In the world of dance music these days, the work never seems to actually stop. Time was that much of the industry worked from Tuesday to Saturday – anyone trying to get hold of someone on a Monday in the 90s had a good chance of being told to call back the next day. Those days are long gone.
Much of this is because a lot of the work involved in promoting events now takes place on social media – and unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t close down at 5pm on a Friday for the weekend. So with that in mind, what are Nervous Records promoting this weekend?
Well, aside from the usual merchandise and music that gets heavily plugged, they’re also pushing tickets for an event at LGNDS in New York on December 16th. The venue – which seems to like omitting vowels from its name – will host names such as Josh Wink, Pablo Cellabos, and DJ Boris for one night only.
To celebrate the occasion, Nervous have decided to put up a promo video featuring “Don’t Laugh”, a track that Josh Wink released under his Winx alias on the label all the way back in 1995. Nervous seem very pleased to point out that since its release, “there have been no copycat imitators”…
We’re going to put out a rather controversial theory here, and it’s more than likely to be one that some of you disagree with – but here goes. Is it just the slightest bit possible that the reason no one has tried to imitate “Don’t Laugh” since its release is because it’s actually rubbish?
One of our regular sources used to work for a large vinyl distribution company in the 90s, and recalls “I remember when ‘Don’t Laugh’ came out in 1995, and it was a bit of a strange one. When we first came across it, we thought it was some kind of joke. No one ever admitted that they liked it. Most of the record shops I had contacts with thought it was s***, and so did we. Inexplicably, it sold well and kept selling all year, yet no one apparently liked it.”.
Then again, the fact that records like this – which Josh Wink himself admitted he made as a joke – are remembered fondly nowadays says how much things have fallen since the 1990s. At least it had a sense of humour about it – maybe there’s a lesson there for those producers taking themselves far too seriously…
