It List: Tuesday 5/23/06
It seems that people are finally starting to catch on to the coolness of Wanz's Lost Generation upstairs at the Cavern, and tonight should be an especially fun party. The details, from the mouth of the beast:
"Who wants to Dance? I'm gonna do the overview of Dance punk before it's out of vogue. James Chance, The Rapture, P.I.L., Moving Units, Gang of Four, Bush Tetras, Hot Chip, Liquid Liquid, DFA, The Pop Group, The Fall, Dance Disater Movement, Mathematiques Moderne, Undoing of David Wright, Out Hud, Radio 4, Atari Teenage Riot, Suicide, The Liars, Bloc Party, Maximum Joy and so on and so forth. It's good to be home. Come out and say Hi......."
As long as he cuts Radio 4 off of that list, sounds like it will be a good ass time.
Oh yeah, I think Ice Cube is playing somewhere tonight too. Guess mama cooked the breakfast with no hog.
"Who wants to Dance? I'm gonna do the overview of Dance punk before it's out of vogue. James Chance, The Rapture, P.I.L., Moving Units, Gang of Four, Bush Tetras, Hot Chip, Liquid Liquid, DFA, The Pop Group, The Fall, Dance Disater Movement, Mathematiques Moderne, Undoing of David Wright, Out Hud, Radio 4, Atari Teenage Riot, Suicide, The Liars, Bloc Party, Maximum Joy and so on and so forth. It's good to be home. Come out and say Hi......."
As long as he cuts Radio 4 off of that list, sounds like it will be a good ass time.
Oh yeah, I think Ice Cube is playing somewhere tonight too. Guess mama cooked the breakfast with no hog.
posted by stonedranger at 4:31 PM
24 Comments:
moving unit? they kinda annoy me.
the rest is rad, i'm glad someone's spinning local bands too (undoing). good decision, i always said that if i ever did a dj set i'd totaly get some local shit to toss in there w/ everything else.
anyone who hasn't gone to this should totaly do so. i think i might try to make it out tonight, dispite having to be out by 11:35 to be home by 12
I agree on both Radio 4 and Moving Units, but I have a few friends that love that stuff. I don't hate 'em , but by far not my faves. I am only playing remixes of both bands. Word up. Good to be home.
I would say that Moving Units does happen to be a lot better than Radio 4, at least.
whats so good about dance punk anyway!
i might be able to say i liked them better than radio 4.... if they weren't an LA band.
actually, no. they just annoy me. i can stand some radio 4, but Moving Units is like the dance punk version of The Bravery.
James Chance
P.I.L.
Gang of Four
Bush Tetras
Liquid Liquid
Pop Group
The Fall
Suicide
All transcended Punk, Dance, and so called Dance Punk yesterday and today. Just because a group of assholes in a Brooklyn loft decided to start pushing this shit down our throats in 2002 doesn't mean these bands necessarily deserve to be lumped into this whole mess. In other words, they are neither responsible for or comparable to everyone who came after them. You'd have a hard time finding these bands referred to as dance punk anytime before this decade and its parade of lesser talents who either deny the influence or completely misrepresent the style of these bands. Ask Mark E. Smith, who's disgusted by Bloc Party for namedropping him. Or Gang of Four, who were pissed at the same band for saying they owed them no credit for their sound. When you're in a completely derivative and style-based genre, you can't win. You're either a liar for saying you made it up without the above mentioned bands. Or you're a wannabe who talks about them incessantly and deep down inside you know you'll never make a record as original as "Buy the Contortions" or "We are all Prostitutes". And fuck James Murphy, who is almost single handedly responsible for the more despicable aspects of this fad. He should have stuck to making music like he did in Speed King, where he really pushed boundaries. Instead he opts for cheap disco ball imagery and suddenly, ex or even current ravers and house "heads" are all over the indie rock/underground circuit. Thanks, James.
Undoing is off the hook because I think they "get it".
