I love you guys. <3

Wise words, Biff. Something similar happend to me in my 11th grade. It started with the Prodigy and quickly became a chemical one. Strangely enough I deselected chemistry at that time :lol:

very good posts by everyone around.

Its funny how much alike we all are.

I get a F in grammar, however.

you're, accept

FAIL

haha that's funny csar, I listened to the prodigy before the chems because when i was in 7th grade (1997), electronic was going through a fad in the US at some point before or after swing music. I can't say I'm a fan of them anymore, for the reasons i gave in my rant about buying music as a tool of conformity. Anyway, for that reason, I'm kinda glad I didn't buy DYOH then like everyone and was able to discover the chems 2 years later without all the media taint on it when my uncle played Exit Planet Dust during dinner.

The ONLY REASON Justice is doing a MySpace tour across the U.S. right now is because every 15 year old girl loves D.A.N.C.E.

And could Daft Punk's success here be attributed in part to Kanye? I think so. The other part is them just being simply amazing live. We'll have to see if they come out with anything else amazing in the studio. (Fuck, their live set still amazes me...)

Edit: Oh, yeah, and I HATED electronic music when I was in 7th and 8th grade. It was all about METALLICA! and PANTERA! and SLAYER! and anything else that made me feel like a hard-ass while listening to it, when I was anything but.

I picked up the Hackers soundtrack my freshman year in high school--I was 15 at the time--and I remember feeling like I was doing something... subversive, almost? I knew there was an attraction there, and ever since I allowed myself to listen to Underworld's Cowgirl, I broke through to the most amazing moments music could offer. :)

It's really funny Biff mentions that he never really told anyone about his interest in the Chems initially. It was the same for me. It was taboo to like "techno" (as it was called) music. The only acceptable "techno" music to my peers at a younger age was the Vengaboys or Eiffel 65.

I even remember a point in my life where I straight up hated music. Jeeze, Im glad that past...

Yea, everybody has their stories. I originaly started listening to my Dad's music, but then out of sheer chance....one day i was watching tv and the crystal method came on and I was like whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Then came the chemical brothers and so on and so on. And because of that, now I DJ and make music too. Im glad things went the way they did.

wow guys, thanks for all the kind words, i didnt really expect this response.

Profunk - Discovery was the first album I bought too

Biff - Can't go through a week of school without wearing my Daft Punk shirt

Madpooter - Cowgirl is my favorite Underworld track

Anyways, reading all your guys' responses made me feel a lot better. I love this forum! It's the only place im not considered a freak.

That's cuz we're allllllllll freaks, TJ! ;)

-which means your conforming with freaks! you're no better than that "onnz" douche... yeah I'm definitely kidding

I used to rave to techno in the 80s, when I was 10, making MODs on my Amiga. (one of the 3 people in the US who apparently owned an Amiga. hehe) .... liked early Moby and L.A. Style and the like. (Don't get me wrong, I was a tool and bought lots of hair metal too!) .....

Then... I saw the Setting Sun video on TV in the mid 90s when it was released in the US (first Chems thing to appear) and was like "Holy hell, that's fucking awesome." ... been hooked to the Chems since.

Hey evermin, it's good to see you around here again. :)

One of the reasons my girlfriend and I get along so well is because she actually really likes electronic music, and she actually pays attention when I get all freak-ish about the sub-genres and what not.

I laughed really, really hard when she told me that she and her friends were listening to The Chemical Brothers in her car the other week and one of them said, "Yeah, I guess techno is okay." She told me that as a result of meeting me, she felt compelled to say, "Well, actually, this isn't techno..."

