Winkle Picker Blues
- 3 Aug 07, 02:14 PM
Back in 1994 I spent an amusing night with Noel and Liam Gallagher as they argued about Primal Scream. The boys from Oasis had recently signed to Creation Records, home of the Scream, and they weren’t sure if this was a bonus or not. Noel was positive, but Liam wasn’t having it.
The singer was fresh out of Burnage, still at war with the universe, scowling like Albert Steptoe. He hated the Primal Scream front man, almost as much as he despised those southern chancers from Blur. What it boiled down to was that Bobby Gillespie wore winkle pickers boots. This, Liam claimed, was conclusive proof that the guy wasn’t rock and roll.
And if he wasn’t rock and roll, then the Oasis rules dictated that you were indie. Or indie schmindie, as Noel called it with an exquisite sneer. The bothers didn’t have to spell it out much further. Indie kids, the Gallaghers believed, were fey, middle class boys with guitars and floppy fringes. They were musical snobs and underachievers, slumming it in music before taking up a position in father’s estate agent offices. Indie kids, according to Oasis, were the ultimate moral cowards.
Yesterday, the argument began all over again in Belfast. This time, the opponents had come from the local scene to debate the perennial issue: ‘What Is Indie’. The discussion had been set up by the Trans festival in conjunction with the Bruised Fruit agency. And so we heard about industry ethics, about DIY marketing and the heavily fetishised joy of a pristine, limited edition, seven inch single.
The essential problem is that independent record companies in the ’70s and ’80s were brave enterprises, trying to nurture new music and alternative practices. These days, the process has been utterly infiltrated by the major record companies. Indie is now a lifestyle, a demographic on a marketing plan. The revolution has been auctioned off, leaving behind the fabled “indie bedwetters” with their damp ballads.
I used to care about such stuff myself. But these days, it seems like an inevitable process. Capitalism will always find ways to make money out of the counter culture. The trick is to move a bit faster and to look for new challenges in different places. Hence the only important question left: whither the next revolution?
Stu Bailie presents The Late show on Radio Ulster, every Friday from 10pm until midnight. See his playlist here.
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