On 10/31/07, Fred Heutte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Each of the major genres was associated with new sonic > space created by the electric guitar, multi-track recording, > synthesizers, PCs, and so on, combined with a cultural cauldron > like New Orleans in 1948, London in 1961 and 1988, Chicago > in 1953 and 1984, New York in 1925, 1956 and 1976, San Francisco > in 1965, Kingston in 1967, Jo'burg and Dakar and Kinshasa in > 1970, the Bronx in 1977 and on and on.
im not sure i agree. i used punk as an example of people throwing out the previous rules and inventing a style without anything "new", but really house and techno to a large degree were like that as well. if you count straight up house and techno records, youre talking about 1984 at the earliest and by then they were using the discarded "worthless" synths and drum machines that had been used and abandoned by pop music already. ditto with the creation of hiphop, they were using old technology (record players had been pretty standard for many years and 8 tracks and cassettes and reel tape had all sprung up as competition for it) and just breaking the old rules of what counted as "music". even reggae and dub was more about misuse of something more standard: a slightly different shuffle with an absuive use of echo and reverb (both of which had existed for years before reggae took it over the top). also, id contest the idea of jungle being something new. surely it was great, but it was more of a combination of what had already been happening with techno and house music and combining it with hiphop. the style and some techniques may have been different, but the equipment was largely the same. i know ive recently seen a pic of a guy called gerald's studio circa 93 or so and it was all the classic house and techno drum machines and synths plus and mpc60 and an amiga. obviously the electric guitar and the synthesizer changed music and alot of ideas about music, but not every major change can be tied to a "new" tool! tom