When I first started working at Tower, bands like KMFDM and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult (industrial) and bands like Messiah and Utah Saints (which were considered straight up techno back then) were all thrown into one basic section called "techno". Which, if you think about it, is kind of a sweeping generalization. I think that was because nobody knew where to put the music as it didn't exactly fit in to the other major categories store-wise. Over the years, the electronica term (another sweeping generalization) was adopted. The techno term sort of faded into obscurity and only to be referenced by unknowing people as well as those old schoolers who raved in 1988. I'm not sure if this was an American thing or what, but that's sort of how things came to be. Over the years, especially around 1999 when it became apparant that electronic music was here to stay -people would come in frequently and ask where the "techno" or "electronica" was. And people, in general and being none-the-wiser, were kindly directed to the proper spot - the section where we kept electronic music which had evolved into the the "dance/electronica" section. But that wasn't necessarily right either. Madonna can also be considered "dance" music and her work with William Orbit also grazed the "electronica" realm, but she was located in the "rock, pop & soul" section. Kraftwerk were located in the "rock, pop & soul" section too (probably because they've been around forever, and long before there was such a thing as a "techno" section. Same with Psychic TV, and bands like Fischerspooner were in both the "dance/electronica" and "rock, pop & soul".

It got even more confusing when the kid (bless his heart) in charge of maintaining the dance/electronica section decided to sub-categorize everything into oblivion - thereby making it nearly impossible for the average joe (who'd heard Windowlicker at a friend's party or whatever) to find Aphex Twin... which was located in the "experimental" sub-section within the "dance/electronic" section.

The bottom line is, it's all very confusing if you don't know where to start. :lol: I was freakin confused, and I worked there. I'm half inclined to think that categories, though helpful when... categorizing and even describing songs/albums... were largely developed by record stores trying to help music find its rightful place in the shop.

Funny, last night I was just talking about the effects of the information revolution on subcultural associations. I made a few posts like 3 years ago that were pretty similar. I think it's interesting as fuck that thanks to the internet I've immersed myself in a culture I'm actually pretty much completely isolated from. I guess it's a good thing. But yeah weirdness is the price you pay for attachment to something no one else around you gets. Sadly, despite how good you might think it is, electronic music isn't likely to catch on to a suburban middle school audience. Right now as a forecast for highschool I can tell you that people don't dislike techno but it's more of a novelty to them than a real musical genre. The plus side is that as you get older, if you already care about the music at this age you'll probably meet more and more people of similar mind once you gain more control of your life.

Yeah, with the internet, you do sort of fall into a sort of niche. It's great because it's a meeting of like minds but at the same time, it's still a niche or a click - a sort of microcosm. But there's relaly cool people I wouldn't have met otherwise, even if we've never met outside of texts and emails and posts on messageboards.

The memory of being a kid in junior high is still with me and as my son grows older (he'll be in middle school in less than 2 years which is freaky in itself) - those memories of how it was when I was his age come flooding back with more clarity than, say, a few years ago when those moments were nicely tucked away in my subconscious. I hate to say this, and I'm not being all "oh boo fucking hoo poor me" but I wouldn't want to relive those times of being a social outcast - dorky, bookwormy, different taste in music and clothing, hormones raging that you don't know what to do with, awkward, bad hair, overweight with food stuck in my braces, etc. etc. - I wouldn't go back and relive that for a million dollars. Yet strangely enough I wouldn't change a thing. :P It's a tough time to fit in, let alone know yourself because you're still trying to come to terms with your own existance. But you keep on and it gets better. High school was an easier fit, especially after I switched schools and was essentially given a clean slate to work with. It was a different atmosphere all around - more experimentation, more open mindedness, more coming into one's own. After high school, though. Fuck it. You do what you want, you have a better idea of who you are and fuck the social consequences of not fitting in with the 'in' crowd because by that time, you've hopefully matured enough to be solid in whatever convictions you choose. I think, as you get older, it becomes less about what other people think and more about the important things - like, what pleases you whether it be music, clothing, hobbies, etc. It's hard to say, though, had the internet - this wealth of information and community - been around during my formative years, would I have been able to find my niche or someplace to fit into some microcosm at the expense of the macrocosm at large. I don't know. I'm just ranting again for no good reason.

Hey Whirly, thanks for the what-up...

I used to like MLWTTKK ... watched them on 120 Minutes a lot. What a good show that was. It made alternative NOT alternative and into Pop. Gotta love that....

Remember when REM was subversive music? no? It was the 80s. hehe...