10th
Indie rock culture wasn’t invented on the internet, or in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I went to the record stores and I watched other people browsing through records. Nothing is more telling than when someone pulls that one-square-foot piece of cardboard out of a bin filled with hundreds of similar pieces of cardboard. You’re definitely going to look at what he’s chosen. You see him pull out the Pat Benatar record, so you blow right by that person. But if he pulls “20 Jazz Funk Greats” by Throbbing Gristle, you perk up and take interest in what he might pull next. We’d do this dance around the record store with each other, and that was one way to find like-minded people. We don’t do that dance now. Now you read someone’s blog or use a search engine or do social networking.
Most people are passive consumers, the ones who hear something all over the radio and then buy the record or see the band at Madison Square Garden. Then there’s the questioning, investigative type of person, the type who seeks out the new music—and that was us.
