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Generation Ecstasy : Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture |
Author: Simon Reynolds
Published: 1999-07 |
List price: $17.95
Our price: $17.95
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As of: August 28th, 2008 06:28:46 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Respectful and Ambitious
If you told me in 1992 that in 2006 I would be reading a book about "Rave" culture in the local public library I don't think I would have believed you. But..here I am.
AT the time of this writing it has already been at least 8 years since this book was published and I think we can see how the author's takes on the phenomenon has held up.
Good points:
The author has a great understanding of the esthetic strengths of the genre,i.e. what makes these songs and their various presentations work.
He has a good knowledge of the artists, events and venues that helped to shape it (leaning mostly from a UK perspective, while very relevant, isn't the whole story).
He has a great understanding of the techincial aspects of the music and how cheap and malfunctioning gear is sometimes used and how these songs really often take a good degree of skill and effort to produce despite popular public misconceptions to the contrary.
I particulary loved his observation that a tepid corporate pop production like Celine Dion uses much much more expensive state of the art equipment than your techno record.
The author also has a great understanding of the, in my opinion, wonderous and vibrant philosophical concepts that went into this music and scene, and emerged through and because of this music and scene both expected, intended and unexpected and unintended. I would love to go on about them but I will spare Amazon this forum.
Bad Points:
I am sad that this author thinks that ecstacy and many other drugs were so important to this movement. I found this element to make for more boring music and conversation. It was also a cause for tragedy.
I am disappointed that this author dismisses so much of the more "avant garde" elements that came out of this scene. He even, very wrongly, suggests that this side was not somehow as legitimatly rooted in the scene as a whole. This is complete nonsense.
In fact, 8 years after this book was published..when I bump into people I remember from this scene I get the following:
The big druggies are dead or crippled.
The main scene is declared "dead".
And..the avant garde is alive and blissfully unaware of their own reinvention in progress.
 Comprehensive but flawed
This is still by far the most comprehensive and wide-ranging history of EDM, which is in some ways an indictment of more recent works on EDM (although some recent and more focused histories of particular styles and periods have been very valuable). While no fan, musician and/or scholar of EDM should ignore this book, you'll probably find yourself wrestling with it from time to time. Reynolds has a clear anti-intellectual / pro-proletarian bias that makes him quick to dismiss the importance of certain genres. Also, he tends to make a teleological history out of the whole phenomenon, where new styles displace previous ones--which doesn't explain why many "old" styles continue to develop in contemporary EDM scenes. Also, good luck trying to trace the source of many of his quotations.
 Good book
It can be a little in-depth sometimes, almost to the point of being inane, but the author carries the story so well, you find yourself being swept up in the madness, almost as if you were standing in the middle of the rave culture yourself.
It sheds an important light on a rarely-reported but highly relevant side of music history; a must-have for any true fan of the art.
The Best Book on Electronic Dance Music...so far.
Some of the reviews here are quite articulate so I won't repeat what others have said; but I will add that the original title for this book in the U.K. was 'Energy Flash' which is a little cheesy but more appropriate than 'Generation Ecstasy.' 'Energy Flash' is an early hardcore track and this title captures the ideas and spirit of Reynolds' book. Those who come to this book looking for a history of ecstasy and the pseudo-hippie 'idealogy' behind rave may be misled by the U.S. title. I also don't think the criticism that Reynolds is biased makes any sense. We read music criticism to hear others views and Reynolds' are well-thought-out and coherent. I respect that, even when I don't always agree with him.
From the "Second Summer of Love" to the "Post-Rave Diaspora"
Despite its limitations, this is still the best empirical book about the history of rave culture to date. Reynolds is an English dance music journalist who positions himself at the popular/danceable wing of the dance movement in contrast with its elitist/"intelligent" sections. (My sources in Ibiza/UK, though, tell me that he in fact belongs to London's clubbing elite...).
The bulk of the book consists of a long series of interweaved magazine articles that Reynolds published throughout the years. He describes dance music subgenres, artists/promoters/clubs, and how music changes. He also connects rave culture with the rise of harsh neoliberal capitalism in 1980s UK and US. However, Reynolds hyperventilates in excessive descriptions of sounds and theis effects in the communal experience of 'raving' that bonds the "generation ecstasy".
Despite the emphasis on musical descriptivism and on the British case, the book demonstrates how dance movement develops in general: in relation to the social tension between the underground and the mainstream, to the repressive action of the neoliberal state, and to the development of a global dance subculture: from the Second Summer of Love (1988) to what he aptly terms as "post-rave diaspora" (since 1997).
In the "post-rave diaspora", Reynolds notes that ecclectic experiments have gotten stuck in formal conventions of House, Techno and DnB, and that nobody knows where Techno movement will lead to. (As an example of this claim, see my review of album "Creamfield" by Paul Oakenfold).
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