----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Cyclone Wehner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "313 Detroit" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 6:41 PM Subject: Re: (313) No play in the USA (was Movement I-F discussion)
> obviously there isn't an audience - but why? I have no idea why. Clearly, I'm not a big DJ but I had a radio show for five years, and DJ'd out with some consistency from '92-'02 in the states, so I have a decent view of the troubles radio DJs, club DJs and promoters have faced in small and large markets in the US. For instance, Baltimore/DC is the 4th largest music market in the US, and you could probably count the number of Detroit DJs that have played there in the last five years on your fingers, and all of the bigger names that once lived there (Stewart Walker, Christian Smith, John Selway???) moved as soon as they could from what I can tell. Brian Zentz would be one of the few counter-examples to this (and not really in that area IIRC) but he's had a following in that scene for a long time - since before progressive crap completely took over. Stewart Walker on the other hand didn't get a chance to play in DC until a few years after he moved away, and he already had records on Tresor and Force Inc. at that point. If I had to point my finger at anything, I'd say the biggest problem for building an audience in the states is that so few people ever get enough time with deeper, or more difficult styles before they ditch electronic music all together. You see the same thing everywhere, but in the states I think the proportion of those that 'crack through' is much less equal. In the UK and Europe I think there's a lot of differences, like the lingering impact of acid house on today's older clubbers and in the states there is more of a racial divide in clubbing, but I won't bother beating that dead horse any more on this occasion. For me, the motivation to move to the UK was less inspired by DJing opportunities than that I would have the chance to actually get to enjoy a vital scene with some regularity sometime before I keel over. 11 years of fighting against audience disinterest gets pretty damn tiring. At some point it becomes more important to allow yourself to enjoy your time with the music you've immersed yourself in, and for me the best way to do that was to move myself to the scene that held the most interest. Obviously I was really lucky to be able to do that. And as others have said, the political climate adds that much more incentive. Re: the schools. I think this is f*cking appauling - as if it wasn't bad enough already. Am I reading right that Granholm authorized this? I mean, clearly the money has to come from somewhere, but I thought she was meant to be fairly liberal. Tristan ======= http://www.phonopsia.co.uk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
