Warning: Shittiness of picture may cause seizures.
This article is well-intentioned, but kind of gave me an uneasy vibe. It’s about a trend I was blissfully unaware of until very recently, when I went out bowling with some friends to a place that plays loud music and videos, and suddenly this song came on—I can’t tell you which one—and like half the people at the bowling alley started to do some kind of line dance. As I stood there appalled, my friends explained that this is some new thing that’s really popular, and later my friend Spinetta emailed out a video of a bunch of middle aged men doing the same dance in kilts….at a wedding of course.
In other words, you can blame the patriarchy for shitty dance crazes, at least in part. The craze for big weddings has created an engulfing need for songs that can get every rhythm-free and shame-laden guest at a wedding onto the floor after a couple of glasses of champagne, and line dancing really fits the bill. As long as weddings have been with us, so have line dances, because everyone can do them and get applause and recognition for it, and doubly so if they are usually considered terrible dancers. Everyone’s just pleased to see them capable of something. This guy spends a lot of time uncomfortably dwelling on how he, white boy from Iowa, looked to hip-hop from a young age to inject some cool and some masculinity into him, but what he fails to realize is that the widespread nature of that desire in this country made the hip-hop-to-gaudy-wedding-music road an inevitability. Who has these big weddings with a strong need for line dancing but the young men like our author here, who listened to NWA on the bus to the Iowa schoolhouse? And with the pressure to both have a picture perfect wedding and to express your “true self”, goofy employments of pop music on the wedding dance floor are de rigeur. I’m not denying that this can sometimes be fun, to watch the old folks shake it to Outkast, but it’s also the source of really goofy dances.
I’m not sure a two page analysis of how hip-hop began to suck is necessary, though. Of course, that never stopped me, so I can’t blame the guy. But after two pages of trying to figure out where things went wrong, he stumbles onto an analogy that suggests that cosmos will not allow anything good to last untouched by the massive suck.
Look, I’m not confused or annoyed by hip-hop, like older rock fans are of, say, Fall Out Boy.
And there you have it. I remember the day that Dee Dee Ramone died. I was driving along listening aimlessly to crap radio talk show stuff, and the DJ announced that Dee Dee had died, and, to give the audience some idea of who this was and why it was important, cited the Ramones as an influence on Offspring. The problem with great music is that its very popularity is often its death knell. Innovation initially alienates all but the adventurous few, and then people get accustomed to it, and there’s often a period where the music is still good and really popular. But the flattening inevitability of mediocrity kicks in.
This article also suffers from the selective memory process that is nostalgia. If this guy was 8 in 1989, then that means I’m 4 years older than him, and I remember yes, that NWA was popular….but so was Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. You can’t just skip over that shit; the Hammer dance was everywhere. You can still start the rap to “Ice Ice Baby” in a roomful of people my age, and at least two or three will overcome their natural, Disco Ball-given shame urges and will start to rap with you. The mediocrity creep set in on hip hop the second records started to go gold. I remember seeing a commercial for Flintstones vitamins where Fred and Barney were rapping when I was a kid. Hip hop and I are about the same age, give or take a couple years, so that means that even in its childhood, it was facing the Flintstones kids obstacle. Not that you give up hope on continuing to make good music in a genre after a setback like that—punk survived the Chipmunks punk album. I remember going to games and dances in high school and hearing “Whomp! There It Is!” a lot more than all the golden heyday-of-the-90s hip-hop that makes this guy wax poetic.
Everyone goes through this guy’s struggle in their mid-20s. It’s easy to say, “Oh, the music changed,” because it’s easier than facing up to the fact that you changed. Responsibilities creep in. You start watching more network TV after work rather than spending your time scouring record shops. Your friends don’t have time to make you mix discs anymore. Looking for good new music becomes hard work, and you slowly start doing it less. And thus you see something shitty on MTV and you think, “That’s what the kids today like?” and you forget that there’s always been a mass of people indulging in Teh Suck on MTV, and that you only remember the good stuff, because back then you could be up at 1AM aimlessly watching MTV during that one hour of the day they play good music, because you didn’t have to be in class until 11 the next morning.
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The craze for big weddings has created an engulfing need for songs that can get every rhythm-free and shame-laden guest at a wedding onto the floor after a couple of glasses of champagne, and line dancing really fits the bill.
Wait, what? I’m pretty sure that the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance did not arise within the past decade as part of the big wedding craze.
