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Help me understand what happened to Trance... (pg. 13)
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| Ishkur |
| quote: | Originally posted by Stasis
Decline theories like Ishkur's are well-worn trails. See Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" for an example. There will always be individuals who criticize cultural changes. Print culture decried Television culture, just as Rave culture decries Club culture today, using almost the exact same arguments -commercialism, lowest common demoninator mass marketing, lack of substance, baseless pretensions, etc. The argument that Ishkur employs is decades old.
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yeah yeah blah blah blah...I know that already. Hell, even made the motivational poster.
But guess what: He's wrong, and your assumptions are off. There IS an objective criteria to the rise and fall of things. Empires, trends, scenes, fads, music, what have you. They all follow the same pattern: rise, climax, and then a decline. Deconstructing WHY this happens is paramount to understanding human demographics, systems, psychology and economy.
Why does something get popular? Why does it decline or evolve? If you're not going to explore these questions, then I will, but if you don't have anything better to offer other than to say that my claims of oversaturation, mass appeal, market uniformity (not commercialization. I never once said commercialization. I said market uniformity. There's a difference)--all of which happened, are happening and there's oodles of objective, concrete evidence that supports this--are baseless? Seriously, you. Put something that we can work with on the god damn table, fencesitter.
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As Ishkur admits, he started listening to "trance," in 96-98
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But my first rave was in 94. And my first friends were all oldskoolers. In my formative years I did a lot of things I doubt a lot of kids do today: I listened. I looked. I learned. And most importantly, I danced and I loved.
Whatever I did not know, I went and found out about it.
Don't you people do that? |
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| kr00t0n |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ishkur
I listened. I looked. I learned. And most importantly, I danced and I loved.
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Funny that, anyone who does the same, but happens to like the more recent variation of trance, is an idiot in your books :rolleyes: |
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| tiesto14 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ishkur
But my first rave was in 94. And my first friends were all oldskoolers. In my formative years I did a lot of things I doubt a lot of kids do today: I listened. I looked. I learned. And most importantly, I danced and I loved.
Whatever I did not know, I went and found out about it.
Don't you people do that? |
Why do u contantly come on here acting like you are so old school and that some how gives you some sort of street cred??
I went to a rave in 1989 and was clubbing every weekend from 1991 up to last Friday...does that mean i can bitch and moan like you with impunity? |
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| Zombie0915 |
so what is to be done? Can anyone come up with a solution? What are the fans of this music to do? Obviously there is a divide between pop aspects and the unique aspects of the classic trance form, are we to fragment ourselves even further because of this divide? It would seem that even classic forms had pop aspects, but people approached these in a joking manner, is the solution to simply bring back that behavior and acknowledge pop? To me it seems people flirt too much with blurring the borders between pop and art for this distinction to be that simple.
If the trance form has declined, are we to flee to some new form? Is it even possible to re-create what was lost from the original trance in today's world?
I just wonder what all of this means to us, and how we should act on this information. If commercialism is bad, the solution might be to support musicians who don't market, publish and sell, in the sphere of EDM that is called 'freetekno', but most people here hate that music, the crowd seems politically charged and caring more for revolution than for music. If the problem is formulaic stuff we can all continue on this campaign against samey music, but it just seems so futile, have we made any progress at all in reducing samey music with these campaigns over the last 5 years?
It is really easy identifying all of these problems, but what are the solutions? |
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| tiesto14 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0915
but what are the solutions? |
Listen to what you like is the solution and tell kids like Ishkur to whine and moan in the corner with his old schooling raver pals. |
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| Stasis |
I did put a lot on the table.
I attacked your central point -that there are objective means to guage cultural trends. I disagree. Nostalgia and therefore romanticism will always fundamentally prevent us from accurately comparing the past to the present.
Anyway, yes Ragadast/Donkeyness, that does mean nostalgia will always reduce credibility. It is impossible to set that aside. Doing so would be like setting aside one's memories or experiences in making a judgement.
Maybe generations from now people might be able to look back and make something that approaches an objective analysis of the situation, but these days that's simply not possible.
Thanks for the " You" by the way. I was a big fan of your website -I think it's hilarious. |
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| Zombie0915 |
But I don't want to listen to crap, he says crap is objective, and he has consensus, and evidence, and all that stuff!
