I don’t think I am a hipster, nor have I ever been… but I think I’m affiliated with them in some way. I tend to have conversations with hipster types and usually I come across as one of them. I love live music, the whole new new wave of bands like The Hives and The Strokes. I read Q and NME religiously, love independent films, and am pretty lefty on social issues - gay rights, affirmative action, etc. I was three hours shy of a Women’s Studies minor in undergrad (completely unintentional - the race/class courses were typically cross-listed as Women’s Studies, Afro-Am, and Sociology. Guess which listing had the most spaces?).
Here are my heresies:
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[li]I love '70s soft rock - I’m on a big 10cc kick right now, Alan Parsons Project as well.[/li][li]I also love late 70s and 80s power pop - like Cliff Richard and Bucks Fizz and Dollar. (Okay, that’s really bad, and I actually want to punch myself for admitting that.)[/li][li]Nirvana was okay but not that great.[/li][li]South Park has never been funny in any universe.[/li][li]Radiohead rocked on Pablo Honey, really had it going on for The Bends, still had it for OK Computer, but completely lost the plot after. Kid A and Amnesiac are two of the most unlistenable albums ever recorded and I’m fairly certain that it was a joke by the band to see how far they could go before people caught on that the songs weren’t very good.[/li][li]I wear a lot of concert/statement t-shirts with a blazer… but I also own ties and really nice suits. Not because I have to, but because I want to.[/li][li]I actually think it’s cool if someone has all of the outward trappings of being a hipster, but loves Britney Spears (or something like that).[/li][/ul]
I’m not a hipster, but I guess I identify more with them than any other subcultures. Still, I feel they are elitist and snobby by nature, and I definitely don’t feel like part of any organized scene or that I’m welcome in any subculture.
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[li]I feel like I’m being judged or mocked mercilessly when I bring CDs into the local indie music store to trade for store credit.[/li][li]I love vintage-looking shirts (bowling shirts, guayaberas, Hawaiians, etc), but never find anything good in thrift stores. J.C. Penney is just fine for my purposes.[/li][li]I dress up for work (usually just shirt, tie, and slacks, but occasionally a suit) and I love it. I look good dressed up, and would much rather dress like that than in faded, too-tight T-shirts with ironic catch-phrases.[/li][li]As much as I love “indie rock,” I’m also a huge fan of jazz, swing, ska, rockabilly, trip-hop, alt-country, surf, punk, and dozens of other musical genres. I played sax in a ska-punk band in college and still consider it the most fun time of my life and nothing to be embarrassed about.[/li][li]I also admit to liking some pop songs (including “Since U Been Gone” and “Toxic”) hip-hop (old-school and gangsta rap as much as nerd-rap and underground stuff), and overwrought, melodramatic rock (Meatloaf, Styx, “The Final Countdown” by Europe, “training montage”-style rock from '80s movie soundtracks, and epic power metal like Nightwish and Dragonforce).[/li][li]I used to be a huge pro wrestling fan, and still enjoy watching football and having beers with my friends. Yes, I like PBR, but not because it’s the “cool” beer to drink.[/li][li]I read comic books and collect action figures, but I’m not trying to make any kind of ironic statement. I just like 'em.[/li][li]I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, I hate black coffee, and I hate hanging out in coffeehouses and bars and clubs (unless there is a live act I’m purposely there to see).[/li][li]I’d rather cook at home or visit favorite joints for stuff like barbecue and Vietnamese food than hit the latest trendy restaurants and hotspots.[/li][li]I keep my beard trimmed short and neat and shave my own head every two weeks. Yes, I admit it’s partially to disguise my early balding, but I also think I look cooler this way.[/li][/ul]
That Paris Hilton song is kind of alarmingly catchy, isn’t it? Damn her. Damn her and her catchy song ruining our cred.
Anyway.
My Hipster Cred:
*I make my own clothing and cute crocheted hats
*I read Paste, Ready Made, and Nylon whenever I can get my hands on them
*I know who the Thirteenth Floor Elevators are, and I like them.
*I cannot help but subconsciously judge people by their choice in music.
*I love Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Wes Anderson, and Paul Thomas Anderson.
My Hipster Heresy:
*I make cute crocheted hats, but there is nothing ironic about them. I just like bright things with earflaps.
*I read US magazine far more than I should.
*Deep down in my soul, I still love Metallica. The Black Album fucking rocks, man.
*I hate people who refuse to dance at concerts. The shoegazer shuffle does not count as dancing. And no, you cannot opt out of dancing to the opening act. Just shake that skinny white ass already!
*Headbanging does, however, count as dancing. And yes, I’ve given myself horrible neckpain from headbanging for too long. Sabbath rules.
*J.K. Rowling and Stephen King may not be “literary” or “au courant” or whatever, but they tell good stories, and that means more to me than clever metaphors.
i think one of the most loathsome programmes ever to desecrate a t.v. set was "rowan and martins laugh in " ,"the laugh in " bit of the title put the idea into the heads of the marching morons that it was hip,cool and trendy and that as well as being incredibly funny was ,witty and inciteful and anyone who found the "gags " ,if they can be dignified as such , unamusing weren`t intelligent enough to understand the deeper meanings of the “comedic geniusis”.as a result we had people desperately laughing and clapping ! for cliffs sake at some of the most dismal tripe ever transmitted ,just in case they were labelled as thickos ! self consciously "zany " characters spouting the same ,bloody catch phrases week after week ! about as exciting as a commando death watch beetle entering west minster abbey . phew i feel better for that !
