the various charts or pages of other sites (most specifically GarageBand, MySpace and UnsignedBandWeb as JustDave is represented on each of them) to see what the common expectation is of the various available genres. What I have found is that very few of the songs in the various categories of Pop/Rock/PowerPop/Indie/Alternative or the various combinations of each etc. actually sound anything like what their short chart/genre description suggests. That is not to say that the songs aren’t good as most of them were excellent, it’s just that the description doesn’t fit the product.

One of the biggest oddities I have come across is the use of the word ‘Alternative’ which you seem to be able to attach in front of any other group of genres to change the overall meaning. For example there is:

Alternative - (MySpace and UBW, but on MySpace it can be used with any other two genres to make a different description)
Alternative Country – (UBW)
Alternative Metal
Alternative Pop
Alternative Rock – (All on GarageBand)

Not very long ago alternative music (before they invented the term ‘experimental’ as a musical definition) was when someone recorded a track playing a Gregorian nose flute with their arse to the rhythm of a drum kit made entirely of kitchen utensils, plastic pipes and a plywood box playing in a loose 16/43 time signature with sporadic animal noises in place of the vocals. In other words the musical equivalent of modern art where the guys playing it really believe there is no other form and anything different is crap and their ‘followers’ by and large don’t understand it but think it’s cool to be around these people.

Wikipedia Description Wikipedia

Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative; known primarily in the UK as indie) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. Alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the independent music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk rock, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970’s. At times alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s, and all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, new wave, and post-punk).

Not a bad description as far as I can tell and pretty much as I thought I understood it. Further down the same page it goes on to describe some of the common elements which make certain musical styles Alternative and on the basis of those descriptions, a lot of my stuff could be considered Alternative too.

I noticed the other day that on the Coldplay ‘Official’ MySpace site they define themselves (presumably) as ‘Alternative/Pop/Rock’. In my opinion Coldplay are about as ‘Alternative’ as Big Brother contestants are talented as are a vast amount of other acts who use ‘Alternative’ in their genre description. (Read the wording here carefully before you get all exited and start slagging me off)

If the Wikipedia description is accurate, then Indie and Alternative are much the same thing but from different countries of origin. So why do the sites also include separate ‘Indie’ references?:

‘Indie – (MySpace and UBW, but on MySpace it can be used with any other two genres to make a different description)
Indie Rock – (GarageBand)

‘Indie’ simply derives from ‘Independent Record Company/Label’, as in – not one of the majors, although strangely, in terms of a musical style, it is actually a better description as most true Indie bands had a style that was not mainstream hence why they were on an independent label. Given that these bands were actually signed and most bands on the aforementioned websites are not, this makes it very hard for Indie to be the correct description.

The thing I have found by listening to other peoples music is that if all that is described as Indie/Alternative is actually that under the current definition, then Indie/Alternative is actually mainstream. This is obviously the exact opposite of the definition above so one of them is wrong – which is it??????

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the music under the Indie or Alternative listings is exactly that by the current definition, it’s just an equal amount isn’t even close. Unfortunately the attitude I described in my own definition (anything different is crap…) still seems to apply to a lot of these acts (and I suspect mostly the ones who aren’t really Indie/Alternative).

On the basis that if everything else is crap if it isn’t Indie/Alternative – and a lot of these bands aren’t actually Indie/Alternative, does that make those bands crap by default.

No of course it doesn’t, but it doesn’t mean that their attitudes aren’t.

Anyway, nuff said about that as I’m still no closer to figuring out what my own definition should be. I’ll keep thinking and I’ll let you know where I get to in a future post.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

-JD-