this isn't just a statement, but also a question.

it seems that london/UK just does urban music/nightlife better than the states. in particular the bass music scene (to say nothing of the other thriving scenes).

legendary dnb djs from the 90s are still performing on the regular. they have weekly/monthly club nights at places like fabric, jamm, etc. andy c, dj hype, bukem, etc are all going strong. tons of kids turn out, chew their face off, and dance their ass off until sunrise and beyond. secret gigs, warehouses, festivals, squat parties, bars, dance venues, they have it all.

does this happen in the states? are hip hop legends performing on the regular in NYC? from what i gather, the scene is more about the flash and bling and dress codes and long lines and other bs. i could only imagine a monthly "old school showcase" night in some grimey venue in brooklyn. if old school artists in london can do it, why can't they in the states? is there no market? am i just out of the loop?

granted i have just a single weekend of experience in each city. but i keep up with the music in both scenes and it seems that london just does it better. i was blown away by the variety of events on offer the one night i was there, as well as the production of the one i chose (dnb, dubstep, juke, house, reggae band, etc) featuring both new school and legends, for a mere 12 pounds. when i was in nyc, i could hardly find anything.

what do you think? why does the UK do nightlife better? or am i mistaken?

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The NY music scene is immense. There are quite regularly events for old school artists. Shit in the past five years the electronic scene has grown incredibly especially in the last two. More and more artists are falling through the city in that vein than ever.

There's a difference between the scenes and the feel of events, and there's probably a lot more organic authenticity if we're talking the electronic ones across the ponds, but NY still goes hard.

And not for nothing Berlin >>>>>>>>>>> UK

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>The NY music scene is immense. There are quite regularly
>events for old school artists. Shit in the past five years
>the electronic scene has grown incredibly especially in the
>last two. More and more artists are falling through the city
>in that vein than ever.
>
>There's a difference between the scenes and the feel of
>events, and there's probably a lot more organic authenticity
>if we're talking the electronic ones across the ponds, but NY
>still goes hard.
>
>And not for nothing Berlin >>>>>>>>>>> UK

okay, maybe NY is going strong with electronic music. but what about hip hop> are the legends of the 80s and 90s still gigging on the regular in nyc? because the djs and mcs of that time period are going strong in london. and at places like fabric, you can find TENS of them on the same bill in one night. for 20 pounds on the door. is THAT happening in nyc? i see that q-tip has a new regular DJ night going on, which looks dope. but just imagine him AND a bunch of others.

as far as your comment on berlin, i've read a bit about their club scene, and it seems to be good, HOWEVER ive heard theres a lot of lines, a lot of rejection, and that the scene is somewhat pretentious, and that you just don't get that in london - being more inclusive, with wider variety of music apart from the house and techno staples of berlin.

im also inclined to believe that maybe LA has an edge over NYC in terms of electronic dance music.

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last time I was there, and I saw an old school artist's concert at least once a month

the US consume and dump just like
every other aspects of life

The UK is arguably more obsessed with fads than the US.

_____________________

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/287/6/c/the_wire_lineup__huge_download_by_dennisculver-d30s7vl.jpg
The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

sorry Mate you off the mark. Poor yourself some Tea because you get no Cheers from me for this one.

mistermaxxx R.Kelly, Michael Jackson,Stevie wonder,Rick James,Marvin Gaye,El Debarge, Barry WHite Lionel RIchie,Isleys EWF,Lady T.,Kid creole and coconuts,the crusaders,kc sunshine band,bee gees,jW,sd,NE,JB

Miami Heat, New York Yankees,buffalo bills

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http://sports.cbsimg.net/images//visual/whatshot/Yankee_fans061912.gif

no, they're not selling out the United Center but they're not relegated to juke joints w/tin roofs and bullet holes either.

fuck you.

its not just the fact that they are gigging - i'm also talking about the nightlife and party culture, which i feel that the UK just does better. those kids know how to party. granted, they are taking a lot of drugs. but you get a high turnout for old school and new school artists on the regular for dirt cheap. and they dance until sunrise. furthermore, its not just grungy venues, they've also got their brixton academy, ministry of sound, etc. but they also embrace the underground roots where the music came from. this is reflected in the warehouse parties, a good example being the lost series which brings jeff mills over several times a year and turns out thousands.

