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Day 5 of “Intro to Indie Music!” This will be my last post this week, so before I get into it, today I’ve got some links about indie music to keep you satisfied and smilin’ until Monday morning.
“What Exactly is Indie?” on Relevant Magazine - Defining indie music from the point of view of the largest indie festival in America - Pitchfork.
Bored-Again Christian Podcast and Blahg - Just Pete hosts this hour-long podcast / blog with all sorts of indie music. I think he’s a Christian guy putting up mostly Christian stuff, but it’s fun either way.
“Indie Music” on Wikipedia - If you haven’t used Wikipedia yet to answer the question “What is Indie Music?” shame on you.
Paste Music Store - Interviews, articles, music to buy, and free MP3 downloads of independent artists, many of them Christian.
Daytrotter - On-line magazine with articles and interviews with indie artists. Free live in-house recordings of tons of artists.
So that should keep you satisfied until Monday, when I go over some more indie stuff. But right now, I still have to give you the next on my list of what makes indie music indie!
Here we are, on to Day 4 of our “Intro to Indie Music” series. I had everything planned on what I was going to do today (a post on Aaron Sprinkle), but it just didn’t seem right, so after talking to my wife, I thought, “Yeah, I’ll do Madison Greene,” but that just wasn’t meshing either. I didn’t know what to do, until just about an hour ago, I found Aimee Wilson.
So today’s post will be about her, but more on that later.
If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of an introduction to Christian indie music here at The Blah Blah. It’s been fun, and I hope you’ve learned a ton of stuff. Check out my previous posts, parts 1 - 3, to get caught up. So what exactly makes indie music “indie?” Below is my ever-growing list of what I believe sets indie music apart from the rest…
Qualifications of Indie Music
1) It must be on an independent label (see here)
2) It’s about the music (see here)
3) Lo-fi good, over-production bad (see here)
and today’s qualification…
4) A do-it-yourself attitude
Now on to day three of our “Intro to Indie Music” segment here at The Blah Blah! I hope you’ve been enjoying the posts and even learning something while having fun.
If you’re just tuning in, I’m in the beginning of a couple weeks’ long exploration into what makes indie music “indie.” Is it the instruments? The attitude? The often strange names of bands? The faded jeans? Or something much more… sinister?
Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or questions. Indie music is hard to define, so give me some feedback.
You gotta check out this blog post here. It’s a YouTube video of a church drama set to the Lifehouse song “Everything.” It starts out a little cheesy, but it ends up really powerful. I don’t get very emotional about these kinds of things, but I got goosebumps and started crying as I watched it.
Maybe it’s the Benadryl I’m taking for allergies, but it really affected me.
Thanks for coming back for day two of our “Intro to Indie Music” segment here at The Blah Blah.
I’ve been looking at the world of indie music this week, with an emphasis on the Christian side of things, trying to answer the question ” What is indie music?” Please offer your opinions and input, because I’m working through it as well. I’ve got ideas and theories, and I’m more than happy to share them, but I’d like to hear what all you readers think qualifies as “indie music.”
Welcome back to The Blah Blah for another exciting week. We’ve had some requests here that we do an “Intro to Indie Music” segment, so welcome, and please share your opinions as we move along. As I seek to define “indie music,” I’m touching on a segment of the music industry that is very hard to define. In fact, the definition seems to change depending on who you’re talking to, what era you’re referring to, and what mood you’re in that day.
What is indie music? Who listens to it? What does it sound like? Is there really a difference from big label music? Do you even dare find out the answers?
Continuing on in “I Heard it on the Radio” week, today’s band is Switchfoot! Like all of the bands we’ve posted this week, Switchfoot is a band that has been able to cross over from the Christian market to the secular world. You’ve probably heard of them before because you’ve likely either heard their songs on Christian radio, regular radio, or MTV.
Most bands we like to cover here are indie bands, or at least less-well-known Christian groups, but this week of popular radio stuff has been fun, and educational - just like Sesame Street.
Switchfoot, on the other hand, is not like Sesame Street. They have no giant wooly mammoths in the band. They are not sponsored by letters. And they will make few attempts to teach you Spanish. But I still give them a strong recommendation as my personal favorite of the three bands I’ve covered this week.
