3 out of 5

Hosted by: Mark Radcliffe

When I was in high school, I gave a presentation on the history of comic art (as well as the history of ska, but we’ll skip over that for now).  I did do research for it, and I found out about a fair amount of things with which I had zero familiarity beforehand, like The Spirit.  But: the presentation was definitely informed by my familiarity at that point with what I’d grown up with and read, and I recall one of the teachers listening to the presentation asking me something which hinted to me that I had no idea what I was talking about… but I gave some kind of “I didn’t cover that because it was out of scope”-ish type answer and moved on.

While I can’t recall the specifics of what I covered, I do know that, now that I’ve read a ton more and have resources like wikipedia to fill me in on any aspect of history whenever I’m interested, and now that I’ve read Understanding Comics and have shelves and boxes full of books ranging from the 60s ’til last Wednesday… I’ve confirmed that not only did I have no idea what I was talking about, but I missed a shit ton.  To be fair, claiming to be able to cover the history of comic art in an hour presentation was more impossible than I would’ve been able to conceive at that point.  But the reason I bring it up – beyond shaming myself, which is the only thing from which I derive pleasure anymore – is to underline the very basic limitation of most ‘history of’ presentations: point of view has a tendency to… well, define the point of view.  And so Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie, is definitely tons of fun, and does a good job of boiling things down, but stemming from the UK and being only three parts, it’s incredibly limited and very much from a British point of view.

Each episode covers an era: 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond.  As with Sound of Song, the best part is definitely the origin story found in the first episode, which dives deep into exposing the record labels and personalities that defined “indie,” as well as giving us a DIY definition for indie itself.  The 80s episode wanders for a bit, fittingly, as it gets stuck on Happy Mondays and acid house for a while, when it seemed like the indie scene was being invaded in a sense and drying up, but resolves the episode with the rejuvenation of the indie spirit in slamming together influences and emerging as… Britpop.  This leads into our present era, during which indie has become a cloudy term, and finding its way out of the Britpop madness required some new innovations – namely the internet – as well as the resurgence of Rough Trade with the signing of The Strokes (whom I honestly had no idea were the first signing when the label started back up).

Even via this description above you can tell this is all very UK centered, which is fine, except ‘The Story of UK indie’ is not the name of the special.  Mark Radcliffe, being a seminal Radio One figure, is absolutely convincing as a presenter; we trust he’s been in the trenches and knows what he’s talking about.  But the series struggles for a throughline after covering the startup of the scenes and labels; to be sure, defining the genre is tough, and so determining what to cover must have similarly been difficult, but that first episode is so information packed that things definitely feel like they’re slowing down when we spend more than a few minutes on one band or concept.  However, the eventual connection to modern times is well effected, and things end on a promising note by highlighting the possibilities of the modern scene, as well as expressing the need for an actual scene to still exist.

Obviously this stuff is always rather fan-servicey for the people who’re bound to watch it, but I’d also say anyone can learn something new from Music for Misfits.  And if not, then I’m sure you can nod appreciatively along to the trip down memory lane.