Eddie Gordon on UK Club land's Cocaine Crisis
Author: Jonty Adderley
Monday, October 14, 2002
"It's divided club-land into territories." Eddie told Skrufff this week.
"In the beginning, an aspiring DJ would remix or make a record or somebody would get a radio gig and everyone would be supportive and encourage each other whereas today it's completely reversed, everything's divided and clique-ridden. Through cocaine, lots of people involved have lost the spirit of house music, the seed of which was always about freedom and positivity. People have lost sight of that and dance music has become just a business run by the nose-up, snoz, wiz, wallop mentality."
His comments followed the publication of new data showing a 500% increase in regular cocaine users in the UK between 1996 and 2,000, with 5% of the population owning up to regular use in the latest figures.
"In the UK it has traditionally been seen as a rich party drug or as something for real addicts but that‚s changing," said Mike Trace, the chairman of the European Union‚s Drugs Agency responsible for collecting the data.
"The real driver for this (increase) is people who go clubbing." (Guardian)
According to Eddie Gordon, cocaine's rising popularity is also responsible for the lack of optimism, activism and sense of social responsibility that accompanied acid house‚s rise in the 80s.
"If dance music was doing its thing naturally, we would get a message out there to the Leader's of the world that we don't want to be blown to bits, we don't want a war and we don't want our future environment to be fucked up by the resulting pollution"‚ he argued.
"Look at our world today, it wouldn't surprise anybody if in a month's time it all goes off with Iraq and we get caught in something that has nothing to do with us as individuals, as human beings. In the house boom era, music-heads would have been thumping that message out there through the world's dancefloor speakers, like Marvin Gave did with "What's Going On" on Vietnam."
"To my mind the role of the DJ has always been evangelical. The DJ is there to lift people out of their daily life burdens of mortgages, job or lack of a job. Dance music is there as an energy to break through cultural, social, religious and political barriers; to unite people and that's what we've lost sight of."
Closely connected with many of the biggest names in dance music throughout his 20 year career, Gordon sees hope in the next generation of DJs and clubs rather than the current crop of superstar DJs and clubbing brands.
"This boom has gone corporate and died. It will go back to how it was in the beginning with little clubs doing their cool organic things and growing steadily from the ground upwards," he predicted.
"Forget the A list DJs, they'll only play music that enhances their business circles and some of them at radio won't play music that conflicts with those interests - they've lost sight of feeding the people this wonderful energy that dance music offers but I know from conversations with many of the next generation of DJ's that music is foremost in their minds. It's not all dead and mundane."
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