DRUGZ AND DANCIN

I think a subculture that helped pave the way for great music that I love today is the progression of dance music starting in the early eighties after disco was killed in 1979. When I speak of dance music I am talking about electronic dance music; such as techno, house, dancehall, dub, acid, and drum and bass. The most noted point is that the entire dance scene was a reflection of what drug was being used most. House music was first dubbed by coming out of Chicago's own "The Warehouse", which was a night club with a few residents that played disco records. A lot of the djs used heroin and would feel as if the music was going too slow, so they would speed it up and add in more clear beats from records such as kraftwork. This was the first idea of house music, and you could even say it was dubbed a whole new genre of music because of how these djs presented it. Soon technology developed and djs began to sample and produce their own take on house music. Around this time was mid eighties and ecstasy was released within the electronic music sub culture. This is when it was believed to have blown up, "the summer of love". Early nineties methamphetamines became widely popular and a lot of producers began producing sped up breaks records and wonky bass lines. I am not a fan of this but it was a direct correlation of the drug use of the time.
This is the common stigma, that drugs is what fuels dance music and the producers but I don't believe that is true. There are a lot of producers who don't even do drugs that just love the music but that is the label that this genre is given a lot.

Now that the whole "rave scene" is over, the dance subculture is all about how much neon you are wearing, or how many party pictures you are in. Producers have lost sight of the first ambitions of hosue producers, and now just try to have parties not make an entire new form of music. You don't need drugs to be creative but everyone has a computer.

The newest drug to hit the scene is the computer, or jenkem.


by the way, I forget what I was trying to say.