What do Athens, Greece, Honolulu, Hawaii, Red Rocks Ampitheater in Colorado, and Kansas City have in common? If you guessed each location will host one of the four stops on the Global Dance Festival Tour 2010, then chances are you are wearing a shiny shirt and have, in the past 24 hours, administered spray-on tan.
While Kansas City’s stop is bringing Paul Van Dyk and BT, it could be worse. Athens has Armin Van Buuren, and Honolulu’s event is headlined by something called Shwayze featuring Cisco Adler . . . which somehow managed to push Bad Boy Bill to the #2 slot. From there, Rabbit in the Moon and Uberzone vs Bassbin Twins round out this homage to the very worst of American electronic music circa 1998.
Or, worst case scenario - you could stretch these travesties over two whole days, which is something the residents in the immediate vicinity of Red Rocks Ampitheater will have to deal with come mid-July.
Thankfully the Kansas City date is the same weekend as the Colorado one, which means hopefully a decent chunk of those who would go to something like this will choose the western weekend option and our fair city can be left off the list of venues next year.
Ten years ago I was tired of seeing acts like this tromped through town under the pretense of a quality event. When you step back and look at all of the talent this world has seen come through the dance music genre in the past fifteen years, ask yourself, “How many have made it to Kansas City?” Do promoters view the area’s glut of bored white kids with expendable income and easily-led tastes as little more than JNCO-wearing ATM’s?
I’ll elaborate: Paul Van Dyk is a marketing tool. He has not had a relevant release since the mid-90’s. His last album release was 2007, and since then he’s had one physical release comprised of new material amid a slough of re-releases, one-off compilations, and digital-only eps.
Despite his early influential releases, he has exceedingly punched his ticket on the dreck brought to popularity by hacks like Tiesto, Van Buuren, and ATB.
Look, I have “Words” and “For an Angel” on vinyl - the Curve remix on the former and the Way out West remix on the latter made the $3 i spent on each worth it. But the world has moved on. This sound is being held over because of its marketability, not because of any musical or cultural importance.
BT - Brian Transeau - is also scheduled to play this thing, and further enhances Kansas City’s reputation as one of very few places in the world where former Moonshine artists and their ilk can still get a gig.
That’s not to say BT’s always been a joke. Take a listen to Deep Dish’s Penetrate Deeper label showcase/mix from the mid 90’s. Fully HALF of the mix’s 14 songs credit Brian Transeau in one way or another. Ima was an early highlight in the attempt to expose more Americans to electronic music, and introduced Sasha via the second disc’s 45-minute album mix. I’ll even give credit to “Mercury and Solace”, which, thanks largely to Jan Johnston’s haunting vocals, remains one of the more usable tracks from the entire “progressive house” fiasco which it seemed we’d never escape from.
The years since then have not been kind to Transeau. This event is largely to promote his first album in four years, with just a handful of singles in the interim. What he has released since his heyday in the middle of the 90’s have largely been trend-hopping concoctions devoid of soul or innovation as he’s become more comfortable within the category of “club” music. In the end, he succeeded in becoming Moby’s understudy as the posterboy for American electronica: a talented individual who chose the compromises of commercial success at the expense of creativity, ultimately ending up as a parody of not only himself, but of a movement.
Taking the disappointment a step further, Rusko - who has sadly devolved into what I consider the lowest common denominator of dubstep with all the bro-step mid-range wobblers he’s churned out in the last year - is playing the “pre-party” at Mosaic and will supposedly be playing an “afterparty” at the Jones Pool on top of Cosentino’s downtown. Nevermind he’s scheduled to play the Colorado date I mentioned earlier - I’m sure he’ll jump on a private charter and make it back to KC in time.
My point here is this: this city could have better. We’ve set through the annual Donald Glaude-Charles Feelgood-Dave Aude-etc nonsense for over a decade now. DJ Dan at Lucky Strike a couple of weeks ago is another great example. I get the fact that most people in this city don’t know or care enough to find out what’s going in their ears. All they know is they paid $20-$40 a ticket and $8 for a beer, so they must be doing something right.
Kansas City - please understand - there is a whole wide world out there who has disowned these artists. There are agents, promoters, marketeers out there whose sole jobs are to find these guys gigs in the most culturally backwards, backwater, uninformed places in the world.
Do we really want to continually be on that list? There are those who will make the argument that without events like this, we will never show the world that we can support the truly cutting edge artists - the ones that will give the shiny shirts a party the likes of which they can’t even conceive of. But it’s been ten-plus years of this already, and still nothing.
Granted, this thing is being billed as a festival. There are other stages and acts, although Shadowrunner and FSTZ are the only two names I recognize on the listing. I’m sure those who end up attending this will be convinced they had a great time, if for no other reason than the damage done to their credit cards. Undoubtedly, there’ll be those who finally got to see Van Dyk and/or BT and will be fully comfortable ignoring the fact that it is only due to each artist’s diminishing rate of return that this is possible.
As the rest of the world moves into festival season, as lineups are announced, as long-lost acts are re-united and hot young djs, producers, and genres are breaking out to audiences open and intelligent enough to welcome them, we here are again branded as a podunk hick town and, instead of resisting, we choose to stay ignorant, pay an extra $20 for bottle service, and continue doing whatever the glossy pages in the lifestyle mags tell us to.
Kansas City - we deserve better than this.
