CAN techno SAVE ROCK & ROLL?

‘No, no, no,” the president of one of the biggest record labels in the world shouts in mock horror. “Don’t say that word. All this talk about techno being the next big thing in pop is starting to drive me crazy.

“I just had a call from one of the most respected artists in the world. . . . Someone who has been around for years and who has nothing to do with this music. But he’s nervous about it and wants to know whether he should hire remixers to do techno versions of his new songs. He hasn’t even written the songs yet and he’s asking about remixes.”

The harried executive isn’t alone in his frustration.

Shaken by flat album sales over the last three years, the $12-billion-a-year record industry is searching desperately for something--anything--to help reignite consumer interest in shiny compact discs.

In the four months since MTV shook up the industry by announcing that it was adding a techno program to its lineup, techno has emerged in the eyes of trend-watchers as the next big thing.

“Trent Reznor said something smart: Music needs to be dangerous, needs an edge to it,” says Steven Baker, president of Warner Bros. Records. “Techno has an element of that. The beats are kind of frightening. It gives its audience an identity, almost as if you are in a special fraternity.”

There is a revolutionary, rebellious feel to techno--and its accompanying all-night, drug-charged club and rave scenes--that could appeal to young record buyers looking for a way to separate themselves from the music and styles of past generations.

Rather than traditional pop-rock elements, the emphasis in techno--or dance music, as supporters of the genre prefer to call it--is on frantic or calming soundscapes, mostly created by synthesizers and sampling.

The British-led movement has been hot in Europe for years, and has already generated enough excitement among rock musicians for many of them, including U2 and David Bowie, to employ dance textures in their new albums. Recording under the pseudonym x-sample, guitar legend Eric Clapton has made a techno-influenced album as part of a duo billed as T.D.F.

Not wanting to be left behind if there is a cultural and commercial shift to techno, many executives, artists and managers are trying quickly to figure out their place in this new, mysterious world--with its strange-sounding subgenres such as trip-hop and jungle--and a new collection of stars, from the Prodigy to the Chemical Brothers.

The race is on to sign techno artists--just in case something explodes. Radio is experimenting with dance formats--notably “Groove Radio” (103.1 FM) in L.A.--and the music will be showcased in a high-profile tour this summer.

“It’s like a fever,” says one label president.

But is all this activity genuine heat that will warm up the sales of records, or just “Saturday Night Fever” redux, a replay of the ‘70s disco era that produced hit records but not career artists?

“[So far] there’s not only no smoke, but there’s no fire,” says Mike Shalett, chief operating officer of SoundScan, which monitors U.S. record sales. Together, the 10 most high-profile dance-related albums of the ‘90s have sold only 1.1 million copies here. That’s less than half the sales of the second Hootie & the Blowfish album, which has been widely perceived in the industry as a disappointment, after the group’s previous album sold 9 million copies.

In a survey of more than a dozen U.S. record executives by Calendar, only one thought there was even remotely enough evidence to justify calling techno “the next big thing.”

“All this talk about the end of alternative rock and the birth of techno is just distracting,” says Don Ienner, president of Columbia Records, summarizing the majority view. “As an industry, we tend to have a lemmings quality and go chasing after things. But we need to keep focused and search for great stars and great songs.

“Techno is only sonically enhancing or dressing up what you have. You can put whatever dress or suit you want on any person. It’s the artist and the song, not what suit you’re wearing.”

Roy Lott, executive vice president and general manager of Arista Records, agrees: “Grunge didn’t happen because record companies said it was the next big thing. It happened because Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder came along and wrote songs that millions of people identify with. You always make a mistake by signing genres rather than artists.”

*

So, what’s the case for techno?

Mainstream pop-rock certainly needs help. The traditional textures were wearing thin by the early ‘80s, prompting such respected artists as Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne and Sting to look to world music, among other movements, for inspiration. Others, including Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, later began focusing on techno.

Not to be confused with mostly witless elements of disco, the best of techno music has substance and sophistication. These records are built around imaginative rhythm patterns that express all the emotional colors, from exhilaration to despair, that we are used to in pop.

Just as with its musical cousin hip-hop, there’ll continue to be a hard-core factor in techno that will probably appeal only to a cult. But some techno artists may mix and match with pop and rock the same way some best-selling hip-hop artists have done. Indeed, the influence of techno and hip-hop has already been felt in the works of such pop-rock bestsellers as Reznor and Beck.

“As far as major labels investing a lot of money in this, the commercial potential is enormous and these investments are positive,” says Jason Bentley, the respected deejay who appears on both public station KCRW-FM (89.9) and commercial powerhouse KROQ-FM (106.7) and is co-head of Quango Records, a techno and dance-oriented label distributed by Island.

“In a way, this is the first international pop phenomenon--this club culture, this techno culture, this use of technology,” he says. “So when it’s grounded in that success, there’s certainly commercial potential here.”

And some retailers do sense some commercial smoke, even if it is just a wisp at this point.

