Think about the Future

News in today that Cream is struggling, having sold off the annexe, even with the reduced capacity they're still not bringing in enough punters to fill the venue on a regular basis. Is this the death knell of house? 14 years after the nations youth first came under the grip of it.

It's been a heady ride and many are the times certain quarters have written it off. Personally, I don't see it as possible to kill it off, as all musical variants are assimilated into the melting pot and there will always be clubs so there will always be a market. Though it seems the generation who grew up with it are not being as readily replaced by a new generation of clubbers and other sounds are fighting for popularity more than in the nineties. Of course some tactical errors have resulted in its diminishing popularity, As well as cross boundary divisions(I couldn't begin to explain the popularity of the Logical song ) . Alienating beer drinkers with £12.00 admission and some of the city's steepest drinks prices hasn't helped. The latest refit left it resembling a moody school disco as well. But there have been other recent casualties most notably 'Home'.

It does seem music is at a crossroads we've reached a position where we are tired of the future. I honestly believe there's no way forward for music but then I don't suppose I could have imagined what it was possible for music to sound like in the future, if I was alive in the fifties. Though since the age of electronics has there been much advancement? The Beatles 'Tomorrow Never Knows' is often cited as the first 'House' record and in terms of structure has much been added since? Just, technological advancements and richer flavours, can there be much more to come other than subtle variants?

Just listening to one of the new ‘Underworld’ tracks and it’s very nice, nothing seems to be missing now Emerson has departed and as a taster for the Album it’s wetted my appetite to hear more but it’s not like it was at the start. ‘Leftfield’ calling it a day as they felt there was nothing left for them to say musically also reinforces this notion, as does the thread debating the direction of the new ‘New Order’ album all the talk is of replicating previous albums. I’ve mentioned before I don’t hear anything in the more experimental electronic acts around that has any lasting impact on me and I’ve probably bored you with my disinterest in rock enough times. There are a few exceptions, some ‘Aphex twin’ tracks ‘Fisherspooner’s’ Emerge is another track that demonstrates a warped aesthetic that hasn’t been done to death but the more avante garde is never going to go mainstream as ‘House’ has.

I just thought I’d get that off my chest, feel free to return to whatever you were doing before I interrupted.:D

No Future No Future No Future For Me... Rotten told me that in '77 and he was bloody right.It has been all down hill ever since! :D Never having been here but i was involved with the first NORTHERN SOUL demise,it would seem that times are a changin.Possibly cos the youth can get MUSIC for nothing almost as a right of passage.I know so CAN i but i still PAY for most of mine cos i want the ORIGINAL.But with CYBERSPACE all that you want is available.I blame those chipped bloody PLAYSTATIONS for making people stay at the computer and game console ALL the time.People WANT cheap beer,fags,drugs and even i STAY in and talk to YOU instead of being in the BLOB SHOP.Money may be tight for me but it never got in the way of BEER/PUBS in the past.Also people like EVENTS again NOT the local DISCO (sic).This probably makes NO sense to you young ones but now you can travel to your local dance HALLS...2000 miles away or even further who wants a wet weekend in LIVERPOOL apart from IAN BOWYER and even he decides against it!HAHA.So enjoy all this whilst you can cos eventually the will knock em down like the CAVERN and the HAC.Hell even the BLOB is being sold. REGARDS ROCKET MICK

Plus it costs a BOMB to watch the GREAT RELIGION called FOOTBALL now.MORTGAGES and rent skyhigh! A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST ON BEHALF OF THE GREEN (TEETH) PARTY. :D

Hank, music has always moved in cycles Glam Rock - Punk - New Romantics - Indie - Dance etc etc, i feel we are currently at the tailend of the last big movemant (Dance) and await the next 'big thing' with bated breath and anticipation

Hank, I don't think that the closure of Cream signals the death knell of house. From my vantage point far far away it seems to me that the problems of the superclubs (Cream closing, other clubs opening less often, compilation albums selling poorly) are the consequence of them behaving as if they had a licence to print money and ripping clubbers off.

