Minimal Wave Records

Hailey,

It is not the place, it is the person.  If you have good friends and good music you can live wherever.  There is no physical utopia.  I grew up until I was 13 in a small town in upstate New York with a population of 5000 and that is where I originally got into Depeche Mode/New Order/OMD and synth bands in general.  Everyone in the high school was into hair metal bands back then, but I wasn’t and neither were my friends.  It doesn’t really matter where you live, but more who you are, and what you can make of it.

A person could compare Jenning to New York, and say Jennings is better, because the rent is cheaper, the weather is better, and the community is safer.  And if you wish you had good record stores New York is not the place to go.  There is pretty much no place to go for that anymore.  Anyway, there is some insight I thought I would share, because when I was 16 and wanted to get out of upstate New York I remember the prinicipal to my school telling me “there is no utopia, because if there was we would all be there”.  I said yeah whatever, and proceeded to move to California, but in hindsight I think there is definite truth to that statement. 

obscure

well…brooklyn has a wonderful vibrant ecosphere atm. i had the pleasure to visit earlier this year and it left an impression i still think daily of…
one could say the same for berlin and perhaps the duopolis the hague / rotterdam. You just dont visit the venues as much when you life outside the city borders. djs / artists move to that region because it gives them opportunities and easy acces to the network.

also professionalwise there are certain places that have a supportive ecosphere. werent you an architect?
in holland you need to work in either rotterdam or amsterdam if you dont want to get stuck in serving the commodity market. other cities in general have at most one or two decent offices. If you loose your job there, or you dont like it, and you life outside commuting distance to both cities mentioned you’re either screwed or you need to move.

Lot of people from Brooklyn. Must be a great city then.

[quote author=“phoenixlipo”]hi..
i m Mark - i live in brooklyn, and play synthesizers in some bands. to pay my bills, i write indexes (mostly for medical journals) - it’s a great job for lazy, easily distracted people with negligible social skills…...........

Phoenix Lipo

?

Spartak,

I understand your point, and I’m sure you understand mine.  I have been to Berlin, Brooklyn, and Amsterdam, and I know that these are all places with a lot happening.  However, I don’t think “you need” to live in any of these places to be content or happy with your life.  Yes I do architecture for a living, but that does not mean I have to live in Los Angeles or Amsterdam, or Berlin.  That is the part of your point of view that I think is close minded.  You said “you need” to do this, and “you need” to do that.  The truth is you can do things a number of ways, and live your life a number of ways.  You don’t “need to” go to Brooklyn to be into minimal synth or to be happy about your life.  Just as you don’t “need to” live in Amsterdam or Rotterdam to be a dutch architect.  You may think you do, but you don’t.  I have a friend that lives in Hammond, Louisiana.  He travels all over the world every year for his profession.  However, the place he loves to live in is Hammond which has absolutely zero ecosphere for his profession.  There are people that live all over the world that are into minimal synth, and a lot of them are content with where they live.  It is just a matter of who you are.  And geography really doesn’t change who you are.

obscure

it’s just a matter of pespective indeed…or better what you value most.
I would have never moved to Rotterdam if it wasnt for the job.  But if i have the choice to work at a lousy office in a town where i have most of my friends, or a great job somewhere else for me it will be the latter. Friends you can still meet on special occassions, especially the netherlands where most of the country is within reasonable travelling distance. But the reality of your day to day life or where you (want to) live is not something fully in ones own hands…

i do think geography and the city you life as a tremendous impact on how you develop as a person. Every city has it’s own social patterns subconsiouscly engraved in the behaviour and way of thinking of it’s inhabitants. And just like a regional dialect, if you live there long enough, you will embrace part of that mentality. People can be attracted to a city not just for the built environment or professional / cultural ecosystem but also for that specific mentality they feel connected to.

i think it’s very american (or perhaps westcoast?) to believe in the autonomy of the individual, but for the most part it’s just wishful thinking.

Spartak,

I will name my second band “Autonomy of the Individual” :wink:

Here is some more wishful thinking for you. 

The reality of your day to day life, and where you want to live is absolutely in ones own hands. 

It makes me sad that you feel like you don’t have control of your life, but it has control of you.  It also makes me sad that you speak in such absolutes about what can and cannot be done and achieved by a person.  I don’t think believing in individualism and the characteristics of one’s identity is an american or westcoast ideal at all.  It is more the ideal of a human being that can think for themselves, and make decisions about their life based on those thoughts.  And I’m sure there are just as many individuals that can do that in the Netherlands than there are in america or anywhere else.  In terms of choosing a great job or your friends it depends on which you value more.  Your friends or how much money you make.  It is true that your friends don’t pay the bills, but it is also true that the amount of money you make does not exponentially increase your happiness with how much is earned.  You chose money over your friends so that means you value money more.  At the same time you do sound conflicted about this decision.  Hearing you speak about Brooklyn with such reverie makes it sound to me like you would rather be in Brooklyn working in a pizza parlor, and enjoying the minimal synth ecosphere then you are now in rotterdam with your great job.  Anyway, that can be done, and you know it can be done, so if you think that is the key to happiness then why don’t you do it.

