History on Indie music and how it has influenced modern indie bands (also known as independent music)
The term Indie music is used to describe the independence of music from major commercial record labels. These labels are usually self representative. People who include themselves in the ‘Indie’ genre do everything themselves as in recording tracks, marketing their band and finding places to perform (i.e. local pubs). Indie groups usually do not like help of any big producers from Music Industry.
Indie Music can date back to the 1960′s when music was limited to just pop, rock and roll and a bit of R&B. This was the Hippie era where most of the song lyrics were inspired by peace, love, anti-war thoughts and freedom. This is when independent bands started to form, one of the first famous bands from the 60’s were a band called "Velvet Underground". Their most popular hit *Sunday morning*



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cWzxJvgWc8
. This was the band was seen  as a real "Indie" band. Their were 4 people in the band and from very different back grounds. Reed was a songwriter for Pickwick Records, Cale was a classically trained musician. Reeds friend Sterling Morrisson from his university on guitar, and Moe tucker (Sterling Morrisson’s younger sisters friend) on drums. This band is seen as a major influence on modern day music even though their album had very poor sales . Every alternative piece of rock music, from punk to post-rock, can be traced back to The Velvet Underground & Nico . Their clothing in the youtube link can be seen as an influence on indie styles today. They have long un brushed hair which gives them the careless look indie artists have today.

In the picture he is also wearing a tight stripy top which can also be seen as a modern indie style. The music video is very natural and un staged, this is a very common feature in indie videos, it has been deliberately set out like this because they want the band to be portrayed as easy going and relaxed. Another common feature seen in this and other modern indie videos is the band playing their instruments. The velvet underground is seen to have been a major influence on changing music in to an art-rock revolution that changed the look and sound of pop culture. The change of music inspired the band R.E.M , Nirvana and U2 to form.


I got information from these websites to obtain my research :


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground


http://mockingmusic.blogspot.com/2006/05/velvet-underground-nico-revisited.html