It may be inherent skepticism or denial, but whenever people talk about trends and hotness, I immediately feel a need to distance myself from whatever scene I may be lumped into. Very archetypal hipster dilettante.
A brief history of my anti-scenesterism:
Two Tone/Ska — Came late to the game with the mod parka. English Beat, The Jam and a borrowed Vespa. Missed it by a half dozen years, never went to a mod-themed club. Embarrassed by: played keyboard for a ska outfit in the early 90s. Set off a firestorm of ska activity in region. Still apologizing to the kids.
Hip Hop/Rap — Hated the Beastie Boys first record, loved Run DMC. Loved Public Enemy. Never bought a single album. Had a roommate play NWA and EPMD as well as 3rd Bass enough to last a lifetime. Not so embarrassed by: backed up and featured rappers on Acid/Punk jazz album. Not apologizing to the kids, but wish I would have kept the kick drum on the drum machine (808) track up when the real drums came in on one of the songs.
Alt/Indie — Wasn’t that into the Replacements. Did like the early REM. Felt they sold out somewhere in the later 80s, early 90s. Not that moved by later work. Don’t own any Sebadoh. Guilty of owning Built to Spill. Like Wilco. Don’t own any Sunny Day Real Estate. Despise the layout of pitchforkmedia.com as cluttered and unreadable while being guilty myself of perpetuating intentionally unreadable design in print medium. Still, I love most of the stuff on 3hive…
In terms of design scenes, I’m guilty of everything: type mangling, grungy, edgy, using orange and gray, David Carson ripping off, electronic/rave and drop shadowing. I’ve been very into clean. Just like everybody else. Total scenester. I still think that design should reflect it’s subject matter. Particularly editorial design. This means that music magazines shouldn’t look like Rolling Stone.
Finally, the online scene. I do not blog because it is hip. I write online to keep myself writing. I do not regard myself as hip for publishing this site. I’m very wary of the big media saying that blogging is hip for the simple fact that I don’t regard it as such.
In other news: there is another round of America’s Next Top Model starting up and it appears cattier than ever. Fantastic.
UPDATE: Heather has informed me that in fact we do own Sebadoh and Sunny Day Real Estate. I married into them.
Also published on Medium.