But not that e-music.

There's a piece in Salon just recently about the 'triumph' of electronic music. It draws out the standard stories of how hidden electronica has merged into the culture (see the standard Moby story of how all of Play was licensed, or how all those cool car and gap advertisements use electronica (and Nick Drake), but does so in a nice way than most - a bit more detail, a bit less 'parents just don't understand' if you will.

Which is the mature aspect of the piece that grabbed me. Anne and I have had, a couple times, a conversation that is a bit emblematic of our growing 'maturity'. We don't quite get the music the kids listen to these days. We listen to a fair bit of it - raised in freeform radio, I still prefer it (in Chicago, that means for me either WLUW or WZRD with a smattering of WNUR - but the fact is, we don't know what the cool stuff is these days.

This brooding reached a peak when Anne and I were discussing that we didn't know who the people were in a number of the electronic bands we listen to. And the piece in Salon does a nice job of touching on that topic, of the anonymity of the performers of electronic music. And so be it. They did miss the boat in this piece in forgetting to compare electronica in the late nineties to reggae in the early 80s. Of course, for this to hold, every frat party in 2012 will have loud blaring Thievery Corporation. I can hardly wait....

Ironically, current music playing - jazz on WBEZ.

Posted by esinclai at June 19, 2002 09:24 PM |