I totally agree. I've hated Tiesto ever since he replaced the worship TAZ with the worship of him. Asshole.

I dunno anything about "glowstickers", but that was the best Get Your War On ever.

Waving their arms.

≡ Click to see image ≡

(part of a BBC Tiesto photo gallery thingy)

Taz! *snickers*

Tiesto's the guy in the flickering space ship dj stage, right? Seems a little odd, but then I've never been to a rave either, so it's hard to have an opinion.

Love this line though: "You really fucking think you're going to impress people with glowstick shows?"

On preview: Oh look! Glowsticks and raised arms!

That's so fucking awesome. I need to print some of those things out and staple me up some Jack Chick style tracts for witnessing to the unwashed masses.

*puts on eye patch, lights pipe*

It's true. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, more often than not you'd find the DJ booth right down on the dance floor or even buried behind a stack of speakers. Usually it wasn't even so much as a DJ booth but a rickety-assed old folding DJ table. People danced. People took a DIY, hands on approach to almost everything. People would set up areas to paint or make various types of art, or boxes of costumes and supplies, or musical instruments for jamming, or just making a ungodly racket. People shared, rather than taking away whatever they thought they were entitled to for their $50 Ticketbastard ticket.

Back when lasers weren't so common, I'd built myself a manually-controlled analog laser show, and I spent several years crawling all over LA just showing up at clubs, afterhours and warehouse break-ins with it and do some laser art and beam sculptures. Just for fun. No money, no bookings, the promoters wouldn't even know that I was going to be there or who I was. The "bouncers" at the door - if any - would just see that I was serious and had a couple of boxes of gear and wires and they'd let me right in - no questions asked, no Golden Ticket, no secret egg proffered to the Peachy oracle, no password, no map point, no namedropping.

Thankfully it still exists here and there in pockets, but at least in the southwest there's nothing quite like it used to be - no 5,000-10,000 person totally DIY warehouse break-ins where they hook up the power themselves, or fire up a generator and just go - people showing up en masse out of nowhere, all on word of mouth promotions. The current TAZ-like DIY stuff is smaller, more secretive and ultimately safer - and as such usually not so thrilling or exciting or empowering. But it's still there, and the music is better than it ever was, and people still dance all night, sober or otherwise.

Wait wait wait... you're saying that an underground scene has become exploitive and commercalized? I am shocked! SHOCKED!

what's the difference between trance and any other rave music?

Ishkur's guide to electronic music.

"Trance" used to be a slightly more mellow version of techno, somewhere between techno and ambient. More for listening to than dancing to - and in many instances the precursors to the ill-named IDM, "Intelligent Dance Music".

Somewhere along the way Trance as a genre was co-opted by fuckwitted muggles who apparently teethed themselves on easy-listening anthem rock of the sort that favors guitar solos, transparant style and ego-stroking antics over meaty form and function. Modern, mainstream trance is trite and reductionist, favoring sacharrine, soupy and overly sentimental themes over any sort of depth or balance.

It is the Kenny G and Yanni to the John Zorns and Charles Minguses of the electronic dance music realm - ultimately safe and timid and predictable.

As a whole it is generally very easy to DJ the shite. There's huge, lengthy washes and "breakdowns" where almost any talentless hack of a wannabe DJ can walk up to a set of tables and "window mix" records with these beatless washes and breakdowns. Window mixing is when a DJ doesn't even bother to do pitch or tempo matching, much less any actual "mixing" or blending of the two (or more) songs.

An iPod can do it, practically. It's just a a simple crossfade.

There are trance DJs who actually do mixing and blending, but there's even more of them who don't. And there a use for "window mixing". It's basically what your average wedding DJ does - act as a human jukebox.

Wow, do people really not dance at raves anymore? I only half believe it, but if so, that's seriously lame. It seems some DJ worship is inevitable, but not dancing to his/her music is just idiotic.

Electronic music does need a good kick in the ass these days. Who's fucking it up to your liking?