Weddings have always had goofy group dance songs that everyone, even Grandma, could dance to. The fact that some of the songs being used are slightly more contemporary than polka music doesn’t make it some brand-new never-before-seen trend.
Geez, you young whippersnappers with your short-sightedness. We were doing goofy group dances to novelty songs at weddings in the 1970s and 1980s before you were even born!
My god, it’s full of stars I don’t recognize or care about!
Yeah, mnem, I acknowledge that this history of line dances and weddings is long. I even says, “As long as weddings have been with us, etc.” But the need for ever more wedding dances is growing. People don’t want the Chicken Dance. They want something that shows how they personally are more fun and hip than people who have the Chicken Dance.
Now, people who think the latest crappy rap song with a line dance attached is somehow cooler than the Chicken Dance are fooling themselves, but you can sort of see why this is an easy lie to tell yourself. It fits into this trend of wanting both the big wedding but also to convince yourself that you’re still a unique snowflake who can use what is the hokey-est American tradition outside of sports to express yourself.
One of my friends wedding was ruined by the hokey pokey and the chicken dance. I hate DJ’s who do that. The point is to play fun danceable music so the dancers dance, and the other people laugh and point. (And in my case, to allow the born-agains to leave in a huff, if they show at all.)
Soooo true about the patriarchy–line-dancing–wedding-industrial-complex connection! Wow, I would have never made it myself, but when I read it, it was one of those thunderclaps of insight.
(I am also opposed to line dancing, to whatever kind of music. Okay, the “Elvira” or “electric slide” or whatever people call it was fun and cool in summer camp when I was 10, but I was 10!)
When I was a kid, my mom showed me the first album she ever bought, at age 15: The Best of Cream (yep, she still had it. Her vinyl record collection would probably make a lot of people sob with envy). She blasted Teh Rock all throughout my childhood; she introduced *me* to Big Hair Bands in the ’80s, then grunge in the 90’s (Nirvana, in particular, was her find, not mine)–she never stopped evolving, though she also never stopped loving the music she grew up with. I guess it rubbed off–I totally KNOW what Amanda means about how much harder and harder it is to find good music, not cause it isn’t out there but because you just don’t have the same amount of time to expose yourself the easy ways. But I never stop finding new sounds and styles that I’m crazy about…I never long for the “good ol’ days” of REAL .
But the need for ever more wedding dances is growing. People don’t want the Chicken Dance. They want something that shows how they personally are more fun and hip than people who have the Chicken Dance.
Yes, and that’s why “YMCA” and “Shout” were big in the 1980s and “The Macarena” was big in the 1990s, and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Seriously, it’s not even close to being a new trend influenced by the big weddings of today. Since the age at which people get married remains approximately the same (I think we’re up to about 26), the songs chosen will constantly change because no respectable 26-year-old today is going to think it’s hip and cool to have your group dance to “YMCA.”
Sorry, but this is not something you can blame on the wedding-industrial complex.
Okay, it’s not a new trend—again, acknowledged in the post. The whole point of my post is Teh Suck is always with us. If the sucky new line dances are coming from hip-hop, it speaks to the age of the people having big weddings. Agreed, 100%. The point is not that line dancing is new—I can’t remember saying that—but that hip-hop line dancing at weddings was an inevitability.
Seriously, I’ve now read that paragraph 3 times to see where I claimed that line dancing is a new thing, and somehow keep getting stuck where I say that it’s always been with us.
fer fsck sake.
not another “Is hip-hop dead” article. That and “IS classical music dead/resurgence” and is Jazz “dead/too academic” article.
Come ON ….. those are slow newsday/page filler type of junk. Cut and paste from random google surf type of crap. (the kind of junk I post when I have 20 minutes and nobody else wants to do update.)
What’s the point of blogging when it’s just pushing conventional wisdom.. Blogger suppose to be this generator of alternative opinion and the voice of alternate universe.
NYARRGHHH!!!!!
This is how civilization end. Everybody talks about how hiphop-classical-jazz-rock are dead/or not dead.
PS. can we drop salon.com already? jeebus, they have ZERO credibility by now. It’s like “GAP to youth fashion”.
Who could forget all of the parodic rap knockoffs in the mid-80s? Rappin’ Ronnie Reagan, Rappin’ Zombie John Wayne, The Rappin’ Rabbis, Mel Gibson’s phat hip-hop beats in either Spaceballs or Robin Hood: Men in Tights (thankfully, I’ve forgotten). Thankfully, we all had the Blu Blockers guy to help keep it real.
