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Explaining Rave Culture To Americans article (pg. 3)
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| Looney4Clooney |
| quote: | Originally posted by corjay9
Times are changing, electronic music is the new stadium rock. Montreal's always had a great scene, but I'm noticing that dance music has been taking over. House music is being played in all the trendy clubs, there's an over-saturation of DJs playing house music, and a concert venue with a state of the art audio visual set up opened last year with a capcity of 3000 people, open club hours. Every weekend its packed, DJs like Tiesto, AVB, Boys Noize, Steve Angello, Calvin Harris, Skrillex, Porter Robinson, etc.. pack the club every week. Drinks are crazy expensive..
These places are killing our afterhours scene. No alcohol is served at Stereo and Circus, and people no longer need to stay up all night to listen to 'crazy techno beats'.
The small promoters who bring in quality acts are struggling to fill up small rooms for the die hard patrons because people have too many party options.. its getting out of hand!
thank god for Igloofest, Piknic Electronik and Mutek who keep it real! Kink and Mathias Kaden tonight, Josh Wink and DJ Sneak tomorrow. |
these club events feed after-hours. The problem in montreal is that the after-hours has become too sketchy, too old , too ugly and normal people are just kinda creeped out. Most people in montreal head out at 12. The bar is the pre party. it blows my mind how paltry the afterhour scene is in terms of numbers, guests lighting .... It blows my mind how they don't seem to be able to fill say the entire 3 rooms at circus every friday and saturday. But their crowd, their music format , their lighting, their reputation which may or may not be warranted needs to be addressed.
You have possibly the most desired age bracket % of any city in NA. Calgary's afterhours when it was around or at least when it was around and I was around managed to get 1000 people a night. This is montreal. Just odd. |
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| djnitride |
| Yes, America sucks at pretty much everything besides making money. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
the thing is that EDM to so many people that listened to funk and disco ie black americans didn't really find EDM dance music. It wasn't really what you would call groovy or funky in any way.
USA invented and perfected modern dance music. Britain added machines and made it for a really really long time.
without jazz, rnb and funk , well you would be still waltzing to Elgar. And i do love elgar but he was not really known for his waltzes. |
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| corjay9 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
these club events feed after-hours. The problem in montreal is that the after-hours has become too sketchy, too old , too ugly and normal people are just kinda creeped out. Most people in montreal head out at 12. The bar is the pre party. it blows my mind how paltry the afterhour scene is in terms of numbers, guests lighting .... It blows my mind how they don't seem to be able to fill say the entire 3 rooms at circus every friday and saturday. But their crowd, their music format , their lighting, their reputation which may or may not be warranted needs to be addressed.
You have possibly the most desired age bracket % of any city in NA. Calgary's afterhours when it was around or at least when it was around and I was around managed to get 1000 people a night. This is montreal. Just odd. |
Why do they feed afterhours events? Back in the day, the only place to listen to this 'underground' music was at an afterhours. If I'm an 18 year old thats getting into dance music, why would I stay up until 3am and go to a sketchy club when I can get my fix at a regular hours club with 3000 other people and a rediculous light show? I can drink alcohol too!
The culture's shifting.. the afterhours crowd is slowly getting older in this city, and the younger kids aren't participating. I know a dubstep/electro/bass/dnb promoter who throws underground parties, 800-1000 people show up to his parties every 2 weeks.. the bigger parties he's thrown have been upwards of 2000 kids, 17-20 year olds partying all night to dubstep.
I dunno how to fix the scene.. I don't think Stereo or Circus are doing particularly well. We need to get the kids in the afterhours clubs, dubstep at Circus? lol.. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
clubs. The culture isn't shifting. After hours isn't a culture. It is an after party. And the main reason people in montreal don't go is because it is sketchy. There are way too many 40 year olds looking to rape someone. The crowd is just too old, too strung out and the sort of crowd that makes you feel like you are hanging out with the lowest of the low. DOing E is one of those rights of passage. Think about all those universities. But they bring in some awful djs, they seem to use awful locals and they just aren't capitalizing on something that could be funner , sexier with people that aren't so ing jaded.
People love decadence. The city has so many universities. People want to experience it but in a way that seems how do you say somewhat posh.
