6 ms·

The day the music died? Denmark Street’s new ‘digitally enabled streetscape’

50 points by Kaibeezy 4y ago

strken 4y ago
I read a translation of Simulacra and Simulation once. I probably missed most of the nuance, but it's an interesting way to see things like this, where real life gets eaten by its own image.
telesilla 4y ago
What a strange feeling to see street corners you know so well, from a much more wild youth when they were just a little bit more grimy but admittedly not as grimy as the generations before me who can grumble even further- what a strange feeling to see them turn into branded vehicles for the wealthy to pat themselves on the back and feel like they are contributing to culture.
- toyg 4y ago
  Strategically coopting countercultures is how consumer-based capitalism has become unassailable. Humans will pay any price to feel like they belong.
  - batch12 4y ago
    It is also how culture moves on. Nobody counterculture wants to be part of the mainstream 'underground'. The new, interesting stuff will move somewhere else and this area will be a vanilla shadow of what it once was. Especially cringeworthy to me were the pictures of mural-graffiti overlayed with a repeating hashtag.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    > Strategically coopting countercultures Unless you actually think there's literal evil mustache-twirling going on there's a much simpler explanation -- the people who were a part of that counterculture are now the establishment and, like everyone else, romanticize when they were angsty in their teens and twenties. It's why Guns N' Roses is suburban backyard BBQ pasta salad music now. You're right that people will pay money to belong but this isn't a example of it, this is people paying money for nostalgia. All counterculture has an expiration date since you can't pass it down to your kids. If you could it would defeat the whole point.
    - toyg 4y ago
      It has little or nothing to do with age, "selling out" begins as soon as culture is packaged as consumable goods. You write a book, it sells well, you're now wealthy and invested in maintaining the system you railed against a minute ago. Meanwhile, others will want to be like you, so will start packaging and selling their output; and consumers will continue to pay for the feeling of belonging to your cultural sphere. Same for music and songs, video and film, and so on. Very few people really ever opt out of these mechanisms. At a macro level, consumer society will automatically fagocitate any cultural output - because to experience culture is to consume it, and guess what the system is specialised in? Producing, selling, and refining at infinitum, anything that can be consumed. Everything else is just the natural outcome of this phenomenon.
- AndyMcConachie 4y ago
  > For £456 a night and upwards, you can stay like a rock star in ‘session rooms’ pre-vandalised with curated graffiti At some point the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail through the window of these places.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    > the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail through the window of these places I strongly disagree. That just gives them an excuse for why their stupid venture failed. They blame some other group. It's much better to see it fail entirely on its own. The real musicians and audience will just find a new home. Times change, people migrate, etc.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    The burnt out rooms will be available for extra £ or used as an art installation for visitors to ogle at.
  - paganel 4y ago
    Not condoning violence by any means, but truth be told that would be very situationist, i.e. quite artsy.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > At some point the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail they are desparate for attention and cultural significance, something like that would put them on the map
  - Karellen 4y ago
    It does feel very "15 million merits" - finding something actually raw and authentic, and then coopting the surface aesthetic of it to sell bland corporate shit. Note to anyone in corporate management - if you watch that Black Mirror episode and think that it's one of the few with a happy ending, you are the baddies. Also, from the article - "grassroots". I'd have LOL'd if I hadn't just died inside.
  - rasz 4y ago
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Well, haven't you explicitly agreed to replace everything you love with a sterile copy of it bearing a hefty price tag when you have adopted pre-distressed jeans en masse?
Cymrukicks 4y ago
You just need to be aware its not for you you dirty peasant. Its everything you loved, built and in some cases contributed to, distilled into a lovely aesthetic that can be sold for way more money than you can afford as a back drop in an instagram post.
- z9znz 4y ago
  Who really wants to stay in areas which become increasingly gentrified (and lobotomized)? This will be for the simple tourists and the other fakers to enjoy, something nice and artificial and tidy.
- toyg 4y ago
  And what is new? Anything and anyone related to the music business have been "selling out" since the '50s. That whole Elvis business was "everything you loved, built and in some cases contributed to, distilled into a lovely aesthetic that can be sold for way more money than you can afford" to folks that still had to sit at the back of the bus.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Uh, I think the relationship between black people and Elvis’ music is a little more complicated than simple consumption.
    - toyg 4y ago
      For the folks who built and sold Elvis to rich white consumers, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't.
z9znz 4y ago
