The Death of Dance

Who care about the Brits?
They probably need more space to allocate to "TV talent show contestants". It is probably more a reflection of The Brits becoming even more Tabloid Pop only, rather than any decline of the club scene or dance music in general. Dance music is a huge catagory anyway and if it is becoming more grown up and coming out of the mainstream, then that is probably a good thing.
I was always amazed that they used to nominate Aphex Twin, as I'm sure most Sun readers have never heard beyond Westlife anyway!

Well,as a boring old fart myself, I don't think we can really 'write off' anyone - maybe not even the half of the Americans who voted for Creationism, balls of cells and the death penalty - let alone the poor old Brits! 'Dance' music represented a lemming like mass outbreak of clubbing as such. It was there as a music from the time of Gong and Steve Hillage, who used many of the same production techniques all those years ago, but perhaps with a much more idealistic world view in that far off time of the 70s. A few days ago I was given a ten year old Opus 3 CD, 'starring' Kirsty Hawkshaw, that I discover I like very much, and I occasionally enjoy listening to the Orb collection 'U F Off'. The music is not really 'dead', but the behaviour patterns associated with it have evolved over time.

It's not dead at all but has merely moved underground. Or at least to Waterloo Station.

Matthew

This triggers a thought of mine. How the development of popular music seems to be slowing down. "Dance" (in the general publics mind) has been around for something like 15 years (yes, I now there where people doing it before 1979, but as I said, in the publics mind it surfaced around that time). "Disco" in the 1970:s lasted for roughly five years, between 1975 and 1980 (or something like that).

This can also be seen in how often an act is putting out records. Beatles made two LP and four singles a year, a group of that calibre today would come out with records, at the max, with two years between them.

JohanR

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Originally posted by JohanR:
This can also be seen in how often an act is putting out records. Beatles made two LP and four singles a year, a group of that calibre today would come out with records, at the max, with two years between them.

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Yeah...don't forget though Johan that an LP was 40-45 minutes at best and a modern CD album now is usually well over an hour. It isn't quite a fair comparison.

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Originally posted by Rasher:
They probably need more space to allocate to "TV talent show contestants".

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More like "TV TalentLESS show contestants". As I am typing this I listerning to Kish Kash by Basement Jaxx, a superb dance album.

Is it me or is "dance" music music to dance to? Not picked over and compared to chart rubbish.

From the Register article Matthew linked to:

"Simply, mobile clubbing is turning up at a pre-arranged public place on mass where you begin to dance to the sound of your own personal stereo."

Every time I've been forced to sit through a eucharistic rite, I've fantasized about doing something like this while the priest jabbers on. (The fantasy is at its best when one imagines the congregants dancing about en masse.)

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This can also be seen in how often an act is putting out records. Beatles made two LP and four singles a year, a group of that calibre today would come out with records, at the max, with two years between them.

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You're right; the present does have some advantages

Kevin