In honor of “I Heard it on the Radio” Week, I thought everyone should check out this post on Christianity Today about the top albums of 2006. Obviously, this is from last year (hence the 2006) , but the bands are probably still good enough for 2007.
As a side note, let me say that I was put to shame by this list. I like to think I’m pretty aware of the Christian music world, but I only had one of the albums listed (and I just got it a few weeks ago). I only had songs from 5 of the 12 artists. And I hadn’t even heard of 4 of the groups.
Sad, isn’t it?
I must try to reform my ways. Only emusic.com can help me now.
Continuing on with “I Heard it on the Radio Week,” today, we’ll look at a band I got into early on in their career but mostly ignored more recently - Relient K! Relient K is one of those great happy pop-punk bands with catchy lyrics and a humorous look on life. Who else but Relient K would release songs with names like “I’m Lion-O,” “Maybe it’s Maybeline,” and “Crayons Can Melt on Us For All I Care?”
Relient K’s current band line-up consists of Matt Thiessen (vocals, guitar, piano), Matt Hoopes (guitar, vocals), Dave Douglas (drums, vocals), John Warne (drums, vocals), and John Schneck (guitar, banjo, bells, vocals).
Though we’re not fans of iTunes here, we do understand that a lot of people are, so here’s a little bit of news you might appreciate.
Are you tired of messing around with your iTunes settings and still not getting that perfectly balanced sound that you want? Stop pulling your hair out! Just go here for the perfect EQ settings and wonder no more.
Woohoo! WordPress has fixed all the issues affecting the blog, as far as we can tell anyway. :) WordPress techs are awesome!
Anyway, we’re gonna totally switch gears this week and for the next 7 days we’ll be covering some of the popular Christian rock groups that you’d expect to hear on your standard above average Christian radio station. Now, before you get scared that we’re departing from the whole underground indie Christian stuff, just relax. We’ll come back to the indie stuff soon enough. That’s our favorite stuff to cover, so we’ll be returning to it next week. However, there are some “normal” bands that we actually enjoy and think are worth noting. Besides, we know some people enjoy regular music even more than the indie stuff, so we want them to be able to find something here too.
This first band is one of the most popular we’ll be posting about, and one of the more spiritually ambiguous (oooh, big words).
OK, so if you’ve checked out the blog recently, you’ve probably noticed there have been some technical problems. Just to inform you faithful readers…
1) The links to certain songs were not working. My file hosting service (www.mediamax.com) has been losing files that I upload. This is not good and I hope they fix it soon, because other than that, I love the service a ton and it had been even more awesome than I expected it to be. Until things are fixed, I’m using a temporary hosting service offered by AOL called Xdrive. The down side to this service is that you can’t download the songs directly from The Blah Blah but you have to open a window to their site and download it there. That, and the link will only remain active for 1 week. I normally like to leave MP3s up for 2 weeks or so, so you’ll just have to download faster.
2) Something is freaking out at WordPress regarding their categories/tags. If you’re an astute reader, you’ll notice that most of the categories and subcategories are missing from the left-hand sidebar. You’ll also notice that almost all the posts’ categories are wrong. Why? I don’t know. WordPress staff and volunteers are working on the problem, so hopefully it’ll be solved soon. In the meantime, just ignore the categories and tags, or you’ll get a headache thinking about it…
3) The Blogroll is missing. Where did this go? Probably the same place as the missing categories. Hopefully it’ll be found soon.
Until the problems are resolved, you can still use the Archive to search old blogs, and we’ll still keep posting, so keep reading!
If you’ve been around a while in the Christian music scene, you’ve probably heard a lot of Aaron Sprinkle without realizing it. The man’s got quite a history. Check out allmusic.com for a complete list of his credits, but just to give you a taste, Aaron Sprinkle was a member of Poor Old Lu, sang a song with MXPX, did everything for some solo albums, produced an Anberlin album, mixed a Starflyer 59 album, and engineered an Eisley album, and that’s just a start. He’s sang lead and backup, strummed guitar, banged on keyboards, picked the bass, wailed on a drumset, shaken a shaker, tapped a tambourine, and played an old organ. Oh, and he’s worked with Jeremy Camp, KJ-52, Hawk Nelson, Demon Hunter, Dead Poetic, Mainstay, Ruth, The Send, Kutless, Blenderhead, Stavesacre, Pedro the Lion, Telecast, Joy Electric… the list never ends!