I remember seeing a commercial for Flintstones vitamins where Fred and Barney were rapping when I was a kid.
AGH! I’m going to need some major brain bleach to get this out of my head. The ad wasn’t for Flinstone vitamins, as I recall, but for Fruity Pebbles (do they even make this crap now?). The ad goes - I can’t believe I remember this - “I’m Fred Flintstone and I’m here to say/I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way!”
I’ll be a sobbing mess in the corner, thank you very much.
Mel Gibson? Mel Brooks! You can’t rhyme shit with “Gibson!”
Stop.
Collaborate, and listen.
Amanda:
I think mnemosyne read this bit:
As I stood there appalled, my friends explained that this is some new thing that’s really popular… In other words, you can blame the patriarchy for shitty dance crazes, at least in part. The craze for big weddings … And with the pressure to both have a picture perfect wedding and to express your “true self”, goofy employments of pop music on the wedding dance floor are de rigeur.
as you talking about a recent craze for big weddings resulting in an attendant craze for new line-dancing pop songs that let one express one’s “true self”. It does read to me, as well, as a statement about a shift away from old-fashioned folk dances (e.g. polka) to ostensible expressions of the bride and groom’s “individuality”. But of course, as mnemosyne points out and as I’m sure you agree, this distinction (as made by the wedding participants, not you) is laughable: no polka song was ever danced to by more white people that Outkast’s last album.
So I think we’re all on the same page: this is an old, old story, even though young people seem think it’s not. But I think mnemosyne was legitimately confused about your position after reading the post by itself, without your clarifying comments.
Norbizness, thanks for mentioning the Blu Blockers guy. I work at a prison and many of the inmates wear those sunglasses (gee, think they got them for a good price?)
Me: Where’s your sombrero?
Inmate: What the…?
Me: You know, to go with the glasses.
Inmate: Huh?
Me: So you can do the rap.
Inmate: (mutters something about “crazy librarian”)
Me: Blu Blockers. The rapping guy in the sombrero. Television. You remember the ad?
Inmate: I was trying to forget that.
Me: Sorry.
Hip hop doesn’t suck–corporate hip hop sucks, and just as is the case with any genre, you can find good stuff without even having to look all that hard for it. Hip hop is no different from rock in this respect, and the internet has made it easier to find stuff that doesn’t suck.
But discriminating taste isn’t common, which is why Tag-Team and MC Hammer made lots of money and why Boots Riley toils in relative obscurity.
I find myself cringing whenever a wedding DJ pushes everyone into those “cool” line dances. If I’m not an immediate family member or close friend of the bride/groom, I find an excuse to use the restroom at that point. But otherwise, I try to be a good sport about it. When someone you care about is having a special day, sometimes you have to indulge their or (more often with me) their spouse’s rotten and unironically trashy taste.
Speaking of which, don’t get me started on that horrific Chipmunks image. The only thing that’s missing from it is Poochie. John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, frequently writes about what happens when artistic innovation in his medium is taken into the cold clammy embrace of the modern BigCorp. Here’s Kricfalusi on the devolution of cartoon-based toys.
My advice for dealing with the wedding line-dance issue is simply to become part of a central european or balkan ethnic group, and then guests at your wedding will have a repetoire of participatory dances they can join which look like an expression of their ethnic heritage rather than an embarassing american ritual. Unfortunately, for many, this may entail having an accordian player as part of your wedding band, but I think you’ll agree that this is preferable to having the guests do the Chicken Dance.
still, even the “is hip hop dead?” meme is not as tired or repeated as the “bam zip pow! now comic books are for adults!” one.
argh.
Oh you people with your YMCA & hokey pokey, we can go back way way further than that!
Hava nagila, hava nagila, Hava nagila venis’mecha
Anyway, the thing that resonated with me about this post was this part:
There have been times when I’ve idly wondered why I seem to have lost interest in keeping up with finding the good stuff, and you’re right, it’s just too time-consuming. And oddly enough, I feel like the greater availability of music on the internet has contributed to my lack of energy for doing the work. When I was a teenager in the late-70s/early-80s, my friends and I scoured little hole-in-the-wall record shops, and traded tapes and tips and listened to college radio to find decent non-mainstream stuff, but what we had to sort through was manageable. Now, the lack of that kind of free time is a big factor, but also I just feel utterly overwhelmed by how much is out there. All the world’s music is available at my fingertips, in an instant, yet somehow it’s harder than ever to find something truly unique that I actually like. It seems like it should be easier now, but it’s just not.When my wife and I married we told the DJ if he played the Chicken Dance he wasn’t getting paid. and whatdoyouknow, no chicken dance!
