what if there is no next BIG thing?

I think you've answered your own question, Simon!

Also remember that on a worldwide scale none of the movements you cite could really be considered massive, at least not commercially, except perhaps for punk, long after the event.

I'm inclined to agree, the music scene is fragmented and I don't really see it joining back together. I know a lot of people on here think that that is automatically a bad thing but I'm not so sure. I kind of feel that a lot of people want there to be big youth tribes for other people but they reserve the right for themselves to pick and choose what they listen to from a variety of scenes and eras.

I'm 23 and think fuck all new is going on.

What would people like to be the next big thing? What's your fantasy sub-cult?

I'd like to see a wave of really preppy, fey groups with a real didain for anything rock 'n' roll. The music would sound like a cross between Cupid & Psyche '85 and One in A Million no guitars, no breakbeats, just all synthetic sounds from scratch. Apart from the vocals which would be pitch perfect and make Mariah Carey-style vocal gymnastics really hip. (And maybe some slap bass) Overnight, legions of pierced, scruffy, tattooed slacker/hipsters would be considered an unnessacery hangover from the nineties.

Not gonna happen though.

Not heard the Junior Boys, then (OK, the pitch perfect vocals proviso might disqualify them)?

simon silverdollar said:

er, isn't that the new junior boys record (slap-bass apart)?

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A bit, but they're really only of drop in the ocean of pop culture. And they are a teensy bit retro with the early house influences even though they twist them into new shapes.
And one of them has a beard.

what ever happend to tripwire. surely now is the time.

"i guess the bad thing about being involved in something like acid house 'back in the day' is that you see where it ends up, with part of it mutating into superclubs and superstar DJs..."

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Yeah and songs you love being on adverts. I guess that should be a whole new thread but every time I see one of my favourites on an advert it really does matter. I read that debate in the Observer Music Monthly (I know, I know) the other day and Nick Cave said something to the effect that people had been married to his songs and it would be a betrayal to let someone use it for an advert.
Anyway, back to the main topic, I think that's a very good point about that not happening so much due to the smallness and "localness" (not necessarily physical) of scenes. I'd never considered that before.

it's also the 'vive la difference' attitude that allows this fragmented set up to work. no real opposition - no music wanting to challenge another...all one big happy i-tunes family fulfilling long tail theory marketing niches

also new music scenes need a bit of time to develop and with an all-pervading media (in the Western world at least), that just ain’t possible anymore…grime being a good example of a scene weakened by too much attention too soon.

"also new music scenes need a bit of time to develop and with an all-pervading media (in the Western world at least), that just ain’t possible anymore…grime being a good example of a scene weakened by too much attention too soon."

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That's the other thing where people want to have their cake and eat it. It seems to be the consensus of opinion that too much exposure too early can kill a scene - yet most of the people on hear would rather chew off their own arm than not find out as much as they can about any new, exciting scene that they hear about. And why not, what good is it to me if a fantastic new scene develops in Antarctica and I don't hear about it until its ready - twenty years later?

Yea Simon , your friend had a good argument
everything is happening everywhere ...
The people I talked , work, hung with in Tokyo and Paris recently are all into their own things , some moods/tropes/memes possibly large enough to be eventually be called 'scenes'.
Re: Being 'born too late' , well I hear you
and have also thought that it could be possible for a movement /wave to be big enough to sweep through tribes , perhaps uniting them into a more meta crowd -
but everything is pointing the other way .

The only (and it's a romantic idea fer sure) thing I can see that big is the rising discontent
with all Gov's and asswipes in power , one can feel it here and felt it when in Europe the other wk.
It would be a big one , one Gek & we have partially explored in some ways in 'Thoughts'
- burning through what we have now - into ruin/eco disaster - and then (trying) to rebuild.
Involves a tonne of things happening & breaking down .
I can only say I sense something like this coming , wind is blowing -
but you know how human made disasters are - never see it coming until ...

If one is '23' and wants exactly this (or that) type of music (slap bass , whatever) to happen, well one's gotta get it up and do it themselves
As someone in late 40's who has seen 'em come and seen 'em go - and has been readying a new group this is the grunt work only YOU can do ...

