When Love Takes Over

I saw David Guetta standing on a street corner in Ibiza ignored by the teeming masses streaming right by him to enter Pacha, where long after midnight he'd "spin records" and have the assembled multitude dancing with their arms in the air, thrilled just to be alive.

I was in Colorado. I didn't plan not to write. But decompressing is so tough that once you do it you don't want to get back on the train, your insides protest, you want to live a life of relaxation, outside the maelstrom. My greatest thrill was reading a book, "In The Garden Of Beasts", by Erik Larson, who wrote "The Devil In The White City." It was about Nazi Germany. It took me outside my life, of this world where we're bombarded with incoming to the point where we lose our reference points, our focus, what's important. Do we have to read our entire Twitter feed? If we don't keep up, will we fall hopelessly behind, out of touch, never to recover?

I don't know.

We live in an information society. And you can't play if you know nothing. That's what's interesting about the disinformation campaign they call the election. It assumes people are ignorant, which couldn't be further from the truth. Assuming they're paying attention to begin with.

And I'm not playing in the Top Forty world. I know the names, but I don't tune in the stations. I don't want to waste that much time with bad music. There's only twenty four hours in a day. Do I really want to be able to debate the (de)merits of these nitwits? Do you really feel better when you find out I'm clueless? Do you feel superior when you read "People,' "InTouch," and "Us" and know who these people are?

That game is done. We no longer live in one big cohesive society. And if feeling good about yourself is based on being able to look down your nose at those uninformed about your tiny little niche, I feel sorry for you. Trade in those black jeans and enter the twenty first century, where we're all on an endless search for fulfillment and are glad to find stimulation wherever we find it, like in a YouTube video.

Yes, that's where I heard "When Love Takes Over."

I can't even remember the clip, it had nothing to do with music, just some random citizen lifting a copyrighted track to enhance her little video production. Make no mistake, the key to the future is liberation, anybody trying to hold the populace back is making a mistake. Let the gays get married, let those women get abortions, join the parade, engage in the giant smorgasbord known as life. Don't judge, just experience. The greatest thing that can happen to a creator is having his work get remixed, go viral, and the copyright police have been putting up futile roadblocks against this for over a decade now. To what effect? Recorded music sales keep dropping and revenues keep going down, this is a recipe for success? Liberate the music! The creators and the licensors must get down in the pit with the listeners, they must join together in harmony, hell, isn't that what music provides?

The story is this is a three year old track. I'm going to be inundated with a tsunami of shit, all the hipsters wondering where I've been. I could fight back, citing the lack of Top Forty success, but that's not the point, "When Love Takes Over" is a phenomenal track!

Remember Kraftwerk? Purveyors of a novelty cut who were discarded and then picked back up as trailblazing paragons? Hell, they wrote an album "Computer World" more than a decade before the average person could tell you the difference between Apple and Microsoft. Remember disco? That pulsing sound that encroached upon corporate rock that had to be killed by mullet-wearing, self-satisfied white boys? Well, Kraftwerk and disco mashed up has resulted in a sound that is now triumphing throughout the world, the music corporately-labeled EDM.

Yes, electronic dance music has been around for decades. But only when the edifice known as the corporate music industrial complex started to crumble could it emerge triumphant. The kids are rejecting the pabulum. The major label dash for cash left them out. And with the means of exhibition and distribution in their hands, they've latched on to a sound that is an aural drug that infects your body without injection, that has you jumping up and down in sheer joy.

In other words, if you can't hear "When Love Takes Over," you're DEAD!

Guetta's been doing it for decades. He didn't get in the press and bitch he wasn't rich enough, he didn't give up and go to graduate school, go to work for Lazard Freres. He hung in until his time arrived.

And as his star ascended, not only fans flocked to him, but artists too. Kelly Rowland asked if she could write lyrics to his track, and the result is "When Love Takes Over."

I don't know about you, but I got no satisfaction from watching last night's debate. Because it wasn't. Just a bunch of talking points batted back and forth.

And I'm sick of reading about the wealthy. As if you're worthless if you don't drive a Benz, if you can't overbid for an apartment in Manhattan.

Once upon a time, all we cared about was music. Because it was the only honest art form, the only place we could go for refuge, that was sans the b.s. But now most mainstream music has gone the way of the rest of the country, an endless struggle to get ahead, push the rest of us down and leave us behind. Whereas, music, when done right, brings us all TOGETHER!

"It's complicated, it always is
That's just the way it goes
Feels like I've waited so long for this
I wonder if it shows"

I gave up caring for music. I'd rather watch HBO than hear Grizzly Bear bitch they're not on the radio. Huh? It's because you don't play music most people want to hear! I won't judge it, but just because a magazine writes about it, that does not mean it's mainstream. Then I hear a cut like "When Love Takes Over" and I'm a teenager once again, all I want to do is listen to it, over and over again, for hours straight, I can't wait to wake up and play it again!

"Head underwater, now I can't breathe
It never felt so good
'Cause I can feel it coming over me
I wouldn't stop it if I could"

Feeling good. Do you feel good when you're run off the road by a person texting while driving an Escalade that would kill you if it hit you? In a world where the entitled parade their superiority, bitch that they fought for their riches and deserve them? No, you feel good when a serum enters your body and squeezes all the b.s. out, like "When Love Takes Over."

"When love takes over, yeah
You know you can't deny
When love takes over, yeah
'Cause something's here tonight"

You've got two choices. You can leave the club, saying this is not music, or join in, jump on the dance floor and let go! All the great things in life come when you let go. Isn't that the essence of sex?

"Give me a reason, I gotta know
Do you feel it too
Can't you see me here on overload"

I feel like a Mexican jumping bean. Or Peter Wolf in that video. I'm bouncing around the house, like a cartoon. That's the power of music.

These deejays are antiheroes. It's not about them, but their work. Doesn't matter what they wear, just whether they can get you to move, to feel the joy.

If you can't feel the joy in "When Love Takes Over," I feel sorry for you.

Throw away your preconceptions. Stop worrying about people watching, being judged. Put on this music and throw off your inhibitions.

It'll do you good.

P.S. Wanna be like me? Then pull up this Spotify playlist and go on a 54 minute journey, hearing the same cut, in slightly different versions, revel in the sound. That's remix culture. Taking what's there and stretching it, expanding it, turning it into something different. Yes, this is me. I can listen to the same cut for hours straight!

http://spoti.fi/REuqUE

P.P.S. "A rant about Grizzly Bear and writing with an audience in mind": http://bit.ly/U7v3K2


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