Commit hipster heresy!

Cafe Society
1

I am no slave to hipsterdom, let’s get that straight. I’m about 65% dork, and I go to a dozen Mets games a year. But if I had to spit out a string of hipster bona fides, I could: I bought all the Velvet Underground records on vinyl when I was in high school, I go to foreign films and stay awake, I have for brief periods worn a soul patch (and I mean outside of my bathroom right after shaving, which doesn’t count, because otherwise I could claim to have worn a Hitler moustache), I saw REM and Nirvana in small clubs before they were well known (hell, I saw the Clash at Bond’s when I was in high school), I can’t wear clothing with logos on them. So there you have it. Was I, am I a hipster asshat? Give me the litmus paper and I’ll lick.

Still, the hipster canon is very strict. And, for the fun of it, I would like to commit the following heresies:

Patti Smith. I bought her records. Dutifully. I don’t like them. I think “Dancing Barefoot” is a good song when someone else does it. Otherwise she’s almost universally a boring songwriter and a terrible singer (and this from someone who usually likes terrible singers). Her main poetic influence is the incoherent liner notes to Highway 61 Revisited. “At heart I’m a Moslem.” What the hell does this even mean? So wear a burka and recite the Koran, then … play clarinet for Cat Stevens and stop out putting records.

Shirts with someone else’s name stitched on a pocket. Whether they were worn by the member of a bowling team or an employee of a beverage distribution company, it is all too abundantly clear that (1) that original owner is not you, (2) that person did not go out to a club on a Saturday night wearing it, and (3) you are guilty of a hipster affectation that I was tired of in 1985, more so even than cat-eye glasses, porkpie hats, Bettie Page haircuts, and overly oblique tats.

Rock bands from Japan. They’re terrible, every last one. Yes, even Shonen Knife. Yes, even if you want to pretend you’ve listened to a Boredoms CD all the way through.

Being over 40 and working in a record store. I don’t care if you founded Delaware’s first punk ‘zine or started a seminal noise-rock band. You don’t have any wiggle room to be snotty about my taste in music if you’re older than me and the employee of a record store. Just ring up the Dixie Chicks CD and check out the inside of your eyelids some other time, thanks.

Heroin. Humans love opiates. It makes you about as cool and interesting and edgy as Rush Limbaugh.

Your serve.

2

I think Jack Kerouac was an overhyped hack, and most jazz music bores me.

3

I’m a huge fan of Gavin Rossdale and Bush.

I’ve never understood the appeal of Bob Dylan.

4

Sonic Youth is the most boring rock and roll band in the history of rock and roll.

5

I found Pulp Fiction overwrought and dull at the same time.

6

I guess I should point out what gives me hipster cred to start with. Even though I don’t self-identify as a hipster (I leave such determinations up to others), I’ve got a lot in common with them. I like the Velvet Underground and a lot of 70’s punk, 80’s punk/post-punk/new wave and alternative from then onward. I like alternative comics, such as the stuff by Daniel Clowes. I like Chuck Palaniuk and Samuel Beckett, and am getting into Kurt Vonnegut.
Here are my heresies:

I like Jack Kerouac from what I’ve read of him, but I think William Burroughs isn’t worth reading more than a few pages of. He can string some nifty sentences together, but that’s about it. Also, I don’t like him as a person from what I know about him.

I own two Old Navy shirts that my parents bought them for me, and will sometimes wear them in public. Usually only when I don’t have any other clean shirts, and I’m self-conscious about it, but I think that if I were a better man I’d be able to wear them without any worries.

There’s some music I like that some would consider uncool:
10,000 Maniacs
KT Tunstall
Toad the Wet Sprocket
The Monkees songs that I’ve heard
That song by The Archies

7

I came in to mention this. I found Pulp Fiction to be boring and not very interesting. It seems that this is an unpardonable sin in some circles.

8

Indeed. I once dissed Quentin Tarantino in a crowd of hipsters, and they got medieval on my ass.

9

Sugar, Sugar is one of the best pop songs ever recorded. Even a hipster should be able to appreciate the cheesyness of the song.

10

I’m likely to think that the song released as the single is one of the better songs on the album.

11

Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Can, Bruce Springsteen*****, The Ramones, Patti Smith, The MC5, Liz Phair, Vic Chesnutt, Sleater-Kinney, The White Stripes, The Silver Jews, Stephen Merritt/Magnetic Fields, Uncle Tupelo, and even freakin’ dead Nick Drake are all artists [artistes?] whose appeal and alleged genius I’ve never really gotten and are either just not for me or are overrated…

…and ditto for the films of Eric Rohmer.
***** listing Bruce might be more of a New Jersey heresy than a hipster heresy, though. Your mileage (and highway exits) may vary.

12

I think appreciating “Sugar, Sugar” for its cheesiness is exactly something a hipster would do. It would be liking the song unironically and considering it to be a great piece of popular music that would consititute hipster heresy.

13

I don’t like Miles Davis.

There, I’ve said it.

14

Frank Sinatra, besides being a complete dickhead, was a mediocre vocalist - he sings like he’d just shat his pants and the noisome, glutinous lump was slowly slithering anklewards - who only covered easy songs and didn’t even write his own arrangements: his “timeless appeal” remains unfathomable. And My Way sucks until your ears bleed.

15

I hate The Cure, Bob Marley, Aviator sunglasses, “Bad News Bears” haircuts, trucker hats, and t-shirts for places that don’t exist and events that never happened. Every new band on the radio (like Ok Go and the Killers) sounds like a shitty bar cover band that likes to play My Sharona two or three times a night.

16

[ul][li]I’ve never cared for the Velvet Underground.[/li][li]I like Green Day. I even liked them before “American Idiot”.[/li][li]Not every film made in Hong Kong is a work of stunning genius.[/li][li]Not every film made in Hollywood is an utter piece of crap.[/li][li]Clove cigarettes smell like ass.[/li][li]Swing dancing didn’t cease to be fun in 1997.[/li][li]Truffaut made better movies than Godard.[/li][/ul]

17

Thank you for the opportunity to say this:

Napoleon Dynamite was a complete piece of shite.

Another negative vote for Miles Davis --in fact, I don’t like jazz in general.

ANY clothing with the designer’s name prominently displayed; listen, dickweed, I paid for the freakin’ thing and now I get to give you free advertising? Nuh uh!

Wine.

Red Bull, Rockstar, or any so-called “energy” drink. Stuff tastes like my socks, and I can get a better buzz from a 65 cent can of Mountain Dew!

I feel better now.

18

I find Kurt Vonnegut to be boring and didactic. And I second everything Scissorjack said about Frank Sinatra.

19

I like some of Vonnegut’s work, but I once said I considered him a poor writer, and certainly not “literature” on the SDMB - and got jumped on variously.

However I’m now biting my tongue about the Sinatra comments. Grr. :wink:

20

Hipster Cred: I only find out about new bands by seeing them in concert: I don’t listen to mainstream radio at all. I feel weird buying music without at least 3 completely different genres of CDs in my hand.

Heresy:

– I like Heart. In an unironic way. Now, I won’t go so far to say that I like their 80’s stuff :slight_smile: but Dreamboat Annie is great.

– Ironic t-shirts are stupid unless they’re vintage. Made-faded faux vintage is even worse (although I do wear my made-faded “Dew U” t-shirt when I don’t have anything else to wear.)

– AOL provides good, if overpriced, dialup service.

– “Starship Troopers” is a witty parody, and sort of lame and a mockery of the book, both at the same time (hipsters have to have an opinion on it one way or another.)