“There’s really been a lack of anything new for people to get excited about and this really does seem to be having an effect,” says Bob Bell, new music buyer for the Wherehouse retail chain.

“These bands all have alternative credibility, and in terms of radio airplay they’re doing the most important thing--making a really strong single that radio can support.

“Sometimes you have these bands with great buzz and people talking about the album, but if you don’t have one hit song, it doesn’t happen. But when you get the combination of street-level buzz and a song radio can get behind, that makes hit records.”

But will radio get behind the genre as a whole, beyond just specific acts and songs?

That’s unlikely, says Jeff Pollack, a Los Angeles-based radio programming consultant with more than 100 client stations in the U.S. and Europe.

“The passion level is very high for this music, and that’s great,” he says. “The problem is, how many people will be able to really get into it and want to be a part of it with that full commitment? A lot of people would find that just too fatiguing. So it might make sense for a radio station to be built entirely on that [to serve the serious fans]. But most people need something a little more multidimensional.”

The techno wildfire in pop began when MTV President Judy McGrath spoke at the Billboard Conference in November and mentioned the launch of the techno-ambient video showcase “Amp” and the programming of such techno acts as Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers as a central part of the channel’s new agenda.

The key was the timing.

If the announcement had come two years earlier, when Hootie & the Blowfish were on a roll and Pearl Jam was selling almost a million copies in a week, no one would have probably paid attention. Techno was being dismissed at the time by much of the industry as simply dance music that couldn’t break out of its cult audience.

By last fall, however, record execs had been shocked to see one after another of their bestsellers--from Pearl Jam and Green Day to Hootie and R.E.M.--nose-dive commercially. Against that backdrop, the MTV pronouncement hit the industry hard.

“It makes me sick to think that MTV caused all this fuss in the industry, but I’m sure it did,” says Howie Klein, president of Reprise Records. “I’m not trying to dis MTV, but we should be taking our cues from the artist and the kid in the street, not each other.”

Even MTV, one senses, is a touch embarrassed by the commotion over its November announcement.

Within the channel itself, McGrath’s speech was not viewed as a declaration of a new direction, but merely a roundup of some new elements being incorporated into the programming.

“We’re not zeroing in on [techno] and we don’t think it’s the next big thing,” says Andy Schuon, MTV executive vice president. “We’re not running conventional singer-songwriters out of town on a rail, by any means.

“It’s just another interesting style as we’re trying to widen our net and explore things. We’re playing just as much Spice Girls and pop acts and singer-songwriters. There’s a revolution--the Wallflowers and Jewel and people like that. Maybe that’s the next big thing. Funny that people picked up on electronica, not that.”

Schuon even believes it would be a mistake to place “Amp” alongside such past programs as “Yo! MTV Raps,” “Headbangers Ball” and “120 Minutes,” which served in the past as launching pads for dominant roles on MTV--and then in pop culture--of hip-hop, heavy metal and alternative rock, respectively.

In fact, Schuon says, “Amp” is designed to maintain a pure feeling of the style, true to the club culture from which it comes. And that may be hard to translate into mainstream programming.

“Amp” producer Todd Mueller explains, “One of our prime concerns is to retain the deejay ethic and think about the music as beats and rhythms and show how they work together--approach the show as a solid block of entertainment as opposed to individual clips.

“It was a conscious decision for us not to deal with this music in terms of personalities. We’ve even removed the talking head veejays, and we frame it by saying these beats and rhythms are the stars.”

And that is most definitely not the future of MTV as a whole.

“Will we have big mainframe computers as guests on [dance music program] ‘The Grind’?” asks Schuon facetiously. “Not while I’m captain of the ship.”

Until the MTV announcement, techno was looked upon by the recording industry as simply one of several areas of potential growth. There was also talk that sales could be boosted by a new wave of lightweight pop (the Spice Girls), sunny teen rock (No Doubt), traditional pop (Celine Dion) or a soul revival (Tony Rich, D’Angelo).

But the MTV statement started a buzz in the record company corridors and in the media about techno--probably because it is the most cutting-edge of the alternatives--that quickly escalated it to the forefront of the discussion. The news that U2 and other hit rock acts, including Oasis and the Smashing Pumpkins, were working with dance textures or artists heightened the interest.

Nothing underscores the record industry’s sudden obsession with techno better than the turnabout in interest by major U.S. record labels in the Prodigy, the high-profile British dance-related band that was dropped three years ago by Elektra Records.

Labels started rethinking Prodigy’s commercial potential in this country last summer after the single “Firestarter” and its video caused a buzz on both sides of the Atlantic. It intensified in November after MTV mentioned Prodigy in its decision to put more emphasis on techno acts.

Another reason so many companies--including Interscope, Columbia and Warner Bros.--were eager for the Prodigy is that the group looks like a rock band. On the whole, techno acts have tended to be a rather faceless bunch that places more emphasis on their sounds than on their public identities.

