Bands, blogs, buzz and hype

musicismylife78

Whats everyones take on this?
It seems this is the current, modern and state of the art way a band breaks nowadays. It isn’t through radio play or a catchy song or even an innovation music video. These days it seems blogs (Pitchfork, Stereogum, Brooklyn vegan, etc..) have the power to make or break a band just by mentioning them. Arcade Fire, Clap your hands say yeah, Tapes and Tapes, and many others benefited from the hype these blogs gave them.

Vampire Weekend is just the latest example, in that they were a band without a record contract, and without a record even out, and all those blogs were talking about them like they were the next Arcade Fire. Is this a good thing? In many ways I think it is. MTV, and Vh1 and record labels don’t have the fans or bands interest in mind. But Pitchfork for all the whining and bashing it gets on this board, does care about fans and the bands. They care passionately about the music, albeit indie music.

I was reading somewhere a discussion concerning all this and one critic suggested that this was bad, in that anyone can post Mp3’s up now, anyone can put songs on their band’s myspace up, and the critic said that all this hype and buzz may lead to bands and talents being discovered who aren’t really talents at all and are basically amateurs.

I haven’t given Vampire Weekend a complete listen, but are they, or any other band deserving of hype and buzz even when they don’t have a record deal? Do the blogs have too much power now? NME often gets the same crap flung at them that Pitchfork does: charges of elitism, of hyping bands just for the hell of it etc…

I admit I like to get caught up in the buzz and hype. We all can make our own decisions. You don’t have to read Pitchfork or NME and you aren’t forced to buy Neon Bible or Vampire Weekend.

But I do feel like the indie rock scene at the moment is the most “grunge like” scene I have heard of. As I said in a previous thread, the indie scene that is being hyped on the blogs, isn’t one that seems fueled by greed and hunger for the spotlight. Its about the music. Do the blogs hurt or help this?

In my mind this all makes the music better. To be caught up in the hype and the buzz, to be talking about bands before they sign contracts as if they are the hottest band around, it all offers accessibility to fans. Someone like me, who is a major fan of indie rock, but am not in a band and cant play an instrument, its sort of fun to follow Stereogum and see what the hottest band around is. It makes me feel like I am part of a movement, and part of a scene, even though as I said, I am not in a band.

muppet

It's cool. There's a real sense of an underground movement. I've discovered so much amazing music through actual music lovers, instead of PR-driven record labels.

Jeremy1012

Pitchfork might be elitist cunts but they are almost always right and have directed me towards some great music. For that, I salute and support them. As far as scenes go, it means nothing to me. Music is music. Take it as it is. I don't listen to bands that Pitchfork likes because it's cool to. I have no interest in a lot of the stuff that they push. The stuff I do like, I like because it's good, not because it's hip. If I liked hip music, I would not be on a PJ messageboard

But as far as trendsetting and that sort of thing goes, I don't think about it. Means nothing to me. The day I get into a band because other people are and not because their music speaks to me is the day I stop listening to music.

CM1847

The whole indie-becoming-popular thing is generally a major positive. I know I've heard a ton of bands I never would have paid any attention to if the great hype machine never took a hold of them.

I think it's a product of a couple of main factors:

1) The internet(duh!!!). I'm stating the obvious here, but it is definitely the biggest factor in all of this. If the internet hype machine can get Arcade Fire big enough to go to #1 when it came out(or was it #2?), you can bet that the same thing would have happened 15 years ago for Pavement when they released "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain". It didn't happen because people didn't have an easy way to hear about a band like that 15 years ago. Now the internet is the easiest way to hear about new music, it has clearly opened up a huge audience to music they never would have heard otherwise.

2) Popular music sucks. I think Modest Mouse's "Float On" is the best example here(this isn't a diss on Modest Mouse). That song wasn't a GREAT song, it was pretty good and damn catchy, but not great. Yet, it caught on with the major radios and managed to sell a million+ copies of that album. It was a good song, but it wasn't good enough to push 1,000,000 copies of that album. The reason it did was because it was something DIFFERENT. For those whose car stereo never changes from the biggest rock station in town, hearing something, ANYTHING, different was a shock and people ate it up. In the early/mid 90s a song like that would have barely been a blip on the radar, but going up against today's popular rock music, people absolutely ate it up simply because of their desire to hear anything new.

There are also negative aspect of it all. I think the biggest is that it is becoming harder and harder to sort out the truely deserving bands who come down the hype-pipeline and those who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Even 4 years ago when Arcade Fire's first LP was coming out, that was legit hype. You didn't get a band that hyped up very often, so everybody set up and paid attention, they definitely deserved it. Now, it seems like there HAS to be a flavor of the month out there and some bands who are really just average get pushed like they are great(looking at you Cold War Kids!!). You really can't go more than a few months without some band getting some absurd hype, they go from playing in front of 50 people at their local club to getting on Letterman and SNL. Hype is always better when it is genuine, you rarely get that anymore as everyone simply wants to be the first one on the bandwagon for the next big thing, there's nothing indie kids like more than to say "yeah, I've had (insert hype band)'s EP for about a year now". (For the record, Vampire Weekend is a good band, they didn't deserve all of the hype they got, but they aren't a disappointment)

As for how much power a site like Pitchfork has, I'm fine with it for a few reasons. First, as the last poster mentioned, they may be stuck-up music snobs, but I rarely disagree with their rating by more than a point or a point and a half. Also, there has always been some controlling source which leads the masses to new music, it was the radio forever, then MTV(when they showed videos), then TRL, then American Idol(I don't know, I clearly lost my timeline somewhere). And there was even a point in time where a 4 or 5 star review from Rolling Stone actually meant something and would give any band a huge boost. Pitchfork is filling that gap right now because all of the other sources have lost their credibility, does anybody actually listen to standard radio anymore except for those people who simply don't care and put on the Top 40 station? You can predict Rolling Stone's reviews the second the album is announced(Bob Dylan = *****).

So that was a long rant, but I am bored and I think this is an interesting topic, so thansk for starting it.