By Deadly Buda
After I had written “The Hardcore Situation” in Deadly Type #1, I was confronted with a number of dilemmas.
1.Despite the positive response the article received, and the general agreement on my re-definition of the original idea of “Hardcore Techno” the name had been accessed and assimilated by the commercial powers that be, and there is simply not enough communication power currently to counter-act the commercial definition.
2.The word hardcore is essentially a conservative description that I was using to describe what is essentially not a conservative attitude towards music or culture.
3.The realization that the definition itself created all the problems that I had identified as being it’s anti-thesis.
In most people’s minds, “hardcore” is this-, a bunch of suburban skinhead teenagers moshing to loud, fast, noisy guitar music. The rave version of this is the same people doing the above to 4/4 cheezy gabber tracks or fast noisy techno. No matter how much I and everyone involved with the original rave scene argues otherwise, there is no way to effectively counteract this impression because the major record companies that have decided to market hardcore techno see it primarily in these terms and have enormous recourses to push that agenda.
What do you do..?
The recent issue of the Aug.99 issue of Spin Magazine contained an article on Hardcore by Pat Blashill. I was interviewed for this article, and it was an extensive in-depth interview lasting approximately an hour and a half. He did this with Dan Doormouse, Lenny Dee, Tron, and Ron D. Core among others. Most of the information never makes it into these types of articles, so a question arises as to what is deemed important to convey.
‘Hardcore” was portrayed as loud fast and noisy, fair enough, as much of the music in the scene is, especially Deadly Systems in particular. What did not make it into the article was the social-political angle that this magazine and others advocate. Instead, drug use was concentrated on as if it was somehow indicative of “Hardcore” in particular.
I for one do not find Blashill’s observations totally inaccurate. There are many within the hardcore scene that share and are promoting this vision of Angel dusted kids (by the way, where the hell did they get angel dust?
Has anyone seen any since the early 80’s? Can he get any? This was completely inaccurate) drinking beer doing their best to imitate Iggy Pop, and barfing everywhere in between making nihilistic, fatalistic statements calculated to offend daytime talk show viewers. Even I find this a bit of fun from time to time, but this is by no means the scene in its entirety, as this and the last Deadly Type easily prove.
If you compare this commercial idea of “Hardcore” with the idea shared by most of the original ravers demonstrated in “The Hardcore Situation” article, you find some vast differences of opinion. Unfortunately, the major commercial forces are destined to win this battle of definition, and I personally see no good reason to fight it any longer, for two reasons in particular....
A) Hardcore can be defined in a very conservative manner, and the hardcore ravers were not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore, the adjective “HARDCORE” though initially fitting, increasingly becomes more limited in scope as this-and-that is not deemed “hardcore enough”, which is the anti-thesis of what was “Hardcore” rave.
B) The realization that the definition itself created all the problems that I had identified as being it’s anti-thesis. As I bemoaned the sub-dividing of the rave scene, I realized that I was on the forefront of this particular development to some extent. Though Hardcore was originally used to separate itself from the commercial techno scene, it also drove a wedge down that was easily exploited by commercial powers. Essentially, the initial diversity and abstraction would overwhelm anyone new coming into the raves, and so it was easy to play to the new ravers’ fear of change. Offering the mundane and giving it a new name and characterizing the Hardcore scene as stuck up, for not being “into” the imitation. So “Hardcore” was merely the first inane pigeonhole, pre-dating all the equally silly sub-genres such as Trip-hop, Jungle, Funky-Breaks, Gabber-House, Trance, Goa-Trance etc. etc.
So now the question arises, if everyone except you is defining what you do in a manner that misrepresents what, in fact - you do, What do you do? Obviously people need some sort of definition or category they can easily communicate. This process will constrict that “thing” to a prescribed sense of rules. This is only a problem when what you are describing doesn’t have or want very many structural formulas. Obviously, you would want a very amorphous term that would lend itself to open representation. My first attempt at this was “The Morphing Culture” which was re-printed in Deadly Type 1 and was originally in Alien Underground, Massive and some other publications in various different countries and languages. “Morph Beat” is of course, still a pretty good term and the idea has been influential, but Morph Beat just isn’t jazzy enough to take on the massive commercial powers aligned against this innocent and unassuming term. A term is needed that has a dynamic impact, that carries the weight of history and culture with it, a legacy of daring and adventure to describe the music and culture being made! That, my friends, is...WILD STYLE!!!
