SIMON REYNOLDS DISCUSSES CURRENT DANCE MUSIC IN TODAY'S NY TIMES

why is this odd?

seriously tho, this article is madly sad-sack. and, dare i say it, rockist. amazing how he seems to want to put across the notion that germany is just getting it "these days" (i know he's gotta be smarter than that).

yeah, mixed with other songs! the drawback that "albums" have is a preponderance of g a p s

hstencil, aren't germans more into techno and dance music, don't they go to more clubs more often? aren't they simply listening to more electronic music in general, than people are in the us? i mean that's been my impression, all the way since 1990, at least.

Which is not to say that it CAN'T be done. Most all attempts are failures for sure. A complete analysis could not ignore "events" in society, though. How can a success ("respectable" sales figures) or failure be judged purely on it's own aesthetic characteristics?

"electroclash, anyone?"

Sorry, never went there. And my gut feeling tells me that electroclash never really lifted off in a way that prior genres did. Think of the "glorified bars" that SR mentions. Did dance in NYC really peak after 9-11? This is news to me.

exactly. now i know when something gets in the nyt arts & leisure section it ain't exactly news, but at least the infamous "grunge fashion" prank article was no more than 6 months late. 14 years is just pathetic.

HA! Dave Q wins.

Dig Your Own Hole was a top-ten album, so yes.

electroclash, anyone?

wait, this was *popular*? for more than six months, I mean?

- "musical overproduction, which effectively divides the pie into smaller slices"...

Effect:
- "the overall pie also seems to be shrinking as well"

- “Dance music has simply lost the ear of the floating consumer”

He ends by saying that sonic producers will have to "once again figure out how to smack listeners upside the head with sonic strangeness".

If this is true, it'll only be a new generation of producers doing it “in the name” of electronic dance music.

He also says that dance music became "too familiar", but how can it be too familiar if it's divided into all those microgenres? Do the microgenres SOUND no different than what preceded?

Uh, that's not exactly true. I knew quite a few kids in high school in DC who used to go to the big raves (where was it, Capitol Ballroom?).

Should I refer you to the thread about a year agi where I predicted all this, and was howled down? No, that would be ungracious of me.

I will say this one more time, and then shut up once and for all: the next playground for electronic music is rock - specifically metal. It's not that dance music has died; rather, it's that electronic devices have been reviving disco for about 15 years now, and the revivial is itself becoming stale. It could not be more obvious that rock is on the very brink of going completely electronic, same as happened to funk and disco.

Oh yeah, one more thing: if it's popular and has a strong rhythm, it's usually dance music. Dance music is not a genre.

Moley the Smug

rock is on the very brink of going completely electronic

you need to hear RTX's Transmaniacon.

xxpost

seriously, isn't "dance music" the most redundant term? unless it's a drone, it's probably danceable. hell even some drones have beating overtones.

Yes, true enough.

I think there's al lot to be gained from panning back to a broader view however. When has technology not revived old forms - in music, transport, or any other walk of life? Electronics are not a genre, any more than dancing is. Genres are based around actual musical formulas - specific rhythms, structures and melodies. People will not stop dancing - but they demand new life in genres, and that is were technological advancement, in the broadest sense, can be applied to old genres, reviving them.

And I now see that, while I was typing this, djdee has made the same point with respect to hip hop.

in shelf-life terms, hugely arguable--Kompakt both preceded and outlasted electroclash, has a growing audience whereas e-c has a shinking one, etc. (neither are all that big, obv., even in dance-music terms.)

Where electronic music is right now in America...

Metal Techno, or Techno Metal

Ideas to Revitalize Modern Metal?

Metal techno: the worst genre ever?

perhaps. far be it for me to stick up for electroclash (esp. since i was listening to kompakt type stuff in 2001-2002), but I just don't see kompakt having the "cultural impact" (so nebulous I know) that ec did. tho sales-wise, they're probably similar. there's no kompakt fischerspooner (yet).

Where electronic music is right now in America...

Metal Techno, or Techno Metal

Ideas to Revitalize Modern Metal?

Metal techno: the worst genre ever?

haha that's the most r*****t thing I've written in a while, innit?

oh no, totally agreed on that. but in terms of star appeal, she's really the only one out of that batch that counts.

how are they electroclash? they sound like Elton John.

I don't know about England, but it's regarded pretty much over here.

And he fails to mention New Order anywhere in the entire article? Compares LCD Soundsystem to PJ Harvey & Pavement? I'm sure people have burned in hell for less.

Rex the Dog!

I thought the article was much better than most of the articles on this topic have been, though as per usual at times the "signs of life" can seem to take on a disproportionate level of importance. The Tiefschwarz mention is alright because Tiefschwarz are flagbearers for what is currently the biggest sound in dance music, but I would have considered "breakcore" to be marginal at best. Actually I'm glad that he grouped Tiefschwarz and LCD Soundsystem together because I think it's useful to compare the two groups' similarities and differences.

Although had he actually talked about electroclash it might have been pertinent to note (and this is where Ronan's point comes in) how Tiefschwarz take the electro framework and reinvest it with a ravey actual-dance-music energy (hence electroclash having saved dance music while still being "over" - it's like a "vanishing mediator", or is that vanishing antithesis?).

I'm guessing it's a response to jaymc's comment.

Ronan totally OTM.

That's why this

In fact, some North American D.J.'s and producers like Richie Hawtin have moved to Germany because the climate for electronic music is more supportive

is basically the whole story. Maybe Simon needs to move to Cologne? ;)
Said it in another thread some time ago but dance here is seeing an influx of young people. And this year Dance Valley is probably going to become a three-day festival, so in rockspeak were actually getting into 1969/ the Woodstock phase. :) Now where are The Stooges?

and disco nihilist otm.

If you're thinking about the mainstream (in the US) and why dance is not as popular (anymore), then you have to look at how the public generally tends to listen/view artists: They want a *face* something which isn't as prevalent in dance.

actually, DYOH debuted at no. 14 and went gold half a year later. Not bad at all, but the "teeming throngs" line feels a bit facetious, especially since they've released two albums since then have each done worse than that.

She's right. (Google "lenny bruce," "vaughn meader" and "kennedy" together to get a fuller explanation.)

yeah, when were prodigy and fatboy slim hip on the real dancefloors? never. its all about the singles and compilation mix albums in the REAL danceculture. the culture that brings money to the table, the 'kids'

They aren't waiting on a new Daft Punk either, they just want Dave Clarke to put out a new mix album.

Or Kiss?

Screw that, we're talking about dancing and having fun, and that's NOT Moby these days. What we need is a picture of Altern 8:

http://www.trancentral.ru/pix00/10_misc/altern8.jpg

http://www.yegor.com/Music/moby-7.jpg

see? Lookee!