So, yeah, you’ve run into him somewhere. Trust me.
This is old news, but check it out anyway. If you haven’t done so already, rent Danielson: a Family Movie from your local video store. If you love the Danielson Famile, music, art, or God, you should really watch this movie. It’ll inspire and encourage you to do what you’re called to do, regardless of what people think. Even if you hate the band, I think you’ll be inspired and challenged by the movie.
Danielson: a Family Movie follows the band from their childhood in a Christian home to the first performance to their current struggles with changing band direction. For a full bio and review of the band, check out my post here.
Here’s what IMDB says about the movie:
“Danielson: a Family movie” is a documentary about unbridled creativity vs. accessibility, Christian faith vs. popular culture, underground music vs. survival, and family vs. individuality. The film follows Daniel Smith, an eccentric musician and visual artist, as he leads his four siblings and best friend to indie rock stardom, eventually facing the struggle to become viable as a solo act. Along the way he mentors an unknown singer-songwriter named Sufjan Stevens whose own subsequent success stands in stark contrast to the music world’s uneasy reception of Danielson just a few years prior. Makes use of collage, direct cinema and animation.
I watched the movie almost a year ago and it’s really awesome. Very engaging, funny, thought-provoking, and inspiring. Everything you want in a documentary, right? I’m pretty picky about my movies, documentaries in particular, and Danielson: a Family Movie blew me away, especially considering how low budget it is.
An interesting fact about the movie is that Creative Arson produced it completely independently, with no third-party investment from the band, its record label, or anyone else. I think this helps a lot - it’s not a band commercial and remains very unbiased about all the controversy and misunderstandings surrounding Danielson.
If this has piqued [Note: first useage of the word "piqued" on The Blah Blah] your curiosity at all, you can view the trailer here on YouTube or buy the DVD here on Amazon.
For more cool documentaries you need to check out, take a look at this post.
Aah… Danielson. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em, but there’s no denying that they’re doing important things for Christian music, especially Christian indie music, that will probably stick around for a while. Whether you’d call them artistic geniuses or bizarre eccentrics, musical innovators or noise makers, Danielson is bringing in much-needed creativity to the Christian music world.
Danielson is Daniel Smith and various numbers of his siblings and friends. In 1995, Daniel Smith convinced his 4 siblings to help him with his senior thesis in art school by joining with him in creating a band that would blend faith, art, and pop music together in a creative new way. So they rehearsed and rehearsed and then performed for the school’s art show. The family was a surprise hit, especially among indie fans, and from there, the band has gone on to tour the nation and produce albums for Tooth & Nail, Secretly Canadian, and their own label Sounds Familyre Records. When the whole family performs together, they’re known as the Danielson Famile, otherwise it’s Brother Danielson for solo stuff.
If you’re like me, you’ve got an unexplainable distaste for iTunes. I don’t know why I don’t like it, but I just don’t. So it’s a good thing emusic.com is out there. In case you haven’t heard of them, they’re a great alternative to iTunes for most MP3s you’d want to download, even some of the more rare indie stuff. The MP3s are all DRM-free, unlimited use and transfers, unlike iTunes, and, with one of their subscription plans, you can pay as little as 30 cents a song.
But wait! There’s more! Click here to get 50 free MP3 downloads just for trying the service. And when you’ve downloaded your 50 songs, you can either continue with them at $10 a month for 30 downloads or just cancel your account and you won’t be charged a thing. I did it and it really does work that easily!
Oh, and when you sign up they’ll try to get you to download their software but you can click that you don’t want to download it if you’re paranoid like me. The only disadvantage is that you’ll have to download MP3s one at a time instead of whole albums at once.
Another cool promotional thing they’re doing is that if you sign up and decide to keep your subscription with them, you can sign your friends up for subscriptions (and 50 free MP3s) and get 50 free downloads of your own when they join.
I haven’t really gotten any spam from them yet, and I’ve been using them for a few months, so sign up now!
Savage Fen is an area of swamp, quicksand, and wetlands in Minnesota. This has very little to do with Jon Watje’s solo efforts of the same name, but what does that matter? Anyway, I randomly found Savage Fen one day a while ago and have been waiting for more songs since.
