Federico Brugia, a well-known Italian video and music producer, collaborated with Filmmaster Productions to bring the world Rocker Vs. DeeJay in celebration of Rolling Stone Italia‘s 10th Anniversary. He really shouldn’t have. Metaphorically insinuating that electronic music is a ticking time bomb that will explode and then disappear forever into the netherworld of the music industry, this video, although not funded or published by Rolling Stone America, comes off as pompous and blatantly insults an entire culture of musicians and fans.
The video’s narration begins by arguing that DJs are, “Criminals with licenses to shoot shit into our eardrums, low quality MP3 pushers and 3rd class whores that give it away to the first bidder.” Wait just a minute, narrator! Fusing together tracks seamlessly to create a set that’s hours long and appealing to the public is hard work that takes months, if not years, of practice. We certainly couldn’t produce a track with synthesizers, drum machines, and computers of quality enough to compete with the likes of Hardwell or Kaskade. Could you? Moving on…
The narration continues (unfortunately) with, “No audience will ever chant your name or know your songs by heart.” Hm. We see zero truth in that. Has the producer been to an EDM festival lately? Anyone who has can tell you that electronic audiences are some of the liveliest and loudest you’ll ever witness. They have lyrics stuck in their heads from 1990. You can find them arm-in-arm belting song after song as if it was written from the depths of their own heart. If this is an Internet troll, it’s a good one.
Ending with a bang, the video argues that good old guitar, bass, and drums will replace electronic music, because rock music rebels. Ironically, rock music did rebel. It rebelled against people who refused to believe that it qualified as a genre of music. Sound familiar?
The video is completely out of left field for a magazine that has been interviewing electronic artists, promoting their music in print, and targeting EDM fans this year (see Rolling Stone Italia’s interview with American DJ Skrillex published last Tuesday). This point of view not only disses the American electronic scene, but also vastly talented Italian electronic DJs like Benny Benassi, Congorock and The Bloody Beetroots.
Boy oh boy Rolling Stone Italia do you have your work cut out for you. The logic of this video’s approach falls apart literally seconds after viewing. We can’t imagine how you’d defend yourself, but you’d better soon, or be prepared to face some really harsh criticism from a worldwide community of artists and fans.
View the Italian article (use Google Translate) and awesome comments after it, here.
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