Reminds me of the spectacles that people make of themselves at my minor league hockey games.
YMCA once a year I could stand. Once a game, not so much.
But the absolute capper is Rednex’s mangling of Cotton Eye Joe. Once a game, the drones in the booth put that on the PA, and mental defectives jump up and do the Cotton Eye Joe dance while my friends and I plug our ears and shout DROP THE PUCK and THIS SONG CAUSES CANCER IN LAB ANIMALS until it ends.
See now, I always thought that dumb wedding dances were really an excuse to act like idiots because everyone is drunk.
When people are big weddings get up and do the Macarena or the Electric Slide, no one thinks, “Man, here I am doing the Macarena! God, I am so with it!” They think, “Ha ha! I’m doing the Macarena! I am sooo wasted!”
Oh, another story came to my mind reading that article, where the author talks about how bad the Soulja Boy song & dance are.
This spring I went to a Mardi Gras ball — I’d been to more modern-party-like “balls” of newer krewes or gay krewes, but this was my first traditional old-time ball — of a krewe that was once all women, btw, and still has women in most of the leadership positions. And props for having an openly gay king, which is why I was there, as his friend. Still very very white though. Anyway, after all the pomp and circumstance of presenting maids and dukes and the captain and her guard and the king and queen and so on, it turns into something very much like a wedding reception, with a meal and then dancing/socializing. Mostly an adult affair, the only children were those who were involved in the krewe in some ceremonial role. Several of them were using the now-abandoned stage to run around and dance and play during the reception-like time. And when the DJ put on Soulja Boy, it was the JUNIOR MAIDS, girls in the 6-10 year old range, who knew every word and step to that song/dance. My friends and I were appalled to see these little girls in their fairy-princess-like dresses jumping around on that stage singing “superman that ho”!!! I felt positively ill.
Amanda, there was this guy who did a science study about why do people get stuck only liking the music of their youth, and pretty much it held true for practically EVERYONE, and, mostly it had to do with exposure to music overall, which drops markedly; people generally KEEP listening to the music of their youth, and listen to less and less “new stuff”. Fewer new records in rotation.
BUT WHILE I AM ON THE SUBJECT: XM Radio has an 80’s station, and ALL it plays is the garbage/payola junk that was on the radio then. NO Ramones, No Talking Heads even, No X, No Husker Du, No Violent Femmes, No Butthole Surfers, No ANYBODY !!! NONE of the great music that defined the era!! (I realize I am only listing a few bands, but what I mean is, NONE of the music that actually influences anyone later, or mattered.) Just, ya know, Bon Jovi. The programming of that station makes me ILL!! THe least the geniuses of that era should get is REMEMBERED LATER!
About 10 years ago, I started listening to classical music almost exclusively. One nice thing about being a classical fan is that you don’t have to worry about getting nudged out of the mainstream, because you were never in it in the first place.
The stuooupid wedding dance craze crap I can take or leave. What bothers me and my kids far more is the Radio Disney Hegemony at all kid-oriented events.
The latest in all that is pop culture, bowlderized and sanitized for your protection.
It’s Tupac, it’s big pop, it’s hip hop, it don’t stop.
I love that song, I love that groove.
Motherfucker, I can’t help but move, so if you don’t mind, if it’s alright with you I’m gonna get in the electric slide line just to prove that:
White kids love hip-hop!
Hurray for not being a music snob, so I can enjoy MC Chris.
I think i stopped listening to new music on a regular basis because 99% of the time I know exactly what I feel like listening to. Its only in that last 1% of the time when nothing I have fits my mood precisely that I go looking for something new.
Why go looking for new music when I really just want to listen to nomeansno?
KMTBERRY,
Ya know, for a lot of folks, it’s that corporate garbage/payola music that defined the ’80s. I guarantee you more folks would recognize songs by Aha or suchlike than Husker Du. And then there’s stuff like Prince or Michael Jackson or Madonna, which personally would say “mattered”. I don’t know from XM radio, but I’m certain there’s a “College Rock” channel or “Alternative” or whatnot. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in college towns over the past decade, but I don’t think the Replacements or the Ramones, especially, are especially forgotten by the kids.
‘Course, for me, the ’80s were defined by country radio, from Johnny Lee to Willie Nelson duets with everyone to Ronnie Milsap to Dolly Parton. One’s results will almost always vary.