When house first became popular in this country in the late 1980's what mattered was that everybody had a good time: it didn't matter that much who the DJ was and whether they were playing house, balearic, acid, techno or rave and it certainly didn't matter what you looked like, what you were wearing and how much money you had. By the early 1990's dance music was still very popular but the scene was changing and becoming more business-like, partly as a result of the Criminal Justice Act (which New Age travellers and political pressure groups campaigned against but which the dance music community didn't bust a gut opposing) and partly because the major record companies started jumping on the dance music bandwagon. By the end of the 1990's the music that was being made and played was not that different to the music that was made and played ten years earlier but the nature of the scene had changed completely and become more factionalised, more fashion-centred and more mercenary with DJs releasing mix albums and playing gigs for vast amounts of money and superclubs selling mix albums, merchandise and even selling holidays to Ibiza.

What has happened since then is that more and more clubbers have come to the conclusion that they have been ripped off, partly because the dance music scene has gone through a bad patch with fewer good records being made (is it me or is trance very very boring?) and more old tracks being remixed and/or re-released and partly because more people have realised how easy it is to make dance music or to mix it. It must be easy because last year I made a mix album which someone else said wouldn't sound out of place alongside the superstar DJs on radio (since which I've made it longer and even better) even though my involvement in the dance music scene has been limited to listening to dance music for short periods on radio and in shops and buying the dance tracks I liked. The superclubs are suffering because many of the clubbers who went to them have gone elsewhere in search of better value for money and have found that newer DJs can play good music and mix it well enough and smaller clubs can have a good atmosphere. What I would like to happen next is that the dance music scene's DIY ethic (which is like the punk scene's but uses the power of modern PCs and the Internet) becomes a big overground movement rather than a series of small scenes and the dance music scene becomes more like it was in the late 1980's.

Super-Clubs may be dying but house music is alive and well...listen to Luomo - Vocalcity, Charles Webster - I was Born on the 27th of July, Superlongevity Vol. 2 - Perlon, Herbert - Second Hand Sounds...just to name a few stunning, unique "house" albums. Yes Trance is Cheesy and awful so DONT listen to it. It's easy to find good music but you cannot rely on the NME or Q to sell it to you and you definitley won't hear it at Cream or Gatecrasher or most other Super - Clubs.

Fingers you make some excellent points.My son used to DJ and the mixes sounded great.Also it depends on the incredients,if you are mixing crap records it ain't going to sound any better.Plus sometimes when a old tune is sampled and everyone goes apeshit why not just put on the bloody TOP original in full and be damned.:D Can someone give me a quid for the jukebox?On the subject of making music everyone should open up the bedrooms as nightclubs and charge a fortune for a bottle of water.Give the drugs away for free though and don't let your parents near your BEER stash.I wonder where i got this idea from? ROCKET HAC MICK YOUR NAMES NOT ON THE GUESTLIST ,YOU ARE NOT COMING IN! But i live here!

Originally posted by The Hacienda must be (re)Built Hank, music has always moved in cycles Glam Rock - Punk - New Romantics - Indie - Dance etc etc, i feel we are currently at the tailend of the last big movemant (Dance) and await the next 'big thing' with bated breath and anticipation

Will someone let me know when the next big thing arrives, because I always seem to miss out.....:(

It was nigh on impossible for Cream to continue to be so succesfully running the same format for the last 10 years. As James Barton points out, they are still a massively successful company, concentrating on big one off events. Creamfields=35,000 people paying £50, while Cream the club can rake in only 1500 people paying £10. it's obvious where the money is.

I went to Home a few times and actually liked it a lot. The reasons it failed were not because there was no one going - it was generally packed, but because it was unable to sell alcohol after 1am (licensing), had to shut at 3am (due to being in Leicester Square/residents), and Westminster Council constantly raided for drugs to use it as an example.

There's still plenty of good house music around, and many good club nights. The End in London, both in it's artists (Mr C, Layo&Bushwacka, Darren Emerson, Tim Deluxe and occasionally the exceptional Danny Howells), and it's atmosphere (best looking, best attitude in London) is a fairly mainstream example of how successful the club scene can be if the effort is made. The attraction is still there.

