yeah i'm with tom and completely disagree with both fred and francis. to you (or, us) techno and house, or jungle, or whatever, was super "new" and exciting etc when we heard it..it seemed like a radical new sound. but that is all because of timing -- our relatively naive ears when we were first exposed to it. we can never get that feeling back again, at least, probably not with electronic music. we view what's going on today with electronic music as just subtle shifts from what we've already heard, because we are all experienced devotees of electronic music who have been devouring it for a long time now...just as people who had already been voraciously consuming european "electro" and new wave and disco easily dismissed house and techno as nothing but new marketing terms for a music which wasn't drastically different from what they were already listening to. the point is, nothing is ever radically new -- it's an illusion created by your pov, and the timing with which you hear music. it's new to you because we aren't familiar with all the dots connecting it to earlier music. i have a fairly thorough collection of the entire history of recorded music now as a result of my father's recent passing -- 250,000 records, piano rolls from 1900, edisons, jug bands, dance bands/fox trots, waltzes, country, bluegrass, blues, dixieland, swing, bop, traditional indian, greek, turkish, chinese, african, african jive, r&b -- you name it, i have it. those cities and dates fred named do have some relevance, but they mark hey days, and by no means mark any radical departures from anything that had come before. none of it popped out of nowhere, not even a little bit, and techno was no exception...though i sure thought so when i first heard it.
jt On 11/1/07, Thomas D. Cox, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 10/31/07, Fred Heutte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Each of the major genres was associated with new sonic > > space created by the electric guitar, multi-track recording, > > synthesizers, PCs, and so on, combined with a cultural cauldron > > like New Orleans in 1948, London in 1961 and 1988, Chicago > > in 1953 and 1984, New York in 1925, 1956 and 1976, San Francisco > > in 1965, Kingston in 1967, Jo'burg and Dakar and Kinshasa in > > 1970, the Bronx in 1977 and on and on. > > im not sure i agree. i used punk as an example of people throwing out > the previous rules and inventing a style without anything "new", but > really house and techno to a large degree were like that as well. if > you count straight up house and techno records, youre talking about > 1984 at the earliest and by then they were using the discarded > "worthless" synths and drum machines that had been used and abandoned > by pop music already. ditto with the creation of hiphop, they were > using old technology (record players had been pretty standard for many > years and 8 tracks and cassettes and reel tape had all sprung up as > competition for it) and just breaking the old rules of what counted as > "music". even reggae and dub was more about misuse of something more > standard: a slightly different shuffle with an absuive use of echo and > reverb (both of which had existed for years before reggae took it over > the top). also, id contest the idea of jungle being something new. > surely it was great, but it was more of a combination of what had > already been happening with techno and house music and combining it > with hiphop. the style and some techniques may have been different, > but the equipment was largely the same. i know ive recently seen a pic > of a guy called gerald's studio circa 93 or so and it was all the > classic house and techno drum machines and synths plus and mpc60 and > an amiga. > > obviously the electric guitar and the synthesizer changed music and > alot of ideas about music, but not every major change can be tied to a > "new" tool! > > tom >
