Genre: Opinion/Argumentation

Whenever a certain song, band, album, sound or genre breaks through into mainstream consciousness, the early adopters are going to feel ripped off and jaded.  Bill Brewster of The Guardian writes about the decline of UK club culture in the face of EDM's rapid ascent. Back in the mid-90s, an act from the record label I ran at the time was selected to appear on Top of the Pops. But when we went to meet the American duo at Heathrow, neither of them got off the plane: they had decided to stay at home. Eventually, we hired two actors to play the role of DJ and keyboard player. They looked the part and no one seemed to notice. I was reminded of this episode yesterday when reading that DJ Calvin Harris has threatened legal action against the BBC for quoting him in a Radio 1 Newsbeat programme in which he appears to endorse prerecorded DJ sets. Like wrestling in the 1970s, there's always been an element of knowing subterfuge in dance music. Since much of the alchemy of the 12-inch mix is often down to one person and a bunch of machines, it does not always translate well to live performance. The real magic is when a skilled DJ and a box of records -- or laptop or memory stick, as it increasingly is today -- take those solitary studio moments and turn them into something communal and occasionally transcendental, with the assistance of a packed dancefloor.