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Feels like UK society has nothing more to offer me these days and no interesting scenes feels so isolating

Too much of the "subculture" has migrated into cyberspace... yes, the teenagers of today feel comfortable with it and probably find it as rich as the "scenes" of yesteryear, but I still think something is majorly lacking when almost all the important socializing takes place online. (Yes, I realize it's ironic to be posting this on internet forum... though these kind of text-based forums and chat rooms were more a part of the mid-90s-to-early-2000s internet experience than today when Reddit/Facebook/Twitter dominate...)
 
I don't think it's just an age thing. A lot of major cities in the west have become gentrified due to real estate, and there are a lot more rules. The 90s and early 2000s were peak days for great parties because the governments hadn't closed the loopholes yet, and also there were still available spaces. The cities have been invaded by wealthy people who are totally square and have no sense of art.

The city I live in, most of my favourite acts don't come here anymore because there's so much red tape. Permit after permit required, and even the Fed has introduced a tax on foreign artists entering our country. On top of this, the RAVE act in the early 2000s severely clamped down on the party scene, such that if the police found even ONE person on drugs at a scene, they could shut down the entire event and arrest anybody they wanted.

So yeah... capitalism has become predatory and imprisoning. They don't want anybody to have fun anymore. They just want you to make money for them and not think too much about having fun/being free. The party scene in my city now is mediocre. Very expensive, events close early, and the acts aren't all that talented. I pretty much have to travel abroad now if I really want to have fun.

Arts and culture are all gentrified now, which makes them boring. Wealthy people don't struggle or sacrifice for anything, so their art never conveys a powerful message. It's all fluff and practically pointless. Most of the middle and lower class artists in my city have all left, it's too expensive to live here now. The result is that art here has become a bourgeois activity only. If you aren't wealthy, you're too busy trying to survive to contribute to the art world.

Culture in the west has stagnated and its all due to economy. Mostly greed.
 
JTemperance said:
Too much of the "subculture" has migrated into cyberspace... yes, the teenagers of today feel comfortable with it and probably find it as rich as the "scenes" of yesteryear, but I still think something is majorly lacking when almost all the important socializing takes place online. (Yes, I realize it's ironic to be posting this on internet forum... though these kind of text-based forums and chat rooms were more a part of the mid-90s-to-early-2000s internet experience than today when Reddit/Facebook/Twitter dominate...)
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Facebook makes you hate your friends, forums like this make you love strangers :)
 
Foreigner said:
I don't think it's just an age thing. A lot of major cities in the west have become gentrified due to real estate, and there are a lot more rules. The 90s and early 2000s were peak days for great parties because the governments hadn't closed the loopholes yet, and also there were still available spaces. The cities have been invaded by wealthy people who are totally square and have no sense of art.

The city I live in, most of my favourite acts don't come here anymore because there's so much red tape. Permit after permit required, and even the Fed has introduced a tax on foreign artists entering our country. On top of this, the RAVE act in the early 2000s severely clamped down on the party scene, such that if the police found even ONE person on drugs at a scene, they could shut down the entire event and arrest anybody they wanted.

So yeah... capitalism has become predatory and imprisoning. They don't want anybody to have fun anymore. They just want you to make money for them and not think too much about having fun/being free. The party scene in my city now is mediocre. Very expensive, events close early, and the acts aren't all that talented. I pretty much have to travel abroad now if I really want to have fun.

Arts and culture are all gentrified now, which makes them boring. Wealthy people don't struggle or sacrifice for anything, so their art never conveys a powerful message. It's all fluff and practically pointless. Most of the middle and lower class artists in my city have all left, it's too expensive to live here now. The result is that art here has become a bourgeois activity only. If you aren't wealthy, you're too busy trying to survive to contribute to the art world.

