Rock like high school

A friend told me that Billy Corgan, of all people, once said that indie rock was like high school, except that instead of football players, bands like Pavement got to decide what was cool. He said that a while ago.

It's been more than four years since Slanted and Enchanted stole indie hearts everywhere and launched a thousand imitators, and Steve Malkmus and his clique have long graduated from Corgan's proverbial secondary school. Meanwhile, new hipsters and trendsetters have strutted through the hallways, toting textbooks about math, space, orchestral, post-rock and such, but at least a few kids can't help but wish for the old days, when being in with the in-crowd didn't require so much decision-making.

Word gets around (probably instigated by a senior with an older sibling) that Steve, Scott, Bob, Mark and the other Steve (you remember them) are coming home for vacation and throwing a party. The excitement escalates. Even though their last shindig was kind of a bomb and lasted too long, the upperclassmen remember some pretty wild times at the Pavement pad.

Saturday night arrives in the form of a bootlegged tape. Every teenager from Indierockville is at Steve's doorstep. I slink in and mull around in the corner uncomfortably. The first quarter hour passes, and I start getting into things, take off my coat and have a drink. But everything slows down and gets kind of blurry. No one seems to have anything to say to me, and vice versa.

The party ends with little improvement. I leave kind of disappointed. As I'm walking home, a car passes by slowly. This guy with long hair rolls down the window and gives me the finger. I think it must be Billy Corgan.

--I-Huei Go

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