the streets (click for more)

Mike ‘The Street’s Skinner chatted candidly about being ‘beaten up at every turn of your life’ growing up in Birmingham’s suburbs this week, and told the Guardian he remains ‘totally’ afraid of street violence compared to the gangsta rap circles he entered at the height of his success.

“As a general rule, meeting Jay-Z at a party at the Light Bar in Covent Garden is probably going to be a lot less dangerous than, say, getting a KFC in Harlesden,” he noted. (http://bit.ly/wTkEcb )

Britain’s mean suburban streets were also addressed by Northern Soul legend/ Kylie creator Peter Waterman this week, who, in an interview with the Daily Star in which he effortlessly the credit for inventing drum & bass and dubstep, was similarly blunt about modern pop.

“The records in the charts this week won’t bring a smile to your face. That’s why all the clubs are closing down,” he sighed. “Now everybody wants to get pissed (drunk) and violent when they go out.” (Daily Star)

Seemingly less concerned about the apparent brutalization of British youth culture was dubstep icon Rusko, who writing on Twitter this week after being angered by his label Mad Decent’s decision to stream his upcoming album Songs on Mixmag was less than diplomatic.

“Try and keep something under wraps for months and then the fucking label allows a full live stream. Congrats @maddecent it’s everywhere now,” he wrote.

“U fcking useless numbskulls @maddecent all the hard work keeping it off radio, no djs, off YouTube, till release day was for nothing. Thanks,” he raged.

Soon after Mixmag deleted the offending stream he appeared to calm down, accepting the magazine’s ‘don’t shot the messenger’ plea relatively gracefully though remained less than forgiving regarding Diplo’s label Maddecent.

“The streams been taken down. Job 1 done. Job 2, I have to wait til I get back to the US. I may go to prison for job 2,” he tweeted.

“I’m gonna post the fucking torrent links day of release. No $ for u@maddecent,” he added, “And il upload the cunting thing myself.”

https://twitter.com/#!/RUSKOOFFICIAL

3 of Pete Waterman’s greatest hits:

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

Click on the picture to buy Led Zepp

William Conn from Las Vegas nightclub The Joint at Hard Rock praised Tiesto for being ‘our classic rock growing up’, in the official trailer for Tiesto’s new In The Booth series, this week declaring “He is your Led Zeppelin. He is your Bon Jovi. He is your U2.”

Speaking to the New York Times the same week, the Dutch trance-pop icon coincidentally agreed.

“DJs are the new rock stars,” he decreed, “We’ve been saying it for years, but now you can really see it.” http://nyti.ms/AnyYS8

The Miami New Times, however, seemed disappointingly less than reverential, launching a poll ‘Is Tiësto the Led Zeppelin of Electronic Dance Music?’ and taking additional exception to Conn’s comparison between the rock gods and popsters Bon Jovi and U2.

“Just five seconds in (to the video) and some dude squeezes Tiësto onto the same fucking pedestal as Robert Plant,” they moaned, “Further insulting the greatness of Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham by inadvertently lumping them into the same category as radio rock.”

Judging by Youtube views, however, Conn was remarkably modest, with Tiesto and Diplo’s smash hit C’Mon attracting 19million views in the last 6 months compared to 9 million for Led Zep’s 1972 classic Kashmir.

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

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Picking up numerous ‘Best American DJ’ awards in the middle of the last decade, Christopher Lawrence sparked surprise when he moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2008, just as America’s electronic music scene finally started taking off.

Returning last year, he admitted missing Melbourne’s coffee (‘probably the best in the world- the coffee in California is horrible’) though was otherwise happy to be back. One year on, he remains similarly grateful.

“Moving to Australia was an epic ‘Fail’. It was a bad career move as I was living fourteen hours away from my biggest market,” he admits.

“Touring was a disaster when I was based in Melbourne. I was never home and that really messed with my family. Moving back to Los Angeles was the best thing I ever did.”