In the UK in the 90s there were dance #1s coming out on a fucking conveyer belt. The big problem is that most of them were rubbish.

*or is it Rest of World?

Laurent Garnier is presenting the 6 Mix show on 6 Music, NOW ! 8pm - 10 pm

Sunday 23 January
Influential European DJ figurehead Garnier enjoyed a previous life as a restaurant manager, then footman at the French Embassy ...

I think this is true about much of ILM

Maybe he should have mentioned Waltzes as well. I mean, okay, Britney Spears makes Dance Pop. You can dance to Rock. If it has a beat, you can dance to it. But he's talking about Dance - from Chem Bros to Kompakt. I mean, this is an article not about him (and what music he likes) but about the state of Dance music in the US.

xxpost - history is written by the "winners"

That's right, we're stopping you from dancing to any records except electronic ones, with physical force.

And fuck the barely concealed contempt in the you can dance to all sorts of music too whining

and as for Matthew's post, perhaps the people want rave culture to be more popular in America because they're into it. not because they hate Britney. fairly certain Simon R did actually do a blog entry about Toxic anyway, so good example

xpost - it is all the same!

hence some people in the US, flagrantly, on this thread, while knowing what dance music is, can't understand the wider concept of it, that which distinguishes it from hiphop etc.

you're so defensive about this, is all i mean ronan. I sincerely doubt that dance music needs defending, it does quite fine on it's own.

There seems to be a spate of disingenuousness about the specific meaning of genres round here lately, too.

In accords to non electronic dance music, Im still waiting for a Funk revival

yes, raves didn't take off on a large scale in america because of homophobes, yep, uh huh.

perhaps it's just because, duh, the US and the UK are completely different countries? with different economies, social customs, class traditions, and even property rights? (there's no way that in America circa 1988 you could've commandeered a big farm estate for a rave, like you could in the UK).

I think it's stupid and overstepping the mark to complain about Americans who like dance music and the culture inherent to that wanting it to become popular.

Just because you can fucking dance to anything does not mean it sounds like Tiefschwarz or Kompakt. Hence the Britney comparison seems like lazy tossed off rubbish.

It's as if to say 'why the fuck would you listen to kompakt or tiefschwarz, YOU CAN ALREADY DANCE TO THE MUSIC IN THE CHARTS'

And you can apply that example to pop vs any other genre that isn't successful in America.

That doesn't explain the relative sales positions, does it? And are you saying that a big part of the anti-Disco thing wasn't the perceived Gayness of the music and its fans?

I dunno if anybody's actually saying this. My reading on SR's article is that, if anything, he's lamenting that 'dance music' is not popular in the US, without going into any realistic discussion as to why that music would be on a different scale here than in the UK or Germany. And he does it in such a simplistic way (tho given the NYT audience, and more likely his editors, i understand that) that if I was, say, German, I'd be offended! I mean he writes like Tresor or Basic Channel or even Kraftwerk didn't exist!

to say that there is one sole reason why some people didn't like disco is as just as specious and strawman-ish as anything a homophobe could actually say about homosexuals!

However there are US internet radio websites such as

dirty radio
http://www.dirtyradio.net/

I have read comments by Felix Da Housecat and Cannibal Ox, for instance who are scathing in their contempt for US mainstream music media.

The thing is, the u.s. already has its own unique dance culture in place - european dance music would have to supplant the weird hip-hop/pop conglameration that currently rules the charts in order to have any effect. And Philip Sherburne's article from a couple months back did a better job at this - european dance music is having an effect subversively, in that hip-hop artists use some similar sonics to euro dance artists. But the idea that european rave culture is going to (or ever really had a chance of) supplanting American dance culture is sort of ridiculous.

xpost - i wasn't responding to any point you made, ronan, but to that specious claim that all disco haters are fag bashers or whatever.

Also, perhaps what puzzles people about the relative failure of dance in the US is House and Techno's American roots?

also in today's NYT:

One Word for What's Happening to Actors' Faces Today: Plastics
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/movies/23darg.html?oref=login

I agree that what people dance to is entirely dependent on context, I said pretty much the same myself above. It's worth noting that pop dance which does not fit the super minimal description counts for alot of the 'dominance' over here, or has counted for.

And are you saying that a big part of the anti-Disco thing wasn't the perceived Gayness of the music and its fans?

were you at Comiskey? I didn't see you there with me and all the other homophobes!

(actually i was like 1 or 2 at the time, wasn't there, and why would i go anyway? I like a lot of disco)

Ignore metal at your peril.

the weird hip-hop/pop conglameration that currently rules the charts

Wait, why weird? I can't imagine anything LESS weird.

It's a bit like bioengineering a creature that's a big blob of tits, asses, and vaginas and expecting straight men everywhere to want to fuck it.

Sounds like the Internet to me!

I think the argument about hip-hop and r'n'b producers adapting European dance sonics is perfectly fair, dee. Timbaland and the Neptunes being obvious examples. It still seems strange that those particular rhythms exert such a stranglehold on American dance culture tho.

OTM. it is completely ridiculous that hip-hop is never mentioned in the article. it's dance music, just not in the above referenced parameters (see bugged out's post). and it gets played in plenty of clubs that are marginalized along racial lines. until that line gets broken, until kids of different economic and racial backgrounds get together, we won't have a dance movement like the late 90s supposedly foretold.

Haha Ned I direct you to Jess' blog post about Lil Wyte:
http://shutyrgob.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_shutyrgob_archive.html#109788172574591929

Lil Wyte himself is one of those ghetto ass skinny white guys with the veiny arms and unshaveable pube 'stache which us fat, vein-less, clean shaven white kids were always scared of because they would beat your ass (i.e. the subtext of his new hit single.) This may well be the first racial stereotype that occurs everywhere, as applicable to Olympia as Biloxi. They've just traded Priest and Maiden for Triple-Six and Mobb Deep.

Seriously, did he just miss the whole Crunk thing?

This is spot on. I guess there's also a long history of European paranoia about American cultural dominance and American paranoia about European cultural snobbery running alongside it.

Yeah, but wishing and expecting are a bit different, don't you think? To me, it sounds like Simon (and the people on that CMJ panel that I mentioned earlier) really think that Americans have fucked it up and that they were SUPPOSED to embrace this culture. Maybe I'm being unfair to them. Definitely a possibility.

The only way to create mass media change is to alter the mix of systems inputs [radio playlists/ programming] - therefore creating changes in music listening - which influences what music people celebrate - the systems outputs.

I thought we'd agreed to re-name that fucking r-word.

I thought my point was pretty simple, but I guess not...