Here’s what John says about the name on his website:
The name “Savage Fen” isnt that complex, in fact very simple. One day in the mid 90s when Jon had his best friend over, they messed around with the music stuff and jokingly called their band Savage Fen. Savage is a small town outside of the Twin Cities. Jon’s parents own dozens of rental property, some in Savage, MN. In back of one of their properties is a fen, or swamp. A fen is like a swamp but also like quicksand which sucks everything in that falls into it. The name stuck in Jon’s head ever since.
Well, this is it - the final day of The Top 10 in Christian Blues. Today, in just a few short moments, we will release to you faithful readers the final two MP3s in the collection of the all-time greatest Christian blues songs. After today, you will no longer need to purchase any more blues songs, because they will only pale in comparison to the MP3s you already own.
Anyway, this has been a fun week for me, exploring the world of Christian blues, and I hope you had fun too, but I’m looking forward to next week, when I’ll be back to my random posts for a little while. I plan to put up some bands that you probably have never heard of - ranging from shoegaze to indie rock to uh… weird, artsy, experimental stuff. I think everyone will have a great time, but until then, we’ve gotta finish up with the blues!
Now returning to The Top 10 in Christian Blues Week, day 4! Just one more day to go, so soak in all the blues you can before it’s gone. Now that’s a thought worthy to sing the blues about.
Anyway, just after my comment yesterday that this Christian blues list was killing our blog stats at The Blah Blah, we had our best day yet, with 63 views. Now, I know that for some of you bloggers out there 63 views would be a signal for the coming death of your blog, but we’re danged proud of it!
Now buckle in, cuz we’re about to get into some of the guys that define the world of blues music.
Welcome back to The Top 10 in Christian Blues Week, now on day 3!
I hope you’ve been enjoying this week and perhaps even broadening your musical horizons. Looking at my Blog Stats recently, most of my readers have not been enjoying this week. My exploration of Christian blues has served to significantly decrease the number of hits we receive daily here at the Blah Blah. Sell-outs. I’m no servant to the public! If Christian blues is what I want to blog about, it’s Christian blues I’m going to blog about.
I’ve worked really hard as a lover of music to not turn into a music snob. There was a time when I vehemently declared that all country music was awful, all blues was cheesy, and all popular rock bands were sell-outs. The only real music was indie music. There was also a time (even before the above-mentioned time) when all I listened to was folk and classical. But I’ve had my fun as a music racist and now I’m open to pretty much every type of music. I don’t like most rap I’ve heard. I’m pretty picky about my screamo choices. But I won’t exclude an artist simply because their music belongs to a particular genre. I’m an equal opportunity listener.
I hope all you faithful Blah Blah readers had a great Labor Day weekend!
Enough small talk. :) Let’s get back to the music. Welcome to Day 2 of The Top 10 in Christian Blues week. Thanks for all you who have given me your thoughts on what I should have included on the list. Keep ‘em coming!
And in case any of you were interested, Dale Thompson (mentioned in a comment to this post) is starting a new project called Monster of the Americas. Dale Thompson was the mastermind behind 80’s Christian heavy metal band Bride and bluesy bands The Kentucky Cadillacs and The Religious Overtones, and this new project aims to blend both sounds. Keep an eye out. It could be really fun.
A friend of mine who checked out my blog the other day said that I should put up some lists to make things a little more interactive and interesting. I said to myself, “Self, that seems like a great idea. Let’s put up some lists.” So here it is, the first official Blah Blah list, of many more to come. All this week, I’ll be looking at “The Top 10 in Christian Blues.”
“Why Christian blues?” you ask. Last spring, I realized that most of the music I listened to was the same. Most of my musical experience through the years has fallen under some sort of “rock” title. Rock. Indie rock. Pop rock. Acoustic rock. Math rock. Punk rock. Folk rock. Classic rock. Sure, there were the handful of reggae bands. Some tribal bands. Some straight-up folk bands. A few jazz guys. Some classical… But most of the music I had experienced and most of the CDs I owned were some form of rock music. Now, theologically this is sound, because Jesus, as the Rock, should be the basis of every God-fearing man’s music library, but I was curious about what lay beyond.
