The year was 2002.
Dance music was becoming colourless because the youth marketing department had caught on to the rave trend and was recklessly driving it into the ground for profit.
Meanwhile, rock music was veering into emo guy with a guitar shoegaze nonsenseland – a combination of the post-Nirvana seriousness that killed fun rock n’ roll and the angst of the 9⁄11 period. Hip hop was alright but it was in that heady period where it just kind of sounded like spoken word set to a jazz trio.
Needless to say, I was bored, music had stopped being fun, and I was stuck listening to classic jams and New York Electro tracks from one off artists in hopes of feeling something –
buuuuut THEN
like a comet blazing through the dreary night sky or some such analogy came Bobby Conn, with orange lips and fuschia sequin jumpsuit, a non-ironic throwback to the magic of the glam era, with an intense stage presence and a full embrace of the rough edges of subculture while still celebrating our collective artistic spirit, and it was fucking good. So fucking good.
Today when I went to revisit his album, I saw he only has, like, 10,000 plays on Spotify – what the shit is that?
We all need to listen to more Bobby Conn. Let’s start here:
—natalie michelle
Flommist Natalie Michelle doesn’t have a bio. She just rants. Copyright © 2016 Natalie Michelle.
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