@26: You know I like my bands a little bit older. There’s something about them… baby… so right. I always feel like there’s somebody watching them (and they get no privacy!) There’s only one thing to do in response to this grave oversight: take… these broken wings… and learn to fly again, learn to something something so free.
So if it wasn’t the Hokey Pokey or the Chicken Dance, the only horrible yet somehow popular song I can think of would be “my achey breakey heart”.
That wasn’t it, was it?
Ew.
Mentioning line dances without mentioning this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HpAE-QcQA&e
…And with the pressure to both have a picture perfect wedding and to express your “true self”, goofy employments of pop music on the wedding dance floor are de rigeur.
Express yourself?
“I’m expressin’ with my full capabilities
And now I’m livin’ in correctional facilities“
OK, just knock it off.
There is nothing wrong with the Chicken Dance nor with the Hokey Pokey.
As a bride, I at first vowed no silly dances. My mother then reminded me that my younger brother, who has Down Syndrome, LOVES the Chicken Dance.
So…at the reception we first did the traditional first dances and after the band took a break we had a second set of ’silly dances’.
It started with my brother and me dancing to “Eight Days a Week” (his favorite Beatles tune). Then Ryan led us in the hokey pokey and chicken dance. It was awesome. The best part of the reception, b/c it was purely joyful. Everyone was up and dancing, and not b/c they were wasted.
It’s traditional, and, as such, fun.
The rest of the music was jazzy–>no pop or rock or line dances. We have a dear friend who insisted on having “Melt with you” at her wedding, but I really didn’t want smurfing and pogoing in formal attire.
I don’t know who let their DJ ‘ruin’ their reception, but I simply wouldn’t have paid the wo/man. Our band was under strict orders to stick to jazz/blues unless requested by guests to play something else. Had he just gone nuts and played crap, he wouldn’t have gotten the rest of his money. As it was, we paid for an extra hour and tipped the daylights out of him.
My cousin was married last month and after the first dances had a kids’ set with the chicken dance, hokey pokey and then the Disney lineup. The 4 year old went nuts when Hannah Montana started playing, despite the fact she’s never watched Hannah Montana.
—–
As for not liking new music…as a teen I vowed that I would always keep up with the latest music.
Then the hair bands and heavy metal nonsense happened. “Headbangers Ball” was initially an MTV joke, since their core audience of teens were out on the weekends. Our younger siblings–the 11-13 set were stuck at home and watched b/c they thought anything on MTV was cool.
It’s a real music division in Gen X. The older members, such as I, sneer down our noses at the younger members who were so enthralled by Poison and Night Ranger and Bon Jovi and Guns n Roses. That vow to stay on top of music just couldn’t survive hair metal and rap.
Unfortunately, living in Chicago there’s no decent 80s station. It boggles my mind that you can find decent stations anywhere else, but in my hometown there’s zip. you’d think with the market segmentation in a town of 8 million at least one station could play decent 81-86 new wave.
Ahhh, at least I got to see the Police last night. Mom wouldn’t let me go to Chicago to see them when I was 17, telling me I could just see them the next time they toured. They promptly broke up, and I had to wait 23 years to get to that show!
Though it’s kinda weird to look around and see nothing but ‘old people’ at a rock concert.
You don’t win friends with salad.
Hey Rob, that was great! The 4 y/o and the 1 y/o were rocking out to the JapanimeDancing!
did you hear? rock n roll is dead!
Happened a couple of weeks ago…
1959, I think…
You lost me somewhere with the patriarchy and big weddings. Is it men who are clamoring for super expensive spectacles?
Stop.
Collaborate, and listen.
Ice is back with a brand new invention
Something grabs hold of me tightly
Throwing like a harpoon, daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know
Turn off the lights, and I’ll glow
To the extreme, I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and waxing chumps like a candle
***
Y’know, 11 million people bought that record. Not a single one of them will admit to it today.
The problem with Cool as a concept is that it’s an quantum superstate. So long as it isn’t observed, everything is both cool and dorky. Observation collapses the uncertainty, with inevitability towards dorky.
Compare: singing in the shower/car is cool, you feel like a rock star and you’re having fun.
as soon as someone watches you, BAM, you’re a dork.
There are mind-collective entities, allowing small groups to function as a single entity, and therefore the singular presence doesn’t collapse the state. But once fame and ubiquity set in, the mind-collective cannot sustain itself for everyone who sees it, and the dorky sets in.
