There just ain’t that much you can do to a carbohydrate to add value. The taste difference between an Oreo cookie dipped in your favorite ice cream (cost: far less than $1) and a snobby flan-looking creation at your favorite snob watering hole (cost: often more than $10) is not a factor of ten or more. In other words, the taste hike does not pay for the price hike.

Just as a pack of Ramen noodles — truly delicious, and still only a damn quarter after all these years — is far more of a taste bargain than some of these $13+ pasta dishes you end up mortgaging your house for at fine Italian restaurants. The $0.25 noodles you boil yourself after breaking them to pieces in a foil pouch are most certainly not 52 times less delicious than noodles some geezer made by hand with flour and eggs. It is, after all, just flour and eggs.

Aha! But at fine Italian restaurants you might get the pasta smothered with clam sauce, or chicken alfredo, or scallops with white wine sauce, or the humble meatball.

And this is exactly my point. While carbohydrates seem to preclude value-adding, proteins do not. The “hot dogs” in a can of Spaghetti-O’s are worth pennies, if that, while the brautwurst at Octoberfest is easily worth a few bucks and the sausage at your favorite Italian place is worth several times more. Steak is far too easy an example, so let’s pick on pork: the dried skins served by the bag in convenience stores are probably overpriced at $1, while the loin at a five-star chop house easily supports a price of $18 or more. Oysters: do you want them canned, served on the half shell with sauce from a jar, or brochette? Tuna: canned, grilled, or served raw with rice and wasabi? Salmon: same question.

Hopefully you buy my thesis, because you must, if you are to ponder the title question: is indie music a carbohydrate or a protein?

First, we need to drop the word “price” and replace it with “cost.” All forms of music are sold in an astonishingly narrow price range (why is that, anyway?), but the cost of listening to indie music is much higher than the cost of listening to, say, Christina Aguilera. Christina’s albums are easier to find. Her releases are advertised weeks in advance. You don’t suddenly learn of Christina Aguilera performing at nearby venue. Pop quiz: quick, is Britney Spears working on a new LP? Of course she isn’t. Is Radiohead? Who the hell knows?

Indie music is harder to find, harder to hear, harder to track, and harder to define. There are certainly costs involved. So the question remains: does the taste hike pay for the price hike?

How would one answer such a question? There’s no shortage of love for the craft here. You don’t need a couple of sycophants telling you what you already know they think. You’d need to speak to critics of the art form. You’d need to speak to those butcher shops who slaughter our sacred cows, and address their criticisms head-on. You’d need to read music reviews that eviscerated Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips, even (gasp!) Evangelicals. In short, you’d need a bunch of Miley Cyrus fans.

And that’s what this column intends to do. Coming up: is there even one person out there paid to review music who doesn’t like Arcade Fire?