We have to concede that here at Ears To The House, we have mixed feelings about Simon Dunmore. On the one hand, the Defected boss is buying up huge swathes of house music history and claiming it as his own – but on the other, you don’t manage to remain in the music business for as long as he has without some business acumen.
However, there is one subject where we find ourselves in total agreement with Dunmore – and that would be mobile phones at clubs. The pompous types you might find in certain dance music press would have you believe everything was better in the 1990s and these phones are a blight of the modern age – whilst usually writing aforementioned articles using the same phones they claim to despise.
Our view is different. Had smartphones existed back in the 90s, does anyone seriously believe that clubbers wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to have a selfie taken amongst the stars of the time? The mere idea someone would have passed up the chance to have a photo with the likes of Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Todd Terry and so on is simply absurd – and the purists know it.
Our editor did a post back in the Amateur’s House days imagining what social media would have been like if it existed during the 90s – we may be biased, but we think it’s worth reading. The truth is the technology now exists, so it gets used. And as Dunmore correctly points out here, it’s the ultimate promotional tool for a brand like Defected…
Yes, there’s a certain degree of “well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” here, but it doesn’t stop it being true. Nonetheless, Ears To The House finds it utterly baffling why the mainstream dance music press gets so agitated about phones on dancefloors – yet has nothing to say on the real big issues of the day…
