The Unhealthy Music Addiction: INDIE

INDIE

Do it yourself. Be independent, be diverse, be an outsider.
Explore. Explore a universe, explore a foreign perspective, explore endless tunnels of sound.
Simplify. Be an understated wire of melody woven with texture and understanding.
Evolve. Expand, innovate, integrate, refine.
Be sensitivity and introspection today; be silliness and satire tomorrow.
Be a social commentary on consumer culture, gender roles, short-lived romances, the theatrical nature of 'realism' today. Be a social commentary on social commentary.
Step on a piece of trash, sculpt an elephant out of it. Spend 3 days straight discovering a band. Write an extensive narrative about how subtle his smirk is in blind company. Embrace irony. Re-live a single memory one thousand times. Scribble on used notebook pages to the rhythm of a favorite song. Go outside just to let your skin and mind breathe. Paint abstractions on paper bags. Paint your body. Paint your mind. 
Transcend the world. Create a niche. Create a world.
Be music for the sake of being music.


Some favorites:


Indie Rock: The Smiths, Kings of Leon, The Strokes, Tegan and Sarah, AWOLNATION, Guster, Gotye, The White Stripes, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beast, Jet, Muse,Vampire Weekend, Dinosaur Jr, Imagine Dragons,The Velvet Underground, Benjamin Gibbard, The Black Keys, Cage the Elephant, Spoon, Beck, Ryan Adams, Of Monsters and Men, The Heavy, The Temper Trap, The Connells, The Killers, The Kooks, Fun, The Format, Flight of the Concords, The Gorillaz, The Shins, Shiny Toy Guns, Eels, Wilco, The Raconteurs, Metric, Lana Del Ray, Foster the People, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, Duffy, Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple, Cowboy Mouth, Paper Tongues, Carolina Liar, Jack White, Rooney, Phantom Planet, Thriving Ivory, Dios Malos, Sondre Lerche, Jack's Mannequin, Hot Hot Heat, Walk off the Earth, The Devil Whale, The Hush Sound, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes

Indie Pop: Passion Pit, Lady Danville, Of Montreal, Sufjan Stevens, Peter Bjorn and John, Dillon, Kimbra, Regina Spektor, The Black Ghosts, Crystal Castles, The New Pornographers, Coconut Records, Mika, Florence and the Machine, Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Imogen Heap, Roison Murphy, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Santigold, Matt and Kim, Lennon and Maisy, Feist, MGMT, Yael Naim, La Roux, Lenka, Lissie, Bloc Party, The Submarines, Charlotte Sometimes, A Fine Frenzy, Postal Service, Operator Please, The Ting Tings, Mates of State, Empire of the Sun, M.I.A., Death Cab for Cutie,Ingrid Michaelson, The Kills


Indie Folk: Bon Iver, Nickel Creek, Modest Mouse, Indigo Girls, Mumford & Sons, Ani DiFranco, Peter Paul & Mary, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, Alison Krauss, The Open Sea, The Cranberries, The Lovin' Spoonful, Jeff Buckley, Carbon Leaf, Good Old War, Paolo Nutini, Damien Rice, Iron & Wine, Jakob Dylan, Brett Dennen, Matt Costa

The Unhealthy Music Addiction: ROCK

OLD TIME ROCK 'N ROLL

The cool uncle. Fun and sometimes spontaneous, yet restrained. Hinting at unmentionables, letting them glimpse the light. Stylized, a performer. Conscious of its audience, very direct in its simple messages. A dash of innocence and naivety. Catchy, accessible, addicting melodies.


CLASSIC ROCK

The erratic grandfather. By nature, wandering. Creating worlds as he goes. Wise and insane from a life of living. An earthy and mellow ruggedness very often excited by the wildness of life. The wildness of desperation, the wildness of women, the wildness of life's peaks and troughs.



ALT/HARD ROCK

Classic rock's love child, upset with its tumultuous existence. An outlet, a rebellion, a blooming, haunting in all its irony and rage and beauty. A vendetta against all things still, all things simple, all things complex. A confused emotion, exacerbated and beautified in its expression. A pure feeling, a poem by a child, hardened from the unforgiving sun. It's beauty, with thick, rough skin.

GRUNGE

The strange cousin. Awkward at parties, full of idiosyncrasies and conspiracy theories. Poetic and abrasive. Paranoid geniuses, flower children of the streets. Apathetic one moment, angsty the next. Lead a seemingly disconnected life every hour except the hour that they perform, when everything in the world aligns chaotically. Revolutionary. Invitational. Join the ranks of the misfit toys.

