Pete takes you on a tour of LA hitting up the biggest clubs as well as dropping in on Eric Prydz and MK to find out why LA is now so relevant in dance music.
Prydz absolutely killed it at Escape, in SoCal this past weekend. The way his visuals combine with his track selections just put me into a state of awe.
Not true. Sound Nightclub is on Las Palmas off Hollywood Boulevard and STILL VERY MUCH EXISTS. Academy LA is a newer nightclub but it's further east ON Hollywood Blvd. near Gower St. Both are fun venues and you can see top acts perform at both all the time.
I don't think you should look to Pete Tong (British), Prydz (Swedish) and MK (Detroit) to tell you what the "LA Sound" is... Pete didnt even bother to talk to REAL NATIVES or local locals. It's like asking someone who moved to Brooklyn from Ohio, "give me the real Brooklyn vibe". Just like MK said at 8:12 he "don't even know"... wrong person for Pete to ask that question to.
Not sure if you're asking a question, but if you wanted the LA sound look to a group called DJDS, (DJ Dodger Stadium), they are a very L.A., L.A. based dance group from Echo Park, Los Angeles.
Tong only focused on he and his friends living in and around the Hollywood Hills, L.A. has many many layers and neighborhoods, but if you try to get a feel of what L.A. is out of this, you only get a feel of Hollywood scene, honestly (and he doesn't even touch on history, or old clubs like Florentine Gardens, King King, the Palladium, the old Keith Haring Dance-a-thons against AIDS in the '90s that used to take place annually for years in LA.. He doesn't even go below Sunset Boulevard, I wouldn't dare look at this like a proper L.A. dance music history lesson. It's not. it's just a cute little Radio 1 bit that he and his cameraman did for youtube, and that's that.
0:26 "The dance music explosion in the UK and Europe... it didn't happen that way in America" YOU ACT like America didn't create anything in the development of modern electronic dance music. It's simply not true. TECHNO started in Detroit, HOUSE started in Chicago, ACID HOUSE also started in Chicago in the early-mid 80s, GARAGE started in NY at the Paradise Garage with LARRY LEVAN who was an African-American legendary DJ, considered the Godfather of dance music DJs, DISCO AS A CULTURAL MOVEMENT TOOK SHAPE PRIMARILY In THE UNITED STATES. All the BIG BLACK FEMALE BELTERS (Donna Summer, Martha Wash, etc.) came out of the African-AMERICAN church, who Europeans USED ad nauseum in dance tracks the 80s and 90s. DISCO was HUGE in America! And that WAS a "dance music explosion" in the US. Donna Summer (also American) came out of that, "I FEEL LOVE" which David Bowie called "the sound of the future" came out of that. It was a HUGE cultural and sexual awakening in the US. Disco predates "electronic dance music" and disco gave birth to post-disco genres such as house, acid house, techno, garage, freestyle, electro, hi-NRG, etc. which were IMPORTED TO EUROPE in the 1980s and BIRTHED the "dance music explosion in the UK and Europe" that you talk about in this clip, including the Second Summer of Love in 89 in the UK, Manchester club scene, Berlin Techno, etc etc etc etc. It's so lazy HISTORICALLY when Europeans just RUN WITH the "dance was big in Europe" narrative (especially white straight men) and OVERLOOk the LEGACY set by black American (and also gay) founders and trailblazers like Kevin Saunderson, Jamie Principle ("Your Love" a track that was HUGE in Chicago before it was imported to the UK), Marshall Jefferson, Juan Atkins, Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Nile Rodgers, Chic, most DISCO and FUNK acts from the 1970s. etc. Also, you do a show about L.A. and you don't even try to reach out to any L.A. natives, or get any history from people who didn't just move 6 or less years ago, before the EDM explosion?! You could've talked to Richard Humpty Vission. Power Tools was huge on LA radio in the 90s, 103.1 Groove Radio in the 90s was the second 24 hr dance music radio station in the US after WKTU in NYC. Pet Shop Boys "West End Girls" was a BIG HIT FIRST in LOS ANGELES in 1984, which precipitated the Pet Shop Boys entire career, L.A. was the first to dance to PSB. L.A. was home to Latin Freestyle, L.A. Deep House, L.A. Warehouse raves, There's LOTs of dance music history in LA. There's just not a lot of people championing L.A.'s dance music history, and sadly America's dance music legacy.
Most of the Techno djs took inspiration from Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode , it's true house music was born in Chicago and techno in Detroit , but all those djs became huge in Europe with massive cachet for playing , Donna Summer was produced by Giorgio Moroder ... let's say there was something but you can't say it was massive like it has become recently ...
We aren’t talking music here, we’re talking numbers, and so money and so industry. Of course there probably was electronic music producers in the us. As you said certain genres came from the US. But from Moroder, Kraftwerk, to Jarre, et and then later Dj Falcon and the Daft Punk, Guetta in the mid 2000’ etc, and then all the Swedish guys and so on. You can’t deny those who are widely remembered are the European ones. Because it is where it « exploded ».