Find a used copy of the Speedking discography. It's fucking good. Before Brooklyn was fucking bad.
No, I don't hate all dance music people.
DL,
that is exactly what I was talking about a few weeks ago in my post about Tree Wave. I think there has been something of a crossover in the past few years between "indie" culture (why can't anyone seem to admit that they are a part of it?) and dance culture, and I do think it is due a great deal to James Murphy and DFA, as well as people like Diplo and MIA, Fader magazine and one of our hometown heroes, DJ Nature. However, I really don't have a problem with that, and find it exciting to be honest. I happen to like most of the stuff that James Murphy has done the past few years, even though I realize that none of it is exactly cutting edge. I think he realizes that too. But that is neither here nor there.
What I find interesting is that this crossover is just now starting to happen. In Europe, you would be hard pressed to find someone that likes Jesus Lizard and The Melvins that doesn't also listen to dance music. There just doesn't seem to be that kind of divide over there, and that might be starting to happen over here for what truly appears to be the first time. That was the potential permanence of electro culture in indie and underground music that I was speaking of in that eariler post.
And lets be honest, dance music since the early 80's, and the culture that surrounds it, has had much more of an impact on popular culture than rock has, and I would dare say that underground dance culture has consistently been more revolutionary in many respects than rock has been. I've never been a "raver" or anything like that, and I do realize that there are a lot of glow stick waving jackasses involved in the whole thing. But there are a lot of jackasses that listen to rock n roll too, and I haven't let that stop me. I'm just curious to see if electro dance has the kind of teeth that will allow it to dig in and stick around in the "indie" underground. Because I can tell you that on a Friday night after a long week, I'll take a DJ Nature set over a Yo La Tengo record any day of the week.
Or I guess, any Friday. Of the week.
bush tetras hell yes
Stoney,
quote: "I think there has been something of a crossover in the past few years between "indie" culture (why can't anyone seem to admit that they are a part of it?) and dance culture, and I do think it is due a great deal to James Murphy and DFA, as well as people like Diplo and MIA, Fader magazine and one of our hometown heroes, DJ Nature."
I admit that indie culture has a lot to do with my life. I despise Fader and James Murphy so maybe that's part of why I'm not so positive about these past few years in music. If there is some kind of cultural revolution taking place, I definitely haven't enjoyed it's leaders. I don't see why dance music fans don't see right through James Murphy and Juan Maclean for the musical posers that they are. When I hear that stuff, I can instantly detect the fact that it is dance music made by rock guys. They've pulled the wool over a lot of people's eyes. If you like it, that's fine. I just think they should have left the beatmaking to people who specialize in beatmaking. I know that sounds closeminded, but I just don't think they really know what they're doing. That can be cool too, but they just sound like they're pandering to a dance audience. They go so far as to admit it in this article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0444,reynolds,58030,1.html
They got swept up in this whole craze and DFA gets a major label production deal. I'm sure even they were a little surprised. Eventually Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are knocking on your door. It's just like when Madonna wanted to work with Aphex Twin. Or all the way back to Bowie and Michael Jackson both trying to enlist Kraftwerk to back them up. You have people who are super-famous but desperate for street cred hounding you. This is symptomatic of when a trend is getting out of hand. Once it's in the hands of the mainstream, it will sink under its own weight. It's happened time and time again in the music industry. Dance music culture seems to thrive on the fact that it's disposable. I don't think that's an insult to it. I'm seriously saying it takes some sort of pride in that. Some 12-inch that's popular thirty seconds ago is uncool by noon. I can't handle that shit. Soon your whole record collection is a bunch of re-mixes. Well, I hope those mixes sound good in six or seven years. I really hope they do. Otherwise, you're wasting a ton of money on things that mean nothing to you in a very short time-span. And I have loved DJ nature since the late nineties, Pre-move to Jamaica. I'm not thinking of him at all when I'm talking about this stuff. I think what makes him great is that he is genuine when he is flipping from genre to genre. He knows more about more types of music than so many people in the dance and rock music community here. That's why he continues to be popular with the rock and dance people. Well, with everybody. He transcends both worlds. It's on a different level.
quote: "What I find interesting is that this crossover is just now starting to happen. In Europe, you would be hard pressed to find someone that likes Jesus Lizard and The Melvins that doesn't also listen to dance music. There just doesn't seem to be that kind of divide over there, and that might be starting to happen over here for what truly appears to be the first time. That was the potential permanence of electro culture in indie and underground music that I was speaking of in that eariler post."