It’s kind of like the Hundred Monkeys Theory. Things one is unfamiliar with are new and interesting, ie cool. As soon as the critical mass is reached, it’s familiar to everybody, and instant dork fodder.
so your only options are to not care if you’re a dork, or to keep moving from trend to trend with reckless abandon like some Postmodern Juggernaut, unable to slow or even stop as you swiftly move from Electrorock to Cold Trance to Zydeco Fusion to Rocky Horror themed Captain Beefheart Tribute Bands, while the ghost of Andy Warhol powers his engines of Spirit world destruction with the crushed spirits and endless cultural momentum, and only a plucky young spirit medium and her gang of spirit powered sidekicks can save everyone from the coming Hell of Polished Plastic. Sort of A Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Yu Yu Hakusho thing with 70s references. Nico has razor fingers like Molly from Neuromancer.
This is what happens when you obsess over being cool. Epic Simile.
I agree entirely. There is no cool. There is only what _used_ to be cool before it made its way to my lame-ass consciousness.
I guess that people who see a lot of live music, or who _are_ artists in any medium, might be further up in the cool hierarchy, but once anything cultural gets released/published/exhibited, its cool immediately declines. It becomes pop. It becomes lame. And that’s where I come in!
Karpad, thank you for that penultimate paragraph.
If people stop listening to new music by the time they are 28-32 or so, then I’m having a ROFL moment imagining todays 18-19 year olds in the year 2078 when they are 88-89 yeaqrs old listening to hip-hop in the assisted living facility! Getting botox injections to keep the tats from wrinkling too much.
A few years back Margaret Cho had a bit about that, picturing the people of her generation (like myself) sitting in the nursing home asking to hear “Hungry Like the Wolf” again.
Yeah, I stopped listening to music for about thirty years. Then I started listening again to stuff I used to like. Steely Dan and Dire Straits. Now I like Coldplay and Counting Crows. That’s as close to new music as I get. Chili Peppers are ok. And don’t tell me it’s teh suck. I’m 54, wtf do I care. You’ll be where I am before you know it if you’re not careful.
Bloix May 12, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Now I like Coldplay and Counting Crows. That’s as close to new music as I get. Chili Peppers are ok.
oh mannn..you need intervention quick…
how to find music similar to things that I like and expand horizon while at it…. (the classic online problem)
1. use known name to get next similar artist
www.music-map.com/
www.pandora.com/
www.last.fm/
2. use general mp3 blogs, search engine
http://hypem.com/
http://elbo.ws/
So for eg. if you like “cold play” which you should be detained for committing heinous cultural crime, you might like a lot of “Merge Record” stuff
(eg. Lou Barlow, Camera Obscura, Lambchop)
I would predict with 98% certainty you will like lambchop’s “Nixon” or “Is a Woman”
www.mergerecords.com/
another interesting area to explore would be “post-rock”. (’Tortoise ‘ ‘ Explosions in the Sky’) A little sedate, but in the same range of texture you are looking for.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-rock
PLEASE stop buying crappy major label stuff.
I don’t know whether to applaud or be slightly aghast that Haruhi snuck into Pandagon, of all places. XD
You, Rob, have your pulse on a very particular subset of Youth Today! *Rock Lee nice-guy pose! ting!*
Okay, I just dorked out there a little bit.
Does anybody else remember line dancing and disco? And I like the Chicken Dance
*is okay with being not cool*
pablo, the word “patriarchy” doesn’t immediately absolve the post from being 95% tongue-in-cheek. I think perhaps that’s where people are running off the rails with this. I personally love big weddings….thrown by other people. A big wedding is to dorkiness like fusion is to energy, and I like to stand around and watch the fireworks/participate if that’s what’s needed to get things going. I am not above being the beginning asshole on the dance floor if that’s what’s needed to get everyone else out there so I can gawk at people trying to sex it up in a full skirt and heels or a 3 piece suit.
Some of those 11 million bought Vanilla Ice CDs as goofy joke gifts to give to their random friends. That was how I came into possession of a copy.
It did come in handy frosh year to teach some loud hallmates who loved blasting their music into the wee hours of the morning some consideration when I aimed the stereo speakers and blasted that CD on repeat into their rooms right before I left for my morning classes as their first classes started at 1 pm and later. After doing that twice, they got the message and stopped blasting their music when I needed to sleep for my 9 am classes.
