hey kids....enjoy!
from
http://interoz.com/musik/
Roll Over Beethoven, Tell Tchiachovsky the News, or How I Learned to
Love Electronica.
by Mike Stephens
Millenuim Watch Memo #23231138.9 --
TO: Any and all Musicians (Rock n' Roll Variety)
RE: Musical Tastes
With regards to recent changes in the needs of the music industry we
urge you to pursue the following course of action:
-Buy a computer.
Make sure you have a nice set of keyboards and mics.
Sell your guitars, drum sets, bass guitars, oh and your soul, too.
-Rock n' Roll is dead.
Thank You for your attention.
Seems a tad melodramatic, doesn't it?
Yet read the industry magazines, fan mags and 'zines, the web music
pages, even the newspaper and you'll hear the death knell for most
contemporary music and the choir singing the 'birth' of electronic
music as the industry's savior. Never mind that there is nothing new
about electronica (a moniker graciously handed down by the music
journalism elite to cover trip-hop, house, jungle, hard-core, et/ al).
Never mind the fact that the industry was obviously planning to go
with a full frontal electronica assault years ago (how else do you
explain Warner Music's first onslaught of remixes to radio stations in
1992).
Regardless, radio and records conferences all year have played taps
over 'alternative' acts (and metal, folk, jazz, pop, country, etc.)
and spent their valuable time in hotel conference rooms trying to find
the first big stars of the electronic era. MTV proclaims that an
eclectic format (with an emphasis on 'techno artists) and begins
airing AMP, an hour of rave-inspired images and hard core.
The problem is this: the music industry knows that market
fragmentation is slowly, agonizingly killing it. The cost of finding,
producing, and marketing new acts is exorbinant and creating the 'next
big thing' is its only chance to put themselves ahead of the pack for
a time. yes, money - not art is making the difference again, and your
CD-buying dollar is the prize.
It's easy to sit here at the keyboard and bemoan the fact that most
electronica is soulless, lifeless, devoid of humanity and more than a
little boring if you quit dropping acid a long time ago. I can quickly
site a thousand examples that most of it is nothing but New Age music
with a drum machine. I'd find no compunction in noting that I think
Trent Reznor is full of sh** and the first thing that Prodigy reminds
me of is the Village People after a long renaissance weekend with
Brian Eno and the Ramones.
But so what? It doesn't really matter what I or any other critic, or
you for that matter, think of 'techno.
I keep telling you, but I'll do it again -- this is about money in the
New American Cultural Economy. It's only about that. the warning
alarms should have been going off years ago and when newspaper critics
proclaim "[electronica] overthrows the traditional order, it divides
the world between those who get it and those who don't (Dallas Morning
News)," there is nothing to do but sit back and wait for the games to
begin. the music Industry (please emphasize the word 'industry') is
the juggernaut that survives, thrives on the thought or rebellion as
market share. As Tom Frank points out in "Dark Age: Why Johnny can't
Dissent," in the Baffler:
The countercultural idea has become capitalist
orthodoxy...consumerism is no longer about
"conformity" but about "difference." Advertising
teaches us [in the ways of] orgiastic, never-ending
self-fufillment.
In other words, the destruction of "the Man" through art is fully
sponsored, nay, sanctioned by "the Man." Get it?
Don't worry about it though, just keep consuming, keep believing that
you are still young, indestructible, rebellious, beautiful.
After all, David Geffen thinks you are.
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primal@interaccess.com
www.interaccess.com/primal/
A New January - electro/techno/synth music
www.interaccess.com/primal/january/
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