Legs Eleven - It's Indie Bingo!

In this world exists a game, without which the gig experience would not be complete. A friend of mine introduced me to it, and I never leave a gig without having played. It’s better than Monopoly, Poker or a PlayStation and it doesn’t cost you a penny. It’s called Indie Bingo.

The rules of Indie Bingo are simple: a series of points are awarded for certain parts of excessive outfits. Five points for each beret found in the crowd (seven if it’s red), and five points for the pointiest shoes on the dance floor. Award yourself ten points for every fool you find wearing a leather jacket indoors, visibly sweating and in such tight jeans he’ll never have children. A further ten for sunglasses worn inside, fifteen for hair that could reach the ceiling, and if you’re really lucky you’ll score twenty-five for a full house. That’s right, a poor impotent sweat-bag who can’t see through his tinted specs to stop tripping over his pointy toes, and prevent himself taking his mate’s eye out with his poker-straight hair.

I love going to gigs, and I love playing this game, but even I have to admit it gets a little tedious trying to find the most stupidly dressed person in the crowd – not because it isn’t fun – but because everybody looks the same. You may think that I sound a bit like the little twerp on Skins who exclaimed that “original is a dirty word”, and you’d be right. After all it’s a fair point, the term ‘conformity’ gets snarled at whilst ‘originality’ gets laughed at. That’s because people like this, scenesters who score me excessive amounts of points in a game designed to ridicule their better judgement, are the ultimate paradox. They want to be original, become the opposite of the mainstream and in doing so become indie sheep.

So, what do we do in order to solve this problem? What kinds of new extremes can people stretch so as to be like, totally out there, yeah? And who can we blame for this horrific creation of the indie army? I say we blame The Horrors, purely because they’re the best example I can think of. The black and white clad boy wonders once told NME that they couldn’t even play their instruments, and that was certainly an honest statement. However, being in a band where the music doesn’t appear to be the point simply spurs on the vanity of the scene and the stupidity of its followers. Unfortunately people such as The Horrors and their posse of devoted clones cannot be culled for reasons unbeknownst to me, which means we’ll have to think of something else.

So, instead of becoming boringly philosophical about the falsity of originality, become a smug bastard, smirk behind your beer and try your hand at Indie Bingo. It’s a deeply fulfilling way to pass the time, and you can make yourself feel better about not getting as noticed as all the under-aged drinkers in the room without causing too much of a scene.

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