Salon vs Chemicals

Thanks to Mike Daddino for pointing this out!

Best to avoid the dot-com after-hour parties now. Grim faces and Whiskeytown on the juke.

Strange piece indeed. It crystallizes the outlook I associate with computer start-up culture. It should have run in Wired, where every piece is full of observations that mean nothing to the public at large and everything to this narrow slice.

Some interesting moments:

Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx: "In 2001, both acts released new albums, and no one seemed to notice."

Madonna's Ray Of Light = "divine".

"Great music, like all great art, should transcend its time." This is where I gave up completely, I think.

I've never understood the prevalence of the whole dance crossover albums as the domain of high flying cocaine snorting execs and office parties thesis. The same thing was said about Roni Size's New Forms but I can't believe there are that many hip execs (or indeed office parties) in the world.

Wannabe execs tho? Countless.

Taking the arena of artistic reception as a the arena of artistic production = deadly!

But I found, weird conceit of the article (that as goes the literati-west goes the world) aside it told me a great deal about the album, what to expect, how the Chems evolved, &c.

just to let everyone know, i posted a link to another goldberg article which is less bizarre, but even more boneheaded.

Ah, just read tom's NYLPM post and saw he said what I wanted to about the chems artical but better. Jess asks: why do people read salon anymore? I'm wearing a salon t-shirt right now, and in my defense, all I can say is that when I got this for free three years ago, it wasn't reactionary.

Also, having been in and around the bay area at the time, I suppose the dotcomstalgia pieces are some of the few things salon does which still resonate with me.

Also, the movie reviews.

Also, Greil Marcus.

Back when they had daily reviews, it was much better, and also when they were writing Brilliant Careers about people who really did have brilliant careers.

Also, one needs a certain amount of accumulated cultural capital to begin to transcend it, so all the common-wisdom factoids I had picked up from there serve me well now, even if I disagree for the most part.

the "thesis" is shot to fuck on so many levels--

1/ rave/techno was at its height (in UK/Europe) at the absolute pits of the last recession

2/ electronica started "failing" in America as early as 1998 when it didn't deliver on the previous year's hype, radio and MTV lost interest -- in other words, its bubble burst a couple of years before the tech stocks bubble did.

so much for the base/superstructure quasi-Marxian approach!

i'm sure it's true that 'electronica' was used as one of numerous peppy stimulants by internet folk who thought the money-rush would never crash --- but to reduce electronic dance culture in all its diverse styles and its multiple contexts/resonances/tribe-vibes to this specific mode of its consumption -- it's almost cosmically wrongheaded and we-are-the-world offensive. Truly a thing of wonder.

greil marcus' writings for salon read like a relative's half in the bag holiday natterings. you want to see why that publication's losing its shirt? find out how much they're paying him for that 'column,' there.

I still look at Salon, but most of the articles really stink. That includes Greil Marcus's column.

To be honest, I also miss Sarah Vowell's music writing for Salon. Does that make me evil?

Generally, I'm keen on Salon - I enjoyed John Dean's review of books about the 2000 Presidential election today, for instance - but that Chemicals review... boy. I almost wrote a letter - I might still write a letter... It's just imperialist, really. Suggesting that British musicians should be making music according to the mood in the States, and all. Very little sign of economic downturn where the Chemicals live, with an old pub becoming some ridiculous bar-restaurant at the rate of one a fortnight, it seems. (The organic pub on All Saints Road wins the prize for most unnecessary: "organic cola" - ew!). I'm clearly still incoherent with rage after two days, so I'll s

Wow! What a bad article. It reads like the kind of thing I'd expect a student writing their first article for the college paper to turn in - - a grotesque combination of platitudes and truisms with a desperate desire to impress but with absolutely no understanding of its topic and more than a few pieces of blatant nonsense. Check out: "On the eponymous opening track, the frenetic, suspenseful strings and ascending beats all built to a cathartic climax, exploding in squelching waves of sound seemingly made to unleash dance floor frenzy." Catharsis! Dance Floor Frenzy! WHAT A LOAD OF BOLLOX

THis chick sounds like one of those people that started listening to "TECHNO" in 99 and now makes fun of people that started listening to "TECHNO" in 99 now that she's changed fucking friends again. Someone mail her monkey ass and get her over here.

No direct link from the article to her address -- just a 'letter to the editor' thing.

Wow there's fighting all over IL*!! I'm strangely excited, yet frightened.

Electronic music is perceived totally differently in the US, at least by mainstream music writers.

In the UK, it's basically considered to be a working-class, mass-cult phenomenon.

In the US, it's basically considered to be a elitist, upwardly- mobile, Euro-aesthete-wannabe phenomenon.

Hence articles like this one.

This is very interesting coming from an online rag that has added pop up ads and began to require a subscription for much of their content in the last few months. Could it be that Salon's office parties are what they used to be either?

Time's on Goldberg's side though. Face it, when future histories are written, the dot-com thing will be prominent, and 90s UK dance culture forgotten, or at least in the 'harmless pastime' category. If there's anything worse than UK dance culture it's said culture's continual insistence that it's at all important.

can i ponce a fag dave?