Step on...

After 15 years of stepping to Drum and Bass I've decided today that it's time to step back and let it pass me by.  I'm not saying that I've fallen out of love with the music, rather that I should stop following the scene and concentrate on more important things in life.  I still love breakbeat, I just don't see myself as one of the scene any more.

The main reason I've reached this decision is due to Hospital Records.  They've been a main player in the D&B world for many a year but over the last year or so I've felt that they have been concentrating more and more upon the youngest section of the raving community and to the exclusion of long-time fans such as myself.  This impression has been exacerbated by their involvement on new technologies like podcasting as well as social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

When I first started listening to the Hospital Podcast it was really amazing, instead of reading about up-and-coming tunes in Knowledge or other D&B magazines I could hear those tunes straight away, I could hear the great Tony Coleman telling us which tunes he liked and I was comforted in the knowledge that there were people like me around.  However Hospital has attracted a lot of young "casual" fans in the last couple of years, middle-class students and emo's who are more interested in getting plastered and moaning about how terrible their cosseted little lives are than actually following and understanding the music which underpins the scene.  Every episode of the podcast has more and more emails read out from kids who think that the odd exam and finishing a month-long relationship is cause for utmost depression and that "D&B has saved their lives" rather than being what it really is, a distraction from life's troubles; instead of being interesting and uplifting it has become more and more onerous to listen to as Tony panders to the little kiddies rather than tell them to stop whinging! (yes, this is me whinging about whinging)

Twitter for me isn't social networking, I don't follow that many of my real friends and instead use it to keep up with the gaming and D&B scenes I love through the eyes and ears of the main players in those scenes.  However I find that those working in the music business find it hard to differentiate between their professional and personal personae, I've faced a constant barrage of irrelevant, personally motivated tweets from DJ's, producers and even record labels when all I want to hear about are tweets related to the business. I'm not interested in hearing that DJ Friction was up til 5am and overslept, that London Elektricity was put in a three-star hotel rather than the four-star ones to which he feels accustomed or that Goldie is watching some football match, I just want to know which tunes are out, which are coming and what they're all playing in their sets.

I recently "unfollowed" accounts used directly by individual producers and DJ's and instead stuck to those run by the labels themselves.  However even this tactic has failed, every tom, dick and harry working for the label seems to use their label's accounts to have conversations with their mates or play TT (trending topic) games such as "Food DJ's".  So rather than have to winnow through the crap I've decided that I'll stop following the scene entirely and become a D&B "casual" rather than the "head" I have been since 1996.

So it's time I sold the decks, uninstalled all of the music production programs from my PC and concentrate upon more important things in my life: my family, my job and my future.  I'll still listen to my back catalogue of amazing albums from Hospital Records, Shogun, Metalheadz and other great labels, but I'm throwing in the towel in thinking I'm still the sort of person who labels, DJ's and producers consider to be their fans.  Sounds extreme but I know where I'm not wanted.  Maybe when D&B ceases to be flavour-of-the-month with the little teeny boppers and proper fans are again seen as the true supporters of the scene I may start listening again, but I won't hold my breath... we'll just have to see...