It’s about House Music. Your Underground Internet Radio Solution

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Underground House on the net. http://clubarena.future.ee - online music ezine source.

Unfortunately, if you ask John/Jane Q. Public about House/Dance they may know the music, but they probably won't know who DeepSwing, 95 North, Tommy Musto, or MAW, David Morales, Danny Tenaglia, and Junior Vasquez are. Even if you showed them a picture. The biggest reason behind this, IMHO, is the lack of video play on MTV. Some underground house artists are lucky enough to get their video played on MTV2 every once in awhile. However, if you don't have Direct TV, you probably don't get MTV2. It seems that mainstream radio in the U.S. is more driven video rotation, hence good old MTV. However, if it wasn't for shows like Electric Circus on Much Music (Toronto, Canada), I probably wouldn't know a lot of some of the dopest underground house DJs by face, or to hear them mix, even if they only get a 15-25 minute set each week.

Last week, Roy Davis Jr. was one of the guest DJs on Circus. Wouldn't dare see Roy on the Skribble's show on MTV. It's a shame. I agree when it was mentioned earlier that artists should start performing their dance remixes during their shows. Recently, Maxwell was in Houston, and at the end of the show, he came back out to a standing ovation and performed the Naked Remix of "Fortunate" and tore the house down. Afterwards, you have a rush of people looking for this remix single and on the CD, however, no haps. Why? Because maybe Columbia felt Maxwell's predominantly urban audience would not be into such a remix in last decade, the urban "buying" audience has turn their backs and focused more on hip hop. Speaking of which, maybe the reason house doesn't shine mainstream much as hip hop or rock, is because maybe there isn't enough controversy in house. Maybe if House DJs started having publicized "beef" with each other and "wild" on each other at a highly publicized event, maybe the mainstream will take notice and want to find out who these clowns are. Or maybe if two popular (with the underground audience) house diva's go at it at every event, maybe we can get some attention from mainstream.

The theory behind the recent allegations behind Jay Z's alleged stabbing of Untertainment Records owner Lance Rivera, was only something staged by Jay Z and his label to draw up controversy and create pre-release hype of his new album that drops in a few weeks. Maybe this is what mainstream needs House music to do in order to get noticed. However, this is not the case, because it is not about these kinds of "Three Ring Circus" gimmicks. House is about love, feeling, spirit, and infamous "P" word the media and mainstream so dearly hate, "positivity". There's nothing controversial and appealing to mainstream about that. We have come along way but there still is a way to go. House/Dance music needs to become more artist driven and market savvy. If you read the industry magazines that reflect our beloved form of music, you see A LOT of DJ's and A LOT of producers. Nothing wrong with this, but there needs to be some focus on the singers and the whole record instead of "who did the remix". Eric Morillo is hailed as one of the biggest, best DJ's around. Paul Okenfeild is arguably THE biggest DJ on the planet. These 2 guys couldn't get arrested in my "middle of the road market" if they threw a party. (I'm in VA for the record). We still have a long way to go in this area as well for both artist and DJs. Oakenfold maybe the biggest DJ across the Atlantic, but in the States he is not as mainstream popular as Skribble and Funkmaster Flex, especially Flex. Why, because MTV has these guys all over the TV screen in front of mainstream America. Flex has made two mixed CDs for Loud records in the past three years; both have gone certified platinum. Why? Because his label (which is distributed by Sony) markets him as "the" face and spokesman for hip hop. It ain't a hit until Flex says it's a hit. We don't have anyone like that in the U.S. Why shouldn't Morales, for example, be in the same category for House/Dance? He's produced enough hits for Mariah (one of the best selling female "pop" artist in music history. However, I bet you the majority of Mariah's fans don't even know who does her dance remixes. Yet Columbia goes out of it's way to promote Puff Daddy's remix on the other side. Columbia could easily push Morales the way they push these big names in hip hop, but they don't because these icons of hip hop are also icons of the largest record buying community. Maybe if the U.S. made these house/dance songs heard in commercials and everywhere else available in record stores on CD and cassette for consumers and actually had a marketing campaign for these artists, maybe house would finally get its name carved on that mainstream totum pole.

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