Perspective

I am trying to reconcile the fact that I like hipster music with the fact that I don't find myself to be much of a hipster. Hipster-ism, as a form of behavior, seems like another attempt at labeling a generation of people who happen to have as little or as much alike in common as any other group of people that have ever suffered a label. Yet it's pushed onto these groups in order to make it easy to pick them apart based on such mutable characteristics such as fashion, profession, and social diversions (and immutable ones like age group).
To be exact, I may have fallen within the trappings of the label, for I agree with the descriptions of those who find that there is much to loathe from the hipsters. This particular article set me off in the wrong way about hispterism. It is an article that always considers the consequences of the society (the hipsters themselves) and never the society itself. The Hipster generation is a generation of young people that demonstrates apathy to everything and stands for nothing because it is a generation of shutouts that suffers from a lack of opportunities hence a general disdain for the social structure. However, the hipster is born of the ideas of the previous generation that their hardwork would allow the next generation to reap the benefits and move up the social ladder. It's not only a generation of malcontents who face reality, but a generation of brokenhearted dreamers who were told that they could be anything if they just worked hard enough. If one also adds to that recipe that all hispters have been bombarded by consumerism in order to build a social identity, then you more or less encounter with the reality that is the hipster. Thus the tongue in cheek humor, the constant ironies and the skinny jean culture. The fact that it's a culture speaks more to the shortcomings of the society than of the group itself.

That being said, fitting in is fitting in. Everyone tries to fit in, no one is exempt from that. Given those barometers I cannot say that I'm not a hipster, not only because I match the criteria above but because I associate with said culture (cue "Hipsters Are My Friends" for great shirt idea). As to what that means for the music on this blog, be sure that hipsters do listen to this music, some for the sake of feeling cool, others because they like it. I fit in with the latter. I don't dedicate my free time to this blog in order to feel or look cool, but because I like music, I like the music I post and I'm pretty sure that if you read this blog, you like it too.

This entire post now comes full circle to the origins of what made me think to write it. I came across a post about how great Phoenix was live, how awesome they're music is and how said author "FEELS the music" instead of just going to a show where you like the music and the band plays exactly like the album or is noticeably less talented than the album demonstrated, so forth and so on....all points taken, I probably agree with him. It still doesn't sit well with me, though, that said author takes Phoenix to be the end all and be all of music, that it starts and ends with them, as if they hadn't been around for a long time, as if they hadn't made music that was almost as phenomenal...basically, the post reeked of bandwagonism. That irks me. What's worse is that it irks me that it irks me. I write on a blog to get people to LIKE that sort of music, so for me to accuse somebody of liking it too much is not only hypocritical, but self-defeating. In the end, I should be happy that people like the music, not only for the listener but for the artists, in this particular case very deserving of the spotlight, suspicious as I might be that it ruins the music later on. Oh well, I'll have to live with the paranoia, and to show you no hard feelings, here's the latest hipster nugget, a cover of Phoenix's song "Rome" by Devendra Banhart.

Phoenix - Rome (Neighbors with Devendra Banhart) (alt)

P.S. Sorry for the babbling, I hope it made sense and I promise it won't happen often.

BONUS EDIT:

Phoenix - Love Like A Sunset (Animal Collective Remix - Deakin's Jam) (alt) via