Will this guy please get a new violin?

Woebot

Well-known member
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1341919,00.html

(link via Scott at somedisco)

prompting just so many observations. first it ought to be remarked that yes the argument (as scott remarks) is a strawman. but the writer is fast becoming one too!

the kind of people who thought that mixmag was where it was at for dance music in the nineties, what kind of absurd ambition was it for, i dunno words fail me.....

was the dance music as "pop" (thats basically his vision innit, mainstream dance) ever anything but a bloated corpse anyway? this from someone who (it must be admitted) never bought a fatboyslim or chemical brothers elpee.

venting spleen of course. we never forgave this twonk for dusting down silverdollar.
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Thing is, I thought his writing was OK in Mixmag. And Mixmag seemed great for a time, until it started saying "this is the album that will break the chemical brothers / dave clarke / luke slater" etc. etc. ad nauseuam. As long as it didn't view dance as reducible to pop, it was a great magazine.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Diggedy Derek said:
Thing is, I thought his writing was OK in Mixmag. And Mixmag seemed great for a time, until it started saying "this is the album that will break the chemical brothers / dave clarke / luke slater" etc. etc. ad nauseuam. As long as it didn't view dance as reducible to pop, it was a great magazine.

I always thought mixmag was depressing. Asking far too much i know (gutter intellectual aspirations in evidence) BUT i found it "delibidinized" the music i really enjoyed, even though it's coverage of the bases was pretty thorough.

I never read him in mixmag. there were scant things i really did like in mixmag. the david toop dub primer was a bit ground-breaking, but things like their coverage of "Ambient" always ended up grubbing around with dubious histories peopled by tangerine dream et al. again fearful snobbishness on my part.

at least DJ magazine was shamelessly utilitarian. (scratches head) not that i can remember much about it.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
His whole angle is so far removed from mine, he might as well be writing about particle physics. I mean, worrying about Awards Ceremonies? The absolute pinnacle of irrelevance.
 

mms

sometimes
john eden said:
His whole angle is so far removed from mine, he might as well be writing about particle physics. I mean, worrying about Awards Ceremonies? The absolute pinnacle of irrelevance.


exactly, especially the embarrasment that's the brit's.
Anyway does dance music generally care bout awards ceremonies?
The only ones i think are relevant are the sidewinder ones and they're "people's choice" awards, and thats kinda just necessary recognition for a scene based around pirates raves and white labels.
 

Jamie S

Member
Rambler said:


Which isn't great either, is it? Why didn't they get Phil Sherburne in?

http://www.neumu.net/needledrops/data/00084_needledrops.shtml

Having said that there is a story to be told or a point to be made, which is why it's frustrating that AP fails to make it. Dance music could be said to be dead in the way that Jazz clearly died at some point and that Rock has been said to be dead so many times you lose count. Or that Pop itself is dead - as the cultural currency/locus of activity for the wider society, not just those involved. This probably happened in, like 1991 or something though.

I haven't thought this through at all, but there's something there.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
he (alongside many others at mags like mixmag) was one the people to hype up dance music to an extent that it coud be knocked down in the first place (the end of rock'n'roll etc).
and that ratpack song was shite, so he clearly has no taste.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Jamie S said:
I haven't thought this through at all, but there's something there.

I guess taking this godawful bloke on is preaching to the converted. He doesn't sound like he ever really dug it in the first place (dance music), a very frothy engagement with the zeitgeist and drugs by the looks of things. Most people I knows love of dance music took them somewhere else (reggae, african music, the wellsprings of disco or wherever) whereas this guy seems all about the headlines and (gulp) the brits.

it would be MUCH more interesting to wonder why people stopped dancing and started nodding. i do miss the sheer danceability of 2step. only one grime tune at the moment makes me want to move right now is roll deep's "let it out".
 

Jamie S

Member
Yeah. Or stopped having fun, even.

There's a thread over at ILM (one of the Grime ones?)in which Martin Clark puts out an interesting mirror image of Alexis's argument.

He finds the whole e/euphoria/rave/acid house etc. phenonema so passe that he celebrates the joyless-ness of a dubstep night in comparison, as a truer reflection of life as it is for real in London.

Which is weird, I think, although I should have a look for the actual quote before we start talking about what probably isn't his position.

Alexis: I know him vaguely. He's a friend of a friend and he's a nice guy.
 
I was getting worried about the 'death of dance' about a year ago, but Somedisco said I shouldn't worry, so I don't, cos I'm a good boy and I do as I'm told. Fuck the overground anyway - I'm crawling back under my rock

But wasn't it exciting when all those dance tunes were ram-raiding the charts? Like Belgian hardcore in 1991? (how many more shameless plugs for my forthcoming extravaganza can I get in today?!)
 

jed_

Well-known member
My god did you see the "worst album covers" thing they did today? almost a facsimilie of the one Matt Woe did a year or so ago. Dig a little deeper for your ideas please.
 
C

captain easychord

Guest
^^^^^^ what's with the major media raiding blogs for fuel anyway? there's a magazine in toronto called EXCLAIM which has pretty much been paraphrasing blissblog for a year now. (without credit given)...
 
Top