I have a confession to make. Not long ago I joined an indie music group on Facebook. At first it was an opportunity to reminisce over neglected Britpop B-sides or impress people with the fact that I’d heard of The Jasmine Minks, but after a while it was the heated arguments about genre and canon that became both hilariously petty and horribly addictive. Group members would set out inflexible rules for what bands, scenes and albums should be regarded as properly indie that rivalled the Treaty of Versailles for complexity (and effectiveness). Did indie strictly mean independent or was it a particular sound, style or spirit? What happens to a band deemed indie who move to a major label and make their greatest record? Are they written out of indie-history (or indstory) because they turned their backs on a 4-track recorder and a drummer who was permanently out of time? Such disputes are of course completely pointless yet kinda fun at the same time. The use of the term alternative rather tha