The next big thing could be a club where a bear comes up in a glass lift from under the floor and clubbers or old folk drinking tea could chant its name until it dances ...

'George' 'George' 'George'

Obviously the bear would live in an excellent room somewhere in the club with ample drinking water and a bowl of crushed mackerel.

If only that was true Huntsman

We can always dream of a better world.

But if it is the BEAR from 60 MPH it is NOT REAL.A man in a costume.I have been done again.:D

blimey - a bear called george - wouldnt be wearing shiny satin yellow jackets & a hat would he?

Originally posted by hibster blimey - a bear called george - wouldnt be wearing shiny satin yellow jackets & a hat would he?

Now your playing with my emotions. I'm filling up here.

Let's build that nightclub and call it 'George' or 'George's Night Spot'. I believe you can keep a bear as long as it puts on a good turn regularly.

Originally posted by Fingers Hank, I don't think that the closure of Cream signals the death knell of house. From my vantage point far far away it seems to me that the problems of the superclubs (Cream closing, other clubs opening less often, compilation albums selling poorly) are the consequence of them behaving as if they had a licence to print money and ripping clubbers off.When house first became popular in this country in the late 1980's what mattered was that everybody had a good time: it didn't matter that much who the DJ was and whether they were playing house, balearic, acid, techno or rave and it certainly didn't matter what you looked like, what you were wearing and how much money you had. By the early 1990's dance music was still very popular but the scene was changing and becoming more business-like, partly as a result of the Criminal Justice Act (which New Age travellers and political pressure groups campaigned against but which the dance music community didn't bust a gut opposing) and partly because the major record companies started jumping on the dance music bandwagon. By the end of the 1990's the music that was being made and played was not that different to the music that was made and played ten years earlier but the nature of the scene had changed completely and become more factionalised, more fashion-centred and more mercenary with DJs releasing mix albums and playing gigs for vast amounts of money and superclubs selling mix albums, merchandise and even selling holidays to Ibiza.What has happened since then is that more and more clubbers have come to the conclusion that they have been ripped off, partly because the dance music scene has gone through a bad patch with fewer good records being made (is it me or is trance very very boring?) and more old tracks being remixed and/or re-released and partly because more people have realised how easy it is to make dance music or to mix it. It must be easy because last year I made a mix album which someone else said wouldn't sound out of place alongside the superstar DJs on radio (since which I've made it longer and even better) even though my involvement in the dance music scene has been limited to listening to dance music for short periods on radio and in shops and buying the dance tracks I liked. The superclubs are suffering because many of the clubbers who went to them have gone elsewhere in search of better value for money and have found that newer DJs can play good music and mix it well enough and smaller clubs can have a good atmosphere. What I would like to happen next is that the dance music scene's DIY ethic (which is like the punk scene's but uses the power of modern PCs and the Internet) becomes a big overground movement rather than a series of small scenes and the dance music scene becomes more like it was in the late 1980's.

i,m with you on that one fingers.. some good points i started going to raves (MARCUS GARVEY CENTRE, NOTTS) in about 1990 or so then as the music and scene changed we started on the dance clubs and allnighters ( RENNAISANCE AT THE VENUE MANSFIELD was the best) i dont go much at all now i dont think the whole dance scene is as good as it was (this were all fields when i were a lad etc etc etc) most of the big clubs round our way( and there arent many )are struggling , i dont think people are prepared to pay silly money to get in anymore.. plus people i speak to arent so bothered about big name djs.. theres seems to be alot of after clubs cropping up though.. niche in sheffield being one of the better ones (opens from sat nite right through till sunday dinner) i personally think the "superclub" as had its day just as any other trend does

What do you say to those who believe it had its day around 1992?

Erm, bollocks!

Actually you're probably right, most of my all-time faves had been written by then.

