On 6/28/07, J.T. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
wait, we're talking about labels now? well, mo'wax were just putting out music they liked. i know those guys, i worked with them too remember.
but thats the thing, they approached it like fans of the music, not someone trying to get paid by putting out least common denominator music.
it should also be noted dj assault was the hype then, coming off coverage in rolling stone and spin etc, and was an obvious choice with little competition.
the choice *should* be obvious!
just like spank rock was an obvious choice for ninja tune because they were selling out shows everywhere and had some hype, and because ninja tune dug their music. maybe technics should have sent them a demo.
obviously i dont know for sure, but my guess is that assault and magic mike werent shipping demos around to mo wax. i mean, club music is pretty obscure, but if i could find out about it in pittsburgh years and years ago, im sure it wouldnt have been that hard for anyone else on any other label to do so as well. but again, there isnt money in that kind of decision.
i sure wish they'd put out technics too, but it's not spank's fault they don't, and technics has got his stuff worked out anyways. so why all the drama and bitterness and why are you directing it where you are?
everyone is guilty here, the publicists who write this nonsense, the label and artists for pushing this "baltimore" connection, the artists themselves for allowing the label to market them as they have, and even moreso to the people that i think should know better, who have seen this kind of thing happen before and should be able to tell when its happening again.
what is this big conspiracy you think has occurred, what are the motives for pushing spank and not technics?
the motive is selling watered down product to white hipsters because the real image is not something that is easy to sell.
there's loads of bad music out there, is it the crappy artists' fault when it miraculously becomes popular, or their label's for picking it up and torturing the world with it and embarking on a marketing campaign etc etc?
everyone is to blame. everyone's motivation is to make easy $$$, not to push art. and they do it at any expense to real art and culture. and i find it deplorable.
detroit had it's own sub-culture yes, they shouldn't have come along and appropriated chicago's. and chicago shouldn't have appropriated new york's. music institute was just a wannabe music box was just a wannabe paradise garage
but these were all part of a larger common culture, the underground black and/or gay culture in inner cities in the US. its the same way that club and ghetto tech and booty house and miami bass are all part of the same family despite having slightly different local DNA.
that is a ridiculous statement. culture can't be narrowly defined, nor can appropriation. you can say virtually everything is appropriation. there is no such thing as originality in the objective sense.
no, people live a culture and their own personalities and experiences allow them to help it move beyond its previous borders. its all a very continuous flow. in the case of appropriation, the flow is discontinuous.
besides, appropriation is a scary word, very negative connotations, but it's not as sinister as all that necessarily. white radio appropriated the jive talk style of black radio, but you could argue that helped bring black culture further into the mainstream and promoted racial equality. it had bad effects, it had good effects, like lots of things do..
but at this point, we've seen this all before. why bother going through this roundabout process that serves no one but the established music industry when its so easy to get straight to the real stuff? do white people really need a buffer zone to be able to appreciate black culture?
no, i'm saying all your points about culture and realness and blah blah blah have nothing to do with whether their music is sonically pleasing to you or not. there are factors other than your ears affecting your opinion. those other things have their place, but not in your ears.
but my previous knowledge of music makes me hear new stuff like this and say "this is not really new, this is not interesting. why is this being hyped up?" and then i start to answer those questions and i arrive at answers.
then why do you keep talking about how they are fronting and not down and not real, and comparing to who is real, and etc etc? what about the SOUNDS??? just say they use crappy samples and you don't like their voices. the rest is noise when it comes to talking about music.
if music was listened to and sold in complete isolation, that would be the easy way to critique something. unfortunately, theres a whole lifestyle industry out there that is part of the music that also needs (pretty much constant) critiquing. and in this day and age, that industry and the music and marketing all go hand in hand.
dummy, "sub-culture that they themselves 'belong' to" then, however you go about defining that in the first place. i do not consider myself a part of house sub-culture. at all. and yet i make house. i love house. should i give it up? where do you draw the lines?
you *are* the house subculture where you live. you are part of it on a global level by your interactions with deejays, producers, labels, records, etc as well as whatever you participate in when you are in other places that have a more established house culture. house is also no longer solely regional like a music such as bmore club is.
why do you give so much credit to scenes/culture in the first place? what's so great about them, other than getting the bragging rights to claim you are "real" and to get credit or whatever? scenes just breed homogeny and boring politics.
all of this music you love came about as a result of a cultural movement. none of it happened in isolation. politics only have an effect on the weak.
i'd rather just make music i like and get paid for it. i'm getting too old to care about anything else.
you should go make movies with bruce willis, you can say things like "i'm too old for this sh*t to each other while you make techno and he blows up buildings.
credit where credit is due is great of course, but getting credit isn't going to make technics as popular as spank or ayres. because all these issues you are talking about has nothing to do with their popularity. they make relatively mainstream, radio-friendly party music. nobody cares about the rest. except music geeks like us, the .01%
but club music *IS*mainstream music played on the radio in baltimore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! its not mainstream music to white hipsters because they are stupid and dont know anything.
i think they'd like to be judged on their music and i think the other 99.99% of the people who hear them do that.
if you think there is any music that 99.9% of people listen to based solely on the qualities of the music alone, you must be delusional. people like spank rock and other nonsense because they dont know any better, they do what the fashionable magazines tell them to do (vice, xlr8r, etc) because they have no personalities. i understand that people arent all going to be into music as hardcore as i am. but what i also understand is that if stupid people are going to be putting money out there for music, it should be going to the quality artists, the innovators, the people who made the hacks biters and ripoffs all possible.
because they are highly influenced by bmore club stuff? i'd probably mention detroit in any interview, but i've never lived there. i'd also mention music that is 80 years old that i wasn't even alive to experience.
thats fine, if thats all it was, i would support that greatly. in fact, i credit Ame (whose music i pretty much dont care for at all) for namechecking dan bell and rob hood constantly in interviews. but that is not the claim, they are referred to as "the baltimore duo" or whatever such PR speak nonsense in basically everything ive ever seen written about them.
i think you are miffed because they are coming across as the pioneers of bmore club, and that's unfortunate, but that's how it goes.
that is alot of why i am miffed, but i dont think that "thats how it goes". thats how it used to go. people should know better know, especially serious music heads. but i have higher expectations even for the general public.
they are treated that way by the media because they are the first to make waves (similar things have happened with dance music, like how portishead or chem bros became the pioneers of trip hop in the mainstream's eyes). they give credit to the bmore scene in every interview, like you say. so...? what more can they do?
keep it straight. sh*t, i cant remember who it was specifically, but some terrible pop punk band toured a couple years ago, and they took one of their big influences with them on tour. instead of insultingly having them open for them, they opened for their influences! despite the fact that they were far far less popular! there's a million ways that they could do this better.
and what is there to cash in on? there was no bmore club craze until them
and now there never will be since them and diplo and t&a all took the thunder and the $$$.
and it's still not really about bmore. they are bringing attention to the music. they shouldn't?
not in this disingenuous manner.
btw, tom and i just like to argue. we friends. i think he says dumb stuff sometimes but so do i (see above and previous 1000 messages on 313). but i <3 tom
hehe, yeah we just like to talk about things like this, there's never any animosity :) tom
