The Indie Genre

The History:

The Indie Rock genre is a sub-genre of rock music that tends to be more alternative. It originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1980's.

Although the genre didn't take off until the 1980's he roots of the indie genre are traced back as far as Velvet Underground, who recorded and released their first album in 1967.

Velvet underground can be identified as a proto-indie band by a number of key facts:

1. The sound quality is very 'lo-fi' and raw, although this could be because of the age of the footage, most probably because they wanted it like that.

2. The music is very experimental, although the music in this video is not experimental nowadays - it could even be said that it is rather outdated by todays standards, but when this was released in the late 60's the music was very 'weird' and unheard of.

Although the origins are seen in velvet underground. Indie rock has a long history even though it has only just reached the height of popularity.

In the mid to late 70's punk took off in the United States. It was Underground, it was rebellious and orginated in new york city. It was inspired by bands such as the velvet underground (featured above), While here in England we had such bands as Sex pistols and the clash. Following closely behind this explosion in punk, was new wave, it started in the UK in the mid 80's and was a bit more experimental and polished than Punk was. Instead of the very simplistic lyrics that Punk music often had, New Wave was a bit more clever and complex. Notable artists from the earlier years of the scene include Elvis Costello and Tom Robinson. In America, New Wave was used to describe artists that were associated with the Punk scene but didn't have fast and raw Punk sound. These artists include Blondie and The Talking Heads. It would quickly hit the mainstream in both countries. In the 80s, the term New Wave would become generalized and became attached to all synthpop groups. Following this post-punk began to emerge in the UK, which gave scene to bands such as joy division and the cure.

Then in the early 80's teenagers who weren't particularly anything special on the guitar, and didn't have 'big voices' such as Robert Plant and Freddy Mercury, started their own bands as they thought they could make good music regardless. This then caused independent labels to be formed and then the Indie Genre. Since then the genre has kept increasing in popularity, almost every week there seems to be a new Indie band in the publics eye.

Today:

Indie music has changed a lot since the seventies, and has become even more experimental than ever. Although the music is evolving the actual instruments are going back in time, back to the stages of folk music for example:

Although this video and band are not british it still backs up my point about using more unusual instruments. This does belong to the indie genre, although the costume and video may not seem like it.