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fuck you.

Because once again, Jeff Mills is from Detroit

There are numerous "nightlife"-styles in USA that may or may not fall under the Hip-Hop umbrella (and yes, Hip-Hop and R&B is club-music too in the sense that it is played in clubs and people dance to it) that may or may not be popular only on a locally isolated level. And if you look outside of Hip-Hop, you have stuff like go-Go that from what I understand is popular only in Washington DC and practically nowhere else.

So if you look at USA as a *whole*, I'm not even sure there are less styles or less "nightlife"-fans per capita. however, it is much more spread out and less concentrated.

So yes, a visit to London may create an impression of an enormous interest in a vast variety of "nightlife"-music but take a cross-country trip through USA and you will encounter all kinds of stuff. That it may fall under the same genre(s) have more to do with the UK's tendency to assign genre-names to every little thing than anything else...

i will be taking a roadtrip across america this january and plan to scope the local music scenes in a bunch of cities (DC, pittsburg, detroit, chicago, etc). so i guess we'll see...

you make some good points. however i still get the impression that UK kids do nightlife better, and this may have something to do with what seems to be a massive intake of mdma.

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London nightlife != UK nightlife any more than NYC nightlife = USA nightlife.

i doubt you were exposed to a wide cross-section of nightlife in the UK. you probably saw it in London and are assuming that's how it goes in the rest of the nation.

i haven't heard that from my ppl who've spent time over there outside London and Manchester and Glasgow.

fuck you.

its a small city up north, visited for a few days several years ago. the first person i asked on the street gave me a rundown. there was all kinds of shit going down...on a tuesday night. ended up at a dubstep then an old school night. maybe its a college town thing. but there are certainly smaller UK cities with a heavy rep...artists, labels, nights, etc.

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fuck you.

that joint holds more than 50K ppl.

and there are at least 2 other major dance music festivals in the city every summer recently.

this isn't a Chicago exclusive - there are similar festivals nationwide, from ATL's House in the Park to Detroit's Electronic Music Festival.

dance music events w/big crowds do happen in the US, not just the UK.

it's cool that homie has been to the UK on vacay or some other purpose and fell in love. it's happened to all of us who've traveled. he's clearly still in that honeymoon phase. LOL

fuck you.

swipe:

"America, Your relationship with rave culture is not unlike our relationship with football. You invented it in your post-industrial northern cities, yet it's the rest of the world that has truly learnt to understand it. It's a precocious child that you managed to spawn, only to realise that you were less than competent as parents and had to give it to the rest of the world to provide it with a proper upbringing. Now it's back in your life and you don't know how to deal with it."

read more: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rave-culture-a-handy-guide-for-middle-america

i don't agree with everything in this article, but its funny and there are some good points. and yeah i'm aware of the big commercial festivals in america, but i feel that a truly rooted and thriving underground scene is lacking. maybe.

here's a funny counterpoint from an american: http://soundbleed.com/2013/01/explaining-edm-america-to-british-dance-music-elitists/

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but i feel that a truly
>rooted and thriving underground scene is lacking. maybe.

b/c there's definitely a thriving underground Dance Music scene w/roots that stretch back to the early 1970s.

fuck you.

While you are hear ask the Euros you encounter what their favorite festival is, why, and whether or not that reason can ne separated from Detroit itself.

I know what the answers will be.

"Movement"
"Vibes and underground dance music"
"No"

DJ Quik used to have a weekly show that he did at the Roxy. KRS comes here quite a bit to a good sized crowd. You can't really make an opinion off of a weekend or two in a city. You might not be in the loop on what's going on but that doesn't mean it's not happening. I've never had a problem finding ANY kind of show to attend in NY. Old School Hip Hop, Jazz, Electronic, whatever.