In terms of city life having a tremendous impact on a person I would say it can, and it cannot.  I definitely think it varies from zero impact to tremendous impact according to the individual.

I lived in a redneck town until age 13 and I would say I have absolutely no redneck qualities or mentality

Then from 13 to 18 I lived in a Hippie town.  I never became a hippy or did drugs or embraced that mentality either.

And for the last 16 years I’ve lived in Los Angeles which is known for being superficial and fake.  Once again, this is what this city is known for, but I have the complete opposite mentality.

However, my sister who has lived in Brooklyn on and off for the last 9 years has definitely embraced the mentality of being a New Yorker.  She talks and acts like a New Yorker and the city has had an effect on who she is.  To me that comes across as somewhat fake though.  I can understand if a person grows up in a certain place it having a greater effect, but when a person is already grown, and they move somewhere and automatically adopt the mentallity of the place it can be perceived as contrived.  Which is how I see it in her.

Anyway, I will say that a cities effects on a persons pscyhe definitely varies from person to person.  One person will be happy wherever they live, and another will be miserable wherever they live.  However, I will still not say the key to happiness for anyone is living in a different place.  If you are miserable in one place there are more factors than just the built environment, and the mentallity of the city that are involved in that misery.

obscure

did i ever speak about money?
I speak about getting professional satisfaction out of what you do. That I am able to do something i desire to do and can be proud of.
if you are a wizzkid in the states, you have a higher chance of finding the job you desire in silicon valey than,say, detroit. if you want to do industrial design for apple your choises are also rather limited.
I also didnt say i dont have control over my life. I am the one who makes the decisions but you cannot have it all: the perfect neighbourhood, the perfect job, living where most of your friends do. Life is in the end about making choices, and setting priorities for those.

You set up one absolute overriding criteria: living in your favourite city whereas for others there might be other criteria more important than that. Most of the times they overlap anyways (the fashion fotographer in downtown new york, the farmer on the countryside, the fisher at a port) but sometimes they dont fully.

Moving from one part of the country to the other is not that dramatic here as in the states though, as you can still meet up with your friends over the weekend. You make it sound like I chose my job over my friends where the reality is you can feel miserable and see your friends, or you can feel good about yourself yet have to travel a bit. Everybody spreads out over the country anyways.

Perhaps you have everything perfectly like you wish for, props to you. but the reality of life is not like that for 99% of the people.

I might sound depressing to you, but in fact i’m rather happy with my life. i’m just saying you cannot have it all, at least not immediately. Life itself is a work in progress.

I realise I sound like a pragmatic Forest Gump but it’s true.

Now that I made so many post in this thread let’s pull out the goods:

in my early thirties (i look young yet wise 8)  )
architect
record collector and opportunist wedding dj
living in rotterdam, straight in the most infamous 50m of the country. i like the sleazyness of it though.

Yes, I agree that you cannot have it all, and I don’t have it all.  My point is that you can make decisions as to what you do have.  It is not something that is completely out of your control.  If you are miserable somewhere you can make the best of it.  The place does not control your misery, but you do.  So if you don’t like the place you can either leave which will definitely change where you are, but will not definitely change who you are, or you can change who you are and try to make that place into a place that you do like.

mid thirties
architect
record collector and opportunist
own the dutch punk comp. rotterdam collection from 1980 with the great minimal synth track “Neon Theme” by Steve.
living in hollywood

obscure

looks like we have a lot in common
not into midgetbiking though.

that rotterdam compilation sounds interesting i’ll try to check it out.

Well that’s another thing we have in common,
because I am not into midget biking either :wink:

You live in rotterdam without that compilation :?:

Tell me that you don’t have the la valse 7” and there goes
all your dutch record collecting crediblity

well i dont have much ‘dutch record collecting credibility’ anyways :oops:
i wasnt there the first time around and watzmann pretty much seems to have cleared the inventory around here…
can you imagine my frustration for living in eindhoven for nearly half my life and not run across a copy of minx / zimmerman? (granted i only knew they were from there the last year or so but still)

=/

Saludos desde México city, aqui tambien escuchamos musica bonita

intro

i am trying to get out of these lukewarm waters and thus will introduce myself.

born/raised in d.c. area in ‘83. moved to nyc when i was 14, which is where i’m at now. i lived in berlin a few times, most recently in ‘07.

i am a filmmaker, currently working on an ESL video about what happens to english when it starts to grow mold.

i enjoy ex-yugoslavian wave, prefab architecture, collecting old pattern films, spicy-food-as-limit-experience, and pretending i’m foreign.

there are really embarrassing videos of me on youtube when i was 16.

be my dutch language penpal!

TOT ZIENS

jordan