Picture skinny jeans, a stripy top, perhaps some thick black rimmed glasses accompanied by an optional hat; beanie or beret. Contemporary Scottish society for many late teens and twenty-somethings is officiated by an influential music and culture scene, what is known as Indie chic.

 

Once an underworld of activity harboured by the ‘Myspace’ community there is an overt arena encompassing many of our young males and females; a mainstay of chosen culture where these figures are present. It is a style in which clothing chains buy into and a scene in which clubs and pubs revamp their image to attract the monopoly. We have always experienced cycles of musical direction and dictatorship which overwhelm the status quo.

 

Perhaps this inevitability means this article will be redundant in a few years time, let’s hope so. We have lived through the year of the Goth and the year of the Mosher, were you born in the year of the hoodie? Some of you may be Madchester babies and a lot of you were Britpop fans. Do we still fear Eminem and his clan’s desire to overthrow society? What on earth is Emo? Young people searching for direction will chew up and spit out craze after craze, with just a small percent completing the digestion process.

 

To my knowledge mods and rockers have a few dinosaurs keeping the cause alive and more relatively we can still observe de pleted numbers of the great Glasgow Goth in their natural habitat outside the Gallery of Modern Art. The Indie phenomenon encapsulates more fear for an altogether different reason. Amy Winehouse may have fi nally said ‘yes’ to rehab and Pete Docherty keeping his nose clean of late, but you know you’re in trouble when the UN has a go at you for taking too many drugs and infl uencing a body of people without thought for the consequences for those unable to splash out on expensive spells in rehab.

 

The UN make reference to the glamorising of cocaine parties and the hoodie clad ‘new rave’ generation, skinny jeans and chiselled jawbones. Channel 4 prime time leader Skins is suggesting nay pushing the idea that late teens just want to party with as many illegal substances as possible, and the music mags that support the scene shamelessly encourage such frivolity. They are deemed essential to the plot, a tentacle, perhaps mandatory for one to be defi ned as indie-genous.

 

Perhaps the drug stories they share and glamourise, initially have a romantic quality in the Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs kind of way and yes, some of them are quite funny… something to tell the grandkids about, but for every Hunter S Thompson how many lost souls are there? An expose on the price of drugs was recently released and it seems the humble narcotic. Easily accessible, it’s the same cost for a line of cocaine as it is for a pint. Drugs are rife at pubs, clubs and more so at trendy warehouse parties.

 

The attendees are clever Indie kids who start by bonding overmusic and end up bonding with hospital staff in tongues. While experimentation in theory is nothing new, the consistency of use is much more palpable than previous times. How bad must your trip be if the UN gets involved? To castigate messers Winehouse and Docherty, there must be something in it. You only need to have a conversation in the workplace or the pub, overhear some banter on the bus or train to piece it together – we can no longer be naïve to the fact that our colleagues are not whiter than white.

 

If young people are the bright minds of Scotland’s future, dynamic with the world at their feet, surely constant recreational drug use and the associated physical and mental degeneration could reverse this process. While we are not ignorant enough to think that this fi xation with white pills and powder is going to wreck all our careers, prospects and minds; the party lifestyle is appealing and may supersede college and university as the main goal.

 

The scene is wrapped in this decadent, stylish and very handsome package. Drug use and experimentation seem to be second to the music as the string that binds it all together. It concerns me that they are more inherent and enshrined to the indie constitution than with previous fads and a good many colleagues who consume the tentacles of indie chic may let the scene package overwhelm them to the full.

 

Ally Millar