Location: Cleveland, OH
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| alex FORTE wrote: |
if your gonna sit and dwindle on any club scene, or rave scene, or nightlife, if there ever was one, your only going to be striving to achieve what was, and apparently to the BEHOLDER isn't (now).
As much as anyone learns from the past, I don't let it overly affect my future.
The problem here on the consumer end, is that not many crews/peoples were left to fill the "event coordinator" shoes.
Now getting people to come to these events...thats a different analysis of the past altogether...
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I bring up the past because it has a lot of lessons to teach, and because I believe things, expecially when it comes to music, are cyclical. If you can't agree with me on the later point then you are only living in your own 15 minutes of existence and probably just repeating that. The bigger picture, not the last 15 minutes of it, teaches us that there are some basic formulas that work when it comes to the entertainment business. When it comes to the music side of the business model, I am in full agreement that there are too many people in the industry using formulas that are no longer relevant (but that is a different discussion and thread).
Back to djs and dancing. To study djs and dancing we only have about 30 years of history to look at. Understanding what will get people to leave their houses, or to go to underground events TODAY can be fairly obvious when you consider the bigger picture. There is a huge gap right now between the mass alternative market of TODAY and underground electronic dance music fans. Many people working on dance music events are only trying to revive (or maybe even expand upon) their own past experiences. I have a hard time time visualizing any effectiveness in stimulating a music/nightclub scene when a lot of people think "how to we get people to come back out" expecially in a 21+ venue. It's like they only want to bring out the crowd that was or the way it used to be. *THAT* scene is nothing more than an 80's night for ravers. Even with new music and forward thinking, you will always have a kids who play old records and a bunch of people sitting around saying "they don't make records like that any more". The majority of the people who appreciate the newness are the djs, and average joe doesn't have a clue. When averge joe becomes the dj we all know what happens. There is a HUGE gap between where yesterdays progressive mindsets are at, and where the people who just want to have fun are at. Raising a new generation of underground culture will only come from infiltrating the enemy.
One of the things that we have yet to discuss in any of these posts is a historical view of underground cultures and the social & economic factors that make them up. I grew up through the osu campus scene (back when there was a choice of clubs on campus) and all those kids were poor as fuck drinking their $6 gallon buckets of beer. Sometimes I wonder about an underground mindset comes from people who earn $35,000 + a year. I often find it difficult to seperate some of the recent "underground" attitudes from the same mainstream marketing technics that they make it look like they are fighting. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not thinking of anyone specific but when I see more kids leading an alternative lifestyle at "Big Mega Event" than I do at events that claim to be underground orientated I have to scratch my head. Then a bunch of dumb stuff goes through my mind... like how are people any different stone than a certain club owner downtown who used to be all about the "big cheesy trance shows" and suddenly went after "the deep house crowd". Then I run into a kid... a kid who was kicked out by his parents... who has a drug problem... who is looking for a place in life... who desperately wants friends.... who finds it hard to identify with anyone who dresses nice or works a white collar job... who just wants to have affordable fun.... who doesn't care about the latest or greatest... who doesn't care about mainstream or underground... he just wants people to identify with. The one thing I do know is that I hated Crazy Mama's (the alternative purist club) liked the joints where people were not so jaded.
So I think there is a lot to learn from examining the past. For example, when I said that I think dvd's are going to be a large part of the future for many types of djs -- most people who are considered forward thinking couldn't conceptualize how it would work or even the practicality of it. I suspect this is because they can't see beyond what they have experienced in their own lives. I can see it, becuase I'm old enough to have lived through when it was practical the FIRST time.
One of the biggest declines of the dance music scene has come from people trying to duplicate what they have seen (or has been important to them) without taking the time to understand *WHY* it worked. People argue "well so and so has a better scene" and then go try and recreate it without understand WHY things are working.
On a brighter note, there are a lot of things that are right. There are a lot of people whose motives are good, and who are doing positive things for the city and doing things that push forward. If we want a scene, however, people need to start looking at the bigger picture of dance music in society and put their efforts into helping everyone (at least those with staying power) expand. Some of this negativety that often happens when people feel threatened could be redirected into postive energy. Most people don't know even know their own roles, so they can't see where others fit into the bigger picture and instead they feel the need to criticize. Knowing your role, and helping others carry out their own roles (or at least respecting it) is what will develope a scene.
That being said there is another side. What about those who fit the mold of the countless others who came before them whose actions have proven destructive? I have asked this question at least twice in the existence of the form, and I don't think the discussion is appropriate here in public, but this is something that is also important to think about.
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