Culture in the west has stagnated and its all due to economy. Mostly greed.
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sounds like you should be blaming nanny-state government rather than capitalism for the death of the party/rave scene. If there was enough demand for it - and money to be made - the free market would let it happen, but it can't operate correctly when hamstrung by government red tape and bureaucracy. Some businesses/entrepreneurs have jumped at the chance to make money from the legalisation of cannabis in some US states. Imagine the money they could make if governments ever decided to legalise Class A drugs!

As for the stagnation of art and culture in the West, I put that down mainly to living in a postmodern era. Art, literature, film, music, whatever; they can't come up with anything new because it's all been done before. There are no more barriers to be broken or boundaries to be pushed. Nothing's new or novel. It's all been done already. If you're a talented artist you may have made it big in an earlier era, but not today. Sorry to be a downer, but that's my rather pessimistic outlook on life :confused:
 
Forever Changes said:
As for the stagnation of art and culture in the West, I put that down mainly to living in a postmodern era. Art, literature, film, music, whatever; they can't come up with anything new because it's all been done before. There are no more barriers to be broken or boundaries to be pushed. Nothing's new or novel. It's all been done already. If you're a talented artist you may have made it big in an earlier era, but not today. Sorry to be a downer, but that's my rather pessimistic outlook on life :confused:
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This was what Raoul Vaneigem meant when he said that "knowledge is essentially banal". Everything in art and culture has echoes in the past, as you would expect since human art and shared symbolic life stretches tens of thousands of years into the past, and "human nature" (at least in a biological sense) hasn't changed since that time. Basically every human thought has its antecedents in the past.

But that doesn't mean that people can't still create worthwhile art and have a meaningful cultural impact in the present day...the only way that you could have a completely doom-and-gloom outlook on it was if you expected some kind of purely original thought or creative expression, which probably isn't even desirable when you consider (for example) a multitude of musical genres in the 20th century like rock, hip-hop, electronic etc. which were enriched by borrowing and developing from a variety of different sources.

I don't live in the UK so I don't know what the situation is like there but, I guess I'd just urge people to not be so negative...or, if the situation really is bad, maybe try and develop or contribute to the emerging counter-culture in your own way, as FUBAR mentioned
 
Burnt Offerings said:
This was what Raoul Vaneigem meant when he said that "knowledge is essentially banal". Everything in art and culture has echoes in the past, as you would expect since human art and shared symbolic life stretches tens of thousands of years into the past, and "human nature" (at least in a biological sense) hasn't changed since that time. Basically every human thought has its antecedents in the past.

But that doesn't mean that people can't still create worthwhile art and have a meaningful cultural impact in the present day...the only way that you could have a completely doom-and-gloom outlook on it was if you expected some kind of purely original thought or creative expression, which probably isn't even desirable when you consider (for example) a multitude of musical genres in the 20th century like rock, hip-hop, electronic etc. which were enriched by borrowing and developing from a variety of different sources.

I don't live in the UK so I don't know what the situation is like there but, I guess I'd just urge people to not be so negative...or, if the situation really is bad, maybe try and develop or contribute to the emerging counter-culture in your own way, as FUBAR mentioned
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Knowledge is indeed banal, but humanity needs art in order to thrive. It's part of our consciousness, and societies that either lack the resources to express it or have unnatural restrictions on it end up suffering. The U.S., for example, is starving for art. They have enslaved their creative class to be innovators for the corporate elite, and that's about it. Art is not integrated in their society. It's the same here in Canada now.

The point isn't whether or not art is novel. Nothing that humans do is novel. We exist in endless cycles of the same thing over and over. Even our so-called high tech society is just another staging ground for the same old human dramas. All that has changed is the scale of the drama, the story is the same. I would argue though that with each cycle, we truly change, albeit very, very incrementally. It's why evolution takes forever.

Most well read historians and sociologists concur that when art and culture become restricted for the bourgeois only, it is a sign that society is stuck at a low level (i.e. lack of social mobility and economic diversity), or that it's at a higher level but now suffering from decay (power and resource sequestration, or in our unique modern case, environmental degradation).

