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September 22, 2003
Dance...Dance...Revolution!
Note: The following entry was originally posted on Blueprints for Architectural Warfare. I have migrated it here for continuity.
Secretly pining for a rock revolution is probably a lot less embarrassing and a lot more widespread amongst critics than you think, Matt; how else do you explain the dance-centric blogosphere unexpectably and repeatedly coalescing around such topics as which Spacemen 3 album was the best ("Playing With Fire" gets my vote, though one that's sure to cause some controversy 'round these parts), or the importance of The Associates (eternally confused in my mind with The Association, imagine my pleasant befuddlement when that meme (wreme? Bleme!) popped up!)? I would wager a guess that it's because the dance theorists, by and large, come from an intellectual, rock background. The punters are too busy dancing to spend time writing about it, in any case.
So, in that sense, the new breed *is* a logical progression from the old breed. I'm not sure something like Herbert would make as much sense to me (on an intellectual level, at least) had I not grown up with bands like My Bloody Valentine pushing the boundaries between electronic music and "rock music." The real dividing line, in my opinion, is between the school of thought that looks forward to dance music while looking back at rock music and those who are actively prophesying the future of rock today. Interestingly, "Loveless" seems like a pretty good common ancestor of both schools (although situating the point of bifurcation at '91/'92 seems pretty useful for a host of other reasons I'll get into in a moment). The dance types, naturally, view it largely the way that I stated above, an example (one of the first, alongside Screamadelica) of rock in the techno era, perhaps even as "anti-rock" in essence.
The rock critics, however, well, I'm not sure exactly how they view it except to say that while they obviously consider it to be an important record (whatever that means), it just as obviously didn't inspire them to load up on E and head for the nearest field in Hampshire. Looking at it from here, it almost seems like, to them, the record was an excursion into the furthest reaches of what could be considered rock music that finished in a dead-end. As a result, rock retrenched itself in calmer waters, with "Loveless" serving as a sort of cultural Finisterre (Enter at your own risk! Beyond this point there be dance music!) while in its aftermath rock proper scooted its way up the charts in the form of grunge and britpop. Meanwhile, 'ardkore was on the rise in the UK, providing the anti-rock types (big up yo'self, Simon Reynolds) with a jumping off point into dance music, and electronic music's growing profile throughout the '90s ensured an ever-developing pantheon of crit-worthy non-rock music.
Obviously, though, it's the latter of the two groups that's holding the torch for rock music today, which goes a long way towards explaining why people like you and I have been unconvinced by "the next big thing" in rock for so long; we're not writing the rulebook, they are! The hype surrounding a band like Interpol or The Darkness can only make sense if one privileges the institution of rock over the qualitatively innovative nature of the music itself; i.e such records are first and foremost innovative rock records, not innovative records per se, if you catch my drift. Which also explains why so many records being touted as "the next 'Loveless'" come across as ultimately boring to these ears. (Though, to be fair, dance music can be guilty of this, too. Anybody remember the marketing campaign for Spring Heel Jack's, "68 Million Shades..." LP? "The 'Loveless' of drum'n'bass"! A decent record, but please.)
So, is dance music all there is? Of course not, but in light of the anti-rock/rockist divide, chances are that nothng the rock camp comes up with will seem all that exciting to the former group, and any modern day Gang of Four or MBV that comes along to excite the anti-rockists will most likely not satisfy the needs of the latter camp. How often do you hear the rockists talking about a group like Hood, for instance? I miss going out to shows regularly as much as the next guy, and even in the realm of dance music, hearing a couple of guys spin to an unenthusiastic gaggle of bar-propping hipsters is small consolation when compared to the massiveness of a rave or a good rock show, but with neither a(n anti-)rock revival nor a dance music renaissance seeming likely at this point, I'll take my Herbert, Perlon, Force Tracks and Theo Parrish records, just fine.
Tags: Blueprints
Posted by Andrew at 12:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack