RUSH OR ANIMAL COLLECTIVE?

A lot of people in blog-land spend lots of time thinking about "indie" bands, and what it means if you say you like them, or if you say you don't like them, or if you used to like them but don't anymore, or you just don't "get" them. Exhibit A: this piece about the band Animal Collective, who I don't "get," and not in any musical Rorschach way. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes when you say you don't "get" a band, you really just don't get them. I read somewhere that this band was practically "invented" by the internet. People enjoy talking about them more than they enjoy listening to them. That's a generalization, but they seem like one of those bands that people just love to talk about endlessly.

I would much rather read this: Alex Lifeson of Rush discussing his three favorite solos (from his own career by the way). He is a kind of funny guy, and probably realizes that there's something a bit silly about this kind of list. But that doesn't mean that it devolves into meaningless sacrastic nothingness. This next comment will send indie rockers through the roof, but I have begun to regard that kind of music, in my mind, as "mainstream." Not in the Nickelback or Three Doors Down way (I don't like those bands either), but in the sense that the media falls all over these guys. By contrast, Rush gets very little media attention, the attention they do get isn't as serious as what, say, Pavement would get, and yet they sell out arena tours year after year. By the way, I'd put the average IQ of a Rush concert up against that of most indie rock shows. Maybe the Rush fans wouldn't have as trendy clothes, but I bet they are having more fun, and not having a problem admitting it.