Of course rock can be dance music, and so can hip-hop, etc. But like it or not, there is a genre of music called "dance," and it's pretty widely understood--including by Americans!--that it refers to house, techno, electronica, etc. You might think it's a bad genre name, and I would agree with you. But when Simon Reynolds writes an article about how "dance" music isn't doing well in the US, he isn't saying that people don't like to dance in the US, or that music for dancing isn't doing well in the US. He's saying that the "dance" genre isn't doing well. So bitching about how he didn't mention hip-hop is completely beside the point.

More nomenclature confusion here -- SR is writing about the European definition of "dance music", and how well *that* music is faring in the US.

What is actually popular in American clubs in place of that music (asnd why this is so) isn't the focus of the article.

Hey, Kid Rock already showed that combining all three strands results in a new synthesis, so bring on more of that. (Bubba Sparxxx fully going goth-metal via Nick Cave wouldn't surprise me at all.)

He's saying that the "dance" genre isn't doing well. So bitching about how he didn't mention hip-hop is completely beside the point.

No, because the reason that the "dance" genre can't make it in the u.s. is because we have our own dance genre in hip-hop/pop!

Yeah, and if he wasn't so myopic in his little culture bubble, he probably would've made that clear to his American audience reading it in an American newspaper.

hip hop is much much bigger than techno or house music in europe too. let´s not think anything else. I think many of you americans have a warped idea of how popular dance music is in europe. yes, it is more popular than in the us but that doesnt mean much.

true he does...excerpt: in recent years it may have been beaten on the shake-your-booty front by dancehall and Southern rap.

But he doesn't recognize it as being a part of the "dance" genre. Instead he says it's something to be absorbed by dance culture, like rock, to inject it with some newfound vitality.

exactly my beef with the whole thrust of the article. i mean, why not examine what moves americans rather than why french house never shook booty in midtown like it was supposed to?

This is definitely true for me, but it's mostly from what I've read in Euro publications over the years.

Simon R is of course saying they once were big (in the States) and wonders why there's a disinterest now. That said, I always thought the Prodigy's album wasn't really all that successful. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

Isn't he also CLEAR about what he's discussing: the big four (dance acts)? *sigh*

Because he chose to examine why French house never shook booty in midtown like it was supposed to. Maybe next time he'll write an article about what moves Americans.

Objecting to why it was "supposed to" is another matter altogether ... Reynolds seems to consider it nearly axiomatic, i.e. he starts by assuming (without argument) that it "should" have broken big, and then tries to figure out why it didn't.

Yeah, about what I thought. Metal may not be the specific vehicle but the aesthetic is being carried through. ;-)

That said, I always thought the Prodigy's album wasn't really all that successful. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember.

The Fat of the Land? Debuted at number one here.

Some big news for you: Hip-hop and pop are big in Europe too.

Hey, I'm tired of Reynolds and his entire schtick. He really needs to give up the rave ghost. But the critiques in this thread are pedantic bitch-assery of the highest order.

well no, you sure can't fill any football stadiums with hiphop over here. Fairly routine for trance/hard techno.

I am sure if Simon pitched this themed article at a specialist publication - then a more longer, detailed and substantial effort would have been actioned.

So? I'm not sure what that has to do w/ hip-hop's club domination in the united states.

well maybe a broad readership isn't interested in music that isn't selling? not that sales should be the only factor in coverage, but given the NYT's increasingly populist bent in the "pop music" section (that's right, music is segregated into "pop" and "classical" again, bye bye clinton nineties), it's just surprising.

Even more oddly, others have been looking to rock music for reinvigoration.

why is this odd?

why is it odd that Norman Cook, formerly a bassist in a rock band (albeit a sorta pansyish one) would listen to or be inspired by rock music!

Point being: If hip-hop/pop big in Europe too, harder to see them as a unique factor holding back dance/electronic in the US. Especially in the case of pop!

I agree with Perpetua's explanation.

It seems a bit strange to ignore that the biggest reason why Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, and The Prodigy all had fluke success in the US around the same time was cos major labels and the media in the US had convinced itself that it was the Next Big Thing

*That's* why a broad readership might be interested. The music was pushed as the Next Big Thing (which a broad musically-curious readership might remember), and now nobody cares about it. There's your article.

but the point of the article is that dance music is barely alive in america. it's not. it's his rather narrowly defined notion dance music that's dead.

This is true, although not about the Spice Girls--they were more or less concurrent to the big beat explosion, and had their biggest impact before Fat of the Land went to #1. But nu-metal is a much better example--it's pretty much what people were looking for in big-beat, except more rock, so easier to reconcile. And as Scottpl recently pointed out in his Always Outnumbered review, it often really wasn't that far off from nu-metal. You put, say, Linkin Park's "Faint" and Prodigy's "Firestarter" up against each other, and there's really not too much distinguishing the two.

No, the point is that *particular styles* of dance music is barely alive in America. Against, I think there's confusion because the phrase "dance music" means different things to Americans and Europeans.

or aphex twin's "come to daddy."

e.g on BBC Music
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/

Dance
House, Trance, Techno

Urban
Hip hop, R'n'B, Garage, Ragga

But yeah, nu-metal is more important since electronica was being marketed to modern rock radio and alt-rock fans.

this was the NeoCons side-project, alongside the slandering of CLinton

and 'dance' as a term for certain genres and subgenres of music is just as hopeless as the terms pop, rock, indie, urban etc. - but i'm still surprised people feel the need to bring up the 'why is it called dance music when we can dance to Britney/rock music as well?' thing again...in 2005!

Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy both had some huge hits, but I would say that the success of Daft Punk really was only a modest success (which probably set them up to a better long term career, cos they aren't stuck with that nostalgia vibe. Well, that and DP just being way better in general.)

4th paragraph:
In the new millennium, the mainstream profile of dance music dipped alarmingly. This downturn occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, but it was particularly precipitous in America

"dance music" = House, Trance, Techno

(as stated in DJ Martian's post above)

Yeah, it really does have a lot to do with how they were trying to shoehorn this stuff into rock stations, it alienated the core demo of rock stations.

"Come To Daddy" did pretty well, though.

"I WANT YOUR SOUL, I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!!"

so metal

(x-post)

These guys really were more of an MTV/album sales thing

Not entirely true. Lo-Fidelity All-Stars' "Battleflag," Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," The Properllerheads' "History Repeating," one or two others.

(x-post to Bill)

Jock jams is really where all of america gets its house music.

We had a thread about this over at another webboard recently, how '96/'97 was such a bizarre time for rock music, that radio was throwing everything from the Primitive Radio Gods and Luscious Jackson to Nada Surf and Spacehog against the wall to see what would stick. The big beat explosion was no doubt a big part of this.

The first video to ever be retired on TRL after 65 days at the countdown. It spent at least 60 of those days at #3, never able to beat out BSB or N Sync.

At the time, I thought it was such a victory when "Freak on a Leash" got to #1 on that show.