Some people are born to make art. It doesn't matter if they make money at it, or if they're even any good at it. They just do it because it's who they are. They are part of the genetic artisan class. A society that excludes art or puts it behind glass windows with high prices is essentially telling the creative class that they are totally worthless unless their abilities can be controlled and manipulated by the ruling class. That injustice is a sign of societal decay.
 
Forever Changes said:
sounds like you should be blaming nanny-state government rather than capitalism for the death of the party/rave scene. If there was enough demand for it - and money to be made - the free market would let it happen, but it can't operate correctly when hamstrung by government red tape and bureaucracy.
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There's no such thing as the free market. There's always someone pulling the strings. Besides which, the rave scene I grew up with and miss dearly was not about profit. Most events were underground and were next to free or very cheap, mostly about covering costs. I remember I paid $10 to get into most events, or less. We didn't care how grungy the venues were, it was about the people, the music, the art, and the drugs. This was back before bottled water was a commodity and you could bring in your own snacks. The rave scene was about PLUR, however deluded that might've been. People tried.

To me the North American rave scene of the 90's was a renaissance. It also influenced the club scene and a whole generation of artists that came after. As far as I know, the only place electronica is still thriving and evolving is in parts of Europe. The scene was killed in North America. It's all mainstream clubs now... which is fine, you can still hear some decent electronica. But the all out, balls to the wall, all night raving with very few rules... that has gone the way of the dodo bird. It ended because capitalists and government saw a trend of rebelliousness, drug use, and "fuck you" art that they didn't like.

The last "rave" I went to in my city ended at 2am and the music was experimental garbage.
 
Good to see some fruitful discussion now rather than the 'get back in your house grandpa!' the replies started out as.

To Foreigner I would say you blaming capitalism is very off the mark as Forever Changes said; the biggest parties of the late 80s were put on by thatchers children (think that is what they called them) and staunch tories cashing in on an opportunity and they were second to non by all accounts of those who were around in the day. I watched a doc on spiral tribe recently which said they only started the free party movement, in around '90, in response to these big ticketed events that had 10-15 entry.

It is indeed the red-tape I think as there is a lot of reporting on the decline of clubland. I read that 60% of clubs have shut since 2008 to either be replaced with flats or yuppie 'cocktail bars'. There was a doc dicussing the closure of The End nightclub in london, the latest of a string of many, and the DJ etc were saying how the place is gentrified and then the hipsters complain about the noise and the council just wants shot of those kind of spaces since it is more trouble for them than flats which would make as much money or more for them.

I think like was said above the root cause is a stamping out of art in society as if it is not needed any more and served no purpose and was just an unruly thing to be cleansed, but if people don't get their release they revolt and the stupid government I guess will not wake up to that until there is some kind of crisis point.

But added to that you have the post millenials using the internet as there surrogate and don't really have any idea what they are missing out on. I have made posts like this in the past on 'normie' subreddits (much to my frustration) and the kids of today mostly downvote my comments and say they feel that chatting on reddit et al and staying in their suburbs with their little clique of friends and watching netflix is just as wholesome as venturing out of their comfort zone to town and just make excuses like 'it's too expensive'.

Then again, as mentioned in the OP, the free party scene is strong still so not all can be like that; but as an old curmudgeon the music they play, which I watch on most of those youtube vids of free parties, seems very watered down compared to 'proper freeparty tunage' back in da day. I guess it varies but the majority, yea, given a large sample size of videos I have watched of parties in the last decade or so.
 
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Tieeurrrop said:
It is indeed the red-tape I think as there is a lot of reporting on the decline of clubland. I read that 60% of clubs have shut since 2008 to either be replaced with flats or yuppie 'cocktail bars'. There was a doc dicussing the closure of The End nightclub in london, the latest of a string of many, and the DJ etc were saying how the place is gentrified and then the hipsters complain about the noise and the council just wants shot of those kind of spaces since it is more trouble for them than flats which would make as much money or more for them.
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This is what I'm talking about when I blame capitalism. They have traded art, liberal venues and creative outlets for the fast cash of real estate.