As well as continually touring the world spinning his preferred flavour of progressive pumping trance, he’s also continuing to develop his label Pharmacy Music, through which he’s just launched a new compilation series.

Marketed with the catchphrase ‘You’ll never be embarrassed to admit that you like our trance’, the series offers ‘solid pumping trance designed for the dance floor’, though as the catchphrase indicates, not just any dance floor.

“We don’t care about superstar DJs and we don’t make cheesy music videos,” its accompany press release insists, “but we will rock you so hard that your teeth will chatter.”

Chatting to Skufff today, Christopher admits he’s far from impressed with the majority of his superstar DJ peers.

“The pop-dance scene is a pretty sad state of affairs and the worst part is that most of the DJs are pandering to the lowest common denominator,” he complains.

“All the genres have merged into one sound. You can go to any club or festival, close your eyes and you can’t tell the difference from one DJ to the next. They all sound the same and play the same tracks.”

“The lines have been blurred between he genres and everyone is playing the same trance-electro-dubstep-house sound,” he continues.

“It has made it difficult in some respects because people no longer go out to be blown away on the dance floor by music they have never heard before.

Instead, they want to hear all their favorite songs and if the DJ doesn’t play the hits they feel disappointed.”

Chris’ assessment of the blandness of America’s pop-dance favourites matches the even blunter views of British tech-house DJ Steve Lawler who, chatting to the Miami New Times this week, is equally frank (and reportedly ‘disgusted’).

“This electro-pop-dance that all the R&B artists are jumping on is the worst music I have ever heard in my whole life — cheap, no soul, no meaning,” Lawler snorts. “[It's] only made to make money.” (http://bit.ly/vRByzv )

But is Christopher Lawrence worried about being marginalized?

“No. I would much rather specialize,” he says.

“My good friend John 00 Fleming compares it to cars. Ford may sell bucket-loads of Fiestas for every one Aston Martin. Instead of trying to please everybody, I would rather specialize in my own sound and cater to a more discerning listener. There will always be a place for the Aston Martins in this world.”

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Asking about your new Pharmacy compilation series, the world is full of podcasts: compilation CDs seem to be dying; why do one at all?

Christopher Lawrence: “Podcasts have pretty much killed the physical DJ mix compilation. No one is going to pay $17 for an actual CD when they can download a new mix by their favorite DJ every week for free. And for that reason Pharmacy: Phase 1 is a digital only release. The difference between this compilation series and a regular DJ mix is that the compilation is focused on one label, Pharmacy Music, and comes as a mix as well as with all the individual tracks in unmixed form. It is a really cool way to showcase the best of what Pharmacy Music has to offer in the way of great music and talented producers.”

Skrufff: Why do you think it took so long for dance music to crossover in the US?

Christopher Lawrence: “It took a long time for dance music to cross over in the US for a few different reasons, most notably that, geographically, the US is huge. England and the Netherlands are about the same size as California and that is just one of 50 States.

Also, you have to remember that dance music really started over twenty years ago, which is before the Internet was commercialized in 1995. There was no social networking, no iTunes, no websites. It was all print media and word of mouth.

The other major roadblock to the success of dance music in the US was that there was very little radio support. The US radio market is controlled by a handful of corporations that were replicating the same rock, R & B and country music stations around the country. The US has a strong tradition of rock and roll. But all that has changed. Now the US is the center of the dance music world and Los Angeles is the epicentre. You can’t throw a rock in this city without hitting a Top 100 DJ. I don’t think people realize how many European DJs are based here now.”

http://www.christopherlawrence.com/

http://bit.ly/fmXeCc (Download Rush Hour Radio shows)

http://bit.ly/bcyifF Christopher Lawrence: ‘Freefall’ (Feat Camille Kramer), from 2004)

http://bit.ly/u0XDtS (Christopher Lawrence live @ Beyond Wonderland 2011)

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff