Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal regarding Dance music in the US

online.wsj.com

I got to the above article article from the article below. I'm a big Mark Farina fan, and you may or may not of heard that he was recently kicked off the decks at a Vegas club for not playing commercial tunes for the "table service crowd". The same thing happened to Dennis Ferrer in Miami recently, and Calvin Harris also got the boot in Vegas last week for the same reason.

m.inthemix.com.au

I think we're incredibly lucky in the UK and Europe to be blessed with so much great music and night life, to cater for all tastes. I still dont think the US as a whole really gets the underground dance music scene. Ironically, the US is the birthplace of what we today call house music.

I reacall those days, my enjoyment of those tracks inspired me to search more into that genre instead of just baning out my D&B and UKG that I was into at the time.

Interesting.....

mixmag.net

The comments underneath are quite amusing, I have read him saying similar things before though, one quote that stuck out was..

"I don't want to be credible, I want to be incredible"

That did make me chuckle, he still won't admit that he sold out for the money though, he still tries to make out it's so he can "spread dance music to new listeners" instead of so he can cash in!

"That spirit of wanting to keep this only for ourselves, and anything that's successful is bad. That culture that goes in a cycle where everybody loves someone and they're all talking about him, and then in one second, because he's successful, 'Ah, fuck him, he's bullshit!' What? But you were saying the same guy was a genius last year, now he's the worst person?"

See, this is something that a lot of people seem to think the underground fans feel like. Its utter nonsense. People dont hate them because they get famous. The original work that artists do that gets them known and liked on the underground scene looses nothing when they get famous, apart from the possibility of being over played.

What people dont like is when an artist changes what they do in order to sell pop records. Fat Boy Slim was adored for You've Come A Long Way Baby, but Half Way Between the Gutter and the Stars despite having a couple of great tracks on it featured too many colabs with established pop artists and a general slower more widely appealing style. It was a slippery slope from there.

Dizzee Rascal anyone?
The Streets?
Chase & Status' last album had a different famous vocalist on nearly every single track and seemed to be more geared toward being a vehicle for those easily marketable front men/women than it was about making some good dnb/dubstep

Moby's Play was heralded as one of the greatest albums of a generation. '18' was a soulless carbon copy.

Underworld didn't have this problem. Nor Orbital. Nor The Chemical Brothers. The Prodigy got less popular because they released some rather awful material that no one liked. But at least Mr Howlett was pushing forward creatively rather than cynically reaching for the charts and the money there in.

People dont care if something gets to number one if its good and honest. People do care a whole lot when they see artists they like water down the true merit of their music in order to sell singles to children and morons who dont buy anything unless it has a video on MTV and a poster on every bus stop in their area.

Different era completely.


And here is the problem, The Prodigy didn't adapt to what the modern day electronic music fan wanted to hear and as you say, it didn't go down well.

Times have changed, people need to accept that, the mass market don't want quirky, underground music anymore, they want big vocals, big synths and generally just feel-good, 'dumbed down' music.

Hence why the likes of Guetta, SHM, Avicii etc are dominating at the moment.

Its sad.

Yes, what a traversty. How dare these artists change what they do to be succesful. It is a problem, and quite rightly so. The cliquey kitsch underground darlings have ever right to chastise such change. Ambition is sin. Success is murder. Living the dream is a sharpened drumstick through the heart of the underground. Popular isn't popular at all in the underground baby.

He essentially stopped writing music and songs about life in the hood because he hasn't lived in it since he was 17 when he first got signed, I read in interview with him recently when he talks about how he just wants to be seen as a pop star now as that is his life. I don't really accept that, just because he's not living in a tower block doesn't mean he can only write cheesy club driven love songs.


Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned was widely seen as an attempt to sell albums to the american metal crowd who were selling a lot of units in the states at the time? They've never made a total sell out album but they're definitely not adverse to compromising their musical principles slightly. Keith's solo album was embarrassing!


That's basically it, the music Guetta makes is genuinely terrible, awful music. It's like Cascada or something, yes it's popular and some people like her but is it really helping dance music or music in general? Do people really believe that?

Tell you why. Because music is ART. Art is important. Art matters.

'Success = money/money = success' is pretty much the worst part of 21st century British culture. Devoting your life to its pursuit and abandoning true expression is a lack of ambition. Not the reverse.

Do you think Guetta or Cascada really care about helping / impacting dance music ? They're pop stars now.

If you dont care about music you shouldn't be making it.

If I hadnt see you write that Lizard Id swear that was the latest lyrcis from a Guetta / Rihanna / Gaga collaboration.

I think he does care about music, but not dance music. Its all pop now.

I don't think they do at all, but it would be nice if Guetta simply said "I used to care about underground music/music but not now I just want to make as much money as I can from it as I like money" and he would have been forgiven for all his sins in my mind, yet he is still peddling this nonsense line about spreading the music to different age groups as if he is somehow helping us all by making shit music.

Yep. I don't think we're every going to see eye to eye on this one haha!

He says he's going back to the undergound:

As much as he is unapologetic about his poppier anthems, Guetta is keen that people, especially those fresh-faced teenagers new to dance music, know there's another side to his music. Last year's Nothing But The Beat was a double album, the first disc containing the radio hits and the second disc purely instrumental tracks. If you heard its closing track, "The Alphabeat" blind, you would be more likely to think it was Daft Punk than Guetta.

"Listen, let me tell you," he smiles. "This story is so funny. Xavier [de Rosnay of Justice, another French outfit] told me: 'Man, I love "The Alphabeat", it's so crazy… Jackson [Fourgeaud, of Jackson and his Computer Band] sent me the album, saying: 'I. Can. Not. Fucking. Believe. That David Guetta did this.' That put a smile on my face, because people like to put a stamp on what you do."

Guetta's latest project is a new record label, which he wants to showcase more of this side of his music. "I'm starting a label called Jackback Records, which is kind of back to my roots. It's going to be only electronic music." His first signing is Dutch DJ Nicky Romero and the first release, "Metropolis", an instrumental collaboration between Guetta and Romero, is out now. "I don't do this for the money, I don't do it for record sales, I don't really care about that, I just want to make beats.

Well, thats some dated ripped off shit. He really is so talented.

Guetta's first track from 1990...


...can you spot him?

Did they do a version of this with lyrics, or does it just sound exactly like another track that was released recently with emo style vocals singing over it? It was on an advert and stuff.

There's a nice clear description for you all, so obviously you'll all immediately realise what I'm talking about.

No. Food, water, shelter and warmth matter. Anything else is just a nicety.