Originally posted by Huntsman What do you say to those who believe it had its day around 1992?

it would have "had its day" at different times according to different peoples opinions ( does that make sense?) i suppose it all depends on when you got into it.. if you know what i mean.. i dont think the music will stand the test of time particularly well though

Seriously though, around the time Kylie and Jason were popular, well, Jason, around 1986/7 the whole dance thing took off and developed into raves quickly. A town near me had a place where people from Manchester used to come up to on a friday night! ... so 1987/88 and 89 were very busy summers indeed and very 'crazy' long nights (lots of memories). Then it sort of developed into raves on fields and old barns and just about anywhere anyone could fit 2,000 people in who proceeded to dring out of the shitters.

So 1990/1991 the first 'rave' generation had experienced it and were on to other things (harder drugs in most cases). By 1993/94 it was just old hat and the thing that bugged me was that suddenly DJ's were musicians? ... erm, no, they weren't. They just put records on and some of the better DJ's managed to put progressively faster and more intense records as the night developed. Big deal.

2002 and people are speaking of its demise? ... couuld it really have lasted that long?

Originally posted by HOOKYS WALLET > Originally posted by Huntsman> What do you say to those who believe it had its day around 1992?> >

it would have "had its day" at different times according to different peoples opinions ( does that make sense?) i suppose it all depends on when you got into it.. if you know what i mean.. i dont think the music will stand the test of time particularly well though

Yes, I agree with what your saying. As above, the 'first generation' should have left around 1990 and no later. It was at its most intense and at its most rootsy then ... in the same way 'Low-Life' could never be repeated.

Perhaps I'm just an old bastard.

Originally posted by Hank Wiseass©
Actually you're probably right, most of my all-time faves had been written by then.

Exactly! ... the official original dance/rave gear was written and finished by 1992. What came after was a load of trance arse which could be achieved by recording 1 chord for 2 days (with a touch of reverb).

It's like saying the sixties ended in the mid-seventies, it didn't, it finished in 1969.

BTW Sefton MBC doesn't use wheelie bins, Which confuses everyone in the Japanese quarter no end.

Originally posted by Hank Wiseass©
BTW Sefton MBC doesn't use wheelie bins, Which confuses everyone in the Japanese quarter no end.

Don't be playing mind tricks Hank ... I cannot fathom a world so out of control the common wheely bin is not used. Sefton MBC sound fairly tight, I bet the yellow lines go down on the roads okay ... eh!

Tell me this, if you don't use w bins, where do you right graffiti?

Originally posted by Huntsman > Originally posted by Hank Wiseass©
BTW Sefton MBC doesn't use wheelie bins, Which confuses everyone in the Japanese quarter no end.

Don't be playing mind tricks Hank ... I cannot fathom a world so out of control the common wheely bin is not used. Sefton MBC sound fairly tight, I bet the yellow lines go down on the roads okay ... eh!

Tell me this, if you don't use w bins, where do you right graffiti?

Have you seen my profile?

When I first got into dance music in the mid-80's (around the time of "Jack Your Body" and "Love Can't Turn Around") I was too young, too poor and too busy studying to join the scene so I listened to Jeff Young's show on Radio 1 on Friday evenings every week. What really excited me about dance music was its open and idealistic approach to life which I described in my earlier post and at the time it seemed that what was happening could be the start of a process that could change the country radically for the better, something that I (a young person living in a dying pit town which seemed to be a world away from the yuppies making a fortune selling pieces of paper and spending it like there was no tomorrow) wanted to happen.

The revolution never happened because the dance music scene took a series of turns for the worse. Some of those wrong turns were ways in which the music developed (too many people made formulaic records and added references to drugs in the hope that it would help to sell them, some bad ideas such as handbag house and cartoon rave took off and some of the most promising artists never got the recognition they deserved) and some of them were ways the scene developed (too many people took too much E and lost their critical faculties, other drugs came on the scene and the atmosphere turned nasty and the scene turned into an industry). However, the one change which seems to have done the most damage to the scene is the elevation of some DJs to superstar status, an idea which seems at odds with the original philosophy of the scene and, if you think about what a DJ does, seems utterly ridiculous.

