People shouldn't be so afraid of big government-- it's big business that's ruining our beautiful world. Consider all those Mom- and- Pop drugstores that have been bulldozed to make way for a CVS or Rite Aid. And what about all those independently- minded newspapers that promoted free thought and vigorous debate, slashed away by the Rupert Murdochs of this world? Time Warner and Fox (that nice Mr. Murdoch once again) own your TV and Sony owns your hi-fi (and just about everything you put on it). So why, oh, why are people embracing big business' attempt to conglomeratize club music?

These immense clubs are most prevalent in Britain, where Ministry of Sound, Cream, and Renaissance make sure you're a MoS, Cream, or Renaissance raver from cradle to grave (or at least from when you drop your first e to when you mong out and slump in a cigarette butt- strewn corner for the final time). Each of these organizations not only has the hanger- sized venue into which 15,000 luv'd-up punters traipse every Saturday night, but also the clothing, the record bags, the slipmats, the nasal hair extractor-- all the clobber you need to proclaim yourself a Cream kind of guy or MoS gal. If you think the Gap sucks Satan's knob-end, check out corporate clubbing.

The malignant tumor that is corporate clubbing doesn't stop at the peripheral goodies, though-- it's the music, too. There's a very nasty aspect to this corporatization of club culture. House music and disco were originally counter- cultural, underground movements which celebrated difference and individuality. But this ethos is exactly what these huge clubs go out of their way to stamp out. They want cookie cutter participants to attend their nights and to buy into their mindset as well as their marketing strategy. So to attract the thousands of clubbers needed to turn a two- hundred percent profit, the clubs fly in a slew of top name jocks who cram three appearances in separate clubs in a single evening, collecting 30,000 pounds (and a couple of blow jobs from e'd-up club dollies) in an evening. Their sets last an hour and, of course, that's not much time for developing a set. So they resort to spinning guaranteed floor- fillers-- those huge choons that'll get hands in the air and pacifiers popping. And, at the moment, those choons are trance (known in polite circles as-- blech!-- "progressive house").

Trance fits the corporate clubbing mentality to a t. Design once, sell many. You hear one trance tune, you've heard 'em all. And Dave Seaman's DJ mix record Renaissance America Volume 1 reeks of this. Each of the cuts he's selected fits the trance formula, and has a money- back guarantee to get witless, herd- like, ravers happy, happy, happy.

What strikes me after subjecting myself to seventy minutes of this goop is how remarkably unfunky trance is. It's totally whitebread music. There's none of the mechanized dystopian unease of top techno, nor does trance have the irresistible syncopation of speed garage or the jacking swing of house, Chicago's finest export. In trance, the kickdrum thumps away at roughtly 135 bpm, a Roland 303 snakes around and occasionally spikes, a rinky- dink keyboard appeggio wows us with its originality, annoying swooshes course throughout in a most unwelcome fashion and, only if we're very lucky does some dappy vocalist utter something so un-profound that I'm shocked that the cast of "Undressed" hasn't cashed in and released a 12" in the genre yet.

Seaman selects BT's "Godspeed" to kick off his set and, though Brian Transeau released the superb Ima album back in 1995, "Godspeed" demonstrates that the former collaborator with Deep Dish (not to mention that Tori Amos character) has lost his sense of adventure. Or maybe the cash became easier to come by. "Godspeed" is based on the same bassline that every trance track has possessed since Sven Vath's Eye-Q label released Cygnus X's "Orange Theme." In fact, if you spun the 1994 Eye-Q compilation Behind the Eye, Volume 1 you'd never have to buy another trance record again. But where's the idiocy in such sage advice?

Brother Brown (concealing their work for arch shite- mongerers, Ace of Base) offers up "Under the Water" for Seaman and we're subjected to Cygnus X's "Orange Theme" modified slightly by a sub- Everything but the Girl vocalist, Marie Frank, who's wimpily chastising someone about leaving her-- you guessed it-- under the water. So, hurry up and drown, dammit!

But at least that's exciting in comparison with "Desert" by Voices. Dull sequencer runs-– check; Cygnus X "Orange Theme" bassline-- check; relentless kickdrum-- check; swooshes-- check; Roland 303 sneakily adding the suspicion of a threat-- check. But what's this addition? Wowee! Cockrock guitars that wouldn't be out of place on the theme song to a Tangerine Dream- scored kids' show about a super- duper motorcycle that fights crime in a seedy city of the near future. Ugh! Hand me the horse sedative now, I'm begging you. So, the choice is yours: the focus- grouped, market- tested formula of trance; or the individual, quirky, idiosyncratic, risk- taking mentality that sends a big "fuck you" to the corporations who think they've demographed you.

-Paul Cooper