Small.

life is hard
and so am i

I'll think I miss Garbage but then I remember that "Androgyny" song.

but matthew's right about the top-down thing - this wasn't a groundswell and I'm sort of amazed that people expected U.S. listeners with no previous connection to electronic dance music or dance culture to even relate the success of these particular 97-98 artists to rave culture in general, let alone seek it out.

like bill alluded to earlier, I had said in that prodigy review that these tracks did have an effect on shifting modern rock radio, but it was toward nu-metal/rap-rock/etc. -- firestarter, breathe, block rockin beats, setting son, battle flag (an inexplicably big song on U.S. rock radio), born slippy (nuxx), rockafeller skank, bodyrock: these tracks are more rock/hip-hop meets dance than track-y dance music. They're electronic music with vocal hooks and choruses and, in some cases, frontmen - and this is the direction electronic productions went in the U.S., in modern rock but also pop and, perhaps above all, hip-hop.

For a country with not much of a history in rave/dance culture, this seems almost like a logical direction -- the sounds and textures of electronic music took over the U.S. charts but not via DJ culture: they were snapped up by timbaland, rodney jerkins, lil jon, etc., and combined with the ego-centrism, marketable star-quality frontmen, verses and choruses, song structures that listeners were already comfortable with and other typical elements of pop music.*

From an outsider's perspective, this also seems to be happening in the UK - U.S. hip-hop seems to be increasingly cutting into dance music's audience, no?

* as an aside, what was the last instrumental top 40 hit in the U.S. anyway? We don't even have the odd Mike Post/Vangelis/Jan Hammer hit single anymore let alone the dancefloor friendly crossovers we had from soul. disco, etc.

xpost can we all agree that rednex "cotton eyed joe" was a big hit and makes perfect sense?

Probably Robert Miles' "Children," no?

especially not at the moment--modern rock's probably the least conservative right now than it's been since '96/'97.

maybe post, vangelis and hammer could team up a la G3 (Vai, Satriani and Malmsteen) or the 3 Tenors.

The last big instrumental pop-trance hit I think was Darude's "Sandstorm," and even that song, ubiquitous as it was, only went to #83.

x-post I thought they cracked it for a week! usher had to take a shit or something.

I certainly bemoan this. There's really no reason why "The Reason" (no pun intended) shouldn't have gone to #1 except that it happened to co-incide with Usher's monster Spring of 2004. It depresses me beyond belief to know that Nickelback could possibly have the last rock #1 in history.

Linkin Park, U2, Green Day, most of the usual suspects.

1) Evanescence "Fallen"
2) Sheryl Crow "The Very Best Of..."
3) Maroon 5 "Songs About Jane"
4) No Doubt "The Singles"
5) Blink 182 "s/t"
6) Hoobastank "The Reason"
7) Nickelback "The Long Road"
8) Linkin Park "Meteora"
9) Sarah McLachlan "Afterglow"
10) Switchfoot "The Beautiful Letdown"

That's anything that could reasonably be qualified as rock music, not counting Prince, country music, and Norah Jones.

This is a good point. I can think of a couple exceptions ("Busy Child," "Battleflag," "The Rockaeflla Skank") but for the most part this is very true--a good deal of The Prodigy's appeal was "OMG LOOK AT HOW SCARY THE DUDE IS IN THE VIDEO," and "Praise You" and "Weapon of Choice" would most likely have gone nowhere without those great Jonze videos.

#7, I think. The only crunk #1s have been crunk-n-bs like "Goodies" and "Yeah".

haha, nope but maybe Tim McGraw or Gretchen Wilson counts on Chuck time.

Faint didn't even crack the pop charts. "In The End" went to #2, I don't know what held it off.

otherwise "hey ya"'s probably the last rock #1, unless that nickelback bill's talking about it more recent

If you count "Hey Ya," then yeah. I can't bring myself to do that.

Didn't "Get Low" make it in the top ten?

#2. Heartbreaker.

Nah, rock bands will still fluke into having #1 hits from time to time. If Clay Aiken can score a fluke #1, then so can bands like Hoobastank or Maroon 5.

x-post.

It's possible, obviously, but the fact that it hasn't happened in three years is pretty discouraging. When songs as ubiquitous as "The Reason" (so ubiquitous that everyone automatically assumes it went to #1) can't even make it, what can?

Although Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is looking somewhat promsiing--it'd be a bizarre #1, but it's really shooting up the charts at the moment. Jumped three to #8 this week.

hahaha full circle!

Wasn't that one of the most often celebrated things in 'dance' music of the kind SR refers to? The importance of the abstract 'instrumental' aspect.

The fact that without the language constraints the music could potentially connect with, and unite people so much more easily? Of course the drugs played a significant role, but I still think it's an important point rarely mentioned enough.

That so much of dance music is re-discovering black 'street' beats is just as much a product of the fact that so many producers are excelling in this area these days (why not steal when it's so good) as it is of recognising that there's something of a racial separation opening up in dance music that needs to be bridged to restore that utopian, inclusive balance.

'Urban'? why not just call it Race music and have done with it? What a hideous genre label and so incredibly incorrect in trying to assign some kind of 'Realness' (another loaded term) to everyone from teenage millionaires like Ashanti to poor white kids from Detroit like Eminem.

I'm not going to add anything else because I really wouldn't be able to argue coherently on here as an obviously alienated hip-hop-ophobe most of the time. But I do feel it's worth touching on.

I wonder what the last non-ballad rock song was to crack the top ten.

Jet didn't get near the top ten, DJDee.

"Jump, Jive an' Wail" went to #94. The rest didn't do shit.

I'd count that, yeah, but that's still three years ago. Has there been nothing since?

It must be pretty low, since those two Bright Eyes singles didn't even crack the Top 100.

dee white stripes by far most successful rockisback act

Lou Bega HAD to get past #94. Had to!

I don't traditionally think of this as swing, but if it is, then yeah, I think it went top five.

"Zoot Suit Riot" only charted Modern Rock.

I guess I'm saying that having no instrumental music in the states in some way IS a bad thing. Partly because I have to try and not listen to the depressing, cynical, egocentric, predictable and uncreative lyrics for way too many party hip-hop/rnb/crunk tunes to even try and begin to enjoy them.

xp

"Out of left field came German-born, Italian/Ugandan Lou Bega, scoring an international chart-topping single with his infectious "Mambo No. 5" -- the only thing that kept it from reaching the top of the U.S. charts was the fact that no American commercial single was ever issued."

Hey, it's called Mambo No. 5 for a reason.

I certainly don't think it's easily lumped in with CPD, Setzer, etc.--they had totally different demographics, weren't played on the same stations, etc.

