I HATE CLUBBING

This is a few years ago -- now I think about subcultures and while I do prefer acid house/house etc to punk/mod *music*, I also think it's a dismal reflection of the aspirations of people my age. I know how much that's likely to get pissed on by standard-issue ILX science [narrow definition of politics' -- I KNOW, I'm not STUPID, but sometimes, the day after a major right-wing success, for example, one needs a little focus), but fuck it, that's how it seems to me.

MDC -- do expand.

But surely clubbing is the most conservative (small 'c') ideal. Clubbers want it to stay this way forever. Dressing differently or listening to alternative music are frowned upon. It's all about what Posh Spice is up to or what happened on Big Brother last night - the most moronic shit imaginable designed for a nation of dozers who find watching another bunch of dozers really fun. I don't understand the point in listening to cheesy music just because it's ironic - I'd rather listen to something good. But as a student, it was the cheese nights that won out, not the alternative nights or the proper dance nights. Right I've forgotten what I was saying now... this is confusing, I'm sorry...

It's been two and a half years since I graduated and maybe the student climate has changed, but there are plenty of students and early-20s folk in my area, most of whom couldn't give a shit about their current climate.

http://www.mk002b5731.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/albums_westendgirls_mixes.jpg

You can't blame acid house for that!

Mind you I think your Big Brother dissing is a bit clichéd, it never ceases to baffle me how people suggest that watching actual people in realtime is somehow more moronic in principle than watching made up stories played out by actors?

Of course neither are moronic but if we're in the business of breaking things down to the brass tacks and gawping "it's just PEOPLE. IN A HOUSE" then I'm unsure Big Brother appears the silliest thing on TV, or the most idiotic.

On the contrary Big Brother strikes me as something of natural interest to anyone! I'm amazed it's become such a scapegoat for "something or other", from the same vaguely anti-capitalist people.

sympathize a lot with dl (keeping it CB evidently)
I like ironic music more than I did at uni -- back then I was disheartened that no-one gave a shit about music the way I did. Now I care less, really. The discussions on ILM are no doubt proof that good shit is out there, but the fact is it isn't popular -- I'm not harking back to golden ages, just saying that I feel isolated from it in a way I didn't when 16-17 -- and I'm not old and passed it.

Something's wrong. And the ILX line in which any talk of this kind is narrow and nostalgic isn't selling me any more -- the people I meet are not music obsessives, or writers, and I find their total lack of interest in being up on music fascinating, completely at odds with what I expected of life as a teenager. It isn't the lack of explicit political content that bothers me, it's the general lack of engagement in... stuff.

Ronan otm abt pre-acid clubs, but-but-but things have definitely regressed. Radio 1 was much more edge in the mid-late nineties for example. Now it's all RHCPs and Franz Ferdinand.

Enrique do you mean just that in general people aren't INTO music as much anymore? I'm not sure I follow your third paragraph.

West End Girls, if it is "socially conscious", is socially conscious minus those scare quotes, ie astute as opposed to vaguely lamenting.

As Ronan says, you're making rules and attempting to bolt them onto a style of music which ill befits them. No one levels the apolitical/apathetic slur at The Strokes/Oasis/The Happy Mondays (going back generations here), why do they get a free pass?

Also, it carries the sneering inference that the sort of people who went clubbing in their thousands in the late 90s were utterly ignorant of, or indeed contemptuous of politics, and just wanted to get out of their head. Shock news, previously there existing a drug called 'beer' and a music called 'rock' which enabled people to do exactly the same thing, and was not overtly political, aside from an overly romantacised and possibly exaggerated moment in time in the late 60s, and another one in the late 70s/early 80s.

Also, as Gareth mentions, there's a very narrow definition of politics at work here. If clubbing is/was a capitalists wet dream, then going dancing every weekend is a political act, regardless of whether it dovetails with the kind of politics you would like. What you appear to be mentioning is a politics of dissent.

In what way is this an apathetic generation? Millions out on the street protesting against the war in Iraq. A lot of these people are the same people out there going to house nights, drum and bass nights, garage nights, whatever. In any case, dance music and dance culture was inherently political up to 1995 or therabouts.