You're right about Europe. That's why when they show a German guy on "The Simpsons", he's blasting some horrible "techno". I don't think Europe's love for horrible dance pop is something to aspire to. It's blasting out of every shop you go to there. Even at rock festivals there, it's unavoidable. I prefer the fact that over here it's just kind of crept into things here and there and has kept kind of an ominous distance. Just like punk and funk or any other respectable style of music. There are hints, accents and references but they don't ever completely dominate. At the same time I think that dance and underground rock music kind of mirror each other. Look at how the mainstream raped and milked these two cultures in the early 90's: "Alternative" and "Rave/Techno". I think you could have found a lot of Jesus Lizard/Melvins fans that attended raves during this time period. And it was a pretty shitty time period.
quote: "And lets be honest, dance music since the early 80's, and the culture that surrounds it, has had much more of an impact on popular culture than rock has, and I would dare say that underground dance culture has consistently been more revolutionary in many respects than rock has been. I've never been a "raver" or anything like that, and I do realize that there are a lot of glow stick waving jackasses involved in the whole thing. But there are a lot of jackasses that listen to rock n roll too, and I haven't let that stop me. I'm just curious to see if electro dance has the kind of teeth that will allow it to dig in and stick around in the "indie" underground. Because I can tell you that on a Friday night after a long week, I'll take a DJ Nature set over a Yo La Tengo record any day of the week.
I think you're making a reference to hip-hop here and that's a whole other and very valid discussion. Hip-Hop deals with similar issues. Like DJ Premier producing Christina Aguilera's next record. My whole point is, that at one time in the history of music there were a group of people who mixed disparate sounds and styles from many different genres and tehniques of music making. They did this in a very pure way, it wasn't to sell a lot of records. They were covering new sonic territory and so there was no perceivable reward for being so adventurous. James Chance, P.I.L., Gang of Four, Bush Tetras, Liquid Liquid, Pop Group, The Fall, and Suicide along with This Heat, Kleenex, Medium Medium, E.S.G., Konk, etc. were mixing disco beats, electronics, funk chords, white noise, free jazz, gamelan bells, and skronky guitar because nobody had really done it before them and they somehow created what I consider to be probably the greatest era in modern music. I think THAT time was probably as close as it's ever come to the revolutionay dance/noise/rock/punk/ crossover that you're referring to. Now if you're going to try to convince me that there's a revolution today in the rock world lead by people who ape this music and are trying to sell it to me in watered down form through E.M.I. and Universal funded twelve-inches, you must be telling a very elaborate joke. If club culture is supposed to follow this joke (it probably won't) then I'll stop going to shows. Yes, there are jackasses in both worlds. But I'd rather listen to a kid fuck around on a drum machine at Rito's (well, I did when it was open) than go to a shithole like Zubar or the Pharmacy. Things haven't gotten that bad, yet.
...And I agree I would definitely rather see Nature than listen to a Yo La Boredo record. Let's go, I'll pay.
Oh give me a break. People just listen to music. They like it, they don't care about anything else. That goes the same for indie or mainstream. I like every single one of the bands that Mwanza had on the list. I don't care if it was from then or now, or who had their hand in it. Defensive Listening you just sound like you wish you lived back then. You have no real argument as to why you don't like the bands other than "so and so was involved with it" or "that's not the way they used to do it." That is so juvenile. "I won't play with Georgie cuz he's friends with Billy." Fine, don't listen to the music. Everyone else is listening to it, dancing to it, and not giving a freakin' care cuz we just like it.
