Tom Breihan, a friend of mine and a damn good music critic, wrote a post the other day on his Village Voice blog, Status Ain't Hood, about Baltimore club music and the MTV You Hear It First episode about the Bmore scene. He does a good job of summing up club music's recent history of national crossover, and raises some interesting points about why it hasn't and might not ever blow up, and how that could be a good or bad thing. I've written a lot about these issues lately in a couple posts, and while I am mindful of exactly how I'd like to see the Bmore scene blow up nationally (preferably maintaining the kind of urban, hip hop-derived audience it has here, as opposed to the hipster obscuro-dance music DJ nerd fanbase it has in New York and Philly), I don't exactly have a right to dictate what happens to club music. I've been listening to it for years but only really started buying records and mix CDs and actively following the scene a couple years ago, and only started to meet some club producers face to face this summer. And I know a lot of them are pretty happy with any love club music is getting in the rest of the world, so who am I to quibble? But the overwhelming majority of the coverage Baltimore club has gotten in the press and on the internet recently has been from people who only know it via guys like Hollertronix and Aaron Lacrate, and they frequently think that Spank Rock is the epitome of Baltimore club or the best the scene has to offer, when they're not really in the scene but just influenced by club music, and probably would say so themselves. So I kind of feel like people who have more of a history with club music that predates that stuff have maybe an obligation to balance the coverage out with a hometown perspective. The last thing I want to come across as is like these guys, some lone nut on the internet trying to be the spokesperson for a movement I'm ultimately only on the periphery of. So, you know, take whatever I have to say with a grain of salt, but I'm just putting some thoughts on the issue out there and have no problem with having my ideas challenged or argued against.

7/14/06 EDIT: There's been a lot of comments on Tom's Baltimore club post in the past few days, including one from Labtekwon. And Tom wrote another post this week that raised some of the same issues about Philly DJ's mixing Baltimore club, and I jumped into the argument in the comments section a little bit myself. Also, it seems that the comment in my Dirty Hartz post about Lacrate's crack vial artwork has inspired a pretty lively debate on the OkayPlayer.com message board, a lot of interesting stuff being said over there. Really, I'm just happy to see some discussion about this stuff, because I kinda feel like it's been festering for a long time but hasn't really been addressed at all.

Labels: Baltimore club, Labtekwon, magazines/newspapers