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Conor McNicolas (Muzik & NME); Why UK Super Clubs Are Struggling

Author: Jonty Adderley
Friday, June 28, 2002
"Once dance music takes on a role outside of its own hardcore culture and starts playing with mass pop culture you will inevitably get burned. Pop-commercial trance peaked in the summer of 2000. It made a lot of people a lot of money and inevitably a lot of that cash trickled down to lots of other people in the industry. It was fun, it was a great party, but now we're having the hangover."

Conor McNicholas, the current editor of Muzik who's leaving the specialist dance magazine shortly to become editor of NME, contacted Skrufff this week to clarify our suggestion that his appointment will mean more dance coverage in NME ("It won't", he stressed.) He also rapped us over the knuckles for not speaking to him in advance, so this week Jonty Adderley asked him some questions on his views of the health (or otherwise) of UK clubland.

Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): How much do you see dance music's decline as drastic maybe even terminal-

Conor McNicholas (Muzik/NME): "The dance industry has experienced a bit of a dip recently, which has been a real pig for everyone but it's not like it hasn't happened before. It's pop culture; it goes in waves and cycles. You can't be the height of fashion for ever (and there are a lot of people in the industry who wouldn't ever want to be.)

The great thing about dance music is that because of the way it's structured - small clubs, small labels, people making and releasing music from their bedrooms - it is impossible to kill it. It's like some advanced international terrorist group made up of individual cells or, perhaps, more like real cells, where the DNA for the whole organism is kept in each individual, so as long as one person or one Roland 808 is still around the whole things can be rebuilt. Acid house will never die. It's just been resting."

Skrufff: When do you think dance music peaked-

Conor McNicholas: "Pop-commercial trance peaked in the summer of 2000. It made a lot of people a lot of money and inevitably a lot of that cash trickled down to lots of other people in the industry. It was fun, it was a great party, but now we're having the hangover. As everyone in the industry knows, you can't get the high without the comedown. And actually, while pop-trance peaked then, whole sections of the industry are only just getting into their stride now. Drum & bass is getting a platform again with some exciting tracks and good solid, let's 'av a laugh, house music is stronger now than it has been for ages. I think."

Skrufff: Paul Oakenfold effectively blamed negativity from magazines like Muzik and Mix Mag for damaging dance music's popularity, do you accept there's any truth in this point of view-

Conor McNicholas: " If he did say that (and I only have your word for it, because it seems like a very strange thing to do) then he's very badly mistaken (Skrufff: he did, in DJ Magazine). Why would the two leading dance music magazines get negative about dance music- It doesn't make any sense. In fact, I've openly said to many people it was our misguided enthusiasm for all things prog (progressive) that lead us all up a bit of a blind alley - too much enthusiasm not too little. We love dance music, that's why we do the jobs we do, but once dance takes on a role outside of its own hardcore culture and starts playing with mass pop culture you will inevitably get burned. You can't be popular all the time."

Skrufff : Why do you think it's suffering-

Conor McNicholas: "Fashion moves on and demands new things and the industry didn't move fast enough. Too many people were taking the old promoter attitude of milking the market for as much as they could before things collapsed, which of course they inevitably did. Not enough experimentation, development of new sounds, new nights, investment in the future. If you keep trotting out the same thing every Saturday night for three years, then people are bound to loose interest."

Skrufff : What are the main musical trends happening right no
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