The Prodigy fit that pattern in its Elektra days. But the band went through a dramatic visual transformation that made it look on casual glance like the Sex Pistols--complete with a spike-haired lead singer, Keith Flint. Even the music has something of the unruly, liberating energy of the Pistols.

Maverick Records, home of Alanis Morissette, eventually won the multimillion-dollar competition for the Prodigy, whose new album is expected early this summer. The “Firestarter” single has sold an estimated 225,000 copies in the U.S. The band’s May 28 date at the Mayan Theatre is sold out.

The performance of that album--and a collection due April 8 from the Chemical Brothers--is likely to be widely viewed as a test of the commercial strength of techno music itself.

Al Cafaro, chairman and CEO at A&M;, warns against expecting immediate results.

“If the Prodigy album is a bomb, you may have a lot of people who are saying techno is the next big thing suddenly declare techno dead and move on to something else,” he says. “I think a purposeful exploration of techno music is the right thing to do, but you’ve got to look at it long term. If you think you are going to sign a techno band and see it blow up in two months, I think you are asking for trouble. . . .”

Ironically, the dance music community is as anxious over all this “next big thing” talk as the record industry.

Techno supporters are fearful that the millions being thrown at techno will lead to a watering down of the music and the culture.

They say there are fundamental differences between techno and pop-rock that are not understood by executives, most of whom were raised on pop-rock. They see their music as more in the elite company of jazz and classical rather than something to be mass-marketed.

In fact, many of the artists are reluctant to participate in the current media exposure of the scene and the big-label bidding wars.

A prime example is Rabbit in the Moon, a Florida-based production combine that is among the most prized by dance music fans and consequently among the most coveted by the major labels.

Rabbit member DJ Monk was reluctant to comment when contacted by The Times, explaining that he and his partners have strenuously avoided the press, especially after the spotlight was turned on techno in recent months.

“We didn’t get started in this for any rewards other than doing what we love,” he says, noting that the combine has been a profitable enterprise via its own label, Hallucination, and by taking commissions to remix tracks by other artists, including one last year for Garbage. “We’ll hear people out, but it’s not really on our agenda.”

Musically, too, techno stands apart from mainstream pop. Its antecedents run from 20th century classical experimenters (Edgar Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen) through such ‘70s progressive rock figures as Can and Faust and seminal electronic band Kraftwerk.

The music found a home in the late ‘80s in England’s dance clubs and in all-night raves that were held underground-fashion in abandoned warehouses. In the U.S., the rave scene caught on in such cities as Los Angeles and New York. More recently, that scene came aboveground, with promoters holding events at regular pop venues.

“The nature of this music is it survives,” says Tom Rowland, one half of the Chemical Brothers along with partner Ed Simons. “I’d been in regular bands with singers and stuff, and what I liked about [electronic music] is I could make it in my bedroom and Ed and I could press up [records and CDs] ourselves without having to deal with a record company and you can go to a club and see a couple of thousand people dancing to your record.

“If someone in a big company office says, ‘This is good this year,’ and it’s big for a while and then shifts back to not being that big, it doesn’t matter. I can still make the music.”

Record execs aren’t the only ones puzzled by techno. Mainstream fans are asking whether this new style, with all its synthesizers and intriguing soundscapes, will mean the end of rock ‘n’ roll and pop music as we know it.

The execs see techno as being one of several styles influencing mainstream pop rock--as it is already felt in the work of such artists as Nine Inch Nails’ Reznor, whose music combines marvelously traditional rock with techno-industrial fibers.

Don’t expect everyone to be sitting around in their rooms a year from now listening to 125-beat-per-minute records--the image that many pop fans have of techno--as their sole pop diet.

The key, stressed again and again in interviews with executives, is signing great artists, whether they are in techno or alternative rock or soul or punk folk.

“The same criteria always hold true: Find the great artist, someone who can touch you emotionally,” says Gary Gersh, president and CEO of Capitol Records and the man who helped nurture Nirvana at Geffen Records.

Like others questioned, A&M;’s Cafaro thinks techno will produce its share of exciting artists. “There is a lot of equipment being sold out there,” he says. “Lots of gear, lots of keyboards, lots of computers. People are going to grow up with this technology and I do believe you are going to see artists coming down this pike.”

Jimmy Iovine, whose hugely profitable Interscope Records has been at the cutting edge of ‘90s music, feels the problem facing the industry is more than simply finding the next hot style. He thinks that all the corporate mergers in the ‘90s have put such pressure on executives to come up with immediate profits that the industry has lost its daring.

“If kids aren’t buying as many records, it’s because we as an industry aren’t inspiring them,” he says. “Rather than be in bands, kids want to be computer whizzes or buy video games.

“That’s because Bill Gates is better than we are. I see my competition as Bill Gates. I have to do stuff that is more exciting than the video game he’s creating. The issue is bigger than techno and alternative rock. It’s all about inspiration.”