Hell, on I Love the 90s, VH1 had totally different entries for Lou and the Swing revival, where they could have been easily grouped to save time.

yes, their albums tanked, or are about to tank, in america. but they arent going to shift mega-units here in the UK either? time has moved on, and they are too tied in to 'the 90s', is there anything less fashionable than chemical brothers, prodigy et al right now (and lets not even get into leftfield and the littler ones of crossover-electronica)

i think the semantics about what is and isnt dance music are a distraction. yes, everything ever is dance music, we know that. but we also know what is being talked about specifically on this thread, and as long as we know what is being discussed specifaclly, i think we can put the semantics to one side, perhaps for some rainy day laterin the year

it is entirely logical that dance music has plummeted in profile and popularity, it is the sound of the 90s, what is less popular than the immediate past? plus the grassroots were never there, only ever inroads. (yes, yes i know the grassroots were there in certain cities, but not nationwide and thats what keeps things afloat). here the grassroots are there, but the downturn is here too.

does this mean dance is dead? well, it depends if you take a uk/us centric view? i think perhaps people in israel dont consider it dead!

black people make the last uptempo rock and jazz chart smashes but nooo everybody's gotta be all Barkenaked Ladies and Brian Setzer and shit.

same wavelength, different movement.

Simon Reynolds has incredibly unique perspectives on dance music in the broadest sense, but the more I read his articles, the more I'm convinced he's become far more jaded and is working with a smaller and smaller domain of actual input when he writes these articles.

Baz Luhrman?

another thing to note, is that european musics track record in america, as far as popularity goes, has been iffy at best, with a few short periods of large success, with vast deserts of indifference between.

im not sure that simon has really got to grips with hip hop at all, i feel sometimes he is looking at hip hop through dance (or house, if you object to the usage of the word dance in this context) glasses, and im not sure where that really gets us

right, and the electronica 'invasion' of '97 has really proven to be no more seismic on reflection than the period in the early 90s when EMF, Carter and Jesus Jones all scored massive hits Stateside.

even before 1996?

No, just the "Firestarter" stuff (the only things to do well here in the US).

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T-shirt?

Simon Reynolds complains too much.

Gareth otm about schemas and stuff.

Other thing that occurs to me is that jaded ex-raver ecstasy burnout types get v v nostalgic for their clubbing heydays when they were in huge barns full of thousands and thousands of people all feeling the vibe and it was IMPORTANT, damn it.

Newsflash, fucker, you were ON DRUGS. Perception did not equal reality.

Having said that, it is pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of clubbing to euro youth culture. But that is inseparable from two things. 1) drugs. and 2) Europeans need drugs in order to get that whole conviviality thing going that comes so naturally to americans. so OF COURSE taking lots of ecstasy and losing the plot for 6 hours is/was bigger in Europe.

Also, point 3: economics. In Europe it's CHEAPER to take drugs than it is to drink, because most Es are made in Holland, and competition keeps the price at around the cost of a pill at the equivalent of 2 pints of lager. So, again, popularity of drug music? Unsurprising. Contrast the US where it's fucking hard for 16 year olds to get a hold of alcohol or get into clubs, but very easy and cheap for them to buy pot. Popularity of hip hop? Unsurprising...

I donno about that one, but otherwise probably otm.

2002 Nickelback, "How You Remind Me"
2001 Crazy Town, "Butterfly"
2000 Creed, "With Arms Wide Open"
2000 Matchbox Twenty, "Bent"
2000 Vertical Horizon, "Everything You Want"
2000 Santana, "Maria Maria"
2000 Savage Garden, "I Knew I Loved You"
1999 Santana f/Rob Thomas, "Smooth"
1998 Barenaked Ladies, "One Week"
1998 Aerosmith, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"

Bill -- there's a Wikipedia page that lists all the number ones.

btw I bet all the detroit techno dudes are fans of "toys in the attic" or something.

And I think the extent to which some dance music is dedicated to being made for dancing goes way beyond the extent of the same in hiphop. And if that´s going to be read as a value judgement then rest assured it´s no more than a personal one.

That's a pretty dire list of #1s. Of those, the only ones I really like are Crazytown, Vertical Horizon, and "Smooth".

hahaha!

oh whoa there I am fairly sure I am of the generation of dancekids that have a reverence for disco, whether that´s based on actual knowledge or not. ie even if my disco knowledge is not impressive beyond a goodish sense of italo.

I think the reasoning is that hip-hop displaced any chance of the euro-definition of dance music from making it in the states.

[/broken record]

the argument that dance was never going to be successful in America is only valid with the benefit of hindsight.

I bet plenty of the Detroit guys hate rock, but I´d imagine that was more the case in CHICAGO. techno purists are lapsed rock kids.

-- Schoolly D, "I Hate Rock And Roll" (1986)

-- Schoolly D (1986)

"FUCK YOU ASSHOLE! E = MC SQUARED!! THE OTHER NINETY NINE!! FUCK THESE BLACK GUYS!!"

hahaha i like the idea of big audio dynamite fans. that shit sure didn't age well.

To sum up my feelings about this article, though...I'd rather just listen to "Weak Become Heroes."

the phrase "dance music" would not exist to Americans if it wasn´t for house/techno etc. it´s not even an American term, so less of the co-opting it for ludicrous argument please.

huh?!

that´s why this silly tacking on of hiphop onto the name is so stupid, the entire thing came from electronic music, house or techno or whatever. people did not simply say ´dance music´ beforehand. dance music is a specific genre name. it does not have exclusive privilege in terms of being a style of record people dance to.

in other news, rock music is not all that rocks. many people who make country are from the city. NOT ALL VACUUM CLEANERS ARE HOOVERS.

no he's not, but he's claiming european origins for the phrase "dance music" in reference to house and techno, which is kinda silly. before house and techno got to europe, did the people in the states who played it and listened to it not think of it as dance music or even call it that? i doubt it.

there was no such genre as dance music until dance music.

This whole argument of specific terminology is extremely silly, actually.

We've already gone over the scores of reasons that hip-hop is America's own version of European dance music in this thread - it was pushed to rock audiences, it was not a grassroots movement, and because, yes, Americans were getting their dance groove fix from hip-hop and pop music.

bullshit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_music

includes "Some paragraphs that got lost but give some context and nuance"

I agree with donut bitch, on one matter, the whole argument is silly. I can´t understand why Americans act so ridiculously about a genre name which so obviously means electronic music.
once again.

And America`s own version of ´dance music´ may well be hiphop, but then clearly hiphop is not ´dance music´, in the last 20 years this phrase simply is house and techno etc. Once again I have to stress the fact that you can dance to two types of music is not a strong enough characteristic to lump them in together.

you simply can´t argue that since hiphop is America´s equivalent of dance music then no article about dance music should exclude hiphop. it´s like determined ignorance, ´dance music does not exist here, because hiphop is actually dance music´.

