pointing and laughing at dance music part 4912

tom's point is totally pertinent, even if his judgment is on its head (i don't know if it's on its head or not)

(eg one of the loose assumptions of ordinary political journalism is that a mass of "bad" writing can have good political effects => i am agnostic abt this, though i think you can point to eras when it's arguably the case, like the decades in the UK up to the first great reform bill)

Petridish in the Guardian is a different kettle of fish, I think.

dave- ok.

This suggests to me that a successful language for writing about rock has been found and is being used. I don't think an equally successful language has been found for most other genres (pop maybe if we're separating it out; hip-hop possibly but I don't read the hip-hop mags enough). My hunch is that the success of the rock language has had bad effects for rock (plus bad effects in forcing other genres to the side, as Ronan says) - in terms of helping to set up a bunch of rock values and expectations, defining 'what rock is' by how we talk about rock (I'm not just referring to paid print criticism).

(I'm NOT saying it's impossible for good writers to write well about other genres or that genres can't be written well about. Good writers can write well about loads of things. What I'm saying is that a mediocre rock writer is more convincing to a rock fan than a mediocre dance writer is to a dance fan.)

answer i don't accept: "it is a given that this cannot possibly be the case"

steve: the ride on time and rockerfeller skank are better tunes so yes it would be easier! right, i'm off for lunch!

julio plenty of musics - polka say - are way older than rock or dance andf not written about at all

dave you are confusing the potential effects of what could potentially be written (if the writing was "good" in a sense yet to be pinned down) with the actual effects of what has actually been written

clear effect of WRITING ABOUT MUSIC = the thousands of bands who based their sound on the velvet underground

w/o people writing abt them — esp. in the late 70s, ie long after they'd disbanded — they would have sunk, not w/o trace, but into a tiny tiny TINY cult of no consequence

the VU turned out to be GREAT to write about, and lots of little bands noted this and set sail in that direction

Yeah, but its a matter of knowing what the listener itself is listening FOR and adapting your writing to focus on these elements, isn't it? (Pitchfork Basement Jaxx review to thread!)

At the same time, I find it pretty difficult to accept that there is really much that can be written about, say, a functional breakbeat track that acts as trough/filler in the context of a DJ set. Actually, I feel the same about functional rock track that appears three quarters of the way through an album - both are far harder to write about than the big singles/anthems or the digressions/oddities.

x-post with Stelfox - in 8/10 cases, is it really WORTH writing about individual dance records, or widening to focus to talking about DJ sets or club nights or cultural movements etc? Surely this is much more what dance is really about? (I am throwing ideas around here, not really stating an opinion).

but did polka have the 'cultural impact' that rock or dance had/still have?

(And then there's the matter of of music for people who don't like to read.)

dancehall massive to thread!

it doesn't really... i don't know of any tabloid that really bother with it much, not counting the daily mail (and coverage there is just plain daft/bad)

BUT it always stayed below the radar of mainstream music writing (i'm surely there were also specialist magazines actually) and has tended to fall out of the ambit of routine histories of popular music (except when novelty crossover was achieved)

(rock is basically a local/ethnic music which achieved novelty crossover, except the novelty went on to eat the world)

This is not the case to the same extent with dancehall or soca or hardcore or any music made prior to about 1900 except classical.

If the tabloids WERE writing more about a certain type of music, would more people be listening to it? (I am fully aware that tabloids are followers rather than leaders in terms of cultural trends, BUT...)

tabloids didn't write abt popstars or pop AT ALL until the late 80s, really => i (seriously) think reality TV makeover pop was a cultural reaction against the entrapment of the fun of celebrity in the web of tabloid writing (obviously it failed)

in the last two or three years we've begin to see music-makers once again taking up the baton of that web as a challenge (taTu = most obvious), though no one's been as effective as the pistols momentarily were (at tremendous cost to themselves)

i used to work there < / potentially devastating confessional >

this sentence has never been in th bizarre column! sean paul is the new shaggy tho, apparently...

ans = of COURSE it has an effect and not all "bad" either (necessarily)

actually the fact that eg the nme is paid unquestioning attention by eg bizarre columnists (and radio one djs) is an even more extreme example of HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD

ha ha, sorry - add the word 'Jordan' in there somewhere

It reminds me of a thread I started last year "is dance music starting to have a heritage every bit as irritating as that of rock music".

I am a bit lost here because I went to lunch and then had work to do. Matt's point about broadening what's written about is good but I'm not sure people understand DJ sets enough.

On reflection Gareth's questions were getting at one thing I was thinking about at lunchtime, sort of why doesn't one (or don't I) just write about dance for dance people. It feels like preaching to the converted I guess, I'd rather be working towards something rather than just doing the job.

And yeah I see the obvious "but if you achieve it you'd have nothing to do" thing but that's true of any life.

But I thought your whole rationale behind this was stopping all these great records you've heard from disappearing? In which case, surely writing for an audience you KNOW would like them is perfect?

but also there's tom's point that unless you think quite hard about what the achieved goal is to be, you may end up with something you can't bear