"The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground." – Frank Zappa I don’t know too much about Frank Zappa, but I’ve liked this quote since the first time I heard it. Even back in my teenage days, I had a self-proclaimed disdain for commercial music. When I was into hip hop, I took – and still to some extent take – pride in listening to the "real stuff," not the radio candy that gets imposed on the masses. I started getting into electronic music in 1999. That year, I spent the summer in New York City. I had just turned twenty-one, so I was checking out the club scene…going to Life, Limelight, Webster Hall, Magnum Bar, and a host of other spots. That’s how I was first exposed to electronic music, but I didn’t really stop to notice the fact that I was beginning to enjoy an entirely new genre. It wasn’t until the fall of 1999 that I really fell head over heels into electronic music. My gateway was Paul Oakenfold’s New York Global Underground CDs. Those two discs blew my mind. It was through the GU series that I discovered Sasha, Digweed, Danny Tenaglia, Nick Warren, etc. …and here I am today, roughly seven years later, still a helpless electronic music junkie 
As I started getting into electronic music, I felt like it fit nicely with my tendency to shun the commercial stuff. As I kept hitting the clubs and finding new DJs, I had the sense that what I was listening to was "underground." It’s funny now to look back on the evolution of my conception of what is "commercial" in the context of electronic music. In the past several years, my involvement in Resonant Vibes has given me a different perspective on things. RV has exposed me to a bunch of new DJs and artists – from the most famous to the up-and-coming. I started thinking about the idea of "what is commercial" because I recently took a liking to Max Graham’s July 16 Essential Mix. I realized that I was generally a little less open to the Essential Mixes – even though there have been some amazing ones – because I felt like they could sometimes be on the commercial side. As much as I have a distaste for the idea of sheepishly following the mainstream, I am also wary of becoming so fixated on non-commercial sounds that I miss out on or undervalue respectable music.
Eddie B