The culture is not the same, the people making it are not the same, the ideas are not the same, the consumption is not the same. They´re completely fucking different and there´s no sense in criticising people for writing about why that scene did not work in America.

Simon is a dance writer, heaven forbid Americans read about another culture.

This is just an irrational pet peeve of mine, so never mind me.

hiphop comes from disco which is dance music! dance music isn't a genre, it's a few of 'em all put together. it doesn't mean anything or even describe anything on its own.

And yeah, Skinny Puppy did put out a new album. In fact, there's that video... with the breakdancing goths. (I'm not joking.)

xpost - mbm had quite an influence on idm as well, as i recall.

Yeah, that is a shame. Even with stuff like Thomas P. Heckmann (striking similarities to Nitzer Ebb) and Ritchie Hawtin's Nitzer Ebb sampling on "Decks, EFX, and 909" sitting RIGHT THERE.

but ronan, one of the big (if not *the* biggest) reasons that electronic music hasn't grown its U.S. audience in the past eight years is because hip-hop did, and it did so using some of the same sounds and textures as electronic music. It also has loads of other advantages over electronic dance music: it's homegrown, sonically it was sprouting in 97 whereas dance's culture of progression was sort of grinding to a halt, its club nights here aren't as likely to be age-restricted to 21+, to white suburban teens it may have the 'outlaw' factor mentioned by SR that is now absent from electronic dance music, it doesn't foresake the things that Americans already expect from pop music and pop stars, etc.

If one were to write an article like this - why is dance music not as popular in the U.S. now as it was in 97? - the longheld setbacks are still in place (geography, rural/urban divide, homophobia, discophobia, xenophobia, the labels' relucatance to spend money on dance music after overspending in the disco years, slower absorption of music trends here v., say, london, media bias, lack of names and faces to promote, etc.) and potentially not as central to the piece, but I think the biggest new reason is the emergence of hip-hop and its usurption of U.S. pop charts in part via electronic production + the emergence of nu-metal on modern rock radio with some of the same. the culture of dance music as you're referring to it was never mainstream in the U.S. as a whole, and the sounds of dance music are, to many American kids, made redundant by rock and rap artists who, in addition to up-to-the-minute sonics, also provide your typical pop thrills. It would be a bit shocking to not mention this. (That said, SR does mention it, so...I don't see why everyone is going around and around about it)

PLUR, dude, is a thread-killer.

Which seems to be the norm at the goth/industrial (=1995 trance with scary vocals on top) clubs these days.

(and yes, I know about downloading. That's how I, a guy who lives in the suburbs, keep up with dance music.)

Really? This probably depends on which crowd you move with because from day 1 this has been acknowledged as a big influence on house/rave/whatever. This was on a personal level where those who dived into rave circa 91 were all metalheads en EBM fans (and it was SR actually who made this connection early on, somewhere at the end of Blissed Out innit?) And the last few years it has been undeniable (again see DJ Hell's EBM mixcd or any Black Strobe rmx or Tiefschwarz DJ-set.)

this is no doubt heresy but I always liked the way Revolting Cocks sampled Phuture's 'The Creator' more that the original. :)

Brian Lustmord made up a Wax Trax! parody band called T.G.T. (The Genetic Terrorists) that actually got signed to Wax Trax! They got a couple of singles and an album out of it. The video to "Revo" is phenomenally stupid and hilarious. Best label signing story ever.

BTW I don't know whether we should be talking about techno and house being 'the European idea of dance music'. It probably owes more to Chicago. In turn, Chicago owes house to US disco. House could even be electronic disco, no more and no less.

Periodically someone comes in and points out that all music people dance to is dance music. This is a point worth reiterating again and again. The kind of music that isn't hitting in the USA any more is just one particular kind of dance music - UK post rave electronic dance music - a strain within a strain within a genre. It's a big world, the world of electronic dance music; and the charts are currently full of different strains of the stuff. The majority of the top 40 at any time is 80% electronic music which people dance to. For better or worse, the battle has been won.

Front 242 strongly influenced the darkwave/EBM-trance style which still remains popular, much of which is quite embarassing. So do dance music writers distance themselves from Industrial moreso because they don't like what it's become today, as opposed to feeling guilty about liking Front 242 in 1987?

I know I'm generalizing horribly about the "most critics in the US and the UK" thing, but it's the only rational explanation for the absence of perspective of dance music in the 80s and before in print today, aside from what critics have learned from interviewing today's artists, many of which were into dance music early on, or what have you.

The problem is that the public (here at least in Belgium) equated New Beat with the Confettis. It was dark and sexy but it was also not to be taken seriously at all.

(i wouldnt want to use rave as a descriptive here either, as i consider it a 87-94 term, before the formalization of club culture - though that is uk specific)

is dance/house/techno/rave/trance (please, people you know what im talking about, dont semantic me again!) as popular in australia as before? the impression i get is that there hasnt been an equivalent decline in australia as in uk/us

um where is this happening?

Last time i was in Vietnam, I went to a club that was playing like 100% new beat type stuff that I'd never heard before and assume was homegrown...

Japan has millions of its own weird microgenres, like that stuff that sounds like happy hardcore with japa-rapping over the top.

Philippines, Malaysia and Shanghai are all about hip hop, following the US lead.

But, apparently, head out to Chengdu or any other place out in the sticks in china and its hard house all the way. As is the case in Indonesia.

No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell...

So dance music/superclub culture was totally dominant throughout the 90s, right up until the big chart trance boom in 1999 (which might, in retrospect, have been partly responsibly for its commercial demise). Hardcore, house, drum and bass, trance and then garage were all big things (even if dnb never really spawned any big chart hits, if you exclude Incredible), you heard them booming out of car stereos across London. In 2004 you just don't, you either hear hip-hop, dancehall or grime in their place. To an extent the rise in hip-hop's popularity here has coincided with its incorporation of some of the sonic elements of dance music, and its now squeezing out dance music itself as a commercial force.

Why has no one mentioned geography here? The relative proximity of British cities to one another was a big factor. People used to drive from Bristol to Manchester to go clubbing for a weekend, or out into the country for a rave, or whatever, or out of the country and into London to go dancing. As more people did that, the more the local provincial clubs opened up their own house or dnb nights.

but it's an interesting parallel - that US rap took a while to peak here just as dance music (as WE know it) has in the States

erm once again we're back to the same pig headedness.

saying "dance music did take off in the US, hiphop IS dance music" is nothing more than an obstacle which prevents discussion of the subject of the above article and of electronic dance music.

the "us equivalent of dance music" is never going to be similar to the European one, it's not enough to simply say "it's all electronic dance music", is ambition so meagre in that respect that we actually consider it all part of the exact same scene and about the same vibe.

hiphop and house/techno are so different, in so many ways, and I maintain that the refusal to even discuss the success or failure of house and techno etc without trying to instantly kill discussion by saying you can dance to anything, that that refusal is telling in itself.

there's an arrogance there.