> “radical new technology-driven marketing, entertainment and information service housed in a super-flexible, digitally enabled streetscape” How can you argue with that? It has to be a success! This will be the perfect street for the fake performers - the ones who pretend to play an instrument, but the "backing track" also has the lead. Good fakers can be difficult to spot if you're just casually strolling by. I bet this kind of "radically new" "digitally enabled" place will bring in just the kind of people who can appreciate fake buskers.
midenginedcoupe 4y ago
Well this is objectively awful, becuase of course it is. But let's not pretend _this_ is the end of Denmark St. It has been dead and irrelevant for decades.
- midenginedcoupe 4y ago
  PS. Archer St's history is fascinating, too. I've heard so many stories from the old jazzers about what this was like: https://www.muhistory.com/from-the-archive-4-archer-street-london/ https://www.muhistory.com/from-the-archive-4-archer-street-l...
- thorin 4y ago
  12 bar venue was still active in the early 2000s. It was still the place to go for instruments in London until about 10-15 years ago.
avidphantasm 4y ago
Commodification of culture brought on by rampant capitalism ruins everything.
Karellen 4y ago
> This “district” is in fact a single project, albeit one incorporating some historic fragments, in the ownership of one company, Consolidated Developments. Holy cow. That's as zero-imagination bland corporate hellscape as "Umbrella Corporation", "Omni Consumer Products", or any similar corporatocratic dystopian nightmare. Did they decide that "Evil, Inc." wasn't subtle enough? Or was the goal to come up with a name that couldn't be satirised?
- dusted 4y ago
  I think it's a cool name.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Cool in that when you see trucks roll up with that name, written in Microgramma in gray or cyan together with a simple geometric logo that vaguely suggests a cityscape all on a stark white background, your buttcheeks instinctually clench together because you've seen this 80s dystopian sci-fi and know exactly how it ends -- sure.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Most people understand that movies aren't real.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >Did they decide that "Evil, Inc." wasn't subtle enough I believe Monsanto already owns that one?
Symbiote 4y ago
The journalist doesn't cover why the relatively low-rent shops and large bars and clubs could exist in the first place. The Crossrail/Elizabeth Line railway route was planned in 1974. Essential points on the route -- like major stations -- have been "safeguarded" in some form since then[0]. That limited any development -- no significant new buildings were allowed on the safeguarded sites, and very little investment in the existing ones. A bar, nightclub or concert venue fits well in that space. Recording studios and music shops fit well in the smaller buildings. See the safeguarded route of Crossrail 2 [1]. You can see why above Angel station the Electrowerkz manages to be a very long-running goth/alternative/metal nightclub surrounded by modern office buildings. (I'm sure there are more examples.) It was wonderful to have the three large concert venues around Tottenham Court Road when I was a student -- they were easy to get to and easy to get home from. I appreciated that even more when I was a bit older and I had to be at work the next morning. It's possible for new music venues to work, for example the Islington Academy is in a shopping centre, but my concern is these flashy new LED-venues will be too expensive for smaller or non-mainstream bands to use. [0] https://2577f60fe192df40d16a-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/assets/library/document/1/original/1_volume_1_old_oak_common_to_abbey_wood.pdf https://2577f60fe192df40d16a-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c55... page 15 / sheet 7 for Tottenham Court Road. [1] https://crossrail2.co.uk/discover/safeguarding/ https://crossrail2.co.uk/discover/safeguarding/ [2] https://www.electrowerkz.co.uk/ https://www.electrowerkz.co.uk/
- DoughnutHole 4y ago
  Cheap rent certainly facilitates nightclubs and venues, but it's not entirely what shaped the area - Denmark Street was a centre for the music industry long before Crossrail and urban decay. The music industry on the street dates back to it being a centre of music publishing in the 1920s, back when music publishing meant publishing sheet music more than it meant publishing recordings. Recording studios and music shops popped up through the 60's and 70's when traditional music publishing declined. Finally in the 80's nightclubs appeared, probably due to cheap rents due to the rail safeguarding you mentioned.
jeegsy 4y ago
The hotel, apparently, “brings together creative expression and fine architectural detail to present something fierce” Lines like these are why this article in the Guardian of all places is a strong contender for my favorite article of the year. I laughed so much at all the examples of "PR gobbledegook". I see those all the time. A disruptive, immersive experience indeed!
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Fuck. Not Denmark St - which used to be a shabby, weird, and occasionally fun place with decades of character. So much for that familiar corner of London.
monkey_monkey 4y ago
Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street was a huge part of my teenage years, every visit to London involved spending hours there looking through what they had and their collection of 2000AD original artwork and prints.
icare_1er 4y ago
God how I miss the 12 bar club and the other heavy metal venue next to it, "Fox"-something...
analog31 4y ago
I can't find the exact words, but from Hans Richter's Dada: Art and anti-art, about when dealers started selling copies of the famous urinal: "We hoped the people would react with shock and open their minds. Instead, they reacted with amusement and opened their wallets."

