All hail the young pretenders in indie bands

Indie rock, schmindie rock. A friend asked me to see him perform in a small indie rock event two weeks back. I had lost interest in these events a while ago, but since I did not have anything planned I decided to go anyway.

Big mistake.

I quickly remembered why I avoid these gigs now. They're chockfull of posers. The occasional guy with the now cool Afro hair; he girl who thinks she invented the word tomboy. But nowhere in sight was the previously cool "Britpop" floppy hair.

And then there was the music. If one can call it that!

Basically, you'll hear a lot of familiar materials. Not because you've heard them before in a previous gig, mind you. Aside from the covers, they all seem familiar because ultimately they're just carbon copies of "cool" bands' materials. Only a lot worse.

Although I detest what's in the Top 40 right now (I personally think that Avril, Britney, Christina and Linkin Park should be confined to the deep woods of Siberia till Armageddon), one is painfully reminded why these indie bands are not signed to any label, big or small.

My friend's band was no different. The songs sounded like Radiohead cast-offs and the accompanying slideshow came across as pretentious at best.

While originality is sometimes overrated, these bands never seem to strive to find their own sound. They aspire to be the next Radiohead or The Cure or The Strokes, yet they're happy just to be known as the band who can look and sound like Radiohead or The Cure or The Strokes.

No, a dousing of make-up does not make you the genius that is Robert Smith, duh.

They believe it's the pinnacle of their (probably short-lived) career if they can sound exactly like their favorite band. The fans and their contemporaries pat them on the back for it, for God sakes. "Hey, man, that song could've been in the latest Radiohead album!"

It is not a local phenomenon, this. I can still remember being distinctively bored out of my wits at a student bar in Glasgow one autumn night listening to a host of local student bands playing bad Stone Roses covers (it was when the Madchester scene was on its last legs).

Those awful covers turned out to be the highlight of the evening. One band decided to treat the audience with their own song after a botched Stone Roses job and it was excruciating!

Sure, everybody has their inspirations. Every novice started out copying their idols, note after note. And sometimes some bands make it big with their tribute band mentalities (paging the Gallagher brothers!).

But what these bands fail to notice is what set their idols apart from the posers: They developed something they can call their own and they continue to move forward.

Back at the gig, I decided to stop moping during the neverending second song. After all, nobody forced me to come to any of these events.

So I switched on my trusty Nokia and decided to break my own record in the Snake game hall of fame. To the first person who put games in mobile phones, I salute you!

-- Krabbe K. Piting