Gibbly Bibko (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dreamstooloud) wrote,@ 2005-06-30 05:04:00 |
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this killed the LJ comment limit, so I'm making it a post.
kineticfactory said:
Weren't DJs meant to be the rockstars of the new millennium?
not really, no, idoru were meant to be the rockstars of the new millenium. if a DJ calls another DJ a rockstar they're usually dissing the other DJ as an egotistical prima donna. (although they could also be complimenting the other DJ's ability to consume large quantities of drugs and/or dress in original ways.)
the thing is, DJs first rose to prominence as musicians in their own right on the cusp of disco, early hip-hop, and new wave. the history of hip-hop has kind of been rewritten for various reasons, the truth is that it emerged from the disco culture in the same way new wave did, and identified itself more with new wave than with the mainstream of black music at the time. in fact at the time it wasn't entirely considered black music per se; keep in mind that Blondie "Rapture" and Pet Shop Boys "West End Girls" were some of the first records to put rapping on the radio. Run-DMC and Public Enemy felt they had more in common with the Clash than they did with Michael Jackson. the PE/Anthrax collaboration in the early 90s wasn't just a media stunt; the two bands had toured together earlier and had ties going surprisingly far back.
(background: check out Russell Simmons "Life and Def" and "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life" by the same guys who also did "How To DJ Properly.")
anyway, in this context, for Run-DMC and Public Enemy the DJ was a rock star, but that was mid to late 80s. in 1987 PE did "Nation of Millions" and anybody who was listening realized that a guitar had nothing on a sampler. in 1988 house took off in England. all those samplers suddenly started churning out dance music. but DJing dance music is completely different than playing the role of a rock band while rappers control a stage. even when MCs rap over dance music it's not the same thing at all. it's like the difference between a rave and a concert. at a concert, you pretty much want everybody looking in the same direction. all eyes should be on the stage. the DJ's not supposed to be the focus of attention. the DJ sets the soundtrack; you focus your attention wherever you want to.
basically the "rockstar DJs" glorified in the late 90s were nothing more than the product of journalists who turned their attention to the dance music scene but lacked the vocabulary to properly understand it. they were so trained on the rockstar way of thinking that they looked for the primary performers and labelled those performers rockstars. it's like locating the leader of an open source project and labelling them a not-for-profit CEO. by definition the concept doesn't even make sense, but that's what happens when somebody's looking at open source and they don't have any non-corporate model for describing technology. same thing. they looked at a new development and inaccurately described it in the terms of the previous system.
in actuality the economics of the dance music scene make any kind of real rock star virtually impossible. rock stars were actually a product of the corporate hegemony that controlled the music industry before punk and disco made independent labels significant. you should read "the long tail," it's an essay or a Wired article or something, I don't recall, but the nub and the gist is that sites like Netflix and Amazon sell the usual mainstream crap that big physical stores sell, and in roughly proportionate quantity, but Netflix and Amazon both sell MUCH more material which comes from outside of the mainstream, in substream clusters essentially, than they do of the actual mainstream. (it's a great essay, find it, read it, I can't summarize it here any more coherently than this.)
but the thing is, dance music is all about the long tail. there's never going to be any dance record ever which is so popular that everybody in the world has it. there will never be a Beatles of dance music or an Elvis of techno. dance music is powered economically by extremely large nodal networks of extremely small-scale local independent businesses. by definition, it lacks the monopolistic structure necessary to the creation of monolithic, ubiquitous figureheads, and because of this the very idea of a rock star DJ is in fact a contradiction in terms.
the DJ is actually a product of network economics as much as of postmodernism and technological change. the rock star is a product of industrial-revolution factory economics. that's the crucial difference. the economic mechanisms powering the distribution of music are no longer sufficiently hegemonic for true rock stars to exist.
and!! I found "The Long Tail."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.1
kineticfactory said:Weren't DJs meant to be the rockstars of the new millennium?
not really, no, idoru were meant to be the rockstars of the new millenium. if a DJ calls another DJ a rockstar they're usually dissing the other DJ as an egotistical prima donna. (although they could also be complimenting the other DJ's ability to consume large quantities of drugs and/or dress in original ways.)
the thing is, DJs first rose to prominence as musicians in their own right on the cusp of disco, early hip-hop, and new wave. the history of hip-hop has kind of been rewritten for various reasons, the truth is that it emerged from the disco culture in the same way new wave did, and identified itself more with new wave than with the mainstream of black music at the time. in fact at the time it wasn't entirely considered black music per se; keep in mind that Blondie "Rapture" and Pet Shop Boys "West End Girls" were some of the first records to put rapping on the radio. Run-DMC and Public Enemy felt they had more in common with the Clash than they did with Michael Jackson. the PE/Anthrax collaboration in the early 90s wasn't just a media stunt; the two bands had toured together earlier and had ties going surprisingly far back.
(background: check out Russell Simmons "Life and Def" and "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life" by the same guys who also did "How To DJ Properly.")
anyway, in this context, for Run-DMC and Public Enemy the DJ was a rock star, but that was mid to late 80s. in 1987 PE did "Nation of Millions" and anybody who was listening realized that a guitar had nothing on a sampler. in 1988 house took off in England. all those samplers suddenly started churning out dance music. but DJing dance music is completely different than playing the role of a rock band while rappers control a stage. even when MCs rap over dance music it's not the same thing at all. it's like the difference between a rave and a concert. at a concert, you pretty much want everybody looking in the same direction. all eyes should be on the stage. the DJ's not supposed to be the focus of attention. the DJ sets the soundtrack; you focus your attention wherever you want to.
basically the "rockstar DJs" glorified in the late 90s were nothing more than the product of journalists who turned their attention to the dance music scene but lacked the vocabulary to properly understand it. they were so trained on the rockstar way of thinking that they looked for the primary performers and labelled those performers rockstars. it's like locating the leader of an open source project and labelling them a not-for-profit CEO. by definition the concept doesn't even make sense, but that's what happens when somebody's looking at open source and they don't have any non-corporate model for describing technology. same thing. they looked at a new development and inaccurately described it in the terms of the previous system.
in actuality the economics of the dance music scene make any kind of real rock star virtually impossible. rock stars were actually a product of the corporate hegemony that controlled the music industry before punk and disco made independent labels significant. you should read "the long tail," it's an essay or a Wired article or something, I don't recall, but the nub and the gist is that sites like Netflix and Amazon sell the usual mainstream crap that big physical stores sell, and in roughly proportionate quantity, but Netflix and Amazon both sell MUCH more material which comes from outside of the mainstream, in substream clusters essentially, than they do of the actual mainstream. (it's a great essay, find it, read it, I can't summarize it here any more coherently than this.)
but the thing is, dance music is all about the long tail. there's never going to be any dance record ever which is so popular that everybody in the world has it. there will never be a Beatles of dance music or an Elvis of techno. dance music is powered economically by extremely large nodal networks of extremely small-scale local independent businesses. by definition, it lacks the monopolistic structure necessary to the creation of monolithic, ubiquitous figureheads, and because of this the very idea of a rock star DJ is in fact a contradiction in terms.
the DJ is actually a product of network economics as much as of postmodernism and technological change. the rock star is a product of industrial-revolution factory economics. that's the crucial difference. the economic mechanisms powering the distribution of music are no longer sufficiently hegemonic for true rock stars to exist.
and!! I found "The Long Tail."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.1