50 points by Kaibeezy 4y ago

I read a translation of Simulacra and Simulation once. I probably missed most of the nuance, but it's an interesting way to see things like this, where real life gets eaten by its own image.

telesilla 4y ago

What a strange feeling to see street corners you know so well, from a much more wild youth when they were just a little bit more grimy but admittedly not as grimy as the generations before me who can grumble even further- what a strange feeling to see them turn into branded vehicles for the wealthy to pat themselves on the back and feel like they are contributing to culture.

toyg 4y ago
Strategically coopting countercultures is how consumer-based capitalism has become unassailable. Humans will pay any price to feel like they belong.
- batch12 4y ago
  It is also how culture moves on. Nobody counterculture wants to be part of the mainstream 'underground'. The new, interesting stuff will move somewhere else and this area will be a vanilla shadow of what it once was. Especially cringeworthy to me were the pictures of mural-graffiti overlayed with a repeating hashtag.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > Strategically coopting countercultures Unless you actually think there's literal evil mustache-twirling going on there's a much simpler explanation -- the people who were a part of that counterculture are now the establishment and, like everyone else, romanticize when they were angsty in their teens and twenties. It's why Guns N' Roses is suburban backyard BBQ pasta salad music now. You're right that people will pay money to belong but this isn't a example of it, this is people paying money for nostalgia. All counterculture has an expiration date since you can't pass it down to your kids. If you could it would defeat the whole point.
  - toyg 4y ago
    It has little or nothing to do with age, "selling out" begins as soon as culture is packaged as consumable goods. You write a book, it sells well, you're now wealthy and invested in maintaining the system you railed against a minute ago. Meanwhile, others will want to be like you, so will start packaging and selling their output; and consumers will continue to pay for the feeling of belonging to your cultural sphere. Same for music and songs, video and film, and so on. Very few people really ever opt out of these mechanisms. At a macro level, consumer society will automatically fagocitate any cultural output - because to experience culture is to consume it, and guess what the system is specialised in? Producing, selling, and refining at infinitum, anything that can be consumed. Everything else is just the natural outcome of this phenomenon.
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
> For £456 a night and upwards, you can stay like a rock star in ‘session rooms’ pre-vandalised with curated graffiti At some point the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail through the window of these places.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail through the window of these places I strongly disagree. That just gives them an excuse for why their stupid venture failed. They blame some other group. It's much better to see it fail entirely on its own. The real musicians and audience will just find a new home. Times change, people migrate, etc.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  The burnt out rooms will be available for extra £ or used as an art installation for visitors to ogle at.
- paganel 4y ago
  Not condoning violence by any means, but truth be told that would be very situationist, i.e. quite artsy.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > At some point the best contribution to culture one can make is a molotov cocktail they are desparate for attention and cultural significance, something like that would put them on the map
- Karellen 4y ago
  It does feel very "15 million merits" - finding something actually raw and authentic, and then coopting the surface aesthetic of it to sell bland corporate shit. Note to anyone in corporate management - if you watch that Black Mirror episode and think that it's one of the few with a happy ending, you are the baddies. Also, from the article - "grassroots". I'd have LOL'd if I hadn't just died inside.
- rasz 4y ago
thriftwy 4y ago
Well, haven't you explicitly agreed to replace everything you love with a sterile copy of it bearing a hefty price tag when you have adopted pre-distressed jeans en masse?

Cymrukicks 4y ago

You just need to be aware its not for you you dirty peasant. Its everything you loved, built and in some cases contributed to, distilled into a lovely aesthetic that can be sold for way more money than you can afford as a back drop in an instagram post.

z9znz 4y ago
Who really wants to stay in areas which become increasingly gentrified (and lobotomized)? This will be for the simple tourists and the other fakers to enjoy, something nice and artificial and tidy.
toyg 4y ago
And what is new? Anything and anyone related to the music business have been "selling out" since the '50s. That whole Elvis business was "everything you loved, built and in some cases contributed to, distilled into a lovely aesthetic that can be sold for way more money than you can afford" to folks that still had to sit at the back of the bus.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Uh, I think the relationship between black people and Elvis’ music is a little more complicated than simple consumption.
  - toyg 4y ago
    For the folks who built and sold Elvis to rich white consumers, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't.

z9znz 4y ago

> “radical new technology-driven marketing, entertainment and information service housed in a super-flexible, digitally enabled streetscape” How can you argue with that? It has to be a success! This will be the perfect street for the fake performers - the ones who pretend to play an instrument, but the "backing track" also has the lead. Good fakers can be difficult to spot if you're just casually strolling by. I bet this kind of "radically new" "digitally enabled" place will bring in just the kind of people who can appreciate fake buskers.

