From: dave@bradley.bradley.edu (David Vessell)
Subject: Re: -->FNL. NIN STATEMENT<--
Organization: Bradley University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 01:30:59 GMT

That sounded like something I wrote in r.m.i about three weeks after the
newsgroup was created.  I'm glad to see that some folks out there can
maintain some perspective.

The first bands I listened to that were called 'industrial' were Ministry,
Nitzer Ebb, and Nine Inch Nails....probably a similar story fits a lot of
other people.

By virtue of listening to them, I tracked down similar bands and widened my
definition.  I found other people with similar tastes and was introduced to
harder-sounding bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Einstuerzende Neubaten, and
Throbbing Gristle.  Around that time, I started the Escape From Noise
mailing list, named after my favourite album of another band I'd been
recently introduced to, Negativland.  I figured that starting it would give
other people the chance to get exposed to the music, and I in turn learned
a hell of a lot more about industrial music.

I still remember the e-mail I got from Greg Earle shortly after EFN
started, and at the time I got rather angry about his suggestion to (I
paraphrase) 'give up on EFN and come over to the New Music List where all
the REAL industrial fans were.  The truth was that the nm-list was geared
to an entirely different audience.  the nm-list readers were hardcore
industrial and experimental music fans, and the list fit their interests
well.

A dozen or so issues of EFN later, I brought up discussion on forming
rec.music.industrial, which I saw as a logical progression of the idea.
It's been a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, it's freed up a lot of my
time not having to patch EFN together and pester for articles and
submissions.  However, r.m.i still doesn't have a very wide distribution,
only about 67 percent as of the last listing I saw in news.lists, and many
EFN readers don't have access to it (or to newsgroups at all in the case of
folks subscribed from CompuServe).

I'm now subscribed to the nm-list, and I've gotten a lot out of it.  r.m.i
continues to be a success (more or less) and it serves its purpose well: to
introduce new people to industrial music.  If it were not for bands like
Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, and Nine Inch Nails, the grand CD
reissue campaign that Mute Records has undertaken would probably never have
happened.  Because of this, nearly the entire catalogs of Throbbing Gristle
and Cabaret Voltaire have reappeared in record stores, and albums by
Einstuerzende Neubaten, NON, The Hafler Trio, Can, and Fad Gadget are
available again.  

So there's something to be said for both NIN fans and NIN haters.  They
serve the same purpose, in fact, which is to expose more and more people to
industrial music.  They're just at different points on the music spectrum.
Not everyone will like industrial music.  It is, by its very nature, a
rebellion against established music and a redefining of musical terms.
But maybe someone who starts out as a NIN fan will end up being a diehard
Neg-head or end up being another Mason Jones (whose Charnel House
Productions has done a wonderful job of rooting out and distributing bands
on the cutting edge of noise).

And some folks will just think it's cool.  Which is perfectly okay in my
book.

-- 
=========*davE*.....making the world safe for intelligent dance music.=========
As you're cleaning the orange carpet, you will hear a voice that says, "Fetch 
my cigarettes."  Another voice will say, "THEY'RE ON TOP OF THE REFRIGERATOR."
--(David Vessell)--(Bradley University Computing Services)-(dave@bradley.edu)--
Newsgroups: alt.music.alternative