Reminds me of the titles that record stores in the 80's used to use for the sections that had hip-hop albums

Anyway, regarding the differences between music-appreciation between UK and US *historically* (=before the internet), UK-like sweden-have the advantage of national radio and BBC and things like that often playing quite cutting edge stuff during weekly specialty shows which means that people can be exposed to non-mainstream stuff with a minumum of effort. When it comes to rock for example, the importance of someone like John Peel and his show can not be overstated; dude had everyone from Beefheart to kraut-rock to a band like the Pixies later hitting the *regular* charts. And stuff like drum&bass got a LOT of mileage due to pirate-radio as well as regular radio picking it up later.

By comparison, in USA, stuff like that from what I understand only got exposure on college radio and other less mainstream outlets which is obviously not comparable. UK is also a smaller country which has benefitted music released on independent labels and the spread of local scenes that in the USA often remained in geographical/cultural isolation not to mention that the distribution of said product obviously was easier to spread nationally. I mean, a single state like Texas in USA is bigger than UK; good luck for making the local scene spread nationally *fast* (I know it did with Hip-Hop but it took long before people noticed; in UK, shit like that happens overnight which isn't entirely positive since there's the "fad"-aspect AFKAP mentioned; historically, stuff barely has time to take root and build an audience before getting blowed up and inevitably played out).

Basically, as Buck reminded me of in the metal-thread, the *outlets* for non-mainstream music in USA prior to the internet seems to have been pretty marginal, at least if you lived in some small, "uncool" city.

Believing that people in UK have inherently better taste or are more independent of trends seem ridiculous to me; they may be more independent of *mainstream* trends; however, an "underground" fad is still a fad and that's what the cool british dance-subgenre of the month or the cool british indie-band or whatever always feel like to me:passing trends and fads.

USA *seemed* immune to that bullshit and seemed to develop musical genres/subgenres in a more organic fashion and let them grow (maybe i'm romanticizing); that they may remain locally and culturally isolated is another thing.

Of course, internet has changed all that and the underground US musical culture(s) seems to resemble the Uk more-and-more to me:short-lived trends and fads and audiences just looking for the stimulation of the "new" and "interesting".

These are just my impressions though as a complete outsider and may be completely off; I know I'm guilty of fetishising the USA while being unfairly critical of the UK but that's just the way I am...

> I know I'm guilty of fetishising
>the USA while being unfairly critical of the UK but that's
>just the way I am...

Leaving taste aside, you don't think the UK-music scene has been terribly fadish? I remember literally dozens of bands that were the best in the world (or at least the "future") after releasing a single if that, only to be discarded within months and never amounting to shit... Granted, practically all of them sucked and didn't deserve better but stil.. You are playing your Adorable, Menswear, Back to the Planet, Kingmaker, Darling Buds, Wonder Stuff, Elastica, Curve, Feeder, Shed Seven, Auteurs etc. records in 2013?

>Leaving taste aside, you don't think the UK-music scene has
>been terribly fadish? I remember literally dozens of bands
>that were the best in the world (or at least the "future")
>after releasing a single if that, only to be discarded within
>months and never amounting to shit... Granted, practically all
>of them sucked and didn't deserve better but stil.. You are
>playing your Adorable, Menswear, Back to the Planet,
>Kingmaker, Darling Buds, Wonder Stuff, Elastica, Curve,
>Feeder, Shed Seven, Auteurs etc. records in 2013?

when paul oakenfold brought house from ibiza to london and it launched a full on dance revolution, that was not a fad. when reggae soundsystem culture combined with this rave culture to spawn jungle, it was not just a fad (i consider this to be the UK's equivalent of hip hop - both have jamaican roots, both sample breakbeats, both have emcees, and both started on the dancefloor). the UK (and berlin/ibiza/etc) took the house and techno born in the states and gave them proper dues and nurtured them into the vibrant dance culture you see today. they did the same thing with "northern soul" music in the 70s. UK garage, dubstep, grime, these are not fads...

mabye i'm not on the ground there so i don't see the fads coming and going, but i do know that the UK's contribution to music is disproportionate to its size. so much good shit coming out of that tiny country, to say nothing of its rich rock and roll history.


