{"id":1203,"date":"2014-01-27T13:09:12","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T02:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2014-01-27T13:09:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T02:09:12","slug":"hbo-set-to-do-dance-music-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1203","title":{"rendered":"HBO set to do dance-music comedy&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>knob-twisters<\/li>\n<li>self-oblivious man-children<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/shortcuts\/2014\/jan\/26\/calvin-harris-irvine-welsh-dance-music-comedy<\/p>\n<div id=\"article-header\">\n<div id=\"main-article-info\">\n<h1 itemprop=\"name headline  \">Calvin Harris and Irvine Welsh&#8217;s HBO dance-music comedy could be hilarious<\/h1>\n<div id=\"stand-first\" itemprop=\"description\" data-component=\"Article:standfirst_cta\">Egomaniacal knob-twisters? Self-oblivious man-children? According to the anonymous duo behind the @DJsComplaining Twitter feed, the EDM scene provides a rich comic seam<\/div>\n<div itemprop=\"description\" data-component=\"Article:standfirst_cta\"><\/div>\n<div itemprop=\"description\" data-component=\"Article:standfirst_cta\"><a style=\"line-height: 1.5;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dialog\/feed?app_id=180444840287&amp;link=http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/shortcuts\/2014\/jan\/26\/calvin-harris-irvine-welsh-dance-music-comedy&amp;display=popup&amp;redirect_uri=http:\/\/gu-social-share-experiments.theguardian.com&amp;show_error=false&amp;ref=desktop\" data-href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/shortcuts\/2014\/jan\/26\/calvin-harris-irvine-welsh-dance-music-comedy\" data-link-name=\"Facebook Share\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" itemprop=\"contentUrl representativeOfPage\" style=\"color: #2b2b2b; line-height: 1.5;\" alt=\"Calvin Harris\" src=\"http:\/\/static.guim.co.uk\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2014\/1\/24\/1390577574909\/Calvin-Harris-011.jpg\" width=\"460\" height=\"276\" data-pin-description=\"Funny man? Calvin Harris, who will be collaborating in the making of HBO's new comedy. Photograph: John Lamparski\/WireImage\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"content\">\n<div id=\"article-wrapper\" data-component=\"Article:in body link\">\n<div id=\"main-content-picture\" itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\">\n<div itemprop=\"caption\">Funny man? Calvin Harris, who will be collaborating in the making of HBO&#8217;s new comedy. Photograph: John Lamparski\/WireImage<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body-blocks\">\n<p>Remember when you first heard\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Calvin Harris\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/calvin-harris\">Calvin Harris<\/a>&#8216;s 2007 hit Acceptable in the 80s and thought to yourself how amazing it would be if Harris wrote a sitcom with\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/profile\/irvine-welsh\">Irvine Welsh<\/a>\u00a0about electronic\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Dance music\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/dance-music\">dance music<\/a>? And then remember thinking that the only way that could happen would be if\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Jay Z\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/jayz\">Jay Z<\/a>and\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Will Smith\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/willsmith\">Will Smith<\/a>\u00a0agreed to produce it? Well,\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/musicblog\/2014\/jan\/23\/calvin-harris-will-smith-jay-z-edm-hbo\">it&#8217;s happening<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"More from the Guardian on HBO\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/hbo\">HBO<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the visionary network behind modern parables The Wire and Boardwalk Empire \u2013 has announced it is in the process of developing Higher, a new half-hour\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Comedy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/comedy\">comedy<\/a>\u00a0series &#8220;set in the world of\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Electronic music\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/electronicmusic\">electronic music<\/a>,&#8221; clearly concluding that the next logical step on from crack dealers in Baltimore and bootleggers in prohibition-era Atlantic City is a kid sitting alone in his mum&#8217;s house in Romford listening to the same kick drum for hours on end and occasionally going out to buy clothes pegs just to &#8220;get out of the house&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>While, on the face of it, this may not seem like the most fecund comedy ground, as DJs ourselves, we are well aware that the world of dance music is a rich tapestry of egomaniacs and self-oblivious man-children that is ripe for mockery. We have tried to mine this particular seam of comedy for a couple of years now, first undermining our peers by retweeting their bitter, mundane gripes on our Twitter account,<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DJsComplaining\">@DJsComplaining<\/a>, then drawing on our own hard-won experience to write cutting think pieces about the EDM scene. And we have remained completely, spinelessly anonymous \u2013 because sharing a backstage area with a socially impaired knob-twister is often awkward enough even without the added frisson of them knowing you&#8217;ve spent 500 words and several days of your life lampooning them in the national press.<\/p>\n<p>Saying that, Harris clearly operates in a different sphere to the likes of us,\u00a0and while details about which aspects of EDM Higher will focus on are scarce, we can only assume that\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/pictures\/eeel45egemd\/the-worlds-highest-paid-djs-6\/\">The Most Highly Paid DJ in the World<\/a>\u2122&#8217;s input to the project will be somewhat influenced by his own lifestyle. Harris probably slaps together his latest chart-topper on his iPad in between sips of ambrosia and bouts of clay-pigeon shooting, occasionally sloping off to wistfully roam his grounds on his gold-plated penny farthing. Let&#8217;s hope, then, that the presence of Welsh \u2013 a man whose heart remains closer to the gutter \u2013 will bring things back down to\u00a0Earth. Welsh was reared in a different world of dance music altogether: a world of pills and pubs, of minicabs and chilli sauce; a world where ketamine was what you gave a horse and\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Traktor\">Traktor<\/a>\u00a0was what you used to get away from the horse once you&#8217;d given it some ketamine.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t know yet quite how these two very different world views will meet on the page, but with Welsh&#8217;s keen eye for hallucinatory nightmare and Harris&#8217;s renowned comedic prowess, Higher just might be the laugh-a-minute romp that the EDM world has been so desperately waiting for. Perhaps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>knob-twisters self-oblivious man-children http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/shortcuts\/2014\/jan\/26\/calvin-harris-irvine-welsh-dance-music-comedy Calvin Harris and Irvine Welsh&#8217;s HBO dance-music comedy could be hilarious Egomaniacal knob-twisters? Self-oblivious man-children? According to the anonymous duo behind the @DJsComplaining Twitter feed, the EDM scene provides a rich comic seam Funny man? Calvin Harris, who will be collaborating in the making of HBO&#8217;s new comedy. Photograph: John Lamparski\/WireImage &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1203\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">HBO set to do dance-music comedy&#8230;.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,15,16,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-music","category-silly","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}