"BLISS IS A MAINSTREAM LABEL..."
an article showing the ignorance some people have of the differences between underground and mainstream music

For those unaware, I am a college student (but not for much longer, I'll be leaving in about a month, so when this zine finally surfaces, I probably won't be a college student, but let's get to the point of this, eh?!) One of the subjects I'm studying at the moment is Media Studies, and a recent Media lesson involved bringing in products which you considered to be "alternative" and/or "independent", and everyone in the class had a discussion on whether they agreed that it was alternative/independent or not. (This was the basic gist of it anyway).

I brought in some of my tapes and fanzines. The conclusion made about my fanzines was that they were largely alternative, and produced/distributed independently, but some of the subject matter within the pages was not alternative, e.g. reviews of bands on major labels. OK, fair enough, I agreed with this. I then played bits of the first few songs from Carnelian, and the tutor said it all sounds very professional (well of course, I don't put any old amateurish drivel on my tapes, y'know!) But wait for it... she said she wouldn't consider it to be alternative as it sounds like MAINSTREAM music!!!!! Alright, I thought, there are some bands in the charts playing so-called "indie" music, and if you haven't heard of any lesser known bands, then you're gonna compare the bands whose songs I played to well known bands, aren't you? For instance, Dream Baby Dream got compared to Garbage, Echobelly and The Cranberries. A lame comparison, I know, all these bands have in common is a female singer, but if these are the only vaguely similar bands you've heard of, I suppose you can be forgiven... (Redditch people are on the whole only known for their knowledge of mainstream music, see Aqua 2 for more on this...)

So I said I'd put one of the Magic Moments At Twilight Time tracks on, as I feel their music is different as it mixes various genres, such as rock, dance and synth-pop. These styles of music on their own are mainstream-sounding, but mixed together, they are quite the opposite. After a few seconds, the tutor said "I don't know, Kim, I don't think this is very alternative at all..." I would have responded with the likes of "Are you sure we're talking about the same band here?" but the song Purple Eyed And Mystified is one of their most accessible songs, and if all their songs were like that then they could probably appeal to a mass audience.

I then said I would put one of the Mary Queen of Scots tracks from Green Oranges on. I explained that I considered it to be alternative to the mainstream as it was recorded at home on 4-track by one person. I also said that MQS was/were influenced by various bands on the Sarah label, a label which was ignored/mocked by the music press, classed as "cutie", and generally not taken seriously. (These descriptions of Sarah may seem obvious to most people reading this, but I had to explain the sort of reputation Sarah had as this bunch hadn't got a clue what I was going on about). I pressed play. Some kid in the class said "This is like THE CHARLATANS, and they were really popular in the late 80's!" The tutor's response to Around The Sun was that it "sounds like The Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday". So, the overall conclusion was... BLISS IS A MAINSTREAM LABEL!!!! Tee-hee. I guess the tutor (and probably the rest of the class as well) had preconceived ideas about what the music was gonna sound like - amateurish, experimental, lo-fi to the extreme, weird to the point of unlistenability. I don't even consider including material of these descriptions on my tapes. Just cos the bands are listenable, and they play proper music doesn't mean that Bliss is a mainstream label! Also, some girl in the class seemed to think it was weird that I should not want to release tapes of stuff I don't like... Redditch people for ya, eh?

FOOTNOTE FROM SEVERAL YEARS LATER...
To understand this article the most, it helps if you're familiar with the music of Dream Baby Dream, Magic Moments At Twilight Time and Mary Queen of Scots. If you're not, this article could come across like I'm the ignorant one and the people from college knew what they were on about. Unfortunately the vast majority of people from Redditch that I've ever come into contact with have known nothing about underground music, so because of this they compare these bands with the bands they are aware of, regardless of whether they actually sound like them! It's the non-journalist equivalent of lazy journalism.

It's true that there are indie-type bands in the charts, but if you know what's what about indie music you are capable of telling the difference between the various indie subgenres, and you will recognise that the popular bands don't really have much in common with the less-known bands, even though they're all pigeonholed as 'indie'. I mean, you'd have to be a complete idiot to think that Mary Queen of Scots, purveyors of melancholic indiepop inspired by bands such as Brighter and Another Sunny Day, sound like The Charlatans or The Rolling Stones (the latter not even being of the same genre, and the former making a very different type of indie music to MQS). No doubt if I'd have played the tapes to people who are underground-aware, I'd have got a very different, and closer-to-the-truth response.

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