The Gentrification of Culture

[shakahislop]

kind of hope that someone will tell me i'm talking rubbish with some counterexamples but the more i know the more it seems in all artforms like there's basically some kind of mainstream which isn't that gentrified and then everything else outside that is gentrification central

 

[other_life]

i reckon a) americas size and shoddy car-centric infrastructure b) the homophobic reaction against hip house in tandem with the rise of gangsta rap c) the FCC (therefore no generalisation of pirate radio for dance) all kept techno and house niche stateside

 

[version]

Stingray said he moved from Detroit to Berlin because Europe was where the bookings were.

 

[0bleak]

i've always assumed that there might / must be messier stuff that is more word of mouth.

Yep.

As for people coming from indie rock, I can't speak to younger generations, but a lot of the American originators from Detroit to New York came out of things like house and/or hip hop and/or other forms of electronic music.
I was never an indie kid - I was really more anti-rock if anything.

Raving doesn’t really make sense when you have all that space. It takes congested, desperate circumstances to give cause for an abandonment of inhibition like that

weird take

i reckon a) americas size and shoddy car-centric infrastructure b) the homophobic reaction against hip house in tandem with the rise of gangsta rap c) the FCC (therefore no generalisation of pirate radio for dance) all kept techno and house niche stateside

There were a few years in the 90s where it was less niche. Even smaller cities has scenes and there were network of information between cities such as newsletters, fanzines, and early internet adopters that would put out info on newsgroups, email lists, etc.
Let's just say that there was a big enough scene that you could find all sorts of "rave" related music in even the most vanilla chain music stores.
Not to mention all of the news stories, etc. trying to scare parents.

 

[other_life]

those few years in the 90s were also when it was at its height of visibility in the UK though and also as a moral panic, i'd suggest we were imitating/tailing them in some respect.. whereas it did become generalised as popular music and easy to absorb by osmosis past that moment in the UK it was manifestly not so in the US. and i'd say the reasons i listed hold

 

[0bleak]

whereas it did become generalised as popular music and easy to absorb by osmosis past that moment in the UK it was manifestly not so in the US.

I guess it depends of what you mean as generalized as popular music. I mean, there were definitely pop takes on "rave".
It was big enough that virtually everyone knew about it in some sense and even bumfuck cities with low populations (meaning in the very low hundred thousands) out in the middle of a desert had big enough interest to throw proper parties.

 

[sus]

TikTok - Make Your Day

American rave

 

[other_life]

i guess i'm fixated on this romantic idea of a 'junglist massive'. a lost object. sewn into the quilt of london quotidian life and a middle american never was

 

[WashYourHands]

Jersey 92-95 rivalled any range of nights here - distilled magic with Tony Humphries, Jovonn, list could go on, occasional e sources bringing small samples before all the skag not even drinking just pure after-hours sweat boxes with small mixed crowds occasionally straying into NY - Shelter crew! - and e binges in Philly with cousins. An ex from this time had been a prior Zanzibar head, a magical time for invoking Dionysiac drugs/sex binges and a tape exchange line I never digitised due to youthful shortsightedness

worst night out in the US was a club called Red in DC around 97, tragic ropey house with these dicks all trying to outshine the previous selector, wall to wall army brats going 150% chang rumspringa and the odd DC hardcore face which even Mood II Swing records couldn’t salvage

equally, a terrible d&b crew who played around U-St corridor, ie pick all of the tunes posted in the 98/99 thread, similar to a night out run in Richmond but I don’t wanna name names because of illicit activities (ironic as they were never less than honest and operated much better playing rocksteady classics)

U-Street did have jazz and Howard lasses though plus the 9:30 Club isn’t far either away. if any British acts worth checking out rolled past, of course you’d try n attend but getting north wasn’t always easy and work was a sketchy legal tether

 

[WashYourHands]

Another night in SE Washington was no joke trying to think of the name (been a while) hosted by all the garagey Baltimore Basement Boys/Spen/Pope and Oji crews, far more sketchy spilling out into the liminal hours between night and morning mangled god help you if you missed your cab

Outside of the beltway? No chance although did visit the VA Bad Brains practice house and Lynch’s old home in Alexandria/Arlington

Americans knew how to have it, identical drinking cultures too not that I imbibe any more - just swap ‘beer’ for lager and bourbon for whiskey, voila

 

[WashYourHands]

What was the question again?