I Once Thought That Good Music Only Comes From India

Can someone help me out? I don't know whether to capitalize the first letters of "that" and "from" in titles.



"Indie" isn't a genre of music, any more than it's "alternative" or "punk." It is, in fact, better described as being analogous to the words "Simon Says."

Rather than a genre, "indie" is what comes before the genre of a piece of music. There's pop and indie-pop; rock and indie-rock; hip-hop and indie hip-hop. As commands in the game Simon Says should only be followed when preceded (no oxymoronic pun intended) by "Simon Says," so should music in the game Have Good Taste only be listened to when preceded by "indie."

We're playing Simon Says. Simon says buy albums from indie artists, and Simon Says steal albums from those artists whose music can only be perversely listened to as a guilty pleasure (or, whose music you put in your shared iTunes library so that others will deem you a legitimate human being). Incidentally, you are not a legitimate human being unless your tastes agree with mine.

As long as we're on analogies, I'll admit that my sententious musical commentary is analogous to a small-town newspaper's middle-aged video game reviewer. Half-remembered conversations, a brief career as a violinist in public school, and two-and-a-half music-magazine articles are the only non-auditory basis for my musical opinions. I'm still right though.

I mean, if that schmuck from the paper were to claim that Call of Duty 4 is a steaming pile of poopaganda, his severe deficiency in knowing what he's talking about would have no bearing on his being right. (That's because CoD4 is a steaming pile of poopaganda, even if it's fun and has original gameplay elements.) I can at least be right by fortunate accident (which I am).

Maybe next time I'll write about video games.