From BigKumquat Sent Sun, Apr 11th 1999, 22:35
Good questions, Alex! <<Is his work meant to be inflammatory simply to get Wire/NME/etc's equivalent of ratings, through increased advertising dollars/pounds?>> Certainly it has achieved the IDM list's equivalent of ratings - the vast quantitiy of recent Simon Reynolds-themed posts. <<What defense would he make for putting a chip on his shoulder every time he comes across a body of music he doesn't like?>> Well, this could be said for many of us, of course. <<How does the use or abuse of various narcotics or psychoactives equate with sticking it to the Man?>> When you have suburban kids with money to burn spending thirty dollars on bogus ecstasy pills, it bolsters the coffers of the underclass (drug dealers, riff-raff, street hustlers) and provides funding for the Revolution. <<When a group of obscure musicians are relatively popular at the same time, and make similar music, why is it that the music journalist community (including Reynolds) must apply a label (and a disparaging one at that) before addressing its sociopolitical or purely artistic merits? Is this just lazy writing or a bad case of writer's block?>> I s'pose "heroin house" and "geektronica" are somewhat disparaging...personally, I do think it can be fun thinking up new micro-genre names. At least "geektronica" is somewhat self-effacing, as opposed to the rather pompous "Intelligent" prefix. Just my random commentary...I'm not suggesting that these are actual answers to your questions. I will say this for Simon Reynolds' book: the chapters on the early years inspired me to break out some older stuff, like LFO...what a travesty that some lame teenage-marketing-ensemble is now using the name "LFO." - Fred Church xxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx