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Re: What is it about...
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_bas
what is it about our favorite djs that makes us hold them in such high regard?
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Marketing.
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_bas
what is it about them that we love so much?
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Their faces on CD covers, so we know what they look like and know who to worship when they come on the decks, despite the fact that the music isn't a hell of a lot dissimilar from the guy who was playing previously.
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_bas
why is it that just one picture can say so many things to each of us?
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If you are enthralled by a single picture, you probably have very simple tastes. And can be entertained by shiny things.
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_bas
what is it about this music that we all can't live without? anyon else wonder things like this?
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No.
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_bas
they deteremined when you went and got a drink, they determined when you started/stopped dancing, they determined when you put your hands up, they determined when you looked over at your friends and noticed everyone was just having a fucking good time.
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Okay, please just shut the fuck up, right now. Here's what happened.
Initially the DJ was considered a techno shamen of sorts. He was the drummer who led the tribal furor, but he did not control it, he did not tyrannically oversee it, and the participants in the drum circle were just that--participants. The show was very much a give-and-take thing. Everyone put into it for mutual, communal benefit. They were not spectators. They did not face him. In some cases, no one was really sure where he was or what he was doing, so long as the music kept playing. They were, for the most part, anonymous and unencouraging of their status, choosing to let the music speak for them, and to keep the party going at all costs. The people at the ebvent did not depend on him to entertain them. They did not cheer when he did something ridiculously simple like play a record. Call the event what you will. Rave. Gathering. Event. But it was not a concert. And the reason for going was the experience. Not the DJ.
Early compilation CDs were often given unanimous throwaway names like "Tancendental Explorations Vol. 4" (something meaningless and arbitrary, yet still appropriate), and whoever mixed them was anonymous and faceless. If he had a name, it might be in the liner notes somewhere. In small type. As a kind of miscellaneous note, but nothing important nor to brag about. The important part was the music. Not who played it. What was more real than anything was what you did with it. Not who you depended upon to make you feel like its important enough to do something with it.
Then, sometime around the mid-90s, something happened. The album-oriented world of pop music applied its techniques, its aesthetics, its polished, smooth delivery and impressive sheen to the faceless world of electronic music. Instead of nameless CDs featuring busy and anonymous fractal art, we had faces. Not faces of producers or musicians, but of DJs. This caused a lot of confusion, especially with the rise of file-sharing, when newbies to the scene interpreted these faces to be original artists, and their compilations thusly original artist CDs. Thus, you have Oakenfold as the inventor of everything from Gamemaster to Binary Finary to Enervate.
So by focusing less on music and the party atmosphere/experience, and focusing more on Britney Spears-style image, fashion, and style above substance, electronic music suddenly became consumer-driven music. Manufactured, pliable, safe, feather-lite pap McTrance (this is why you call the years 99-2000 the glory years, because it became really lame, boring, and thus perfect for mass appeal) proved to be an economic boon for the electronic music industry. DJs were propped up like rockstars, their faces adorning magazines and posters, their words quoted in interviews, and their electric raves getting larger and larger, turning into pyrotechnic concerts and festivals, removing the element of the dancer as participant, replacing with the dancer as spectator, watching the theatre on stage, ingratiating himself, worshipped as a living god.
It's great that these people have made a lot of money off the punters, parasites, trend-whores and ignorant newbs who can't think for themselves and didn't appreciate electronic music until it put on this shiny new faceplate full of pretty colours and shiny things for them to consume, but don't ever foster any delusions that what these people do is any more complicated or impressive than riding a bike. They have excellent marketing/PR teams, and they know the right people. That's all they've done right. The music is a distant and, in most cases, an unimportant third to why they are famous, and why you like them so much.
In short: you are the sucker who fills their coffers. They are laughing all the way to the bank at you.
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