PUNK ROCK

Grunge's brother. Loud. Less thoughtful, a deliberate doer. Bored with subtleties, speaks his mind. Brutally honest, sometimes crass, always catchy. A heart pounding, sewn to the thunderous beat of life itself. A hit at parties, the class clown. Messy and to-the-point.





ALT/POP ROCK

The older brother. Has a bit of his brothers' quirk, but is generally much more subdued. Down to earth, melodic, sensible. Pretty far removed from the honest, raw, rugged rock of ages long gone. Stays within bounds, but finds a niche and rocks it. Well-liked. You can take him home to Mom.



Disclaimer: This is definitely not an attempt to give extensive, complete lists, or to eternally compartmentalize bands into one distinct genre. It's more of a gist-giving kind of thing.

Some of my favorites from each genre:

• Old Time Rock 'N Roll:  Elvis Presley, James Brown, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, Herman's Hermits, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, The Beatles (yes, some bands fall under multiple categories, depending on the time period and amount of drugs they were doing)
• Classic Rock: Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Steve Miller Band, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Guns 'N Roses, Queen, Jefferson Airplane, Cheap Trick, Boston, Ramones, Kiss, AC/DC, The Clash, Def Leppard, Eric Clapton, Foreigner, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Jimi Hendrix, John Mellencamp, Kansas, Journey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motley Crue, Peter Frampton, Vixen, The Who
• Alt/Hard Rock: Rage Against the Machine, Dead Sara, Foo Fighters, Ra, Breaking Benjamin, Flyleaf, Disturbed, Quiet Riot, Sick Puppies, Dragonforce, Linkin Park, Metallica, Slipknot, Skillet
• Grunge: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, R.E.M, The Pixies, Garbage, Butthole Surfers, Alice in Chains
• Punk Rock: The Offspring, Beastie Boys, Green Day, Blink-182, Sum 41, Fountains of Wayne, Bowling for Soup, Simple Plan, The Academy Is..., Forever the Sickest Kids, Cute is What We Aim For, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance
• Alt/Pop Rock: Third Eye Blind, Cake, Guster, Jet, Sugar Ray, Paper Tongues, Phantom Planet, No Doubt, Hootie & the Blowfish, Stroke 9, Semisonic, Sister Hazel, Gin Blossoms, Ingram Hill, Sugarcult, The Fray, Augustana, Spin Doctors, James Blunt, Train, The Wallflowers, Vertical Horizon, LFO, Switchfoot, Eve 6, Maroon 5, Matchbox 20, Jimmy Eat World, Jack's Mannequin, Paramore, Weezer, 3 Doors Down, Five for Fighting

White Oleander

White Oleander is a universe-expanding, skin-thickening book. It is rough and empowering. It grants readers a connection to people, both ordinary and extraordinary, with all their frailties, their flaws, their beauty, their games, their will. It is poetically realistic.  Some of my favorite quotes from it:

• Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you and allows your soul room to grow.
•  That beautiful girl, she was a universe, bearer of the words that rang like gongs, that tumbled like flutes made of human bones.
•  I realized I was exactly where she wanted me, safely unhappy…a prisoner…brewing into an artist, someone she might want to know someday. When all I wanted was for her to see me now.
• This was an artist’s stare, attentive to detail, taking in the truth without preconceptions.
• That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific—chair, eye, stone—but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.
•             Life should always be like this…Like lingering over a good meal. Unfortunately, most people have no talent for it…As soon as they start one thing, they want it to be over with, so they can start on the next.
• The mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don’t know whether you’re going to jump.
•  His guitar bore his longing up into the darkness like sparks, a music profound in its objectless desire, beautiful beyond solace or solution.
•  A man I wanted like falling.
• Feel the music, Astrid. Don't look at me. Close your eyes and be inside it.
• How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.
• The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.
• The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain.
• I liked Berlin. The city and I understood each other. I liked that they left the bombed-out hulk of the Kaiser Wilhelm church as a monument to loss. Nobody forgot anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn’t like America, where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. We hadn’t learned yet, that there was no such thing as an empty canvas.
• We were the wild children with all the talent.

An average night in the Smith household: junk in the trunk, The Perfect Eldest Brother, and an eerie angel voice

Here's an average night in the Smith household.
After re-reading what I wrote here, I realize that Justin is somewhat the star of the show. Not intentional. I guess it just happens. Anyway, read away.

It begins as a still Sunday evening. Justin and I wander aimlessly throughout the house, not sure how to entertain ourselves in this house which used to be our home a few years ago. We decide to play a game as a family and to eat dinner shortly after-- the game is some variation of Scrabble, but in card form. It's fun, but has a short run. Justin quickly wins three rounds and insists that we all vocally acknowledge his victory.  We admit this subserviently and move on to the next game, Loaded Questions.

