History Repeats: “It Takes No Talent to Perform Electronic Music”
First, let me quote from Straight.com:
Let’s just cut the shit for a minute and say it: electronic dance music is the stupidest music on the planet. It even has a fittingly dumb name, EDM, which makes me cringe every time I see it. More so than the acronym, though, the reason it sucks is because the amount of talent required to perform it is precisely none.
Case in point: Paris Hilton recently made her DJ debut in Brazil. She can’t give a competent on-screen blowjob—Christ, you just put it in your mouth and spin your head around like Linda Blair—but she sure can throw down Gotye remixes and Avicii tracks to big crowds. Hilton even pushed a few buttons and it looked like she knew what she was doing. The best part about the whole spectacle was how it showed that trotting out some attractive and vapid idiot with no qualifications to DJ, other than that they have a following, isn’t exclusively a Vancouver thing. (Hi, Mayor Gregor Robertson. I loved your set!)
At about the same time, one of the genre’s biggest stars, deadmau5, came forward and said what we’ve suspected all along: DJing is fucking easy and all the knob-turning that goes on at a “live” EDM show is a sham. The refreshingly candid man behind the mouse mask claims that if you’re remotely tech-savvy you could learn how to do his show in about an hour. It’s just pressing play and that’s all there is to it.
Surely this means the current dance-music craze is done.
Funny, but I’ve heard this song before. As synthesizer technology improved and became cheaper in the late 70s and early 80s, a different breed of young musician emerged. They were fascinated by the infinite sounds that could be produced and replicated by these new keyboard devices. Learn a few programming tricks and even a rank amateur could sound like a pro.
It was all very punk, too. The original punk rock scene valued self-expression and outspokenness over virtuosity. Synth technology just added some new tools to that attitude and aesthetic. The result was an explosion of new and interesting music that was all somehow very stylish and futuristic. We still hear the echoes of those early 80s experiments today.
But it wasn’t an easy ride for these bands. Traditionalists (i.e. rockers who believed in guitarists who could play and drummers that weren’t circuit boards) hated techno-pop.
“You’re not real musicians!” they screamed. “All you do is press a button and dance to pre-recorded electronic crap! That’s not music! You’re cheating! You’re fake!” Etc.
It was tough in the early days for Depeche Mode who were pilloried for playing to a backing rhythm track on a reel-to-reel machine. OMD took a lot of stick for their all-electronic approach. The Human League was booed off a tour with the Talking Heads.
Yet we got used to it. Electronic music–however generated and performed–became assimilated into rock and all its genres. A couple of years after the Human League lost their Talking Heads gig, everyone began to use the new Apple Macintosh to program heretofore unbelievable forms of music.
So forgive me if I don’t get all wrapped up in this “EDM is crap” and “Deadmau5 just pushes ‘play'” bitching. I’ve seen this movie before. And guess what? It all works out and everyone ends up playing nice in the end. Sorry for spoiling it for you.