And I realize that Williamsburg scene is tired and done, but I also realize that the music that came from that time was really good and different. It's pretty easy to call b.s. on bands like Bloc Party because they were too late. But records like Liars "They Threw us In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top" and that first !!! record is still great. And they were at the beginning of the whole Williamsburg/dance punk thing. I liked The Rapture's "Echoes." I still listen to it a lot. I listened to it a lot back then too.
quote: "Oh give me a break. People just listen to music. They like it, they don't care about anything else."
Why are entire magazines, books, websites, and movies dedicated to so many things besides the music when discussing musicians?
quote: "Defensive Listening you just sound like you wish you lived back then."
I'm actually glad that I didn't. I did but I was very young. The first record I bought was the Ghostbusters soundtrack. That's some real horrorcore shit. Either that, or the Chipmunks Christmas record. They were a big influence on DJ Favorites, Newcleus.
quote: "You have no real argument as to why you don't like the bands other than "so and so was involved with it" or "that's not the way they used to do it." That is so juvenile."
I'm actually giving you my theory as to why these current groups usually suck and don't deserve to share company with those other groups. On the contrary that is the "way they used to do it". That's why it sucks. They use it as a template to ape and offer us inferior versions. I'd rather listen to a scratchy Collins Kids 45 than watch a bunch of cartoon characters reenact history at the Old Crow. It's the same thing. I respect the era enough not to exploit it. Or support those that do.
quote: "Everyone else is listening to it, dancing to it, and not giving a freakin' care cuz we just like it.
I actually have nothing to say back to this. I really like this sentence and while I'm sure you really mean it, this is not the case for many hipsters. This sounds like an Alan Freed line out of an old Rockin' 50's rememberance book.
quote: "Fine, don't listen to the music."
Oh, trust me, I don't. Just enough to educate myself. It's called, "Know Your Enemy".
quote: "And I realize that Williamsburg scene is tired and done, but I also realize that the music that came from that time was really good and different. It's pretty easy to call b.s. on bands like Bloc Party because they were too late. But records like Liars "They Threw us In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top" and that first !!! record is still great. And they were at the beginning of the whole Williamsburg/dance punk thing. I liked The Rapture's "Echoes." I still listen to it a lot. I listened to it a lot back then too."
Williamsburg was done before it began. You're assuming there was a "good old days" here. Bloc Party was too late? For what? To get their 15 minutes in one of the least original fads in modern music? Didn't those records you named come out like 30 seconds ago? I couldn't listen to them "back then". I don't listen to them now. Pitchfork might have you believe this shit is like Classic Rock by now, but there are so many other sides to this story.
I like Japanther. They're from Brooklyn.
Defensive Listening sounds like he/she really needs to get laid.
i think i figured out who DL is.. it's their play-by-play posts that give them away.
my guess: DL is mark followill
damn it. I guess you're fired, Mark.
IT was . Good Tunes. an excuse to play some good music and do a little connetcing the dots wrapped up in a DJ mix and hopefully get people to dance. It worked. A tuaca, Jager and maker's mark later I was even shaking my ass. Good Times. Good Tunes. Defensive listening sounds like he could use a little drink and dance. Apparently Stephen R, Nature and I are doing a night at Club One next month. That will be da shit fur rizzeal.....
And I did play Speed King. That shit is golden.
I love you guys. Your all so cute when to over analyze things. Cheers!!!!
Club One...Interesting. Guess I could do a bump off the toilet seat as opposed to having a drink. Slow down, Wanz. Pretty soon you'll be playing "Wet Grooves".
to Defensive Listening...
"When you're in a completely derivative and style-based genre, you can't win. You're either a liar for saying you made it up without the above mentioned bands."