Personally , I enjoy the multiplicity and variants and hear of new stuff I like all the time,
most pointedly after a period of rereleasing '80's stuff and dealing with extinct label's heads, ego's etc. for New York Noise 3 job.
Cheers

"If one is '23' and wants exactly this (or that) type of music (slap bass , whatever) to happen, well one's gotta get it up and do it themselves"

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You're spot on there. Swears, you know what you want the music to sound like, you know what you want its people to look like, you've got this whole specific vision mapped out. It's as though the whole thing is there except the important bit in the middle and you've got to do that yourself. If another new thing does come along then there is no particular reason why it should be the thing that you are asking for unless you actually make that happen.

I dunno, I think there might still be one extremely BIG thing going on: hiphop. I don't mean true-school hiphop, but hiphop in a very wide sense. You only need to walk by the technical high school in my neighbourhood to see hundreds of kids that live and breathe hiphop. All their language (which some of my suburban friends can't understand, like its a completely different tongue), the way they dress (everything XXXL on a kid that weighs about 95 pounds), and their values come from hiphop. they have pretty much zero interest in anything besides rap, selling & smoking weed, shooting dice and building car stereos. it seems very much like a tribe to me, although not a new one. I think the hiphop movement is just so huge that it is taken for granted, but when people look back in 100 years, 1990-2010 will be known as a hiphop era more than anything else, and we're still in the thick of it.

this might not be so applicable in Europe, but I don't think there will be a next big thing until the current big thing (hip-hop) runs out of steam and becomes irrelevant to poor and working class kids, but I don't see that happening very soon.

i think your satisfaction with the state of music depends largely in how you take it in.

if you do it on a case by case basis, isolating a group or sound from from every cultural association (who else listens to it, what sounds like it, etc), or if you bypass these things altogether, you will never be dissatisfied - every unit is a self contained world, a genre in itself.

if you want communal experience, a grand narrative or a constellation of associated units you have to be prepared to get into bed with the mediocre bits, most of which you won't mind but some that you will and that will cloud your vision or make you become a pessimist, terminally unhappy about the state of things. which is a bit stupid since there is always at least one very brilliant unit that you can isolate and enjoy as the embodiment of what you like best about something without having to suffer deception/disillusion with the whole (which is a construct anyway).

and i couldn't agree more with idlerich and polystyle above regarding doing it yourself, enough complaining already!

I think it depends on what yr demands are from music. There is a certain lack of intensity at present, but contra to what some people are saying there are plenty of viable threads floating in the air waiting to be picked up on and developed. Its working out how to slot them together which is the key, I think...

I suspect that the sense in times past of "importance" was a factor of the manner in which the media operated... few outlets meant that if a certain faction took over that part of the media, it certainly appeared as if say rave or punk was ruling the entire world. Of course they weren't and that becomes ever clearer now, especially as the reverse feedback loop which a narrow-band media world creates is now no longer so prevalent, and indeed what is left of it (broadsheet media exclaiming latest indie-dreck) is largely malign in its influence.

OK then- would we say that Grime was a "big thing"... not necessarily right now, but in 2003/4 say? I think it was a big new aesthetic, and no matter its level of popularity in real terms globally or in the UK the sense of intensity and innovation were on the level of previous "big things".

it seems to me a little that you've already established the rules for the next big thing thru experience, which in some ways isn't the way to establish the next big thing.

i'm not sure if any of the things that simon talked about in his first post were ever 'big things' they were big leaps into the future thru the past and present and technology, but surely only a minority got into them, the people that sought it out ?

my thinking about the 'next big thing' is that it kinda avoids the hardcore continum in anyway possible, it's bohemian diy the knowledge and acceptance of difference and simularities on a level playing field rather than bullshit rip offs, or the misery is funky house really, that doesn't mean that the dying embers of the numm isn't important but maybe contrast to the experiences and methodologies of the mainstream, dubstep and minimal have some of this in em' but its piechart style.

likeminded people will find each other and create something new, maybe even enjoy themselves and create new forms.

i can understand how arctic monkeys have a touch of kanye west in em and dmz has a touch of jay dee, but hip hop is the spectre in a way.

poisonous dart has been saying lately how mainstream hip hop ain't living up to the big peoples expectations and this can only be something positive, i reckon.

maybe it's continually about abstraction, the things you can't find the words to describe, those are the good things, the things you enjoy in all your cells and they put your hair on end but you can't reach for the words, but wanna know more.

mms- the whole point is you won't ever see it coming?