Where does grime fit in here? Obviously it has little mainstream profile even here yet, Dizzee aside, but its origins are in hip-hop and dancehall as much as they are in garage and jungle.

why did Simon Reynolds not mention Dirty Vegas? ;)

upthread i mentioned Carter having a big hit in the States. this is based on something i read years ago which claimed that 'The Only Living Boy In New Cross' was in the Billboard top 10! but it seems i have my wires crossed...

But that track falls somewhat outside the typical hip-hop boundaries surely, as with 'Hey Ya!'

You're saying Mo & Benoelie started New Beat? Or brought it back with their compilations? I'm confused now. They now play at the Culture Club - or used to, as I don't go there much more. My husband loathes'em. *shrug* Not surprisingly as he sees them in the same style as 2ManyDJs. :-)

I love when this list suddenly starts bickering about what dance music is. Trying so hard to prove Simon R wrong.

applies to Grime also of course

xpost

either way, i cant see grime busting the top 10/40 open wide like rave/hardcore did, barring a few odd hits here and there. this year might see it happen though - kano's new single is sure to hit the top 40, even if its more of a standard hip hop/rock track then grime.

xpost - mary j isnt hip hop.

Commercially, though, Fatboy had more US success than Leftfield and Orbital combined.

No one saw THAT coming.

(Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.)

hstencil, more accurately you bought those records at the larger, more liberal (read "culturally aware") university town in the state. A town that's two hours from Chicago and has a lot of students from that city. To my current knowledge, there were probably zero other stores in the state that had those records at that time.

College kids devour a wider range of new music by blowing their student loans? Who knew? It doesn't hurt that it was 2001 and all the kids who went through the supposed US dance renaissance in their teens were in school.

I mean, I know a lot of people who say, "oh I like everything except boring dance music". I don't have to ask them if they're referring to boring hip hop or boring rock when they say that.

Non-pop dance music is a multi multi billion euro business in Europe, don’t underestimate that even though it may lack in crossover radio hits.

I don’t think there’s any good reason why non-pop dance music couldn’t be as popular in the States as it is in Europe. It is American music, bascially, after all.

The reason it’s not may also have to do with media and politics.

a) Before* commercial media took over, underground electronic dance music was played on National public pop radio (which has a big influence in Europe) as part of their musically unformatted programming. *It still is of course.

b) most young Americans are probably a lot more likely to be Christian and politically conservative than their European counterparts and this may partially responsible form them not to embrace drugs & “abstract” electronic music is such a massive way. This may be nonsense, though, I don’t know. However, it may take a bit of a metropolitan worldview to get into it, something that may be lacking outside of California and New York.

okay then! at least we're making our snob-preference for purism clear! i'm not saying 'hey ya' is a work of pure hip hop, any more than 'no diggety' (which at least had rapping) but the point is, hip-hop has not been a negligible presence in the uk. nationwide it's been bigger than garage or dnb.

What about Firestarter? That's not an "MTV hit"?

this isnt about purism, this is about that comment that because hey ya is supposedly 'owned' by the UK's hip hop audience, that its hip hop, which to begin with just isnt true. no hip hop Djs (other than westwood) were playing hey ya. you would never have heard hey ya on any hip hop radio show in the UK. and thats not purism, thats fact. same for no diggety.

i used 2 swear by him till he went off dance. haven't looked at his site in a long while.

I don't think there's any one rule as to how genres are carved up. Genre divisions are based on what artists/fans/critics/etc. finds useful.

(Sorry, I'm just now reading through this thread.)

OTFM

also, black strobe does indeed = wax trax 2004. hell, the artwork for the chemical sweet girl ep looks like skinny puppy artwork from their nettwerk days (steven r gilmore?). wax trax was also hugely euro-influenced back in the day.

this thread is weird. dance music has existed in the form of club culture since the 1970s.

yeah, given -- but that *is* purism. dj shadow wdn't have been played on hip hop radio either. most 'hip hop fans' don't listen to hip-hop radio. same way most 'indie' fans don't listen to lamacq. these specialist audiences always exist, but the bulk of records are not bought by them. hip hop radio/clubs hip-hop gaining purchase on the uk mass audience.

That's funny, since Christian raves are probably the only successful/popular/relevant raves in the US today.

Can we please stop characterizing Americans as backwards jesus-worshippers? The best selling album of the past couple years in the states is gangsta rap.

But you can't ban Chris the Savior!

xpost, depends on what druggy vibe means right?

*runs*

sorry, carry on.

b) most young Americans are probably a lot more likely to be Christian and politically conservative than their European counterparts and this may partially responsible form them not to embrace drugs & “abstract” electronic music is such a massive way. This may be nonsense, though, I don’t know. However, it may take a bit of a metropolitan worldview to get into it, something that may be lacking outside of California and New York.

learn about the still-growing methamphetamine and oxycontin problems in most of rural america, please.

besides, some of the most fucked, psychedelic-sounding music, rock-wise or whatever, was always made by the 'designated driver' glasses-wearing dude in the back with the rack of synths and the nerdy knowledge of effects pedals. you don't have to be the electron to understand the electron, or whatever

i mean i've heard that the mayor of berlin goes clubbing! i certainly wouldn't expect to see bloomberg getting down at Avalon or whatever

Age is creeping up on my generation of dance music.

hahah!

But yeah, ppl are misinterpreting ronan. And ScottPL addressed the only major problem w/ Ronan's argument wayyyy upthread.

People, please go up and read Scott PL's post in response to Ronan, because it addresses what was actually wrong w/ his approach - essentially that European dance music in America was redundent.

disco is the origin(and definition) of modern dance music so if he dismisses it he's a dumb fuck.

blount I did answer you and I already said I actually like disco, for fuck sake you could at least read the thread before throwing out such shit. And I like hiphop aswell.

And you wonder why I say you´re being pigheaded at the exact same time as you say "and even if hip-hop isn't officially sanctioned by her majesty's press as "dance" music it nonetheless fills that role for many americans who aren't going to suddenly stop liking it and, more importantly, dancing to it just become some irish dude sez 'that's not dance music'

how many times in my posts did I stress I wasn´t making a value judgement? I mean this argument keeps going backwards because people STILL assume that to say "that is not dance music" equals saying it is fucking morally wrong to dance to it and Americans are all wrong.

