music + hipster rules

[navarre]

Every now and then I like to take stock of the stuff I'm listening to. After spending my pre-iPod years feverishly taping the Top40 off my local FM station (with actual tapes, no less, which seems so frightfully quaint now that I think about it; am I the last generation to tape stuff off the radio?), I now source my music largely from blogs, gossip, TV shows and the more indie-oriented of my friends' Facebook profiles. Sometimes I just trawl last.fm and iTunes for bands with funny names. Totally professional selection criteria, I know, but sometimes I kind of wish there was a Dow Jones/All Ords type scale for which indie bands/trends were on the up in the online and offline global hipster empire. An "Indie Index" of sorts, which could let me know when something is just kitschy and mainstream enough to be hipster, and just hipster enough to be too mainstream. And then I realised in this era of Web 2.0, I should formulate my own rules for staying Indie:

1. As soon as something good is used in an iPod commercial, it's sold out and got too 'popular' (but only when it catches on and gets radio airplay on something other than Triple J or fBi/was only used in a commercial overseas - this is how I justify still listening to The Asteroid Galaxy Tour)
2. Retro is always safe. 60s/70s is generally safe, but stick to rock bands on copious amounts of drugs. Disco died in '79.
3. The 80s are not 'retro' unless it's like, Joy Division or something. Cyndi Lauper will never be cool again because she wrote the anthem for cheap drunk chicks dancing around their handbags at a Hens Night/office party or similar. No matter how much you love U2, Bon Jovi or Poison, repress the almost innate human urge to sing along in your car/the club etc. even if your friends are into it. Instead adopt a look of studied nonchalance and/or go out for a smoke. As a hipster, you should not be associating with these people anyway.
4. Hypemachine is not always accurate. Neither is last.fm. These places will try to tell you that, by popular demand, you should be listening to Sara Bareilles or something. My friend Jackie listens to Sara Bareilles, and my friend Jackie still listens to Steps.
5. Almost everybody likes Girl Talk because he is controversial. Nothing is sexier than stealing shit.
6. If somebody asks you who your favourite artist is/what kind of music you listen to, and you find yourself momentarily blanker than a dyslexic at a spelling bee, fall back on "classic stuff, you know". The Beatles, obviously. The Doors, Joy Division, Bowie, Neil Young. All good.
7. Myspazz breakouts are generally okay when it's someone like Lykke Li. Who is fucking awesome, by the way. When it's Lily Allen or Kate Nash and she's got trashed at Cannes, it means she has no respect for 'Art'. If NME has declared her the next big thing, you can listen to her for maybe three weeks before she is no longer considered interesting. As far as I know Friendly Fires are still cool because, despite having a video on Channel [V], they recently covered Lykke Li.
8. Kings of Leon are a matter of personal choice. It takes a brave soul to reject them out of hand because they have such a tight indie image not even a Number 1 album could dent their cred.
9. 808s & Heartbreak kind of falls under the same umbrella as KOL: while Kanye is undoubtedly an extremely talented producer and creative force in hip hop, he also has no sense of humour and a truly immense ego. His ambitious and deeply personal project on 808s lends him some definite kudos (and also his mum's dead and his girlfriend left him; it's a shock he didn't go all the way to country music) - but he's also been publicly lampooned and 'humbled' by Stephen Colbert. It's like Sophie's Choice!

Anyway, right now I'm playing it pretty indie: She & Him Volume One, Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago, Hercules & Love Affair Hercules & Love Affair, Alphabeat Alphabeat. I'm kind of splicing that with the single "Bag of Hammers" by Thao Nguyen & the Get Down Stay Down, "Around the Bend"/"Sun Ain't Shining No More" by Asteroid Galaxy Tour and Girl Talk's Feed The Animals for parties. Because I'm good like that, eh.
Word of the Day: "dysfucktional" - I don't even know where this was coined, but it's not on urbandictionary yet so it must be fairly new.

Horrific experience: my mother not only declaring that I have "junk in the trunk", but that she does, too. Honestly, who let her listen to Black Eyed Peas?