DMA: The dance scene in the UK is as massive as it can be, whereas here, it is a small but growing industry. As one of the few UK DJs who comes to America more than just for Winter Music Conference, Where do you see it going?
COX: It's taken 11 years to get here. I really don't know...I think there's still a long, dark tunnel. When the scene broke in England, for instance, everybody got into it, no matter who you were.

It wasn't on the basis of weather or not you took drugs or whatever. People wanted to be in an uncontrolled place -- taken out of the club situation and out in a field or warehouse which would just be more creative. You can't really get that here. A lot of people really don't like clubs. They want to go to a bar, or see a rock band or County and Western, they have all these other choices. You can't start the scene off on such a big scale with all these festivals. In the UK it did, and went to the club scene because of the police [and the Criminal Justice Act]. It's going to take a long while for that to happen here -- a long while. The only way for it to move initially, is if we tried to in a small way, have a small force of people who are actually into dance music [as opposed to the fake ravers who only like the scene for the drugs] who will go to clubs or a concert-orientated party like they do in the UK. Of course you have your people here who go and listen to Vasquez or Tenaglia and love them, but the scene is very far off here from having an event like Tribal Gathering and pulling it off.

DMA: Is this country too big to ever emulate the UK club scene? There's a scene for everything over there. Handbag, trance, trip hop, jungle, northern cheese, deep house, ambient...whatever it is, there's a scene for it.
COX: It's kind of weird, because you can be into ambient and you can be into jungle,you can be into hardcore, and then go down into the most cheesiest, commercial uplifting house ever but people still enjoy music and there should be no barriers for that and that's been broken down in England. That's how the scene initially started, with DJs playing music that had no boundaries or barriers. If you heard U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and the next record was a Todd Terry record, the same people would still dance.

DMA: The non-dance press have all of the sudden here given major labels the green light to push this so-called 'electronica' on Middle America. Is this a good thing for dance music, or will it have the same effect it did when these clueless rock A+R's went and signed every 'techno' band they could find back in '91?
COX: You need to go backwards before you go forwards, but I think to some extent, you're already there with the Chemical Brothers and Underworld being bands that people are looking to, or even your own bands like Crystal Method coming through as well. Unfortuantely, the major labels don't understand this music. Some people are going to get rich from this new interest in dance music, but at the end of the day, it's not really about money. In England, it wasn't about money. It was like 'here's our music, and here's a few people who scraped up a few pennies to purchase a 303 and a 909 and a two track cassette recorder down to the cutting room for a dodgy, repressed vinyl. It sounds crap but the record's slamming, and on that basis, people are dancing to it.'

DMA: So what your saying is almost exactly how the grunge scene happened here in America, which just sort of happened. It wasn't Rolling Stone saying that Nirvana were going to be the 'next big thing' and telling average folks, 'you're gonna like Pearl Jam!'
COX: Exactly, it's all a building process. Nirvana didn't happen overnight. Without the rave scene in England, there would have been no Prodigy. You have to start small. If it all came in major, major video, whatever and the record's crap, no amount of money is going to buy this scene mass exposure, and then they'll move on to the next thing.

Originally posted by Jennifer Warner, reposted with permission.