personally I find whenever people say something like “emperors new clothes” or “style over substance” I think there’s a 95 percent chance they’re talking about something great.

at least the phrase tends to say very little about the records…

plus in the original story the people cheered the emperor because of the vast discrepancy of power between them and him….doesn’t really apply very well to modern culture!

i agree wholeheartedly.

but there’s a limit to this. there can be a fine line between innovation and pretension. for me, there’s a distinct ‘emperor’s new clothes’ quality to some recent mutations within dance music. (eg certain strains of ‘minimal’).

creating new language is part and parcel of innovative music…the only reason it’s easily mocked is because anything new is a risk…things which are fashionable generally go out of fashion and things which are never fashionable never do.

I mean, of course, these labels allow people to follow the trends a bit too much, eg electrohouse or “electro”…probably the most saturated bloated load of shit in the entire musicverse at the moment. was good when it was fresh though.

I’d agree that a lot of the genre mixing gets very irritating very quickly. (for eg. if erol alkan plays here again i’ll start throwing rocks at him). its all quirks and no depth.

what’s just as irriating though (and this is particularly relevant in the techno world) is the neurotic obsession many have for the creation and maintenance of rigid microgenres. its as if the scene or the fad is being followed and not the music.

i take ur pt that we all like feel part of something but it can get very herdish (and nerdish)

As for Bjork, she’s a typical example of the way major league album artists cherry pick what’s cool and re-sell it to people who don’t follow those scenes.

And there’s nothing wrong with that except that if you are someone who follows those scenes it can be intensely annoying when people or history acts like the big album seller invented the genre rather than just aped it.

I’d argue the history of music is more the story of X music robbing from Y and making Z where Z=a gigantic multi million selling album.

And fine stuff needs to be popularised but if there were no genres, if there REALLY were no genres and no pure music, there’d be nothing left to pillage, no subcultures, no gang to be a part of.

Still wouldn’t be surprised if Dizzee/Monkeys crap. But dont see why it necessarily has to be.

??