COLLAPSE BOARD

Welcome to issue two of the magazine that’s taking indie music by storm, Where Others Lead

Welcome to the second issue of the irregular magazine that’s taking indie music by storm, Where Others Lead. Here boy, down Fido. Don’t be too excited, it’s only slowpoke Everett True with his team of whippets sniffing through the outer garments of Melbourne.

Let’s restate a few ground rules here. It’s always worth restating ground rules, especially when they’re obvious.

• Record sleeves will always be printed larger than the words that follow them
• The words that follow the record sleeves will in no shape or size attempt to describe the venom and confusion of excitement of hearing music, instead preferring to be intimidated by their actual proximity to said music
• Music will always be deified, or at least given three and a half stars out of five, whichever is closest to hand, because – Adele alone knows – it takes a special form of human being to bang two saucepan lids together
• Band members should always have their names written out in full
• Do not attempt to clarify. If you attempt to clarify your readers might realise you’re actually saying nothing. (There’s nothing wrong with saying nothing but remember: there’s a limit to how large font sizes can go.)
• Punk rock will be defined by the followers of Foo Fighters and Real Estate (quintessential indie bands, both) who think you need a beard and testicles for said music
• No band is worth writing about unless it’s to compare them to bands from 20 (or 10, or 30, whichever is more preferable) years back, and openly insinuate that yes of course music was better back then
• 2011 was boring
• 2012 will be worse, unless someone in a position of authority – Better Homes And Gardens, Gorilla Vs Bear say – decides otherwise
• Nothing is worth writing about unless countless someone else’s have already written about it
• Noisy music good, produced music bad
• Produced music good, noisy music bad
• And so on
• Recorded pieces of music will not be defined as such unless they’ve had over $20,000 spent in promotion of same
• Lo-fi will be taken as a catch-all for anyone recording without $20,000 to promote same, and sometimes even them as well
• Earplugs are mandatory
• Imagination is to be regarded as a danger to decent commonsense musicians
• “We only do it for ourselves and if anyone else likes it it’s a bonus”
• “Our duty is to describe the music”
• “Our duty is to inform”
• “I’m only doing this while I’m at uni”
• Don’t argue
• This is not art. This is not craft. This is just an excuse for a couple of free concert tickets.

Me? I’m just happy to be here.

P.S. (stolen but still credited to Matt O’Neill)

Every Top 100 Guitarists list ever:

1-10: Classic Rock
10-30: Prog-rock/jazz/fusion
40-70: Miscellaneous ‘Credible’ Genres (See: genres invented by black people)
70-100: Popular rock genres from the last 20-30 years (grunge, metal, indie-rock).

Five per cent of every section will be interlopers and ringers from other genres brought in to disguise these rules.

P.P.S. This post actually started out as an attempt to find another way to write about this band. Maybe tomorrow …

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 9:13 pm. It is filed under Everett True and tagged with Everett True, Foo Fighters, indie rock, music journalism, Royal Headache, Where Others Lead. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.