EDM versus Disco

[Agent]

I mean, just why? Why so many genres of music? Why should anyone care? Enjoy the music in its context but why have conversations about it, let alone theories and explanatory models mapping its evolution? Maybe it is my deep seated hatred of music criticism, and the style of writing it traffics in, that makes communication here impossible. Impossible in a fun way, ofc.

 

[Agent]

I want to engage with this thread but where do you want to go with it? It's a non controversial statement. Everybody here likes disco. Nobody here likes EDM. Everyone here would acknowledge the debt dance music owes to disco. It's a truism. Why do you think this would be controversial? Perhaps this is not the board you thought it was? Perhaps you are talking past us and not to us? Who do you think we are? Nobody here likes Pink Floyd. What is going on? Help me out a little.

Give us something with more meat on the bone, something we can chew on.

I wasn't trying to be controversial! Just pointing out the "continuum" from disco to EDM. I thought it was funny, and I thought at least a few people would get it. Same goes for the Pink Floyd comment. Not being controversial. I did blow up after a few predictably uncomprehending responses, and I regret not articulating my thoughts more eloquently or in more detail about the hypocrisy of being anti-capitalist and popist at the same time. It was 5 AM and I'd given up on sleep.

If I wanted to be controversial, or piss people off, I might say something like "rock music was American black music, stolen and re-appropriated by the Brits and sold back to idealistic American white kids as protest or art music, while American hip hop is American black music, stolen and re-appropriated by Brits and sold to intellectual British white kids as meta-postmodernist music from the future no one cares about."

 

[luka]

I don't understand where your hostility to paying attention comes from. Why don't you want to pay attention? To music, to clouds, to the city, to movement, to what people say and do, to actual concrete facts, to manifestations of reality, to what is.

Why does it make you so hot and bothered?

 

[luka]

Why have conversations is a question I just can't get my head around particularly when posed on a board devoted to conversation. Why have conversations?

 

[Agent]

I don't understand where your hostility to paying attention comes from. Why don't you want to pay attention? To music, to clouds, to the city, to movement, to what people say and do, to actual concrete facts, to manifestations of reality, to what is.

Why does it make you so hot and bothered?

I couldn't be colder or less bothered. Maybe it's a vibe I'm sending, some kind of curse? I don't know, and I don't care. Sure, I'm alienated, but I pay attention. Maybe I'm blindspotted, missing something. Enlighten me.

Why have conversations is a question I just can't get my head around particularly when posed on a board devoted to conversation. Why have conversations?

I meant conversations about music genres and how one developed out of another and branched into three sub-genres, etc. I'm not a music geek, or a music critic. I have absolute contempt for their profession, especially since the ascendancy of popism, and their style of writing, even if it is a proto example of splatter (post-viral) aesthetics.

 

[Agent]

I resent your accusation I don't pay attention to clouds. No one pays closer attention to clouds. I observe them unmediated, no apophenia, no projecting anthrocentric patterns. And I don't pay attention to cities? Man you don't know me. I am devouring Atlanta and London is moving up on my list.

Hey Carly Rae Jepsen has a new album.

 

[luka]

I'm just restating your own positions. These are the things you have said. But this is an unsatisfactory encounter. It's not working. I want to get you to say interesting intelligent things. I am working on the assumption that you can. Why not, as a thought experiment, drop the assumption of superiority and instead try to think of us as equals and friends, or, more radically, dangerously, daringly, think of the people here as being ahead of you. In either case people it is possible to learn from rather than students to be fucked with. I think you might get better results that way. And if you think talking about music is stupid, don't talk about it. Talk about something else.

 

[thirdform]

If I wanted to be controversial, or piss people off, I might say something like "rock music was American black music, stolen and re-appropriated by the Brits and sold back to idealistic American white kids as protest or art music, while American hip hop is American black music, stolen and re-appropriated by Brits and sold to intellectual British white kids as meta-postmodernist music from the future no one cares about."

Again this is only a halftruth. and not very controversial at all. in fact, most of the discussion around here revolves around how those co-optations and appropriations take place.

So cut the sneering college prof crap because noone fucks college professors here unless they are angsty ian mcewan readers.

 

[thirdform]

you're not controversial.

you're not funny.

You've pissed off noone here. absolutely noone. and don't infer from this post you've pissed off anyone lmao. the only thing is to shut this thread down rather than inject the forum with artificial electricity. if you don't want this to be the case, if you don't want to be shutdown, then don't leach and bring something to the table. it's really that simple.

 

[Agent]

I'm just restating your own positions. These are the things you have said.

As I said above, you misunderstood the spirit and intent of those statements, which was to evoke laughter via irony (ie "club music has always and will always serve the same socio-sexual purpose, but at least those vilified and underrated disco musicians could play a goddamned musical instrument!" I know I said "goddamned" there, but try to interpret it as humor not hostility).

But this is an unsatisfactory encounter. It's not working. I want to get you to say interesting intelligent things. I am working on the assumption that you can. Why not, as a thought experiment, drop the assumption of superiority and instead try to think of us as equals and friends, or, more radically, dangerously, daringly, think of the people here as being ahead of you.

That's just insulting. I don't need you or anyone else to force "interesting intelligent things" out of me, and I'll think of you and your community, including the great Simon Reynolds, however I want, and I'll keep my opinions to myself.

In either case people it is possible to learn from rather than students to be fucked with. I think you might get better results that way. And if you think talking about music is stupid, don't talk about it. Talk about something else.

Why don't I just stay out of the Music forum altogether, since music-as-art or music-as-culturally relevant died sometime around Woodstock '99? Sad watching ostensibly intelligent people try to find something interesting to say about a form (music) that has been dead for 20 years, and I don't want some wanky stupid argument over nothing to trigger a bout of depression. Last thing I need.

 

[Agent]

you're not controversial.

you're not funny.

You've pissed off noone here. absolutely noone. and don't infer from this post you've pissed off anyone lmao. the only thing is to shut this thread down rather than inject the forum with artificial electricity. if you don't want this to be the case, if you don't want to be shutdown, then don't leach and bring something to the table. it's really that simple.

It's "no one," not "noone." Idiot.

 

[Agent]

You all sound pretty angry to me. And again I wasn't trying to provoke anything.

 

[luka]

But disco is not vilified. It's not blue jean America in 1979. It's not Comiskey Park, Illinois. There's loads of interesting things to say about music, not least its role in the spectacle, as a commodity, as propaganda, as social reproduction, as advertising, as subliminal messaging, as occult programming and so on and so forth. You know this. How is this show, reality, power, society, kept on the road?

 

[sadmanbarty]

CORPSE'S NEW AVATAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

:crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf:

 

[Agent]

But disco is not vilified.

In the States it is and always will be, and for good reason. Coked up whites in polyester pissing the future away. Sure there's lots to say about music, just not club music. Club culture, maybe. The music has always been background and never changes.

 

[luka]

:crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf:

Fucking hell lool he is actually in Cypress right now too

 

[Agent]

:crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf::crylarf:

And I'm the provocateur. I guess he didn't want to be associated with the Simpsons anymore thanks to me, so he adopted something less controversial.

 

[Agent]

you're not controversial.

Then why are we having this argument? I've explained a dozen times, I wasn't trying to provoke anything with this or the Billie Eilish thread ffs.

you're not funny.

Yeah well, you are literally incapable of humor.

 

[luka]

Ok sorry we misunderstood the intent then. Let's move on.

 

[sadmanbarty]

for the record third's fucking hilarious