I like designer clothes, having a real job and I think the new “indie” clothes just look dirty. Fuck, bring back the Eurotrashy business goth look. I like my men in Zegna and shiny black shoes dancing to Depeche Mode (while maintaining a brutish 3rd world masculinity).
I still call music “alternative” rather than “indie”.
I think Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Fuguilera and Britney Federfunk have all put out brilliant pop songs.
That said, I still wear Chucks with my monkey suit to walk to the train and I’m heavily stereotypeable in other hipster ways-like caring about the environment, listening to college radio blahblahblah. I’m more likely to be friends with some pretentious indie freak than a white hatter (are they still called that? See!)
My hipster credentials (such as they are):
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I wear black most of the time.
Bands and musicians I like include Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, the Decemberists, the Ramones, and Sufjan Stevens.
I would live in a bookstore if I could. Preferably one with a cafe inside or next door.
I read The Believer and The Onion.
I prefer to wear glasses with square/clunky frames.
I like hanging out in the Los Feliz/Silverlake/Echo Park area. Also Chinatown and downtown LA’s loft district (but not so much at night, especially since Al’s Bar closed down)
[/ul]
My hipster heresies:
[ul]
I actually got married and had a kid. :eek: Yes, I am a mommy. Deal with it.
I listen to the radio. (Besides NPR, I mean)
I work in an office, in an honest-to-goodness cubicle. (is there a death-of-the-human-soul smiley?)
I watch TV sometimes, even (gasp!) Disney Channel 'cause The Princess likes it.
I don’t have Bettie Page bangs, Goth make-up, thrift-shop clothes or a lunch box for a purse.
I’ve never been to any band’s in-store appearance at Amoeba Records.
I take public transportation sometimes.
I have no tattoos or (currently) piercings other than in my ears.
[/ul]
Although I once had a navel ring, but the piercing kept getting infected so I had to take it out.
I am not hip, never have been, and never will be, even in my wildest dreams. I’ll contribute anyway.
Sigh… Frank Zappa was a remarkable guitarist. He also had an amazing knack for spotting, developing and nurturing talent (a stint with Zappa’s band ALWAYS made a musician much better). He commanded the respect of a huge number of outstanding musicians. As a composer, he showed sophistication and complexity that most supposedly “progressive” rockers couldn’t come close to.
Which is why it blows my mind how little of his music doesn’t suck!
I’m so unhip (by popular definition) that it’s a wonder my legs haven’t fallen off.
I’ve never heard of most of the bands mentioned in this thread, so I’m going to throw this one out there:
If a band was any good, they’d be on the radio, The fact that they aren’t tells me they must be worse than the usual crap the radio plays these days.
Most people agree that “Straight To Video” movies are generally pants (to borrow an Englishism I’m rather fond of), and I think it’s time that Hipsters accepted that music which gets no airplay on the radio is also pants, at best.
I think the problem is that that I haven’t updated my hipster cred and still cling to the Depeche Mode era (and um, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure) & potentially early to mid-90s incarnation of hipster (I’m also a Liz Phair, Pixies, Urge Overkill, Radiohead, They Might be Giants type). A lot of that stuff has become pretty radio-friendly or the artists have changed their image to become more radio-friendly so it automatically defies the “uknown no one else listens to it” requirements of hipsterdom. Except I do remember the days back when these people were all kind of ground-breaking and “alternative”. I DO listen to modern hipster music but for the most part my interest in it is kind of fleeting and I go back to the old mainstays, my Eurotrash pussy-goth dance music and early to mid-90s alternative.
Another big problem for me is that 1/2 the hipster music I hear today seems to be from people who can’t play or sing or compose an underlying melody to save their lives (unfortunately I’m very tied to melody seeing as I grew up on Indian music first). Julie Holland and Calexico and Yo La Whatever…they can never hurry up and compose a good beat and worst of all, I cannot stand to listen to people who can’t carry a tune. Ani DiFranco was about my limit and Liz Phair at least used to limit the extent to which she had to stretch her voice so it didn’t sound so fucking bad!
Then again, a friend of mine just clued me into TV on the Radio and I still love most of the stuff that I hear on my old college radio (WPGU online)-it’s just that I’m no longer interested in entire albums, but you know, I’ll go buy one song from Phoenix or Sufjan Stevens, but I don’t bother with buying a whole album.
Fortunately, most of my fave bands still seem to go on tour but I’ve noticed more and more that I don’t really care for their new stuff as much. I haven’t liked a Radiohead album since the one after Kid A-I didn’t really like the one they released in 2003. The one exception was that I did dig the latest Depeche Mode and regret that I didn’t go to the concert but I’ve been watching them perform since Violater so it’s not like I missed the chance of a lifetime or anything.
They’re clothes, OK? Not “street wear”. I know you wear them in the street, but they’re still just clothes. And if you’re old enough to hold a driver’s licence, you’re too old for a skateboard - what are you, 10? Go buy something with an engine in it.
I agree with you for the most part (as I said in my post on page 1 - why can’t anyone write a decent melody anymore?), but I have to say Yo La Tengo doesn’t completely fall into this category. They do their share of droney/psych stuff (which I don’t mind), but they’ve definitely done their share of concise, catchy pop tunes, too. Their new album has a bit of all of it - and the catchy pop tunes are my favorites.
