The IC Philosophy
Most groups have a philosophy that ties them together. Whether it be ‘party hard’ or ‘never give up’ or ‘When in the course of human events…’, every group has a central philosophy that everyone in the group works towards.
Here at the IC, our philosophy is simple. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, it also has two parts, but I assure you that not only are both of these points extremely logical, they’re actually easy to understand.
The first point in our creed is directed towards what we publish as a zine. The motto of “Only music, every time” is truly what we aim for as a zine. You won’t find politics here (unless it’s an article about the RIAA). You won’t find culture here (unless it’s about some cultural phenomenon sweeping the indie music world). You won’t find movie reviews or book reviews (unless they specifically have to do with music). Nope, this zine is about music, and music alone.
Some may say a stance that narrow could lead to a boring, repetitive zine- and to those people, we defiantly reply: How many states are there? Yeah, there are 50 states, and thousands of cities. Even if each city ponies up only two bands, that still leaves us with tens of thousands of bands to review. They all deserve reviews.
That brings us to our next bullet point: The IC wants to hear your band. We’ll review your first concert as if it were Bleach’s final concert (which I didn’t get to attend- quite angry about that). We don’t care if it’s the band down the corner, the band in your local venue, the regional stars poised to make it big- all have the same weight in the IC’s book. I’ve heard bands that haven’t ever played a show make more astounding music than bands who have flooded their scene with performances. The best show I’ve ever seen came out of a band who’d been together less than 6 months (The Programme- and what a sight they were to behold). Hype doesn’t equal quality, for one, and after all, the hype has to start somewhere! I’d rather be carrying the torch for the new hype than standing on the streets, waving palms and coats at the already-hyped indie band (Grandaddy, Modest Mouse, Broken Social Scene). Now don’t get me wrong- all three of those bands are pretty spectacular in their own right, and I listen to Grandaddy and Modest Mouse on a regular basis. You just won’t see much of their hype printed here.
The IC isn’t a fan-boy trying to get ins with his favorite bands. The IC isn’t a bunch of indie snobs trying to gratify those bands which are already ‘holier than thou’. The IC is a bunch of people who love music. We want you to know about the music we love, and which music to avoid. And if we start some hype along the way, hey- we never said we were against starting hype….
-Stephen Carradini, Editor-in-chief