Is It Spelled "Indie" or "Indy"?

So, I was perusing through my Amazon.com music recommendations today. These are CD’s Amazon thinks I might enjoy owning based on the music I bought from them in the past. The site also features recommendations in books, electronics and toys based on my buying history.

A couple years ago I would’ve been very proud of my Amazon.com music recommendations. Back then I was a college radio dj and was totally immersed in the world of independent music. I knew my stuff, or so I thought, about all that was indie and non-mainstream music. I turned up my nose at all the Clear Channel muck and thought myself a true indie girl. I had the subscription to Magnet and the Wilco T-shirt to prove it.

The Amazon.com music recommendation list would’ve given me further validation of that status. My recommendations are a veritable Who’s Who of the Indie Rock World. Back in the days of indie, it would’ve warmed my heart to read down the list and see that "these awesome indie bands are associated with me!" Plus, I derived great pleasure from the fact that I already owned most of the recommendations. Sort of like I had one-upped Amazon.

I know how ridiculous it sounds that a person could be so proud of such a list, especially since it’s an automated list created by programs that were created by computer techs who probably know very little about that type of music anyway. Still, back in the day, the list would’ve been a small jewel in my indie crown. I probably would’ve copied and pasted it into emails and shared it with my friends. Or maybe I would’ve posted it on my old blog.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love independent music, and my favorite bands have not changed since those days. But at some point I crossed over from being a hardcore indie person - and, yes, it was a significant lifestyle change - into being a person who likes that one song by Good Charlotte and that one song by Kelly Clarkson. Furthermore, I became a person who is willing to admit to liking certain mainstream songs and concerts.

Indie kids are very territorial. I’d probably be shooed out of the old record shops I used to haunt if the personnel or loyal customers got wind of my slackened mainstream policy. Something in me stopped caring about the sneers of disgust given out by those indie kids when they heard someone say the Incubus concert "rocked ass!" I got tired of the condescension that so many of those hardcore people like to use in their conversations about pop culture or whatever. It all seems so futile and wasteful now – all that energy spent on proving you’re not a sheep.

I get it. I mean, I really do. I will always be able to relate to those indie kids. Some days I even miss being one of them. But I know that when someone asks me what concerts I saw last year, and I say "Uhhh, Saliva, KISS and..... let’s see, Linkin Park?" there’s no going back to the Land of Indie. And that’s okay.

By the way, I keep typing the word "indie," and I used to say it a lot. It’s supposed to be funny in its gross overuse. Anyone who actually knows what I mean by "indie" probably knows that many college radio bands aren’t all that indie anymore anyway in the no-label/D.I.Y. sense. So, the ludicrousness of the indie myth continues to grow.

I guess for old time’s sake it won’t hurt to post a partial listing of Amazon’s music recommendations just to show what would’ve - at one point in my life - put a little indie sparkle in my eye:

01. Neutral Milk Hotel/In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
02. Pavement/Brighten the Corners
03. Broken Social Scene/You Forgot It in People
04. Arcade Fire/Funeral
05. Pavement/Terror Twilight
06. Pavement/Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
07. Ween/The Mollusk
08. Iron & Wine/Our Endless Numbered Days
09. My Bloody Valentine/Loveless
10. Silver Jews/American Water
11. Wrens/Meadowlands
12. Death Cab for Cutie/Transatlanticism
13. Spoon/Kill the Moonlight
14. The Shins/Chutes Too Narrow
15. Modest Mouse/Lonesome Crowded West
16. Sonic Youth/Daydream Nation
17. Franz Ferdinand/Ferdinand
18. Ben Kweller/On My Way
19. The Walkmen/Bows & Arrows
20. French Kicks/Trial of the Century

There was also a recommendation for U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb on there. You can bet I would’ve been insulted back then. Actually, I kind of still am. Indie has nothing to do with the fact that I’ll always hate U2.