March 13th, 2008The Narrowing Gap Between Indie Rock and Rachael Ray
In which I don’t totally have a point, but nonetheless talk a little about hipsterdom’s relation to appetite, and whether or not a band can sell out anymore
My weekend was so oppressively sad I ended up watching “Rachael Ray Feeds Your Pets” on Saturday night. Part of the show, however, was filmed at the llama farm in Granby, and as a result, a food hostess who normally occupies 0% of my mind occupied 0.1% of my mind.
So it was weird, on Sunday, that I’d end up reading about Rachael Ray again via the Onion AV Club. They reported, via MTV news, that Rachael Ray is hosting an afternoon cookout at Austin’s SXSW Festival. Here’s the descrip:
Feedback With Rachael RaySaturday 3/15 12:00 pm to 6:00 pmBeauty Bar (617 E. 7th St.)Listen Records, Watch Entertainment and Everyday With Rachael Ray come together to bring you Feedback…a feast of hot bands and tasty foods, hosted by America’s favorite cook and indie music lover, Rachael Ray. Join us at this merging of great food and even better music with performances by Autovaughn, The Raveonettes, The Cringe [Ray’s husband’s band], Scissors For Lefty, The Stills, and Holy *&%$. DJ Efren “Pedro” Ramirez from Napoleon Dynamite will be DJ-ing inside. Drinks on us and lots of Rachael’s Tasty Recipes. Open to all SXSW badgeholders.
MTV’s report gave me the impression that the indie community reacted to ‘Feedback’ with the expectable diarrheic blog-rage and Hatorade. That wasn’t totally the case, but there were nonetheless a few stray annoyances about the event: Brooklyn Vegan ran a hilarious Photoshop job showing Ray at a ska / hardcore show, and the thread on Stereogum settled into a snark-a-thon over Ray’s ‘hittability,’ whether or not she’s indier than Anthony Boudrain (who said Ray’s Dunkin’ Donuts endorsements were like “endorsing crack for kids,” later adding, “I’m not a very ethical guy. I don’t have a lot of principles. But somehow that seems to me over the line.”)
The degree to which any of this is so aggressively not news I’m absolutely aware of (there’s been no complaining about of SXSW’s other huge sponsorships, or its 263-ton carbon footprint that, certainly to their credit, they’re working on changing this year). But Ray addressed that issue to MTV:
“[…]I don’t understand why that’s so surprising. I find it weird that they find it weird. People think I’m like this food robot or something, but music is a huge part of my life,” she continued. “I’m a huge fan of rock music in general — all kinds. I like indie stuff, my favorite band is the Foo Fighters. When I first met my husband, he told me what he made for dinner the night before, and I thought, ‘OK, well, he can cook.’ And then he told me he had a band and I was like, ‘Aw, jeez. I hope they’re good,’ because I couldn’t deal with someone who didn’t play good music.”
Certainly, Ray’s personality is partly the reason for any discomfort among the indie kids: her relentless, raspy-voiced optimism, the fact that her dog is named Isaboo, the fact that she’s her own empire in a festival that vaguely eschews empires. But, for Chrissakes, it’s only food, and it’ll probably taste good. And that’s just it: food is one of the last elements of popular culture yet to be tarnished by irony and music-store-clerk ennui. Sure, there’s high-end food criticism, but nobody makes cynical, parody food, and nobody’s getting food poising off Taco Bell ironically. Which makes me wonder how much the indie code of conduct can even apply here: can your palette sell out? Can meta-food exist that comments on the act of eating - a metaburger? Or if, say, recording an album DIY or on an independent label is the equivalent of buying local at a supermarket, then how does getting wasted on Pabst or Bud - whose finances and marketing campaigns are just as widespread and irritating as Rachael Ray’s - fit in?
Then again, this is about food, not alcohol. And the current statuesque, skinny-jeaned brand of hipsterdom has always had an awkward relationship with food, always attempting to look like it has transcended the body’s basic needs. Being thin is important, but not so thin as to appear like you’ve put in time on a treadmill to achieve that thinness. It’s almost impossible, and quite weird, to imagine any hipster eating, going to the bathroom, or, like, having a stomach ache.
Maybe that’s about to change a little, or has changed already. Rachael Ray does, in fact, listen to Holy F—. She has Sirius. Where there would’ve been unanimous vitriol 10-20 years ago about her appearing at an event like SXSW, many bloggers, aside from those I’ve mentioned, wisely don’t care about any of this at all.
That’s partly because, today, there are too many ways to get known if you’re in a band or part of a music subculture — it’s pointless to be selfish about it. And maybe that shift from previous decades could and should redefine the idea of authenticity, for a band or a music community. The process of band exposure is different now. As larger labels acquire or spin off smaller, artsier ones, I wonder if it’s even possible anymore for the underground to “sell out” in the old-fashioned, 1980’s / 90’s sense? Pitchfork ran a headline about this a while ago, but I didn’t read the article and couldn’t find the link. More recently, Interpol didn’t sell out so much as get boring; Feist didn’t sell out so much as just happen to sound Starbucks-friendly. Either way: music’s politics of purity circa the 80’s and 90’s are dead. Don’t try to save them.
