I saw this company that sells like Bluetooth vibrating air drums or whatever you want to call them, and it’s so obvious what their purpose is that it makes me really sad. We went from drum kits to those black/deadened practice kits for practising at home, to eventually having people in rented accommodation being so worried about noise complaints and/or losing their place of living that they’ve had to create drum-less drums. 100% the reason for this is not wanting to get evicted. Living in matchbox houses with paper thin walls of cheap and in-no-way soundproof material, packed so close you’re a stone’s throw from your neighbours, you’ve silenced the drumkit entirely.
Is it any surprise then that people aren’t forming bands? Is it a surprise that artists moved from bands rehearsing in basements and garages in houses, to samples, electronic drumkits, midi, solo ‘bedroom’ stuff, even as we lose more and more rehearsal spaces, and schools stop offering kids musical lessons because they must be inferior to subjects that lead to a job in IT or finance? We lose youth centres, community spaces, musical spaces, and everyone’s world gets a little quieter.
Gentrification. People move into the ‘fun’ parts of town and then file complaints against all the ‘fun’ stuff. Bye bye La Tulipe, they gave a developer a building permit in the fucking downtown culture and entertainment district and now the residents are filing complaints. City councils are so afraid of the word 'rave', they don't know what it means but they think it means 'illicit drugs-taking event' and want to ban any instance of it. The raves move out of the city, to a little space under the national highway, or leave the city entirely.
I wanted to take a walking tour of historically important music sites in London, such as important venues, clubs, studios, the Blitz where the New Romantic kids first congregated for their David Bowie nights, the café where all the musicians including the Beatles would go down to to meet people when they decided the only way to make it in the music industry was to move to London. 3/4 of that tour involved looking for ghosts: empty spaces, corporate offices and residence buildings sitting on the burial grounds of moments of cultural significance. I didn’t do the tour, I don’t think I could bear to look at these places, to try and imagine what they once were and what their neighbours were.
It’s the same with these drums too. I know the makers only want to do good, bless them for that, and I don’t doubt a lot of people will find this a better practice solution than midi because it still sort of has that unquantised feel of a real person hitting sticks— although I suppose if you really think about it, it still is just a midi controller but with a vibrating haptic response. Next you’ll say drums can be done on AR or VR I suppose. It will still make me sad.
It saddens me that we lose so much of the spirit of art and culture to dilution. People trying to make the music quieter so as to not offend the neighbours, even as their spaces get slowly choked out. Writers being unable (/less freely able) to explore darker themes so as to not set the dogs of the ‘problematic writing police’ on them. Artists presenting as less dramatic so as to not appear ‘weird’ to an uninvested audience; TikTok’s obsession with their straitjacketed definition of ‘authenticity’. Making fun of anyone who dares to dress weird, look different, say something new. I see it everywhere. Art gets diluted to become palatable, and in doing so it loses its ability to express itself and say something that needs to be said.
I don’t know. Some could look at it as the weird, twisted, fucked up plant growing through cracks in the pavement, doing what it can to reach the sunlight. Art surviving despite everything, somehow being more poignant and having more important things to say as a result.
But even a 22h candle has an end. We’ve got to do more to protect our artistic spaces and outlets, and the ability to create without fear, or ae risk losing it forever. It takes just one generation to train out habits; we see it with other obsolete things, let’s not let art be one of those.
