This thread will be for the fallen kings of music.
New jack swing. Can’t see this sound coming back aside from a novelty. Old drum machines mixed with the glossy 90s production leave it stuck in its era. I can’t see BBD coming back with a ‘Poison 2018’ and making it sound like our poison. The beats are corny by today’s standards but some of the music stands up.
No idea how I never went deep with SWV but I clearly need to remedy that.
BGwaves wrote:You guys think that’s anything but a novelty? The Bruno mars song. I’m gonna say we won’t get a full album of that stuff.
Guess I see what you're saying but dude sold like a zillion records and won 89 grammys for stuff like that. A full on New Jack revival seems unlikely, though, sure.
I really miss industrial music. But I'm not talking about Einstürzende Neubauten or Coil, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I miss when Ministry and KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails were just a regular part of listening to alternative rock radio. I even miss stupid shit like Prick and Gravity Kills and Orgy, who all sucked but still made the world a better place just by being there. I remember when Northwestern football had its first really good season in forever (1995) and ABC 7 had this promo they ran for the Rose Bowl or some upcoming special they were going to have about the team's success and it was soundtracked by a Revolting Cocks song. They ran this commercial all the time and I would do anything to see it again. "Crackin' Up" was on Chicago alt rock radio. I remember listening to the radio in my friend's backyard, jumping on his huge trampoline while this was on the radio. IMO this was a good formative experience. a year later my friend and his sister would throw out all their secular music, it was a fun ride while it lasted.
I miss listening to the Industrial Zone (Industrial Nation?) late nights on the radio when I was teenager, hosted by Zoltar the Brother From Another Planet. It was really weird and frightening music--maybe everything seems mysterious and creepy when there's no images or context and it's coming out of a black box you can't control--and there is nothing like it now. I wish I could communicate this idea without sounding "old," but I guess everyone feels that way and you just have to take it on the chin when it's your turn. Shit. But wtf was I supposed to feel when a song like this came on?
Something happened in the world that erased music like this from youth culture and even seemed to smudge this whole subculture out of existence within a very short period of time. I graduated high school in 1998 and jumped straight into a sheltered, shitty couple of years that would have insulated me from any contact with this world, suffice to say by the early 2000s I'm sure that teens were not really down with this anymore and I really don't think Limp Bizkit/Linkin Park were the reason. I also don't think that The Matrix suddenly brought this subculture into the light and that's why it "died" or whatever but the timing was certainly very weird. No new industrial bands came out with any hits. NIN survived The Fragile and Ministry milked the anti-Bush shit for a couple of years but then it all just seemed to be over with. White Zombie had willingly turned himself into a meme, no thanks.
It fucking sucks that this stuff became completely synonymous with Marilyn Manson and Columbine. But again, I don't think that's why it disappeared. This wasn't supposed to be music for kids, right? People in their 20s and 30s would dress up and go out to "goth clubs," right? I was working at a video store when I was in college and my manager went into the back to get changed at the end of the night. She came out dressed in fishnet and leather and in these sick ass boots that I still think about every now and then. I never went to any of these clubs because I was lame and didn't feel like living life. Whenever anyone talks about these scenes now, it's always with a sense of regret or some kind of reflexive "cringe" or whatever. The Internet turned life into a performance to be as cool AND normal as possible 24/7, it's a prison and it's killing us but I digress.
This was a top 100 hit! No, we won't speak about their actual Top 40 hit in this thread. Whatever do people listen to in the high school weight room now?
KMFDM completely rules, I love "Juke Joint Jezebel" and "Megalomaniac" with all my heart and I'd never put them in the guilty treasures I unashamedly enjoy thread. It's insane and stupid that everyone associates these songs exclusively with Bad Boys and Mortal Kombat. I love how much their stuff evokes disco and funk (and gospel!) and skewers the kind of macho fascist bullshit that bands like Rammstein would later embody and use to win over dumb kids by the millions with.
This music was really off putting and I think that's the biggest part of it that's missing from music today. You weren't supposed to like it. There's lots of popular music that's "unpleasant" or confrontational now every bit of it now arrives with the same sense of entitlement to your approval. Popular music today is surely more hedonistic than it's ever been, but this sex-positive attitude is just a happy accident, a byproduct of the bigger consensus that pleasure is just a goal to achieve alongside money and popularity and status, an attitude that no one is interested in subverting, much less even questioning anymore. I had a point I wanted to make here but I had to go to Walgreens and now I can't remember what it was. I can just keep rambling here if anyone's really interested.
"Dragula" seemed to be a turning point here, I dunno.
undo wrote:It was really weird and frightening music--maybe everything seems mysterious and creepy when there's no images or context and it's coming out of a black box you can't control--and there is nothing like it now. I wish I could communicate this idea without sounding "old," but I guess everyone feels that way and you just have to take it on the chin when it's your turn.
If you went to high school basically any time in the 90s you had the unique experience of having a pretty well-formed idea of what the world was like before the internet but still being young enough to be an early adopter. And context was really the big change, by 2000 I was doing Allmusic deep dives and wallowing in the context but in hindsight the strangeness of pre-online music discovery feels pretty interesting even though I don't miss it per se.
I feel that post. I was thinking this Fall about wax traxx and how all that music is just forgotten and it made me sad. Partly because I allowed myself to bury it in my own subconscious...so these last couple months I've listened to revco and ministry and skinny puppy.
I saw a woman wearing a psalm 69 shirt walk into her house a few months ago as I was delivering mail. I wanted to make some small talk about it but she was too far away. It was so jarring to see that shirt, I had the same one in jr high. Like seeing an alien transmission in that uber wealthy town. Anyway, it was cool and I give her maddest of props.
EBM has been huge in the techno scene the past few years! I know it's not exactly what you are referencing above but KMFDM/Ministry references are everywhere.
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