London, like most major cities in the west, has become a real estate wasteland for hipsters and yuppies. There's no attempt at class equality. All of the characteristics that made the city cores unique and diverse are being replaced with monoculture; and the message that culture is sending to everyone else is that if you don't have $$ then you should just leave.
 
The same large-scale force (like capitalism/neoliberalism) can favor different or even opposing smaller-scale results at different points in time. I think it's true that the initial burst of the rave scene in the late 80s was encouraged by the energies unleashed by Thatcherism, positive or negative. But in the intervening decades, crucial structural factors have changed that now mean the same economic trend works against raves/art/etc. Most notably, as has been mentioned, is the spatial overhaul of the inner city that gentrification has produced.

You can see this dynamic at work in other countries as well. In New York, the combination of deindustrialization and disinvestment in social services that took hold in the early 70s produced a semi-abandoned cityscape with very affordable rents that opened up the physical space for a lot of great music and art to be made, even though the working-class core of the city was suffering. But the same trend that was inaugurated back then eventually ended up producing the ultra-expensive NY of today which is so hostile to art/music/etc.

Generally, the government regulation and "red tape" follows the economic changes that are underway. So all the restrictions on noise and closing times (or at least their strict enforcement) got started at the same time that inner-city real estate values became the overriding concern of the investor class. Back in the 60s and 70s, that class saw the future of profit to be made off of housing developments and corporate parks in the suburbs, so they weren't preoccupied with regulating behavior in the inner city.
 
Tieeurrrop said:
Back in the nineties and naughties I was also an outsider from the trendies (what is the name for our version of jocks?) but back then you could retreat to scenes with other likeminded people. The rave scene was my refuge and escape til I shunned it due to the drugs and such. Now with age I think it would not affect me, the other people taking drugs, but there is no rave scene as I knew it. What is left in clubs is just a burnt husk of what used to be. If I go to edm nights I just get frustrated that it is not underground enough and they play some shitty fidget house or some crap and think they are underground
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Today's official rave/club scene and music are mostly dreadful. Commercial, cliquey, unfriendly, attitude-infested. Reggaeton, anybody...? 🤮
Luckily I'm very introverted, work is often demanding and I don't have a lot of energy, as a result, I just stay in and don't have any desire to go out. I'm sorry to hear that you feel isolated, are all your friends in stable relationships or married with kids, or maybe lead that kind of lifestyle you don't want to be involved with? A virtual hug from me too :)🤗 x
 
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The undergound rave scene in and around (particularly East) London is as vibrant now as it has been since the mid 90's. Yeah you're going to have to put up with smoking in unlicensed venues but that's on you, doesn't mean that the parties aren't good.
 
Best night I've ever had was a squat in Leeds on NYE 200? :
Soundsystem in all rooms (even one of the bogs I think), music of all kinds on all of them, played on one system, lots of ket, cops came and went (nowt they could do), trying to get my mate off of the speakers like he was king kong (king ket more like) then back to a mates for a chill before getting the train home for bed :)

Best night of late was a charity do at a pub, paid in liquor, met loads of young wipper snappers, felt left out (aside from seeing a few mates I'd missed for yonks).
Age is a state of mind my arse....
 
monstanoodle said:
Best night I've ever had was a squat in Leeds on NYE 200? :
Soundsystem in all rooms (even one of the bogs I think), music of all kinds on all of them, played on one system, lots of ket, cops came and went (nowt they could do), trying to get my mate off of the speakers like he was king kong (king ket more like) then back to a mates for a chill before getting the train home for bed :)

Best night of late was a charity do at a pub, paid in liquor, met loads of young wipper snappers, felt left out (aside from seeing a few mates I'd missed for yonks).
Age is a state of mind my arse....
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NYE 200!!!!

Fuck me, old school indeed. =D
 
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