Yep as of this evening I will be downloading garage band and locking myself in a hotel room in Venice until I have created a suitable mixtape to drop on some hipster internet music station. I will then let my hair grow impossibly long and wait for the phone to ring offering me 10 grand to play a sold out club in Los Angeles. Followng next will be my tour that sells out the venues across largest cities and campuses in America, watching my adoring fans sweat and roll on ecstasy while I simply press play.
I offer no indictment of the electronic dance music scene, and by no means do I think I provide any original thought by saying that it is easy. For every Skrillex, Avicii and Deadmau5 there are probably 1000 little Scandanavian kids putting out similarly dope beats, yet they are still working at their parents' bakery. I love the genre, I think there is nothing better than jumping around at a dark night club entranced by thumping bass and pretty lights.
I rarely discuss music on this blog because I know relatively little about it. I have 17 OAR cds in my car, one Strokes (hipster cred, I was totally playing Is This It in 2002) and I usually listen to AM radio. And while I do attend a ton of shows especially now in Los Angeles, I am almost always there for the party. A true music lover would go to a show sober solo and still have an outstanding time, yet I didn't even possess the courage to go see Blink 182 by myself at the Hollywood Bowl when they came just a month ago. (What happened to 90's nostalgia? I couldn't even convince anyone at RentaFriend to go with me.)
So while I sit here discussing the EDM nonsense, I don't understand the progression of chords or how to manage the interface of Pro Tools, I do believe that it is one of the most interesting sub cultures in society right now. People are often asking what is the "next big thing" in music. In the 90's it was boy bands, in the early 2000's there was a failed push to return to form with the classic rock band, the jam band thing in its current iteration has arguably been looming for 20 years, but this is really the first time a generation has adopted a theme song.
Why? Is it really that Gen Y doesn't care about lyrical storytelling anymore? Watching live music produced at a concert? Or is it really just about the drugs, getting fucked up and bumping around like an idiot? The music is catchy, it is fun, it jacks me up during a pregame. If I'm at a bar and one of those popular songs comes on I can't help interacting with it in some way, even if it is just a subtle head nod.
When I think back to when I started hearing music similar to this, it was called techno or house, think back to earlyish Daft Punk or Alice DeeJay, but over the years the lines were blurred between techno and mainstream with a heavy influence of more bass and now there are all these 20 year old European kids literally engineering the next chart topper in their bedroom. The real question is are young kids going to stop asking for guitars for Christmas in exchange for a higher powered computer processor that can handle their new intense DJ music programs.
The big guys in this game make roughly $60,000 on a show I would guess and they almost undoubtedly sell out. It's a great business model really, have a bunch of venues set up your tour for you, pop in with your equipment, press a few buttons, put on the facade of having a good time, you're out of there in under 2 hours. Meanwhile the rock bands that we grow up with are playing county rib festivals and dive bars in Fort Wayne. Many pop artists have either adjusted their sound to fit more inside the edm sound, while others are planning straight up collaborations i.e. Elle Goulding and Bassnectar.
Final question, is it really about the music, or has a generation of kids just defined this as the new standard in partying? It seems that party drugs and pills have become this generations marijuana. Our parents' Woodstock is our Electric Forest. Just 5 years ago Lollapalooza featured a rap/rock heavy line-up, this year there were 3 headlining djs and you had to drag people away from the Perry's tent. Rap is even drifting hard to the electric dance medium. Perhaps its a shift in music, perhaps our generation will find any excuse to get fucked up. Whatever the case, it's not going anywhere for the forseeable future, leaving you with 2 options drink the Kool-aid (it is really fun) or lock yourself in a room and emerge when you have created something better.
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