In short, Vanilla ice CDs make good coercion/torture tools…:)
“A few years back Margaret Cho had a bit about that, picturing the people of her generation (like myself) sitting in the nursing home asking to hear “Hungry Like the Wolf” again.”
OMG, that’s awesome.
Myself, I make a point of searching out a CD by a new band with rave reviews every year for a friend’s birthday, as we both get older. I include an exchange token, but it allows both of us to get exposed to something new, and forces me to wade through the music literature looking.
Mind you, she put me on to Beth Orton, so it works both ways.
Nico has razor fingers like Molly from Neuromancer.
You have just described my dream woman.
I’m disappointed, yet unsurprised, that no one here has noticed the rather loud racist dog-whistle in this article.
A white guy says, who obviously has limited knowledge of hip-hop, proudly declares the following:
This is a white guy who is an editor at a major publication who has been working in journalism for years who somehow manages to omit breaking, krunk and other difficult forms of dance at the heart of hip-hop so he can complain about line dancesThis is a white male who doesn’t mention Missy Elliot, let alone Lupe Fiasco in order to declare hip-hop shallow.
He doesn’t even seem familiar with grime and other best selling international multi-ethnic rap.
This guy has the balls to say:
I’m sorry Amanda, but doesn’t someone proclaiming young black males lame when he doesn’t really know the culture strike you as informed by white entitlement lamenes A.K.A. racism.I mean, I’m sure if he made such sweeping pronouncements about women in music with a similar obvious lack of knowledge, you’d call it sexist, so why not call him on this?
And let’s not get started on the subtext of Salon printing an article about how lame young black males are.
Also, I’m not buying this excuse:Responsibilities creep in. You start watching more network TV after work rather than spending your time scouring record shops. Your friends don’t have time to make you mix discs anymore. Looking for good new music becomes hard work, and you slowly start doing it less.
Except no. If you are a journalist writing an opinion piece for a national magazine about how lame young black males are, you can make the effort to have an informed opinion. Because that’s your job.
Karpad, I love you.
softdog, non-drinker of kool-aid May 12, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I’m sorry Amanda, but doesn’t someone proclaiming young black males lame when he doesn’t really know the culture strike you as informed by white entitlement lamenes A.K.A. racism.
look man, I am telling ya. It’s salon.com
it’s completely useless. (they just close down their music download section because the blog eat them alive and they can’t get traffic.)
I really don’t know why anybody wants to link them that much. They suck.
Calliopejane:
Hava nagila, have two nagila, have three nagila, they’re pretty small.
You’re very welcome!
Mrs Nice Guy
Well, there’s this:
Is it correct? I couldn’t begin to tell you. But he specifically addresses the history of hip-hop dances, including the styles you mention.
The guy who wrote the article clearly doesn’t show an appreciation for all four elements of hip-hop, which include breaZZZZZZ…
there *is* a moment when romance starts to overwhelm innovation. Soulja Boy makes me tired, but basically, the problem remains the same. It’s much more problematic when a claim to (ever-shifting) old-school cred turns into an excuse to act a fool, but the Electric Slide will never die. I kind of like it; last time i was at a middle-aged birthday party i felt like my ancestors were looking down on me, thinking, “coping mechanism! coping mechanism! NOT an excuse to act a fool, dammit!”
FlipYrWhig May 12, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Is it correct? I couldn’t begin to tell you. But he specifically addresses the history of hip-hop dances, including the styles you mention.
The guy complained like a baby, just like the ones before him. (how come jazz doesn’t swing anymore. Is hard bop and free jazz even jazz? waa waa waa…)
hip-hop has moved beyond simple rhyming. eg. illbient, acid jazz or whatever turntable-ism or novel sampling program people can get a hand on.
just smack him upside the head and give him a nickle to watch life show. (or click youtube)
I just realized that my contact with new music will diminish dramatically in the next few years, as I leave Austin’s music scene, and even more importantly, the wealth of music that the cool young staff people share on the Philosophy Department iTunes. This thread presages my doom.
I am not above being the beginning asshole on the dance floor
I am always the beginning asshole on the dance floor.
That article left a bad taste in the mouth, but he is not wrong to suggest that hip-hop has changed remarkably over the years.. Hip-hop’s landscape really was vastly different in 1989. Someone like Hammer was an anomaly at that time, the exception rather than the rule (Vanilla Ice didn’t hit until the next year)..
Also, Hip-Hop records started going gold/platinum with the very first rap 12-inch, Rapper’s Delight, and obviously its best years (as a recorded form) lay well ahead at that point..
