is there a thread about dance fans moving on to rock + hip hop + other stuff

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is it true that dance fans tend to flock to stuff that's described as "studio wizard" music?

like, they'll listen to rock music, but only stuff that's dominated by heavy studio manipulation (i'm thinking along the lines of brain eno / brian wilson / phil spector / eddie kramer / todd rundgren and so on ... or you like lee hazelwood as opposed to gram parsons, just because the production work is so much more intensive ... similarly you might like gong much more than soft machine ...)

and you get drawn to rap music dominated by producers (like i only listen if timbaland / jay dee / pete rock / dj premier / the neptunes are involved) and same for disco (i tend to buy label-oriented comps instead of artist albums) and reggae (i like king tubby and lee perry, bob marley not so much)

is there a thread where we treat this tendency in detail?

or am i the only crazy that is like this?

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:15 (eighteen years ago)

You are not the only crazy like this, but I am not crazy like this.

― Alex in SF, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:25 (eighteen years ago)

not sure what's surprising about it, though -- i mean, i guess i'd noticed, but what doesn't make sense?

― lucas pine, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

i like king tubby and lee perry, bob marley not so much

Ahem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yfa1-lJy4E

― Tim Ellison, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:34 (eighteen years ago)

I like this question.

Sometimes I wonder about the journey back to rock and other music like it is a road back to normality. Even though techno remains the main thing I listen to, I pick up 2 or 3 rock acts a year. In the last year, the Butthole Surfers and John Cooper Clarke.

I'm not sure what the pattern is here, or if there is one. I often feel like techno is this gigantic wilderness of stuff, and wonder where or how, or if it is actually possible to return to other music after you reach a certain point. Not that this worries me, just it is weird talking to friends and them never really having a clue about the central tenets of the music you like.

― Ronan, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:35 (eighteen years ago)

tim yeah i know that lee perry produced the wailers (and "uprising" too, right?) ... but i don't like the artist-oriented lee perry tracks (even stone classics like "put it on" or "freedom street") nearly as much as tripped-out shit like "bionic rats" or "city too hot".

ronan i was a big butthole surfers fan in high school, even while i was deeply into utah saints and shamen and breakbeat hardcore. maybe because it's so fast and rhythmic and acid-y? ("dust devil" = "acid tracks", rock version)

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:41 (eighteen years ago)

techno group that explicitly mines the acid house => butthole surfers axis: tresor's HOLY GHOST (check "4 am at the crying cactus")

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:43 (eighteen years ago)

just kidding

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:45 (eighteen years ago)

yep...I know 600/charltonlido describes them as acid all the time, sometimes I feel like I am listening to rock bands that sound like what it is like to be disconnected from rock music. but also I am a bit disconnected from everything in general anyway lately, so they work on that level too.

― Ronan, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:49 (eighteen years ago)

(Not sure I buy the idea that the Butthole Surfers are as disconnected from rock as all that, but this could get very boring, since I don't listen to them much any more. I do still like most of their Touch & Go era releases. They are a lot more like 60s classic rock experimentalism than some other bands I used to hear on radio stations with classic rock formats. Of course, it also depends on what you are listening to. I definitely can relate to the idea of them fitting in well with feeling disconnected in general. I am putting this in parenthesis, because it's probably an unimportant digression.)

― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

well, I guess a bit disconnected from contemporary stuff, albeit from my narrow perspective.

― Ronan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:08 (eighteen years ago)

i mostly listen to rap music but when i get into rock or whatever its usually overproduced studio shit

― and what, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:15 (eighteen years ago)

so the conclusion is that these dance fans don't like rock for reasons other than production?

― Tim Ellison, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

i don't want to draw a conclusion without a bigger sample group! i wanted to do a poll ... but then i thought maybe there's already a thread on this?

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:35 (eighteen years ago)

I think we all research new music in different ways. I don't organize my other musical interests that way, but I don't think that makes you crazy. I think you could divide the "rock" producers you mentioned along several different axes beside studio wizards and non-studio wizards.

The Sympathetic Sounds comp that Jack White recorded in his attic is probably the best rock record i've heard this decade.

The funny secret is that good dance music and good rock music aren't that vastly different. I've heard a lot of good rock music on Little Stevie's Underground Garage that has a pretty kick ass groove. Rock used to be dance music until Rolling Stone and the college students of our parents generation turned it into "real" music.

As much as I like garage, Sun Records and Bo Diddley, I like Eno and Brian Wilson too.

This rant is now officially outside the boundaries of your question.

― Display Name, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:50 (eighteen years ago)

I would also guess that people might look for different things in other genres of music. You might look to live 60's jazz records, or old country because it isn't what usually dominates your listening habits/

― Display Name, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

yeah actually i got to admit i fuck with a lot of raw ass garage rock type shit too

― and what, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:45 (eighteen years ago)

i mean its a thin line between 'louie louie' and 'shame on a nigga'

― and what, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:46 (eighteen years ago)

yes!

― lfam, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:06 (eighteen years ago)

if it makes you shake your hips, it makes you shake your hips...

― Display Name, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:58 (eighteen years ago)

TS: Down by Aaron Carl vs. Blue Orchid by The WS...

