oh everyone here does, its like the second thing people ask you!, "hi whats your name?........so what are you?...emo/metal head/rocker/indie/goth?"

that's terrible.
where is the "none of the above" option?

It doesn't exist. Thats just what england is like. It's worse where I am though, where I am generally asked 'are you a goth or are you normal like me'.

it doesn't really get to me much, i happen to love all of the bands ya mentioned, gmku, especially BSS and the Arcade Fire, as much as some of the people who listen to it may be lame, i don't give a shit, i tihnk the music is awesome. i like Bloc Party too. think what you will.

Don't all the bands you listed have major distribution deals? True independent art is crafted in basements and bedrooms and distributed through word of mouth and great gigs.The bands you list seem to be on some wanna be roster of alternative...which just means they wanna turn a profit...even tho their tunage I would agree does blow,they stick to a national sound format of whiny,tuneless crap.Just watch any TV commercial,it's the now sound.

yet another reason not to move to england.

Never move here. Please.

your country would be a shambles if i did.

Some of those bands that were implicated earlier are on an independent label in the U.K., but a major label in the States. "Indie" status aside, those bands are certainly over-hyped unnecessarily and undeservingly, and that is really why you hate them.

Quite like the phrase folk music when it became genre-fied in the 60's--thus excluding over half of the music from the American Anthology of Folk Music from the increasingly accepted definition of folk in America--the word indie has become tantamount to a genre-descriptive, whereas, like folk, it's historical definition has been to define the mode or process by which a wide stylistic variety of music is created.

But to get to really bent about mainstream media and ad execs hijacking a word and polluting its definition....that's really just a waste of time. There's no undoing the damage. The definiton changed for emo and hardcore, too, and enjoyment of hip hop no longer requires livin' the lifestyle like it did 20 years ago. Short of writing the proper definition in the best selling book of all time, no person can make it pure again.

this is something I've been thinking for like half a year. To me, "indie" has become a genre as opposed to a level in the tiers of "music business" if you will. I know a lot of people shudder at the words "music business", and think they are outside that circle, but they're just fools.

I don't like how there is a genre of music called indie rock, becuz if yr in an independant rock band then all of a sudden(sp?) you're no good.

I CAN'T STAND INDIE ROCK

Yeah i can't stand it,i can't stand it,I CAN'T STAND IT!But then......why do i listen to it?Why do i think of it?Why do i bother?It's ok,indie rock.I can't stand you so therefore i'll ignore you.Good luck.

i hardly think of genres or scenes, i sometimes happen to like bands that are scene and lumped with a lot of crap which i find surprising (like the shins or the arcade fire, for example). i sort of always felt it was fucked that indie music like pavement, dinosaur, cat power, etc. up to the shins and the arcade fire was poppy and slick-produced, i thought that indie music was supposed to be noise and ugly and hard to swallow!! now i appreciate them for what they are, poppy and nice and shit, it's cool, just not made to stay indie.

i don't like those b52's rip offs (new pornographers), those belle and sebastian rip offs (bss) or those...well...completely horrific shit that's crap your hands say hurl.

a) what?! have you listened to the arcade fire!? you can hear his fingers sliding on the gtr, maing that "wwaeee" noise. now, if you call that "slick produced," then ok.. but thats an odd definition. i really fail to see what you mean there. the shins, maybe, but then again, i don't really care for them. but the arcade fire, not a chance.

b) nor do i. they annoy me.

c) what?! are you sure about that?! i hear no real B&S similarites, at least not enough to be called a rip-off. plus, BSS' first album was an electronic-y ambient album. getcher facts man.

d) yeh.. they are a snooze.

the arcade fire is a band that HAS to be produced slickly in order to capture all the instruments they use (same case with neutral milk hotel or sufjan stevens, for instance); also, i meant slick production values for underground music, not by mainstream standards, it's certainly more hi fi than hair police, no neck blues band or the goslings, which are kinda what i had in mind.

i don't know the history of bss but i saw them open for dinosaur jr last year and they did strike me as a boring belle and sebastian knock off, lots of people onstage with a girl singer besides the male guys doing cutesy pop songs and sometimes playing trumpets and stuff...it seemed very b&s to me, i haven't heard their first album though; i tried getting into them so much but i really don't see why people like them at all.

I think Indie, to many, is more of a genre and not a degree of siad band's label stance. MOst assume will mean your pitchfork regulars or garden variety garden state soundtrack bands. It was about this time that indie was given a shot to attention because the shins were damn good (hey, that first album is good). Ima ramble, fuck my point/.

not to worry, i'm gathering up my hoodlum friends in new york and starting a new scene.
we'll be nihilists and live in the east village.
hey, it'll be just like...

Indie rock now a days is so slick and corporate sounding as well as looking.

I wouldn't agree with Broken Social Scene and New Pornographers, gmku.
I think these two bands can throw some neat-ass tunes and are generally more than amusing to me.

Arcade Fire, The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Decemberists, Bright Eyes, etc, on the other hand, are just a pile of bull shit.

Broken Social Scene are appaling both on record and live.They'll go away soon,trust me.For the time being,indie or nor indie they're here so let's live with them.