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>
>when paul oakenfold brought house from ibiza to london and it
>launched a full on dance revolution, that was not a fad. when
>reggae soundsystem culture combined with this rave culture to
>spawn jungle, it was not just a fad (i consider this to be the
>UK's equivalent of hip hop - both have jamaican roots, both
>sample breakbeats, both have emcees, and both started on the
>dancefloor). the UK (and berlin/ibiza/etc) took the house and
>techno born in the states and gave them proper dues and
>nurtured them into the vibrant dance culture you see today.
>they did the same thing with "northern soul" music in the 70s.
>UK garage, dubstep, grime, these are not fads...

The attention given to those things from the "mainstream" and "outsiders" does seem faddish to me; remember that many of the british club-acts spawned from what you mention were catapulted to genuine pop-level success only to drop from sight when something else became cool. Are there exceptions? Sure but not many...

>

The summer of acid doesnt mean you get to start claiming Detroit shit as your own

they took what we created/abandoned and embraced it, nurtured it, took a ton of drugs to it, and spawned a ton of new genres which thrive to this day, without mainstream approval. granted, there seems to be a decent scene in detroit from what i gather, though its telling most techno producers flock to berlin. another recent example is the juke/footwork of chicago. its huge in UK right now and taking the bass music scene by storm.

read this article: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rave-culture-a-handy-guide-for-middle-america

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yeah, you need to get out more.

i'm guessing you're in your late teens or early 20s.

i'm almost 40, homie. and i'm Chicago. and i've been here since the early 90s. i hate pulling 'rank' or whatever, but there's nothing you can tell me about the underground dance music scene in Chicago or even in the USA that i don't know. not that i know everything, but based on what you're talking in here and the fact that you think that article is saying anything, i can tell you don't know what i know. you haven't been where i've been. i've been to parties that'd blow your mind. since the early 90s. in the USA. and not just in Chicago.

that lil dismissive Vice mag article is cute for what it's worth and if i didn't know what i know and hadn't been where i've been i might put stock in that article. but i know too much and have seen too much. so i can and would tell those writers to fall the fuck back. b/c really...dance music has been alive in the underground in the USA since the early 1970s. and the *electronic* dance music has been grooving underground and mainstream since the 1980s. it's not new here. it's re-emergence in some mainstream channels is recent. keyword: RE-EMERGENCE. b/c it was big in the early and mid-90s too - i was there so i know.

again, i'm glad you've found some parties in the UK you like. and maybe you just haven't been exposed to those parties in the USA so you think they don't happen. but they do. just keep living. and maybe try asking ppl here in the USA who know more than you where you can find what you're looking for instead of so dismissively declaring that there's nothing here like what they have there. b/c that's just not true.

fuck you.

i am actually road tripping across the states this winter (via chicago & detroit) so if you have any recommendations on spots to hit i would appreciate it. especially curious to see where house music has gone, unless it is all upscale now...

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check out 5 Chicago magazine and The Reader for some club dates when you're in town.

Smartbar is a House/Techno joint. The Mid regularly books House and other Dance acts. As does Soundbar. and Boom Boom Room on Sundays. and Vision. and i think they play House at the Funky Buddha. i know they play it at Primary.

fuck you.

>they took what we created/abandoned and embraced it, nurtured
>it, took a ton of drugs to it, and spawned a ton of new genres
>which thrive to this day, without mainstream approval.

By "ton" of genres you mean trance, jungle, and dubstep. Techno is still techno, house is still house. We'll come back to trance.

>granted, there seems to be a decent scene in detroit from what
>i gather

This is pretty much an admission of not really knowing what you're talking about btw.

>though its telling most techno producers flock to
>berlin.

Who? Richie Hawtin and Jeff Mills? European producers going to Berlin does nothing for this conversation.

