Here’s the ref – it’s a reprinted journal article so it might be easier to find that way:

McRobbie, Angela (2002), ‘Clubs to Companies: Notes on the Decline of Political Culture in Speeded Up Creative Worlds’, Cultural Studies, 16(4), pp 517-31.

Now is a good time to return to it and other books I dismissed for instrumental (diss completion) reasons. that and i have book reviews overdue for mark, eeek…

The difference between the commons and commodities in relation to the infrastructure of a scene and their correlatiing mode of organisation (gift economy versus entreprenuerial) does need to be staked out.

Glen, are you familiar with Angela McRobbie’s work on the mode of organisation of 80s dance parties in Britain being commodified by the self same people and later used as a template for creative work?

I can hunt down the ref for you if interested – it’s also in Hartley’s CI reader.

By contrast, in Berlin I went to plenty of warehouse parties that just kept going all through the weekend in places that literally fell apart around is. Some of the best times of my life.

Tyro Rex, indeed http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/showpost.php?p=392002045&postcount=268

I think you’re overcomplicating the difference between a party (always free, very rarely public) and a gig/show/festival/event/night (always “organised around producing a surplus value from the enjoyment of the music”).

Maybe, I was explaining what I meant, I did express it quite simply in the first comment I thought.

The difference between the commons and commodities in relation to the infrastructure of a scene and their correlatiing mode of organisation (gift economy versus entreprenuerial) does need to be staked out. I am not talking about separate categories of events and their differences, but different events happening in what is ostensibly a single scene. I don’t think this is unwarranted as some forum posters invoke memorialised conceptions of bygone ‘eras’ (late 1980s, early 1990s) and ‘dance parties’ and ‘raves’, compared to this recent party, as a critique of the current commodified events for emerging out of these earlier events.

As a generalisation, I don’t agree with your ‘people love’ ‘always free’ assessment. Most punters are happy to pay money if it means they get to attend events for the purpose of the event, not someone else’s profit. However, some punters prefer to go to hyper-commodified events because they are allegedly safer, cleaner, better organised, etc. Yet, such events are plagued with numbskulls who attend for the purpose of their own enjoyment, as that is what they are ‘consuming’, rather than helping produce an event to share and belong to. It has little to do with whether something is a ‘free’ event for punters or rip-off/’value for money’ event for the purposes of making someone money, but the expectations of consumers as soon as someone is organising these events for profit.

Plus, are the people commenting on the boards and in response to the news article are simply saying “don’t compare”? Rather aren’t they saying “don’t use your hegemonic capitalist models of valorisation to judge how we want the scene” (for the reasons I argue above)? I don’t know? Perhaps this is what you meant?

similar…in that they are both different…

Any two things are ‘similar’ if the only requirement is they both be different to a third thing, glen. I think you’re overcomplicating the difference between a party (always free, very rarely public) and a gig/show/festival/event/night (always “organised around producing a surplus value from the enjoyment of the music”).

People love parties. Complementary services, including the music, are provided for the enjoyment of the party goers, so naturally un-commodified: gifts. For that reason and many others, parties can’t happen regularly or for everybody.

Similarly, the various critical replies unfortunately have to rely on a ‘taste’ based discourse.

Most people seemed to be saying, do we really have to state the obvious? Don’t compare your super-expensive/awesome value for money festival with the free party we went to last night. Any benefits you try to sell are missing the point.