A short analysis of things of unimportance….

The Indie scene is an understandably weird culture, its counter-culture adapted into popular culture, at least that’s how I see it in society, especially in Jakarta. The dominance of what I describe as “posers” at concerts. The static and expressionless faces of those who understand nothing about the scene they are at. A waste of time, space, and money. To watch a musician or a group play without understanding a fucking note. This is the capitalistic nightmare, when means are available yet culture has not thoroughly integrated within society. These posers feel the need to go to what is labelled by society as hip, happening, and in the now. Enjoyment is inevitable yet they administrate those oh so familiar static and expressionless glance to the stage, only enjoying mostly the popular singles. Point in case: Incubus (5 Mar 2008) – yes, I am aware that they are not what you call “indie” but it definitely can give an understanding about my concept of posers – I can really understand why the band left so early without an encore, the people just don’t fucking get it! Repertoires from their earlier work proved unfamiliar to these posers – which at the time filled almost three quarters of the venue – resulting in the aforementioned idiotic gawks towards the stage, the only excitement displayed by the crowd was at their performance of their single, Drive – which to me is a bland acoustic ballad compared to the rest of their work.

The concert of the previously indie Denmark based self-proclaimed “pretentious art rock” band MEW (9 Aug 2009) showed similarities. The point of going on tour is to promote new materials, in which they did, only to be responded by total awkwardness and cluelessness to the performance. As I enjoyed myself there, only one song caught their attention, Am I Wry? – Which is mostly, to my logic, because of major airplay on MTV. The enjoyment of attending concerts has now made myself tired and uninterested based on the fact that these posers are most likely to ruin the fun for me. Basically, a band or musician would get a rush of adrenaline from positive crowd reactions, or “spontaneous feedback” a lousy crowd would result in the band thinking “what the fuck are we even doing here?” the exact impression a poser would leave. So how did these posers came to be? And is it a fact that they grow even more every time? That, is a truly unknown fact, but what is known is that media promotions could be the main cause of such catastrophe, prior to the more commercialized music scene, everyone had a community and a segment. Over-promotion is key to barricading these metaphorical walls of commune fandom and segment based concert goers. Punk scene-goers would go to, well, punk music concerts (duh..) and metal scene-goers would go to metal scene concerts, and ska scene-goers would go to ska music concerts. The crossovers of music genre led to the fact that mainstream jazz music would blend with pop jazz music in one event (JavaJazzFestival), confusing the crowd in labelling such genres, resulting in “ending up in the wrong scene”, hence we find posers.

So maybe, we cannot at all point the finger to say that posers are to blame with the whole uncomfortable concert going experience, for it is certain event promoters are looking for more ways to interest the general public to go to their events – which means,  in other words, looking for profit. So, what is really happening here? Has music finally lost it’s meaning? Well perhaps not, music still has integrity thanks to a handful of artists, but still we ponder on the future of the music world, the assumption is that trends are a non linear continuous cycle, and profit seekers will always have their watchful eyes close to art as their tools of production. Alas, artistic prostitution will always be a part of society, and as artists, we ourselves control the path of our existence.