Every week in the UK about 200 singles are released and whilst not all of them are dance tracks many of them are. If you assume that three-quarters of singles are dance tracks (which sounds about right) and there are two different mixes of each single (which doesn't sound right - some singles are released on two 12" singles so three or four mixes of each single is probably a better average) that means that 300 dance tracks are released each week. If you measured the tempo of every dance track most of them would be somewhere between 120bpm and 140bpm and most dance tracks are built around 4/4 rhythms and have long intros that build up and long fade outs so that they can easily be mixed into other tracks. So given that thousands of dance tracks have been made in the last 15 years it is very likely indeed that the end of any of those tracks is going to sound similar enough to the start of another one of those tracks to make it easy to mix the two even without the need to increase or decrease the tempo of one of them by 8%. The more dance tracks you hear the greater the chance that you will notice one of those tracks can be mixed into another one and if you spend many hours a week listening to new dance tracks you should be able to find enough similar tracks to fill a two-hour DJ set. Mixing dance music isn't rocket science or brain surgery: it's a task that requires some basic musical knowledge, a good memory and a certain level of dexterity that some people can teach themselves to perform and others can be taught to perform just as people are taught to drive cars.

Don't get me wrong: there are some great DJs who have turned mixing music into an art form (although the hip-hop scene has probably produced more great DJs and more innovations in the art of mixing than the house scene). However, dance music DJs have been treated as if they are somehow members of a breed that is superior to the artists whose tracks they mix and the clubbers for whom they mix them. Many of them have been happy to behave as if they are, pocketing vast amounts of money for a few hours work, making wild claims about their own power and prowess and competing to find the most obscure tracks that most people will never get the chance to own if they wanted to because if they are released they are pressed in such small quantities that few people who aren't DJs will ever get their hands on them. Whilst the demise of the superclubs may not damage the dance music scene if the superstar DJs were to be knocked off their pedestals that may help the dance music scene because it may encourage it to become less self-important and factionalised and more accessible and open-minded.

Fingers you've jogged a few memories there. Well Def Jeff was a Friday staple in our house as well. My thirst for the music 'I'd been waiting all my life for' was also quenched by listening to Stu Allen's Souled Out show on Key 103 on Sunday nights.

To achieve this I had to precariously balance a mono hand held Hitachi radio under my bed for optimum reception, usually having spent five minutes with a pair of pliers(No Houllier gags) trying to fit a broken telescopic bit of ariel, back through the hole.

I also had to listen at about 5 decibels for fear of waking various family members at 1.00am. A subtle art I first mastered during an apprenticeship that involved purchasing hi-fi separates one at a time the first arrival was a turntable and lacking a pair of speaker or an amplifier, it was pretty damn quiet.

The thread was triggered by the news Cream was having difficulties as I've mentioned in the past I attended the opening night and most Saturdays for the next five years. Some of you may not be aware Cream was far from opened as a SuperClub. It started life as a separate venue to parent club Nation and grew steadily to eclipse the parent club it was attached to. As the two clubs merged a split emerged between the more glam main room crowd and the more underground back-room. Nation as was became the main room under the Cream umbrella. It's backroom was and remained for a long time home to a more underground vibe and continues with the hosting of the monthly 'Bugged Out' all-nighter, who’s residents, Justin Robertson in particular were the most popular d.j.'s.

The 'no future' theme is a thought that's occurred a lot to me over recent years It's just a feeling that there are no major changes in store for us, or at least I'm unable to envisage them. I’m all too aware they pull down your favourite clubs, eventually, as ‘Quadrant Park’ was demolished a few years back now. Also all other big things have died but I still think they all just lead us to here. Maybe things will change subtly to a point that seems unrecognisable now. Maybe It's just my own perception, so it only makes sense to me, this feeling that the modern world is complete, all the visions of the future are here and that there's no-where left to go. I didn’t wish to sound too maudlin either as it’s not like I don’t enjoy music anymore, it’s just an observation.:D

CREAM were not helped by the fact that the SPICE BOYS in white suits BROKE UP! :D