I like a wide variety of things, what would be the most helpful thing to like? I would much rather support diverse enjoyable music, to help breed a scene of inclusion, where wild behavior and uninhibited self expression are the norm, much moreso than these clubs with the whole "look pretty and stand in line for your drink special" thing. The web promised me this beautiful sanctuary with unique music and tolerant people, who cared cheifly for contribution to the partying spirit above all else. I finally come of age to see these things and I find that it no longer exists, and has been canabalized and fragmented into these clubs and subgenres, that they put a guy at the door to seach us and charge us, just to get in and have the crowd act just like they do at high school prom with their cliques and their stupid fads, much like any other music show, leaving me quite unsatisfied.(forgive the awful sentence please)
Just leaves me wondering, what is a boy to do? |
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| Donkeyness |
| quote: | Originally posted by Stasis
Anyway, yes Ragadast/Donkeyness, that does mean nostalgia will always reduce credibility. It is impossible to set that aside. Doing so would be like setting aside one's memories or experiences in making a judgement.
Maybe generations from now people might be able to look back and make something that approaches an objective analysis of the situation, but these days that's simply not possible. |
Then why isn't nostalgia stopping me and others like me from realizing how bad post 96 trance actually is? Why are we able to say, "True, back then I did love the stuff and I do have good memories of it, but now, looking back objectively in my quest to find the answers, it seems that the best explanation for why I no longer enjoy epic/anthem trance and feel a sense of disillusionment is (insert explanation here)."
It's a common occurence. Ishkur terms it the '9 month romance period' or something. Well? |
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| peking_duck |
Hey everyone, just wanted to say thanx for all the discussion. But also i want to clarify something. I don't think songs like Without You Near, Summerdream, Air For Life etc suck, it's just that if I were a DJ and I wanted to send a big crowd into a frenzy, I wouldn't play those type of tracks.
When I listen to older Trance sets in my room I pretty much can't help but get up and dance, and I just wish that the tracks that DJs are mainly spinning ATM would be the same, and not make me want to go chill out on the couches.
I just think that certain situations call for certain genres of music. Restaurants - Lounge Music, Parties - Party Tunes, Big club dancefloor - Awesom music you can really go nuts to. To me it doesn't matter if it's trance, house, rock or even pop, if it makes me wanna go nuts dancing, i love it.
Haha, but I'll stop my whining now. I'm still gonna enjoy the PVD nite even if he plays 3 hours of Celine Dion!
Ciao! |
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| Zombie0915 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Donkeyness
Then why isn't nostalgia stopping me and others like me from realizing how bad post 96 trance actually is? Why are we able to say, "True, back then I did love the stuff and I do have good memories of it, but now, looking back objectively in my quest to find the answers, it seems that the best explanation for why I no longer enjoy epic/anthem trance and feel a sense of disillusionment is (insert explanation here)."
It's a common occurence. Ishkur terms it the '9 month romance period' or something. Well? |
I think this whole no longer enjoying epic thing, is not because of any objective sense for quality, but rather a much simpler explanation.
trend hopping, face it, alot of people don't like this stuff because it isn't cool anymore, they enjoyed the fad and the fad lost momentum. People who aren't trend whores keep liking the stuff they used to like rather than dumping it and pretending they didnt like it because it makes them cooler.
Todays music is more drinking music than it is stimulant music, because todays music wants to be legal and accepted by society, so it is smoother, calmer, slower, less exciting, because no drugs taht make you excited are legal. Think about it, all the biggest forms of music these days seem to work really well for drinking. One of the big prog songs is called "drink to get drunk". DnB, breaks, hiphop, prog, are drinking music, and if trance wants to become popular and accepted in industry it must also be drinking music. |
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| Donkeyness |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0915
I think this whole no longer enjoying epic thing, is not because of any objective sense for quality, but rather a much simpler explanation.
trend hopping, face it, alot of people don't like this stuff because it isn't cool anymore, they enjoyed the fad and the fad lost momentum. People who aren't trend whores keep liking the stuff they used to like rather than dumping it and pretending they didnt like it because it makes them cooler. |
One problem with your rock solid argument there...people are still getting into trance now, and the cycle of liking then getting sick of it still goes on, even though the 'fad' is long gone. They weren't there for this fad, they didn't see it come and go, and they didn't come because of this fad. They were simply drawn in by the music, then spit it out once they had their fill of it shovin itself down their throats. Or some other reason besides trendiness. |
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| Zombie0915 |
oh the infinite joys of arguing with radagast, I know how this works.
cool is definied in a much smaller scope and you know it, your purposely not thinking about my POV because your pride blocks you from budging. Just think about it a little more, try and understand the complexities of how fads flow, how the people getting into this stuff now are following a different fad, definied by a different crowd then the poeple that went through it before. Trance is very much a passage ritual these days, a fad among a certain age group. The fad dictates that you arent cool if you are of a certain age and still enjoy trance.
your taste is defined by other people, you are a sheep, you parrot everything ishkur says, you pursue these talking heads and do everything they say. |
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