All this talk of the Queen etc just makes Americans on this thread look even worse, by the way. Do you know how insular you appear sometimes? ´the queen´

it makes the two of you look ridiculous.

and as for ´god forbid we make our own beats than suck from the queen's teat´

why not simply say what you really mean ´god forbid America ever accept that other parts of the world have valid cultural contributions to make to things´

I said your question was a good one, why don´t you answer it yourself?

dude did I not just list the American artists that are utilizing techno innovations

Seriously the last 100 posts or so have been repitions of arguments that have already gone on upthread.

xpost - but those were americans miccio. don't be so pigheaded. do what ronan sez.

This point has been made several times during this thread (at least twice by me), but it's worth it to keep making it because there STILL seems to be confusion over an "issue" which is nothing more than a matter of labelling and has NOTHING to do with the music itself or how danceable it is.

to ignore hip-hop in america when talking about why "dance" didn't take in 97 is like talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs and then forbidding anyone bring up asteroids.

This, however, IS a separate issue and a very good point by blount. There's a world of difference between "dance music" eating itself and fragmenting into a million subgenres and "dance music" getting eaten by hip-hop.

james, you´re the one who is still alleging my argument is based on thinking people cannot dance or should not dance to anything other than minimal techno. pretty much the definition of pigheaded. oh and apparently I hate disco, and all Europeans hate hiphop.

And you wonder why this thread and the responses make people mildly irked. Any coincidence blount hstencil and miccio, fucking team america, are the ones stubbornly stopping any decent discussion by assuming we euros are stealing your right to dance, and after you saved our ass in the war too!

Ronan: address what PL said upthread.

blount: ronan is not trying to tell us we can't dance to hip-hop!

I don´t want to make a value judgement about America, until a thread about a specific dance culture becomes preoccupied mocking Simon R and acting as if a discussion of dance music in the European meaning and its chances of success in America is a total affront to American popular culture.

It´s bullshit and I still maintain that there are at least 3 posters on this thread who don´t give two fucks about the success or failure or records of European dance producers or American ones, but simply see a Simon article and want to shut down the possiblity of a European speaking about America, like on every other fucking thread.

now please grant that post more than another lame jibe

ronan, i stated upthread that I was responding to someone else's point about homophobia (I think it was noodle vague's?), not anything you wrote. Let it go, man.

ronan yr patriotism has given you rabies.

also this is bullshit. Not to get all losing my edge, but I saw Thomas Brinkmann and RRR at the Empty Bottle (OMG AN INDIE ROCK CLUB) in Chicago way before Kompakt stuff was even discussed on ILM (or even ILM existed, possibly). So fuck off with your assumptions, you already guessed wrong on my age.

I remember spending a few minutes in the blistering hot dance tent but it was mostly jock types flexing while Carl Cox was DJing. This was during the post-Amp, early MTV2 days so MTV was a small sponsor. I think the big ones were Intel and Ford -- this was around the introduction of the Focus when "No Ufos" was in their commercial.

Anyone here still looking forward to the new Isolee album?

Always a good idea to remember that an editor is at work in the larger press which can change the tone of a story quite a bit to its core audience.

(xp!!!: I linked to blissblog wayyyyy up there too!)

what actually happened in 1989? Soul II Soul? Happy Mondays? the Belleville Three broke even? i'm confused about the implication that 1989 was a breakthrough year for Dance Music in the States as I can't think of any major successes - certainly nothing greater than 'The Fat Of The Land' (a severely compromised Dance album lest we forget) straight in at #1 on the album chart.

why did it never come close to approaching the success of disco or hip-hop?

Because it's faster and harder. Next.

xpost x3

and the implication is that these artists have sold more records and earned more respect in the U.S. than the Big Five of 1997 in total? I doubt it myself.

"compromised" only if you're some purist dullard in the first place

get a haircut hippy ;) selling records is important as this thread is primarily concerned with Dance Music's commercial success in the American market, as I read it.

putting attendance figures aside, these raves weren't anything like the legendary UK ones we read about. I imagine they must've had "permission." And yeah I think that makes a big difference.

-- charltonlido

Momus, you are a very silly man.

Charlton, there is a place called Perth on the west coast where rave will never die, and early rave records trade there for hundreds of dollars.

Trance/doof is always big in an underground way here because of the country itself - you can escape the cities and get right into the bush for a doof and no-one will ever bother you. Israeli trance acts stop off here all the time.

Techno never really hit as hard as house did - not hedonic enough. Some people still release techno records, usually in limited runs.

House has a welcome home in the Sydney gay clubbing circuit. It's been that way since about 1987.

Electroclash - sorry, Outsider Electronic - has a small but devoted club following. That stuff has been around for a while here, at least since 1999. We have dinkum loyalties to the Aussie Chick on Speed.

Rock is big, but that's not new.

The only thing that's really died is the superclub experience. Small clubs are alive and well and there's more of them than ever.

Some other Aussie or NZer may wish to elaborate on, or correct, some of this.

If you ask me, The Music are baggy and I for one would dance to that.

Well, they (along with class of '90 artists C&C Music Factory, Snap! and Deee-Lite) did have legitimate (as in top ten, top five) hit singles, which the class of '97 did not. Did that translate to more records sold? Dunno. Probably.

Um, and raves.

Oh, yeah, for sure (on the legal thing, though plenty of the early-'90s ones were illegal). But that doesn't really address my point: that there was a massive (I mean massive) American subculture that practically no longer exists. (And yeah, probably that has much to do with police getting savvy rather than a shift in policy, though anti-rave laws have gotten more restrictive--I'll find a link for this...)

Um, and raves.

-- Pete Scholtes

Yup - although there appears to be an avid rave-will-never-die faction in Perth still for some reason. Raves were very big here from about 1992-1995.

Raves died first in Sydney - in about 1994. Dodgy promoters were the cause. An act or DJ would come over here from Europe and play everywhere in Australia but Sydney. When raves died no-one cared, good riddance to dodgy promoters they said.

Hm, I don't know how to check sales, but I'll go by charts.

Class of '89 / '90

C&C: Big Album (#2) Highest Followup (#87)
Snap!: Big Album (#30) Highest Followup (#121)
Black Box: Big Album (#56) Highest Followup (n/a)
Technotronic: Big Album (#10) Highest Followup (n/a)

Class of '96 / '97

Prodigy: Big Album (#1) Highest Followup (#62)
Chems: Big Album (#14) Highest Followup (#32)
DP: Big Album (#150) Highest Followup (#44) (reverse that if you'd like)
Fatboy: Big Album (#34) Highest Followup (#51)

so yeah, looks like you might be right.

Here's one of the misperceptions I'm trying to address. People certainly could, and did, just a couple years later.

you are, actually. E was rampant in the midwest, and it wasn't the only thing. (this is around '92-4, the peak of the mw rave moment)

xpost--hell yeah!

Matos wrote about the 2002 RAVE Act a bit, too:
http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1143/article10834.asp

btw, http://citypages.com/databank/23/1143/article10834.asp is the article Blount mentioned.

haha xpost!