The canonical history holds that it was indeed out of the marketing
of the Ten Records Techno comp that the term "techno" first came to
be used to describe the 313 sound and differentiate it more
concretely from the sounds of Chicago's scene. But there's more than
one example of May in particular mentioning that he doesn't like
techno as a term. "Techno" was clearly Juan's afterthought, and it
suited Rushton and the marketing campaign just fine.
Up until '88, "techno" did not exist in Detroit. It was house, or
"Detroit house" at best. I think this fact is often covered over
because it's felt to undermine the genre differences between techno
and house, or to undermine techno's claim to independent
consideration. But it would be clearly incorrect to consider techno
as "merely" a cousin of house. The scenes in Chicago and Detroit
were related, but LKS uses very good concrete examples to show the
differences.
If we can give up just a touch of our collective 313-centricity, just
for an instant, and ask seriously what House/Techno would have been
without the terms to stabilize them, I think the relatively
provisional and even kind of arbitrary limits of the genres become
clearer. Sure Chicago & Detroit had rather different sounds, but the
sounds within each city's scene were also wildly divergent. "House"
today rarely sounds as broad, or experimental, as it did when it was
local, and stood as a local practice. The earliest tracks (and
mixing practices) of the belleville three, plus d-wynn, mills,
baxter, fawlkes, and *all* the other folks who were already
well-established by '87-'88, were also very different,
track-by-track, from each other.(1) There was a *lot* of musical
experimentation going down at the time, in both cities.
This is not to say that the experimentation of 313-related artists
today is insignificant. But it's worth thinking through how "house"
and "techno" came to be understood, sometimes out of listening for a
common thread in the music of the 313, and sometimes by ignoring
interesting ventures into its early outer reaches...
My overly academic .02, at any rate.
-marc
(1) I'd be more than willing to bet that this incredible diversity of
sound, and movement which seemed to *defy* rather than produce genre,
also helps to account for the individualistic strain in
Atkins-May-Saunderson-Mills interviews. May relentlessly hits on
individual innovation, and on *not* sounding like the thing before.
Atkins and Mills both say techno (which they use as a descriptor in
the early 90's, rather than a categorical definition) should be the
sound of the new. When they say "It should (or did) sound really
*techno*" they clearly meant that it sounded wild, and really out
there.
At 11:07 AM -0400 10/24/03, Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote:
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Dr. Nutcracker wrote:
> >I always thought that Juan coined the term by taking the phrase from
> Toffler's book when he made 'Techno City' . It was Rushton who jumped on
it
> and pushed it as a genre name to try and differentiate thier music from
> Chicago House.
> And that's exactly what these heads were doing in the beginning on their
labels...
simular equipment as in Chicago House and with influeces from a dozen
european bands.
So can we conclude then...
that in early stages a lot of so called 'Detroit Techno' classics are at
least very simular to Chicago House?
Yes and no. They are similar enough to mix w.o. problem. But there is
nothing coming out of Chicago during this time that sounds anything like
Clear or Cosmic Cars.
Similarly there is nothing coming out of Detroit that sounds like Love
Can't Turn Around.
Strings of Life, and maybe Triangle of Love are the two songs that sound
like Detroit songs with Chicago influences. The Acid stuff (Phuture's
stuff jumps out) are the Chicago songs that exhibit Detroit influences.