There's also the utterly fallacious notion that the sort of people who in 2000 were watching Big Brother and listening to trance would 20 years ago have been discussing the miner's strike and Marxism and reading Dostoevsky. Its harking back to some socio-political-intellectual golden age that never existed.

I remember proper illegal parties and small clubs alike were equally political at inception due to the libertarian and egalitarian approach of those running them and became extremely politicised when the Criminal Justice Bill came along. Very few actual TUNES manage to be anything more than signifiers for that time through lyrical content but there's a reason so many fucking sirens were there from '90.

over the weekend i felt that inanity was a big issue that hadn't been brought up on this thread enough. the inanity of certain fads that people indulge in, the trivialism, the banality. but i guess that's often what makes fun fun e.g. cheesy student nights or whatever

Actually, maybe it's this I'm getting cross with. It's not just clubbing, although this often ties in with it. I'm not rating myself above anyone, I'm no smarter than the average bear - I'm not a writer or a thinker or an artist - I'm not prizing myself any higher than anyone else when I say this. When I speak to a lot of people my age, I can tell that they possess the intelligence and skill to be able to hold an intelligent conversation about "stuff" as you say, or to have a hobby, or telling me about something they enjoy doing. Instead I get the impression that they dumb themselves down and this makes me dumb my conversation down, until all the conversation is about is "blahblahblah 'avin it blahblahblah big brother blahblahblah". It's as though people are afraid of challenging each other's minds, or scared of belittling each other...

Again I don't know where I'm going here and realise I'm coming off as an arsehole. I can't even begin to explain my disppointment with a lot of people I always rated higher. I'm gonna chill back and see how this thread goes now.

I think, to try to chrystallize it, it's the absense of music *culture* that bothers me. The mag-foldages are one facet of this.

No one levels the apolitical/apathetic slur at The Strokes/Oasis/The Happy Mondays (going back generations here), why do they get a free pass?

Well, I do and they don't! Also, as Gareth mentions, there's a very narrow definition of politics at work here. If clubbing is/was a capitalists wet dream, then going dancing every weekend is a political act, regardless of whether it dovetails with the kind of politics you would like. What you appear to be mentioning is a politics of dissent. I've tried to deal with this, but this is so boilerplate ILX stuff, and it just doesn't chime at all with my experience. We can try to theorize our way out of the fact of political disengagement, but only for so long.

I'm in no way advocating earnestness and I am one of the more frequent posters on the BB thread. I'm dragging this out a bit, but frankly today is *not* a day for saying an interest in actual IRL politics (as opposed to the politics of dancing which I don't deny but... postpone, shall we say) is narrow.

No-one made that suggestion did they? But again, if anyone on ILX mentions the past they are immediately accused of 'harking back' to 'imaginary golden ages'. It's a bit weird!

x-post Enrique don't you think that trying to see the problems with IRL politics or the way those who have a real interest in it treat it is just as apt today as any other approach? I mean isn't as much of the problem to do with how the political engage with the apolitical or the disillusioned?

also it's the absense of music *culture* that bothers me

I think, and I know this is such a cliché, if you were out really indulging in some type of music or going to see DJs or something alot, or even frequenting record shops you'd find a culture there.

Er, that sentence is the first time those scare quotes went on. Are you saying that the stuff people your age are listening to was "socially conscious" rather than socially conscious?

I do think it's a shame there's a type of music they don't make much of anymore, and I am suprised at how gleeful I am that the on-paper dull and "worthy" Faithless single is in fact ace.

Of course it's not like "good" music has better odds than any other sort at being good music, it may just be that they made more of it back then. "Small town boy" AND "Don't leave me this way".

For me the thing in the 90s (which was the start of this Generation Y apathy, the rule that No Logo was the exception to) was going "Hooray, we've won! Oh fuck, that's not us!".

http://www.heavenly100.com/img/artists_pics/socialism.jpg

I guess reacting agin this was important -- but because it wasn't laid on me (I had '88 mythology to content with -- from Shoom *and* from Chuck D) it hasn't been a great burden.

Oh I guess I dugged the MFTJG sleeve at 13. Erm, but then I liked the Manics...