philip sherburne

...in which I jump into the new rave fray. The piece may spin out of control a bit--there was a shocking amount I wanted to touch upon, and a few excellent interviews (crucially, Mark Leckey, whose 2000 video piece Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore was almost a decade ahead of its time in the attempt to grapple with the meaning and aesthetics of the rave imaginary) fell by the wayside. Before anyone jumps down my throat -- new rave is just a trumped-up marketing phrase, Klaxons are a rock band, etc. -- I'd ask you to actually read the article. I could care less about how new rave pans out, frankly; what interests me is the way that rave's legacy is being reimagined. The crux of the article is really how differently that is playing out in the UK and Germany; for the fullest recounting of the story, of course, you'd need a hell of a lot more historical analysis. Speaking of which, anyone know of any good histories of German rave (available in English)? The German equivalent to Altered States or Energy Flash?

Rather uncannily, Simon seems to have landed on a similar page just yesterday:

"Now how do those of us who actually lived through and participated in this mass eruption of gladness-as-madness--the last full-on movement in UK youth culture, a complete subculture package with its own style and slang and dance-moves and rituals--how do we respond to this development, very different from the various retro-rave currents that have been generated internally by dance culture? For this is the Enemy (or should i say NME) hijacking our memories, the hegemonic indie-rock culture despoiling our myth for its own ends. Yet it's too easy to take shelter in that old Marx 18th Brumaire line about revolutions returning "the second time as farce" . The fact that the Ghost of Rave, in however mis-shapen a state, stalks the culture again signifies something, surely. It announces a lack, speaks of a yearning."