And yes, clubbers can be a ing nightmare but if you have enough people, you can control who you let in. The problem right now is that there are just no women, too many 40 year guys with no shirts on that aren't gay and drug dealers that need to be a little less conspicuous. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
| The first rule of PLUR club is: Don't talk about PLUR club. |
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| Mr Game+Watch |
As a longtime American electronic music fan (got into it around 1996 via eurodance and blindly purchasing an Orb CD on the recommendation of a friend whose brother was living in Britain), it's still very surreal how EDM has exploded in this country. Going from people looking at me like I had a third eye when I told them I listened to "house" and "trance", to Tiesto and Calvin Harris being household names.
iLLiE586 is right on the money with the US and fads, and this is why I worry for EDM in the states. It's on track to being the butt of jokes like nu-metal. I'm actually very surprised that wub-wub-wubstep hasn't run its course yet. If the current EDM scene isn't bringing casual listeners into the underground, along with underground EDM fans growing old/getting bored/moving on, then this could have wide-reaching effects on the EDM scene. As far as I can see, casual EDM fans have not been converting over - I'll use Electric Zoo as an example. Pretty typical of a big stateside festival, with a clear division of 'heads' and 'casuals'... as EDM blew up, the change in demographics for the festival has been extremely apparent. There is a tent called the "Sunday School" tent, which focuses on techno, tech house, deep house, prog, IDM/leftfield (Sasha, Apparat, Paco Osuna, Joris Voorn, Maya Jane Coles, Speedy J, Dixon, etc) and just stepping into the tent is like a whole nother world. The people there are usually a good 5-15 years older than the rest of the festival and much more knowledgeable about the music and DJs they're seeing. The "neon kids" who are only there to roll and maybe catch Guetta walk in and immediately walk out after a few minutes.. they want to sing along to the songs that top 40 radio plays day in and out, not hear and discover a fresh, cutting-edge deep house track. While back in my day, being enamored with songs like EBTG's Missing and Livin Joy's Dreamer caused me to want to find out more about this "house music" (thanks to internet research and a classmate who was into the stuff), leading me into Daft Punk, Faithless, Oakenfold, Sasha and Digweed, drum & bass, trip hop, 2-step, on and on till today when I still am itching to discover new music. I don't think those "neon kids" who are just in on the fad are committed to take the dive into the wide world of underground electronic music, they'll just move on to whatever top 40 radio decides is "cool" after EDM has run its mainstream course.
The exact same happened with casual gamers and the videogame industry, and we are now starting to see the fallout (no pun intended) with that.
I am very lucky to have grown up and lived near NYC, which is so large and diverse that a thriving underground scene has always existed since the days of the Loft and Paradise Garage. So even if EDM has a widespread collapse, I'll probably still get to hear a diverse assortment of music and genres, but I feel sorry for longtime EDM fans in other parts of the country. |
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| Zombie0915 |
I was amused when this showed up on reddit. Overall I think this surge in popularity for EDM is a good thing with a few bad elements. The main one being that this really smells like the industry's attempt to co-opt what was once an exciting cultural movement into just another style of pop music. I think what is happening now with EDM is really similar to what happened to hip hop. They are selling the out of it while disconnecting it from the culture that it came from. If the hip hop comparison is sound then this stuff will not go away, it will just be another flavor of pop/club music on the radio and the new kids won't remember the spiritual/philosophical goodness that was once so important to us. Then again many would say that the philosphical stuff never really existed and only came into being later to cover up all the drugs, who knows I wasn't there.
But I think we are under estimating this new generation of kids, like our generation, some will turn into heads with a deeper appreciation for this stuff, and some will not. |
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| cr24 |
Good read, the first article.
Sometimes I wish I was older/had less restrictive parents lol I didn't go to my first "rave" until I saw PVD at Roseland Ballroom in 07 or 08 (was it "commercial/cheese" back then too? I remember having a blast even being 19 and not being able to buy liquor)
I've seen how the scene here has changed though even from 07-12 which has led me to search out more underground events.
| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0915
But I think we are under estimating this new generation of kids, like our generation, some will turn into heads with a deeper appreciation for this stuff, and some will not. |
<--This for me, I just kinda creep around on this forum clicking the youtube videos and sets looking for different stuff |
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| Guest |
| afterhours is almost wholly dependent upon readily available drugs. How easy is it to get good ? |
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| Lagrangian |
you cannot expect electronic music to thrive in a country whose inhabitants are clones of Mark Anthony.
the future is South America. Period. |
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| Guest |
| I'm an asset at any party. |
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