...maybe you fear "style"? ever think of that? I'm not saying to disregard standards or anything, but the people that initially embraced writing songs within that genre of music were mostly just doing what they felt, why you assume that whole entire notion is just gone?
I'm just saying, not everyone is a rip-off whore like you think man. chill out.
I'm late to this, but I used to listen to a lot of electronic stuff and the old school industrial and I have no problem with the indie rockers getting electronic or making dance music or whatever. I'm not the biggest fan of LCD, but that Juan MacLean was great stuff. I think I'm fine with the whole thing because I appreciate their take on the thing rather than some purist beatmaker doing it now. Is LCD all that artistic or even worth discussing like this? No, but they make some great floor filling beats. That Juan MacLean was a deeper record, more soulful and space-funky.
As far as dance punk goes, yeah the revival is already tired (and DL is damn straight when he mentioned how good that Delta 5 reissue is, fuck yeah) and yep maybe you can't improve the wheel here, but I do really enjoy some of that stuff from a few years back. That first Liars record was as good or better than anything done in 79-80. Yeah I said it. I'll even say that the first Rapture ep was solid gold too. And Echoes wasn't bad either. A lot of that dance punk revival shit I hate, but some I enjoyed.
Anyway, this integration of dance culture and electronic has been a long time coming. Yeah, I get annoyed as hell at those indie wannabe hipper-than-thou bandwagoners who think LCD is the be all end all, but I still get down to the singles and when it comes to dance music, that is all that really matters in the end. Not permanance, but can you enjoy it for the little while that it got a hold of you.
also DL - there's a hell of a lot more to dance music than the generic Euro Raves you keep yammering about. Electronic music to me has a lot of ability to grow and expand, I mean unless people like you just deflate every attempt someone makes before they have time to complete themselves. God, there are so many points I want to make that I can't even keep count of them, but it just seems so obvious to me...
I'm not trying to dog you man, but when people are DANCING to a song, do you think they stop everything & disect it like "eh, this is some post rock cross-genre dance shit, guess I'll sit this one out" - UH NOPE. I mean, think about how music feels to people, the countless different opinions and emotions it pulls out of people. it's frustrating to read you go on and on about musical politics because it sounds like you miss the entire point of everything - people making music.
do you actually enjoy music? or do you just analyze it to death?
I agree with whole-heartedly with JonofDeath when he says "People just listen to music. They like it, they don't care about anything else. That goes the same for indie or mainstream." UH YEAH MAKES SENSE
But I mean, you do a great job of overexplaining absolutely nothing.
I do love music. That's why I talk about it. I hate a lot of music as well. Well, I hate all the phoniness and business people and hype attached to music. It really does get in the way and usually the more mediocre something is, the more you find this crap attached to it. And if it's all about just dancing and loving music, feeling the beat etc., why are you on a blog that discusses music? Are you dancing in place on a DDR pad as you read this?
Another band I want to mention is Essential Logic, they were another really great band from this time period. And they featured a young William Bennet of Whitehouse! I love music! I don't just talk about it. Honest!
Yo DL. Club One is not my usual hang either, but on that night it will be filled with good music and good DJ's. I want to be the first DJ to drop Can at Club One. I guaruntee my set will be something never heard in that building. I just play good tunes. Don't really care about all of the social stigmas and so-called rules of indie elitism. I have not been that uptight in years. You are obviously into cool stuff, but maybe just a little to uptight. If you want to see cutting edge new stuff go to a laptop deathmatch.
I have been reading a lot about how there is no good local stuff on here lately. Which is a little ironic considering that this blog has really drawn a lot of attention to everything that makes Dallas pretty cool right. I have been traveling a lot lately and I have come to the conclusion that anyplace sux if you don't go see the cool shit that is there.
I played essential Logic that night as well. Great band.
Jesus Christ, I didnt know Essential Logic records even existed!! I love me some Whitehouse though ... such nice fellows .. too bad they cancelled before SXSW
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