My So-Called Indie Rock Blog #25
I broke up my band. It was too hard to continue being myself - a "nice" girl from the suburbs of Massachusetts -and to keep asserting myself with all these indie guy musicians, with their effortless self-confidence and encyclopedic knowledge of all-things-Pitchfork. I crawled into my little cardboard box, filled it with Alan Lomax recordings, and started booking my way through the million lonely bars of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Hoboken.A lot of these places are gone now. Real holes-in-the-wall like Bar B on Essex Street. But most of them are still there, and even now, when I walk down a single NYC block I find myself noticing in rapid procession: I played there and there and there...It was lonely. But it numbed me to every shade of sadness that can settle on a half-empty bar at 11pm on a freezing Wednesday night in January. To indifference and distain, to unexpected adulation and communion. And how else can someone learn the most important thing you need to become an independent musician: to not give a fuck?
Comments (4)
Wow, I'm so glad I found your MOG. You really hit the nail on the head about the indie rock guys. You know, I think it's a front. I don't know how so many of these guys out in the music scene can really have that kind of confidence about their music! I know that sounds mean but I also live in a music city of sorts, Nashville, and while there are amazingly talented musicians here, surprisingly the ones I meet with the least amount of confidence are the most talented! The ones around here who show off and brag all the time have very thin material that is derivative and lacking in content. So finding that state of mind you talk about, to not care - that really is the answer I think. Because otherwise that world of bombastic indolence that surrounds you and all artists in the music world can really bring you down - make things seem pointless and make you complacent.