>another recent example is the juke/footwork of
>chicago. its huge in UK right now and taking the bass music
>scene by storm.

1) juke and jit music getting popular now runs counter to your point. We've been on that and its not a new sound to us. The fact that europeans just discovered DJ Rashad doesnt mean much, and neither does the fact that Om Unit started making tracks like that.

2) the term bass music is meaningless. If you insist on using it you have to acknowledge that bastardized Atlanta trapstep is running it. Also contrary to your point.

>read this

that article is beyond stupid. Its totally ignored that while England was preoccupied with Detroit and Chicago, America was tuned in to New York and LA. Techno and house declined here as hip hop came to prominence. Never mind the fact that disco bands were a thing, totally negating his *E*DM point. The fact that white euros took drugs and formed cuddle puddles 20 years ago suggests that they dont really understand it the way they thought they did. Techno was born of the intersection between emerging technology and post-industrial urban dystopia. Without growing up in, or at least visiting, Detroit its impossible to "get".

Im less qualified to talk about the homophobic backlash that drove disco underground in chicago, but rest assured that "understanding" house music goes deeper than drug induced PLUR.

If you want to assert that they have more fans, then fine. But America had a lot more going on in the early 90s than acid house and generic rock music. All England had was a conservative PM and fresh American vinyl.

you make some good points. i'll address two of them:

- "bass music" is a normal term in my part of the world (china/hong kong), setting the music apart from the majority/house and techno. witness: bassmusicchina.com

- "All England had was a conservative PM and fresh American vinyl." not sure i should bother...but there are some good documentaries on youtube about jungle circa 1993/94, as well the whole rave thing that was going off around 88/89.


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Ive made it a point to exclude drum and bass because its always been a narrow niche despite its brief moments in the sun

and this is coming from someone who LOVES drum and bass

>mabye i'm not on the ground there so i don't see the fads
>coming and going, but i do know that the UK's contribution to
>music is disproportionate to its size. so much good shit
>coming out of that tiny country, to say nothing of its rich
>rock and roll history

All this is because England has had greater access to US music than any other country on earth. All your DJs were playing our records.

(and lol @ ever having a menswear record)

also speaking as an outsider, i'd certainly agree that the UK music scene seems trendier than that of the US.

i'm not sure that this is such a bad thing, though. i think the clear channel stranglehold on the US music industry has hamstrung development.

>(and lol @ ever having a menswear record)

That's the funniest example because they went from hyping the band up to hating them passionately almost overnight. If they were that bad, why even hype them up in the first place? I knew the press was full of shit before that but that one made it SO explicit...
>
>also speaking as an outsider, i'd certainly agree that the UK
>music scene seems trendier than that of the US.
>
>i'm not sure that this is such a bad thing, though.

It's not entirely bad. I think it's cool that everyone from the Orb to tricky and Goldie and Roni Size etc. managed to make records that were HUGE sellers by british standards while making music that, for its time, was quite cutting edge and" modern". Stuff like that rarely happens in the US where it's mostly "safe" music fitting mainstream criterias that sell well.

At the same time, if you look at the career trajectories of said acts, it's like all attention and interest disappear when the next cool thing comes along which I find pretty sad. Of course, in the case of Tricky and Goldie, you could argue they had themselves to blame but at the same time, they got so much hot air blown up their ass (sorry, arse) that they arguably started to believe their own hype (see also Terence trent D'arby for a more mainstream example even if I like his second album) and disappeared right up their own asses; there's a mutual relationship there I think...

At the same time i think
>the clear channel stranglehold on the US music industry has
>hamstrung development.

I don't think so. I do think it affects things from the *consumer*-side which is probably why people here and on other sites "always" say that the british are so openminded and cutting edge whereas americans are so narrowminded and "safe" in their tastes.

However, I don't think it affects development of the actual music or that it leads to less "creative" artists. There may be less artists jumping on various bandwagons though due to the rewards being smaller; that's not really a minus to me...
>
>

LOL

fuck you.