In the game Loaded Questions, a question is asked, each player submits their written personal answer, and another player guesses who put each answer. It's great fun. Always guarantees huge laughs and sometimes, spilled secrets. At one point as we play, the question is asked: "What is one character trait you wish you had?" Naturally, Justin's answer is "junk in the trunk." After some hearty giggles and helpful explanations of modern terminology to a few less cultured folk, we move on to other questions. Here and there, Justin makes simple and silly comments that send our laughter through the roof-- we laugh for his silliness, we laugh for his wit, we laugh for his unfiltered love for life and all things potty humored. We laugh, we look at each other, we laugh again. There's no stopping it.

In this moment, nothing in the world seems more delicious than laughter. Laughter is something so sweet and ripe, something you unknowingly crave for a lifetime. In this moment, we get to indulge in it shamelessly. I want to gather it all and keep it in a locket, close to my heart. Laughter with loved ones is something to live for.

We suddenly recognize just how famished we are and realize that it is way past the time that we thought we'd eat dinner. My mom and I reheat the food and make last minute dinner preparations as the boys laze comfortably on the couches. Finally it is time, and we eat like Smiths. Mom eating delicately and mindfully; Scott eating delicately and absentmindedly; the rest of us eating like we are just now discovering this miracle called food.

Throughout dinner and the rest of the night, there are many more mentions of "junk in the trunk." Justin says he loves the fact that he can continually get away with saying it in our household. At some point, someone suggests we go around the table and say what we like about each member of the family. They talk about me first. Scott says something about my teeth being white. Everyone else says slightly more meaningful things. We continue, saying things we like about each family member, present and not. Dad genuinely cares about people, Mom loves learning, Spencer is thoughtful in gift-giving, orderly and diligent, Scott has attention-locking eyes and a good sense of right and wrong, and Justin...well, we all know Justin. Along with his craziness and hilarity, he is also a very just person, and kind.

When we get to Ryan, I go first. "What I like about Ryan is that...HE'S PERFECT. The end." We make several jokes about the perfection of Ryan, this eldest son. When it's Justin's turn, he says he's glad Ryan doesn't pinch him anymore, like he did here and there in their youth. I suddenly realize that THAT counted as a flaw, but then I remind the family that Ryan only did that before his baptism, before his sins were washed clean, so he's good to go now. We all laugh, and I relish in the victory of making an acceptable joke, realizing for a moment how it must feel to be Justin. Then we start discussing how incredibly intelligent, talented and perfect Ryan's children will probably turn out, and Justin suggests that Ryan's whole family will probably get translated. He describes how one day, Ryan's family will be eating dinner, and suddenly their whole house will begin floating, straight up to Heaven. I wouldn't doubt it for a minute.

After dinner, the house is alive. Dishes rattle, Scott's trumpet pierces the air, voices converse. I sit down on the family room couch with my laptop, to write. It's an L-shaped leather blue couch, and Justin sits on the other side of the L. I don't pay too much attention.

But then, he is singing the Lord of the Rings theme song, using gentle "ah's" to slide from note to note. Normally, in these types of situations, I avoid eye contact. I usually don't want to egg him on. However, in this instance his voice is eerily on pitch and angelic-sounding. I look up from my computer, and am surprised to find Justin looking straight ahead, with pure enjoyment written on his face as he sings. I had expected him to be staring in my direction, breaking into silliness at any moment, waiting for a reaction. But instead, he is simply staring ahead, singing like an eerie angel of an 1800's boys' choir, and enjoying life. His eyes dart my way as he realizes I am staring at him, and we both laugh. He continues to sing, relishing in the victory of this moment. Justin smiles triumphantly as his voice reaches each note with clarity and ensuing vibrato; not only has he penetrated my indifference; he has amused me greatly. Once again, Justin has won.

My dream last night

I had moved in a new apartment, and was satisfied with my new roommates. They were nice enough. They were still somewhat distant, because it takes time to really know someone, but they seemed nice.  All the sudden a time lapse occurs and I wake up to a room where all my things are in place; I have been living there for a while. Who knows how long. I pull out the book I'm reading at the time, and begin to read as I relax in my bed.

One of my roommates comes into my room, probably just to say "Hi," or to hang out for a while. I don't yet know her as well as I'd like to, so I welcome the interaction. I think little of it as I see her walk in. She wears a striped cashmere sweater with soft, subdued pinks, purples and brown. Her long caramel hair is straight and thick as it swings slightly while she walks towards me. Her eyes are big and brown and...empty? All the sudden I see her dive, cutting through the air like a falcon, and then she is attempting to strangle me. My initial confusion arises and then fades immediately as my brain gears into survival mode. There is a great struggle between us. This goes on for about two minutes. Her hands keep trying to find my neck, the passageway for air which I had completely taken for granted just minutes ago. I am breathless and terrified. I fight to survive. Suddenly, we hear the front door of the house close; another roommate is home. She leaps off of me as quickly as she began the attack, and exits my room without a word. I gasp for breath, sitting in my bed in an awkward position, my head aching and spinning.

