Man ! I forgot about Canada. Several of the electronic groups that came from there were among the most innovative in their field. Look at Skinny Puppy for pete's sake ! about 99% of their music is so layerd and complex that they would be near to impossible to duplicate without spending monsterous hours tweaking and blatantly trying to figure out how they did certain stuff. And the music really complicates it further.. I mean.. every time I listen to one of their tracks, I hear something new in it that I hadn't heard before (and I've been listening to their stuff since "84 or sometime around there). Considering that I could duplicate a popular hip hop song in ten minutes, and that it would take me months to duplicate a Puppy song, you can clearly see that these people just aren't putting any effort into the music itself.
Oh.. and here's my other pet peeve. Pop stars are really starting to overuse the vocoder. It's driving me nutz !!

Anyway.. this is the reason that I ended up buying my own synthesizers and electronic gear. Since I don't like the music that is out there at the moment (even the new industrial music is bland to me now. It seems all the industrial acts are either going techno/drum&bass or KMFDM style, NIN style or Ministry style with drum machines), I decided to make my own music that I could enjoy so I can have something new to play in my car and not go crazy !!!

Oh.. and in reference to the space program thing.. America was actually much more innovative than the Russians in respect to safety, quality and dependability. It took us a little while and a few errors to get that far, but our space program focussed more on safety than the Russian one did (Heck.. they were shooting up people without space suits for a while there. They actually lost three of their cosmonauts because a hatch blew out on reentry and they suffocated). That was the reason that we were behind them. They were sending people up while we were sending up animals and test equipment to make sure the environment was safely habitable. Our rockets later on in the program blew up a lot less than theirs did also.

(I know this is off topic, but I had to defend that fact that America HAD to have been innovative somewhere.. even IF they are into crappy throw away pop music..)

The Soviet space program was so underestimated. They did tests and even sent up a dog into space (Laika). They beat the US fair and square with having one of both sexes up in space first (Yuri Gagarin and Valentina "Chaika" Tereshkova). Tereshkova married another cosmonaut and is the mother to the first child ever with parents that both have visited space.

-tek

grand funk railroad is so underestimated

Another big problem in Electronic music is that everytime you see an article or story , it's most often than not a DJ . DJ's get more recognition than the people who actually make the music . Most younger people that talk to me about electronic music always ask me " what do I spin " . I always have to tell them that I don't play records , I play the music . When did it become cool not to actually perform the music , but to just play a damn record ??

Many people believe that EVERYthing we watch, listen to, or wear, is determined by a very small group of people in about a 10 miles radius that circles LA. Nothing in the media happens by accident. They research what will sell TODAY and then they cram it down our throats. They are, no doubt, planning our wardrobe for tomorrow, RIGHT NOW.

The attraction to "spinnig" is not so different from that of (I hate to even type the letters....) Karaoke. It EASY. People can do it WITHOUT the talent and practice involved in becoming an artist.
Before I offend any DJ's - I'm not saying that you don't need talent to perform well - my point is that it's an entirely different set of mechanical skills, and is VERY much removed from playing or MAKING music. At it's simplest terms, spinning can be compared to a percussive-like skill, but playing records, no matter HOW interactive you may be - is not MAKING music. It's manipulating music. It's restructuring music, maybe, but to really enjoy the creation of music is much more involved, requires talent and dedication and today's crop of new "artists" have NO clue what it's all about.

Being a singer is not even on the same level, because it's a gift that you really cannot learn. You can learn diction, breathing, phrasing etc.....but no one can teach you how to sing. Every singer should take music lessons to learn the "partnership" between the lyric and the music. It's vital.

So, in a round-a-bout answer to your question .... it's NOT really cool at all - it's just a lazy, accepted norm that makes me sad. Being a musician has brought me so much joy in my life and it's supported my family for over 30 years. I hate to see what's happening to my craft at the hands of all these "marketing" exec's that are controlling MY life's work. It's a shame, it really is.

I think that electronic music especially at this point needs to get thrust into more experimental directions rather than the same one over and over again. Experimentation usually creates totally new sounds. I'm experimenting myself and I don't think ANY band that ever existed sounds like my stuff as I took the music into a direction that I don't think ever existed before (collide together the sounds of Skinny Puppy, Dead Can Dance, add a sprinkling of Controlled Bleeding's total noise, and the guitars of Lycia and you pretty much have my style). The electronic music industry needs new stuff, not the rehashed, highly repetative sounds like Prodigy and Crystal Method, and that new one that's out with the video of the guy dancing on the sidewalk. Whenever any of those groups even have vocals, the vocals are just repedative samples. That drives me crazy. If the music itself is repedative, at least do something with the vocals to carry it along. Don't just sample yourself saying like four sentances and just repeat them over and over every other measure...
(Can you tell that I'm a little anti-mainstream ?) 8)

Oh. Here's another thing I encounter a lot, especially from the rock music crowd. "So, do you play any real instruments or just synthesizers ?" or from my own father "Synthesizers aren't instruments ! They're computers !!"
I hate to break it to these people, but synthesizers are as much an instrument as a guitar is (and I play both) and I can get just as much emotional expression out of my synths as I do out of my guitar. Why is it that rock music people so often completely HATE the synthesizer so much ? I have yet to figure this out. All I can think of is that they see the arpeggiator or sequencer going on a synth and they think that that's all that playing the synth is all about. It's ignorance because they never took the time to fully understand the technology due to the learning curve and fail to see it as an expressive instrument (This is probably also propagated by the fact that the electronic bands they get exposed to have probably never actually played a keyboard in their lives and just let a sequencer do everything, or they mistake the sample loop stuff of the R&B hip hop genera to be synth playing)

Yeah , Blacklight , I always loved those STUPID questions . But , most people are too stupid to realize that EVERY musical instrument is a technological advancement . The Piano is more sophisticated than the harpsichord , the guitar is more sophisticated than the Lute . As we progressed , we made drums into all kinds of shapes and learned how to tune them . You have to remember that most people are dumb sheep , unfortunate but true . I always loved the question " Do you know how to play a real instrument " ?? I would now answer a little angrier ( but these idiots deserve it ) " What , is the synthesizer a figment of you're imagination you damn idiot " ?! Remember , people are stupid , most are affraid of the synthesizer . Back 1000 years ago , those same idiots were affraid when the sun went down .