
Welcome to Electropalooza
In
advance of the 2002 Electroclash Festival, the lineup for
the 2003 festival has already been announced. Amongst those
artists scheduled to appear: No Doubt, Bush, Kylie Minogue,
Blur, and whomever else cares to start "experimenting"
with electronic instrumentation between now and then. Well,
OK, this is merely a prediction, and perhaps too-cynical
one at that; but frankly, given the direction the festival
has taken, it might in fact not be that far from the truth.
Like a Lollapalooza for the new millennium, Electroclash
seems ready to transform from a showcase for the vanguard
of an emerging, mostly-ignored-by-the-musical-mainstream
genre, into an uninspired gathering of middle-of-the-road
come-latelys looking to cash in on a trend.
Only last year, the first Electroclash festival played
host to a cross-section of the most talented members of
the global electronic-music underground, including FischerSpooner,
Crossover, and ADULT. But now, in its second installment,
it has begun to devolve into a forum for any artist with
a synthesizer and an ounce of "attitude" (read:
funny haircut) to either launch or revive their career.
Witness the 2002 headliner, Bis, a thoroughly middling Scottish
electro-pop trio, whose one brief moment of importance came
and went in 1995, when they were able to ride the cresting
wave of the riot grrl movement with the wincing ditty "Kill
Yr Boyfriend." More recently, they've repackaged themselves
as "electroclash," even going so far as to release
an E.P. of remixes by the likes of ADULT. and Tommie Sunshine,
so as to cement their affiliation with the genre (or rather,
with the label "electroclash" - electroclash,
as a genre, is still not particularly clearly defined).
What they are doing at the top of this year's bill, when
the only people buying their albums are the most die-hard
of britpop fans - the type of people with Union Jack stickers
on their cars and subscriptions to the NME - is not readily
apparent. It seems more than likely that Bis, or their label,
SpinArt (for those wondering, "wait, weren't they on
Grand Royal?" - they were unceremoniously dumped in
1999 after tepid album sales) came looking for the festival
organizers, and not the other way around.
The
remainder of the lineup, though largely lacking the opportunism
demonstrated by Bis, is not much better off in terms of
either relevance or talent. Among the notable: Peaches,
whose debut album, "Teaches of Peaches", was one
of the best records of 2001, but whose live performances
- which consist of her, alone on stage, singing along to
pre-recorded backing tracks - are remarkably tedious (I've
never seen an audience as exasperated as that during her
hour-and-a-half-long set at Electroclash 2001); Chicks on
Speed, who, with their high times-name-dropped-to-number-of-listenable-songs
ratio, are sort of the musical equivalent of that one class
in college everyone always talked about - the one with a
really cool- and important- sounding title, like "Anthropology
of Late Twentieth Century Subcultures," or "Situationism
and its Relationship to Popular Culture" - that wound
up being so dull no one could stand to stay in it past the
first week; and W.I.T., festival promoter Larry Tee's latest
go at Svengali-ism, who have made more appearances in magazines
than in concert, and who despite not having distinguished
themselves from the rest of the electro pack in any way
save their supposed (as Tee so bluntly puts it) "fuckability"
were recently offered a six-figure record deal (and people
thought the Strokes were the ultimate triumph of hype over
talent). All three of these artists, in fact, appeared at
last year's festival, but it's not entirely clear why, when
they are neither the cream of the new-electro crop, nor
up-and-comers in dire need of exposure (is it entirely necessary
to have W.I.T. featured in some form on three separate nights?),
they've been invited back to this one. It would make sense
to turn the festival into either a celebration of electroclash's
(however you define it) pre-eminent stars (i.e. FischerSpooner,
Miss Kittin, Crossover, etc.) , or a launching-pad for its
lesser-known talents, but to allow it to become a refuge
for second-tier acts hoping to stay relevant just a little
while longer is, to say the least, a disappointment.
How Electroclash, the festival, went in the course of one
year from must-see-event-of-the-millennium for members of
the global avant-cool to something the readership of Spin
magazine might find kind of passé can almost certainly
be attributed to a single factor: hype. The music press
has taken to the term "electroclash" with the
same sort of cynical delight with which it took to "grunge,"
using it to neatly compartmentalize a broad swath of artists,
as well as making it into a descriptor for the current early-1980s
influence on fashion (witness the increasing use of "electroclash"
on eBay as a keyword for Members Only jackets, wraparound
sunglasses, and the like). Thus, just as in 1992 any band
that had so much thought about living in Seattle, or donned
flannel onstage was hailed as grunge, so in 2002 any artist
who has ever used a vocoder, or sported an ironic haircut
is bestowed the title of electroclash. Albums that a year
ago were buried in the techno section, amidst Ibiza's Greatest
Hits Vol. 104 and This Is Bulgarian Progressive House, are
now required listening in urban bohemia, and acts that would
have been lucky to register a blip on the radar screens
of major labels are being offered enormously lucrative contracts.