― Display Name, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:59 (eighteen years ago)

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:01 (eighteen years ago)

whats funny about that is i've kind of discovered about blue note that i don't even really think their sound quality is that GREAT. just real distinctive.

― deej, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:06 (eighteen years ago)

as a rap fan the rock i've gotten into tends to have a pretty raw, chugging masculine edge - stooges and motorhead and shit that seems really gut-heavy. I think that might be a continuity in some ways. With dance a lot of what i like about it is how different it is from my taste in other ways tho ... and not just the obvious shit like the divas etc but also (as far as recent shit) its tastefulness ... a lot of j dilla-influenced R&B and shit almost seems a lot closer to some of the newer house i like than it does hip-hop.

― deej, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:10 (eighteen years ago)

j dilla hip-hop, too

― deej, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:11 (eighteen years ago)

i actually do have 100s and 100s of blue note and impulse and ESP and actuel and black lion and evidence CDs ... but then with jazz recordings, i often wonder if i am fetishizing a certain sound quality?

i can get with just about any mid-60s rudy van gelder session, but i never want to listen to 80s/90s marsalis or cyrus chestnut or what have you (even though i dutifully dragged myself to shows at yoshi's or the SF jazz festival when i was in college)

that is because ideas get old and tired and that form of jazz is entombed in that Marsalis "real" jazz world. I know I am probably opening myself up for a lot of attacks, but that idea of jazz isn't a living culture anymore. Those festivals inhabit the same world as people who do Civil War reenactments. It is one thing to listen to the recordings that the jazz culture left behind, but it is another to listen to people dragging out the corpse yet again.

As much as I am on Detroit's nuts, I sure as hell don't want to hear the records that the international "Detroit techno scene" is going to produce in 2020. It is one thing to love those records and be influenced by them, it is another to be involved in the circular copying of those records in the name of "real techno". That will be as boring as the middle aged guys currently playing back to basics blooze in crappy bar bands.

I think your 60's jazz sound fetish is similar to my 90's electronic fetish. Bad computer records are to techno what bad 80's recording is to jazz. I am sure a lot of great jazz records were made in the 80's, but there were a hell of lot more dope ones made in the 60's and 70's.

― Display Name, Thursday, 12 April 2007 06:45 (eighteen years ago)

i dunno if my rule for rock music is so much production as rhythm - nothing is as off-putting as bad drumming, so i enjoy bands with good drummers (yeah yeah yeahs, the gossip) and even better with a drum machine instead (the kills) - though the more obvious common factor would be a female vocalist who can hit notes (or er not, i do like courtney love after all).

i agree that most dance heads seem to be producer-oriented when it comes to hip-hop and r&b, but i'm not really, because r&b was my genre way before any sort of dance, and if i had to choose (god forbid) i would probably still choose it.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:22 (eighteen years ago)

falls into two camps, the studio wizard eno/wilson type figure, and the seeds/pebbles psyche/garage type stuff

though its probably equal in terms of 'path back to rock', the former is probably more common as the 'path INTO dance'

for the studio wizard side i dunno about hip hop or disco, i dont feel myself drawn to the producerwizard aesthetic, label aesthetic for disco maybe

my own path 'out of dance' was kind of threefold

1) 20s and 30s music, firstly hapa haole/hawaiian music, and then english 30s pop music (which is where my head is right now, lew stone etc), probable extension into 40s noir soundtracks - david buttolph etc
2) 60s sunshine/soft pop, jackie&roy, wendy&bonnie, dino,desi&billy, love generation, later growing into 70s woozyness of deodato, roy budd, marcos valle
3) 50s-60s, across the board really, from louvins to porter wagoner, jean shephard

in a way none of these really fit the aesthetics described in the original post (with poss exception of some sunshinepop as studio wizard)...but theres obviously some element of disconnect from modern life there

― 600, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:30 (eighteen years ago)

gareth, disconnected from modern life? never!

― lex pretend, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:31 (eighteen years ago)

though weirdly i was listening to yma sumacs les baxter 'rock album' frome 72, and the free design and inner dialogue and really a lot of the ways the drums and bass work is kinda really a great template for a lot of slinky minimal. its easy to focus on the summery superbright vocals and tones and not notice the jazzyness of the playing, esp with basslines buried quite low in the mix, but strip everything away on these track to the bass and drums and you've got the basis for some pretty slinky techno

― 600, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah I'm wondering if what really appeals is less production, or even rhythm, and more an idea of texture and build, where the underlying structures and approach are more similar to house and techno, even within a verse-chorus basis?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:57 (eighteen years ago)

sunshinepop is total studio music, isn't it?

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:02 (eighteen years ago)

oh absolutely!

― 600, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:17 (eighteen years ago)

i just realised i forgot the word...country...in my number 3 route. kinda important word for that sentence

― 600, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:32 (eighteen years ago)

four years pass...

Posting here so the bookmark disappears

― lebroner (D-40), Wednesday, 1 June 2011 23:45 (fourteen years ago)

always felt this thread had more miles in it...will compose an update later on!

― Suggest Banter (Local Garda), Thursday, 2 June 2011 16:28 (fourteen years ago)

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