Music: Watchoo Talkin' 'Bout Sasha Frere-Jones?!

This weeks indie-rock controversy continues to snowball (see my original post here) -- Yes it's Sasha Frere-Jones' Molotov cocktail of a New Yorker article (and blog posting and podcast -- can a video game be far behind?) suggesting that indie rock has eradicated all traces of "black" musical forms. Now comes Carl "not the Beach Boys one" Wilson's response in Slate which turns out to be actually pretty good. While taking Frere-Jones to task for all of his article's obvious shortcomings Wilson posits class as a bigger differentiator in indie rock, and makes a decent case for it. Of course any kind of reductive argument like this gets hung up on the exceptions but this is worth thinking about. He also puts some of the racial trends in music in a broader social and historical context -- both sorely lacking in Frere-Jones' original piece. The folks at I Love Music's board are already all over this one -- may the controversy continue!