"Last night we were taking the elevator down to the Pearl to see the shows. It was crowded with Matador types, which, to my surprise, are rather young. Vampire Weekend was playing on the speaker and this guy behind me of vague ethnicity started singing along to the song, but improvising lyrics like, “I’m so white / My parents paid for tuition,” etc. His buds, naturally, thought he was hilarious. An older gentleman in the corner was not amused. It turned out to be the drummer from Pavement: I recognized him on stage later that night. It reminded me of something that Nitsuh wrote about recently (I am writing this on my phone because of the high cost of wifi, so I don’t have a link to the actual post). He questioned the idea that certain bands are considered “more white” than others (ironically, the band in question was Pavement). It really is getting old to hear people muddle race with class, and especially to hear people still call Vampire Weekend “white.” Its both lazy music criticism and lazy observational comedy at this point, like making a joke about how ladies seem to dress sluttier on Halloween. (Good eye, bro!) So, can we just stop this sort of thing now? I mean, especially while attending a music festival in which the bands with the most “non-white” sounds are Cat Power and Spoon."