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Sam Chase, longtime friend of the Edukatorz, hails from New Haven/New York. He spent a while in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, epicenter of hipsterism, so he’s well-equipped to weigh in on Hipster Friday. Today he’s broken down the basics of hipster music.

2010 is a census year.  The census is a super large scale gross generalization of the population at large and a big fuck you to the multi dimensional personality that is the United States.  The census fails miserably at truly categorizing and rationalizing all of the normal, and more importantly, all of our freak show citizens that overrun our fair nation.

It’s not that it would be impossible to thoroughly categorize people, in fact there are many ways in which you could go about doing so.  Like it or not, everyone is subject to being objectified and reduced to just another statistic in a larger group.  I say like it or not because there are those among us who really, really don’t like it.  Those individuals are affectionately referred to as hipsters.  A hipster’s greatest nightmare is being just another face in the crowd, being “normal” for lack of a better word.  Actually that might be a perfect word given its accessibility to the tongues of the masses…but I digress. When struggling to epitomize what it means to be one of these artistically inclined teen-turned-twenty-something self-proclaimed outcasts but more appropriately too-cool-for-school enigmas of style, the answer that I stumbled on was quite simple.  Hipsters are epitomized by the music that they love so dearly.

Hipster music is a sacred and long-standing cultural lynchpin of the hipster.  Upfront I would like to state that I love hipster music.  In fact it’s probably my favorite part of hipsterdom, a far cry from those retarded ironic t-shirts they love so much.  Hipster music tends to fall into two main categories, those being 1) older artists who were underappreciated for their time, with exceptions of those who were appreciated but few people (especially those of like age) know about, and 2) artists who are currently playing but are little known local talent playing at big city hipster hot spots i.e. the mercury lounge in NYC.  Hipsters have a vested interest in going against the grain.  A hipster creates their image by celebrating the retro, revering the obscure, and the music they love is carefully compiled in order to fit their false sense of differentiation.  A hipster can only increase their level of happiness whilst wearing a crushed Hartford Whalers t-shirt and wayfarer shades by blaring The Smiths or possibly Belle and Sebastian on their Ipod (yes hipsters are not adverse to technology, although I would respect the hipster rocking a walkman).

Now it is easy to plaster 80’s British pop music with the title of hipster music bread and butter, but the hipster is a complex being, and it would be unfair to make such a sweeping generalization.  It would be hard to argue that British pop didn’t leave a big stain on the impressionable young minds of future hipsters, and to be sure a fair number of hipsters would assert that The Smiths are the greatest band of all time, but I would say that that genre would, generously, only garner half of their attention when it comes to music.

The next big section of hipster music would have to be our little known superstars who fight the good fight, waiting the hell out of tables by night and playing awesome gigs either later at night or on their off days.  Now the beauty of these artists is a lot of them are really, really good.  Unfortunately for the masses it’s not that easy to get famous, and many of these artists have too much integrity to sell out.  You can find these artists at small hot spots located all around big cities.  The gift and curse of the hipster can come into play with these artists.  It does happen that a hipster favorite does indeed get famous, at which point the hipster is obligated to say a bittersweet goodbye as the now mainstream artist has violated everything a hipster stands for.

Lastly, we will address a subsection of little known artists, and those are foreign artists.  I don’t mean English-speaking foreigners, but all those others.  A big niche market for hipsters is French.  France is a natural partner with hipsterdom, as they are fashion forward and their dudes are effeminate.

Hipsters have done their best to distance themselves from the mainstream.  They detest those normal bastards who don’t fear the fact that they are just like everyone else.  Hipsters thrive on their ironic differences and their stupid shirts and crazy music, but along the way a funny thing happened, and in the most beautiful piece of irony I have heard, the hipsters have created their very own category, in which they all reside.

And check out Too Late here…that song is dope.

Consider yourself edukated.