Not totally disagreeing with this post, but I do think hip-hop’s narrative arc as a pop phenomenon is more complex and more worthy of analysis than you give it credit for.. the topic warrants far *more* than 2 pages of essaying, that guy just shouldn’t be the one to do it.
Also, and this is of utmost importance: the Flintstones rap was not for the vitamins, but for FRUITY PEBBLES! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42GeF1KMxAY
that is a pivotal moment in rap history you are disrespecting.
I disagree that it’s a shitty dance. It’s not crazy awesome, but it’s not shit either. That’s like saying c-walking is shitty line dancing. You can do it lame, or you can do it with style. If white people are willing to learn that shit and perform it with flare, good on them.
No, he does it like an old stiff white guy, just like anybody’s personality shows in their performance.
Also having somebody whose only knowledge of hip hop is top 100 artists telling me why hip hop sucks in ‘96, is not very credible. To disrespect and summarize the genre like he does tells me he doesn’t know squat about old guys like africa bambaataa, or any modern hip hop that’s not on his local radio station.
I’m not hearing that he’s irritated that people with poor rhythm are executing complex dances. Because then he says this:
Oh, fuck you, dude. I think this is the idea that spawned his thesis.
I’m telling you, hip hop has reached middle age in the same way that rock hit middle years back in the mid 70’s. Nobody in 1976 would have predicted a revitalization of the rock spirit in punk–they just saw wacky costumes and obnoxious behavior.
A lot of objections here say things like, “but the guy doesn’t know about __________.” That’s beside the point. Mainstream hip hop IS fucking bland, just as bland as anything that dominates pop culture is going to become. But it’s also a given that there are tons of great, vital artists doing work that doesn’t make it into line dances at weddings.
The reality is that hip hop is still great–but it’s no longer NEW. So I think it’s a little misguided to throw around the “oh, that old fart just doesn’t get it” insult.
You can tell you are aging by your response to the music in commercials, especially car commercials.
Mitsubishi, Cadillac, Cooper Tires, have all pulled up
Indy groups from near past to way past in an attempt to appeal to the “correct” demographic. I reach for the mute button, and write letters to the companies saying that with such taste in music, their products must be teh suck! But, I’m an old dude, so what.
How quickly they forget the macarena!
And yet, this was the line dance that decisively won the 1996 presidential election. Things were neck and neck between Dole and Clinton until Al Gore came to the rescue with his own stunning version, and of course the rest is history. If Gore had only line danced in Florida in 2000, how different the last eight years would be.
Hooray for line dancing - more macarena please! Although for wedding party fun, it is much better to dance to Dhoom Machale.
“Dr. Locrian May 13, 2008 at 9:48 am
Mainstream hip hop IS fucking bland, just as bland as anything that dominates pop culture is going to become. ”
mainstream hip-hop becomes bland because everything is controlled by less than 3 major labels and one or two big outlet (mtv, clear channel) all those are programmed by very few people.
of course, the chart race to the bottom. Nobody wants to air the hard pieces or non standard form.
but the internet suppose to change that, instead of same few people mouthing same conventional wisdom. (well, if he actually go out and dig stuff. He might find some interesting thing instead of whining. It’s his job as a music reporter.)
Relevant information:
Not all line dancing is crap.
Back in college, I performed with a Commitments-style R & B band (it was multi-racial, but yes, I do get the irony of mentioning this anecdote in this thread). One of our performances was in one of the large dining halls on campus, and during Mustang Sally, a line dance about four rows deep spontaneously broke out in front of the stage. Frankly, it was amazing to watch. Everybody doing it knew the steps, and somehow it was organic and precise at the same time.
So I wouldn’t lump in line dancing (i.e., stuff from an R & B tradition) with “shitty dance crazes”, although some of it has been co-opted, Pat Boone style.
Dubby jungle. (complex beat, extension of hip-hop tradition, designed for dancing. If the core of hip-hop is creating mix out of recorded material and voice that can’t be produced by other instrumentation, then this is hip-hop.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYhoPee450
SHUT up with hip-hop IZ D34D already.
LTJ Bukem & PFM - Love & Happiness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj5tp5qHLxw
(sonic quality is not there since it’s youtube, but it definitely has atmospheric texture and danceable, if not a bit 90’s retro.)
… more pies! (and hip hop is/is not deadz)
OMG….hip-hop is deadsss…againn….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh6Q8dDVjlM