midenginedcoupe 4y ago

Well this is objectively awful, becuase of course it is. But let's not pretend _this_ is the end of Denmark St. It has been dead and irrelevant for decades.

midenginedcoupe 4y ago
PS. Archer St's history is fascinating, too. I've heard so many stories from the old jazzers about what this was like: https://www.muhistory.com/from-the-archive-4-archer-street-london/ https://www.muhistory.com/from-the-archive-4-archer-street-l...
thorin 4y ago
12 bar venue was still active in the early 2000s. It was still the place to go for instruments in London until about 10-15 years ago.

avidphantasm 4y ago

Commodification of culture brought on by rampant capitalism ruins everything.

Karellen 4y ago

> This “district” is in fact a single project, albeit one incorporating some historic fragments, in the ownership of one company, Consolidated Developments. Holy cow. That's as zero-imagination bland corporate hellscape as "Umbrella Corporation", "Omni Consumer Products", or any similar corporatocratic dystopian nightmare. Did they decide that "Evil, Inc." wasn't subtle enough? Or was the goal to come up with a name that couldn't be satirised?

dusted 4y ago
I think it's a cool name.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Cool in that when you see trucks roll up with that name, written in Microgramma in gray or cyan together with a simple geometric logo that vaguely suggests a cityscape all on a stark white background, your buttcheeks instinctually clench together because you've seen this 80s dystopian sci-fi and know exactly how it ends -- sure.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Most people understand that movies aren't real.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>Did they decide that "Evil, Inc." wasn't subtle enough I believe Monsanto already owns that one?

Symbiote 4y ago

The journalist doesn't cover why the relatively low-rent shops and large bars and clubs could exist in the first place. The Crossrail/Elizabeth Line railway route was planned in 1974. Essential points on the route -- like major stations -- have been "safeguarded" in some form since then[0]. That limited any development -- no significant new buildings were allowed on the safeguarded sites, and very little investment in the existing ones. A bar, nightclub or concert venue fits well in that space. Recording studios and music shops fit well in the smaller buildings. See the safeguarded route of Crossrail 2 [1]. You can see why above Angel station the Electrowerkz manages to be a very long-running goth/alternative/metal nightclub surrounded by modern office buildings. (I'm sure there are more examples.) It was wonderful to have the three large concert venues around Tottenham Court Road when I was a student -- they were easy to get to and easy to get home from. I appreciated that even more when I was a bit older and I had to be at work the next morning. It's possible for new music venues to work, for example the Islington Academy is in a shopping centre, but my concern is these flashy new LED-venues will be too expensive for smaller or non-mainstream bands to use. [0] https://2577f60fe192df40d16a-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/assets/library/document/1/original/1_volume_1_old_oak_common_to_abbey_wood.pdf https://2577f60fe192df40d16a-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c55... page 15 / sheet 7 for Tottenham Court Road. [1] https://crossrail2.co.uk/discover/safeguarding/ https://crossrail2.co.uk/discover/safeguarding/ [2] https://www.electrowerkz.co.uk/ https://www.electrowerkz.co.uk/

DoughnutHole 4y ago
Cheap rent certainly facilitates nightclubs and venues, but it's not entirely what shaped the area - Denmark Street was a centre for the music industry long before Crossrail and urban decay. The music industry on the street dates back to it being a centre of music publishing in the 1920s, back when music publishing meant publishing sheet music more than it meant publishing recordings. Recording studios and music shops popped up through the 60's and 70's when traditional music publishing declined. Finally in the 80's nightclubs appeared, probably due to cheap rents due to the rail safeguarding you mentioned.

jeegsy 4y ago

The hotel, apparently, “brings together creative expression and fine architectural detail to present something fierce” Lines like these are why this article in the Guardian of all places is a strong contender for my favorite article of the year. I laughed so much at all the examples of "PR gobbledegook". I see those all the time. A disruptive, immersive experience indeed!

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

Fuck. Not Denmark St - which used to be a shabby, weird, and occasionally fun place with decades of character. So much for that familiar corner of London.

monkey_monkey 4y ago

Forbidden Planet on Denmark Street was a huge part of my teenage years, every visit to London involved spending hours there looking through what they had and their collection of 2000AD original artwork and prints.

icare_1er 4y ago

God how I miss the 12 bar club and the other heavy metal venue next to it, "Fox"-something...

analog31 4y ago

I can't find the exact words, but from Hans Richter's Dada: Art and anti-art, about when dealers started selling copies of the famous urinal: "We hoped the people would react with shock and open their minds. Instead, they reacted with amusement and opened their wallets."