Season 2, Episode 5: Behind every summer is a community that keeps Fire Island alive. This episode explores the history of the beloved Pines Pantry through the eyes of its iconic Pantry Girls, alongside the volunteer firefighters of The Pines and Cherry Grove who protect the island from fires, hurricanes, beach erosion, and an uncertain future.
2004: THE YEAR INDIE ROCK BROKE Explores Radio Play and Festival Days
Bethany Cosentino hosts conversations with industry figures and artists about MTV, major label radio tours, and early festival performances.
By: Rachel Stone
A new episode of 2004: The Year Indie Rock Broke is out now across all digital platforms, this time focusing on radio play, late-night television, and early festival performances. Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara, Death Cab for Cutie, and Modest Mouse all look back on the era in the episode, titled 'This Is Radio Clash.'
Getting on the radio and on TV still mattered in 2004. This week on 2004: The Year Indie Rock Broke, host Bethany Cosentino (Best Coast) talks with Sub Pop's Tony Kiewel, former KCRW host Nic Harcourt, XMU founder Tobi Lynn, and author Robin James about how indie bands navigated radio, from grueling major label radio tours to indie labels learning a system most Americans still used to hear new music. Meanwhile, indie bands were landing on Letterman, Conan, and The Colbert Report, and MTV was still pushing their videos to college kids through mtvU. The episode also heads to the festivals, where Death Cab for Cutie wore matching white jumpsuits at Coachella and Modest Mouse lost half their Bumbershoot crowd to the Pixies reunion.
Episode 7 of the series is set to be released on November 4.
About '2004: The Year Indie Rock Broke'
Presented by Dropbox and produced by Nevermind Media, the eight-episode series is distributed by Talkhouse, with additional support from Distrokid and Discogs. Hosted by writer, artist, and musician Bethany Cosentino (Best Coast), the podcast features interviews with iconic artists and industry figures including Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), James Mercer (The Shins), Britt Daniel (Spoon), Carl Newman (The New Pornographers), Emily Haines (Metric), Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Tegan Quin (Tegan and Sara), Megan Jasper (Sub Pop), Josh Rosenfeld (Barsuk Records), Josh Schwartz and Alexandra Patsavas (The O.C.), and Helen Pai (Gilmore Girls).
The executive producers are writer and journalist Courtney E. Smith, who scripted the episodes; writer, journalist, and Nevermind Media owner Melissa Locker; and artist manager Jordan Kurland, who conceived of the series. Jim Fairchild (Modest Mouse, Grandaddy) composed the show's original score, and poster artist Mike King designed the artwork.
2004 traces indie rock's path from college-radio obscurity to the mainstream: the rise of the New York scene in the shadow of 9/11, the Pacific Northwest and Canadian bands building their own sounds in parallel, the record-industry collapse that pushed bands toward commercials and TV syncs, the rise of the iPod and the launch of the iTunes Store, and the blogs and early internet culture that decided, sometimes literally overnight, which bands were cool — and which were not. Along the way, the series revisits the defining pop-culture moments of the era from The O.C.'s Bait Shop, Garden State, Gilmore Girls, and Coachella's earliest indie-heavy lineups to the raging, generation-defining argument over what it meant to 'sell out.'
'When I was asked to host this podcast, it felt like a pretty obvious yes to me, as this era of indie rock, and so many of the bands, and artists featured, are why I wanted to become a musician. When my band, Best Coast, had our own version of mainstream indie rock success in 2010, I felt like I had made it into the cool kids club,' says Cosentino, 'Getting to play shows with Death Cab, and share festival bills with The Strokes, The New Pornographers, The Walkmen, and more - it was a dream come true for 17 year old me. Getting to learn as much as I did about this era of indie rock, and these bands and artists, was like a peak behind the curtain of an era of music that really shaped who I later became. I'm really happy I got to be a part of it, and I hope everyone enjoys the musical and educational time machine back to 2004.'
Episodes also explore how distrust of major labels pushed bands back toward indie infrastructure even as festival culture and new distribution deals made 'indie' more commercially viable than ever; how Hollywood music supervisors turned film and TV soundtracks into a career lifeline for bands the record industry had stopped investing in; how sync licensing – from The Shins licensing a song to a McDonald's commercial, to Modest Mouse performing on The O.C. – rewrote the rules of what counted as selling out; and how sites like Pitchfork became powerful enough to make or break a band with one review.
About Talkhouse
Talkhouse is a Peabody and Webby Award-winning first-person media company, podcast network, and outlet for musicians, actors, filmmakers, and others in their respective fields. Talkhouse's podcast series include A View From A Bridge, How Long Gone, Blank Check, Alison Roman's Solicited Advice, Life of the Record, Craig Finn's That's How I Remember It, This Is Taste, Jokermen, Santigold's Noble Champions, Björk: Sonic Symbolism, as well as the new Peabody-winning Fela Kuti: Fear No Man. Björk's Cornucopia represents Talkhouse's first foray into producing TV/film.
About Courtney E. Smith
Courtney E. Smith is an owner-founder of Ravenous and in 2004 she was working at MTV in music programming. Previously, she was an editor at Eater and Refinery29, and a producer at CBS Radio. Smith is the author of Record Collecting for Girls and the writer and host of the podcast Songs in the Key of Death.
About Melissa Locker
Melissa Locker is a writer, editor, and producer. Her work spans art, comedy, food, movies, music, television, and travel. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Pitchfork, TIME, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Elle, Billboard, and more.
About Jordan Kurland
Jordan Kurland is co-founder of Brilliant Corners Artist Management (Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service, Perfume Genius) and a partner in Noise Pop Industries, having also co-founded the Treasure Island Music Festival. He's notably partnered with Dave Eggers on charity compilations (Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy Volumes 1 & 2) that raised nearly $1M for voting rights and over $200K for abortion access in a single day, and he also served on Obama's and Clinton's presidential campaign Entertainment Advisory Council.
Photo Credit: Christina Rentz
Photo Credit: Christina Rentz
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