Hence it is possible that electroclash the genre is now
too big for Electroclash the festival. And while nothing
bearing the electroclash label has yet to make an appearance
on MTV, or grace the cover of Rolling Stone, a number of
artists - most notably FischerSpooner, who recently signed
to Capitol Records, and Miss Kittin, who is now doing Levi's
ads - are prominent enough that they might consider this
year's festival not worth their bother. A likely explanation
for this year's lackluster lineup then, is simply that the
biggest names weren't willing to perform, and so the acts
chosen to appear are the most renowned members (or at least
those possessing the most clout) of a largely drained talent
pool.
In fact, Electroclash, in terms of the changes it has undergone
in the short time since its inception, bears a striking
resemblance to last decade's trend-setting music festival,
Lollapalooza. Conceived and organized by Jane's Addiction
frontman Perry Farrell, Lollapalooza, much like Electroclash,
initially shined a spotlight on a then little-known musical
realm, and was, according to Farrell, done entirely in the
interest of getting bands he felt were underexposed the
recognition they deserved. In its first year, 1991, at a
time when hair metal still ruled the airwaves, it featured
artists who were at the forefront of non-mainstream rock,
ranging from Nine Inch Nails, to the Violent Femmes, to
Ice-T's experiment in rap-metal, Bodycount. A month or so
after the festival ended, however, Nirvana's Nevermind was
released, and the "alternative" explosion was
underway. Thus, when it came time to organize Lollapalooza
1992, there was, for all practical purposes, no more non-mainstream
from which to choose a lineup (a lineup that could fill
a stadium at $30 a ticket, at any rate), and so the festival
became a paltry mishmash of artists - including Pearl Jam,
Soundgarden, and (ugh) the Red Hot Chili Peppers - who were
never particularly avant-garde, but who were now dying to
convince the world just how "alternative" they
were. Rather than remain true to his stated aim of drawing
attention to struggling bands, Farrell had cynically cashed
in on mass media hype. So a similar set of circumstances
has shaped Electroclash, albeit on a considerably smaller
scale (at least for now). It could, in its first year, have
been considered a true labor of love, for there was presumably
little to gain in staging a multi-day extravaganza of mostly-unheard-of
musicians (and in fact its promoter, Larry Tee, reportedly
lost tens of thousands of dollars, despite its success).
But now, with the focus of the music press squarely on electroclash,
the integrity of the 2002 festival is significantly more
suspect. It is not hard to imagine how, by putting together
a lineup composed of equal parts recognized-names-not-yet-successful-enough-to-charge-too-high-an-appearance-fee,
and opportunists-desperate-for-exposure-and-thereby-willing-to
perform-for-a-pittance, it would be possible to assure a
large draw, and thus significant revenue, while keeping
cost at a minimum. This was the business model that made
Lollapalooza such a lucrative venture during the nineties,
and which now, it would seem, has been adopted by Electroclash.
But is it really that bad? Is Electroclash the new Lollapalooza?
Well, as bad as they are, Bis isn't Pearl Jam, and W.I.T.
isn't the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Still, it is disappointing
to see the festival turn its back on up-and-coming artists,
relegating them to a separate venue (the painfully hip but
horribly cramped Luxx - the main stage is at the Warsaw)
while giving top billing to already well known but going-nowhere
acts like Chicks on Speed. This is especially the case given
the abundance of woefully unrecognized performers that fit
the Electroclash mold, such as the Ghost Exits, Centuries,
Avenue D, Prance, Flux Information Sciences, Mommy and Daddy,
and My Robot Friend (several of whom are, in fact, playing
at this year's festival, as (borrowing from Lollapalooza's
vocabulary) "second-stage" acts). If Electroclash
were truly dedicated to the advancement of avant-garde electronic
music, it would allow more obscure acts to headline, banking
on its name to garner them notice (and it is, to its credit,
doing that to a certain extent this year by putting the
relatively un-hyped Tracy and the Plastics on the marquee).
But sadly, it seems more concerned with filling the wallets
of its promoters, and sustaining the careers of musicians
already long on publicity, but short on potential.
During the first Electroclash festival, a number of flyers
were posted around the city reading something along the
lines of "Boycott Electroclash. Don't let electronic
music become the next grunge. Resist the categorization
of culture." Though most people, at the time, wrote
this act off as the unwarranted moaning of a cynical scenester
(as no doubt some people will consider this article), it
has turned out perhaps to have been a valid warning. True,
no major-label, synth-dabbling atrocity passed off as "electroclash"
is headlining, and the mainstream music press - Spin, MTV
News and the like - is still paying sparing little attention,
but nonetheless, Electroclash, as a forum for electronic
music's bona fide avant-garde to show the world why they
shouldn't be ignored any longer, is rapidly coming apart
at the seams, like so much tattered, threadbare flannel.
--Ryan Booker
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