For some reason, life simply went on after this dramatic occurrence. The event gave me quite a scare in the moment, and from then on I was terrified of this roommate. However, I didn't take any action at all to make anyone else aware of the situation, or to protect myself from future incidents. 

I can't imagine why, but I stayed in my apartment the rest of the day. I made myself as small as possible, huddled in a dark, cold corner. The whole apartment had become so dim and chilled and musty after that event occurred. The world seemed to become a dull, grungy shade of terrifyingly empty blue. I shivered and shivered for hours, not letting myself get anywhere near sleep. That was the one protection I allowed myself-- not giving in to the vulnerability that sleep brought with it. I was not necessarily hidden, but at least I was vigilant. 

I hear the front door open, and I know that she has walked in with her boyfriend. Instead of just walking by my room, they stop in to say "Hi." She offers some moderately personable greeting and a smile. I don't even remember if I reacted at all. Then, she walks out of my room, off to do something human, like wash some dishes, re-apply her makeup or to flip on the TV. Her boyfriend lingers for a few moments, carrying on a surfacey conversation with me. No one seems to think it strange that I am huddled up in a cold, dark corner, terrified. I search her boyfriend's eyes for an awareness of the monster that his girlfriend is. I find nothing. His eyes are empty. Or clouded? I can't tell. Soon enough, our conversation is over and he leaves.

Another time lapse occurs. The boyfriend is gone, and she walks into my room. She spews out some illogical yet seemingly sincere apology for the occurrence earlier that day, and offers a hug. I reluctantly accept, and we embrace. All the sudden, I hear dark laughter. It suddenly registers that a few moments earlier, I felt something sharp slowly slide into my back. Why wasn't the pain immediate? I feel it now. I feel it as I see a raging fire seem to light up her menacing eyes. I feel it as I hear her devilish laughter seem to fill up the room. I feel it as a dull pain begins to spread and spread, permeating my entire body.

Suddenly she is gone, and my little brother is with me, his face gaunt as he asks what happened. I tell him there's a freaking knife in my back, and to call 911 right now!! He runs out of the room and out of my mind. Task at hand: am I supposed to take this thing out of my back, or wait for medical attention? The extent of my knowledge of these types of things is what I have seen in movies. Without even consulting that knowledge, I decide to take it out. The pain is searing. I try to ignore it. Somehow, I possess the strength to make a phone call. Although he is eleven hours away, I call my dad. My protector. I struggle to explain the situation. I try to tell him that my roommate is dangerous. I try to tell him that she has tried to kill me twice. But my words come out like molasses; I can't seem to express myself. My thoughts get more and more clouded, and suddenly I see, hear, feel nothing.

Why my little brother is cooler than yours

Scott Anthony Smith.

Tall, lanky kid with muscles like a green bean that has been working out.

Skin that tans instantly, eyes that open easily.

His eyes are my favorite, because they're so big and blue and full of understanding and silliness.

It pains me to see his blue eyes clouded at times-- when he is contemplating injustice or internally discovering a new melancholy place.  

His adam's apple is so endearing for some reason; why, I couldn't tell you.

His hand gestures mesmerize me as he explains something with intelligence, conviction and fluidity.

He condescendingly insults me as he brings his eyebrows together, makes his sparkling eyes so big, and pushes his lips to the side, stifling his charming little smile.

I give the pretense of offense, and we banter for hours, saying more with our eyes than our words.

I love my little brother.

He understands me in a way that no one else does.

Quelqu'un m'a dit

This is the type of song you listen to on repeat on a long car ride to California while you're reading a sad, honest book. It's the type of song you listen to while you're falling in love. It's the type of song that starts to play as you walk away from him in blissful, utter disbelief of what just occurred. It's the type of song that you put on as you twist restlessly in your sheets, remembering the way his lips felt on yours. It's the type of song you listen to as your heart is breaking, and everything beautiful seems to unravel slowly. It's the type of song you listen to when your heart is broken-- for a moment, you are physically paralyzed; for a lifetime, you become emotionally numb and immovable. It's the type of song that lets your senses drink in all the sweet beauty and pain the world has to offer. It's the type of song that plays as you careen off a smooth, slippery cliff, and you don't mind. Because this song is playing, you are suspended in air, and that is enough.