Joe Muggs wrote:Drugs can ruin music, though.  I'm not anti drugs, far from it, but I'm old enough and ugly enough to have seen loads of scenes disappear up their own hooters.  Too much K, everyone's in their own little world and nobody looks at each other or notices what's going on.  Too much E and speed and all people want is something that'll make them rush.  Too much gak and it's all swagger and giving it the large and turning up the treble til it fucking hurts.  Too much bud (especially skunk) and it gets all noidy and dark.  Too much alcohol and everyone just wants shit they can sing along to.  And so it goes.  No drug in itself is evil (OK the ones that are properly addictive are best avoided on the whole) but when any one drug takes over or becomes the entire point of the night out, it's game over...
please forgive the outrageous generalisations that i'm about to speak (and the London-centricity!), but lets see where it goes anyway
what about the way that drugs ruin (or inversely stimulate) 
music, rather than specific scenes or genres?
i think there's a strong argument to say that focused intensity is a good thing in dance music sub-genres in terms of what possibilities are opened up... imbalance drives people to do things differently, and motivates people to create something that they feel is missing
say darkcore or tech-step, in themselves the drugs probably had some kind of influence on the sound accelerating towards something that a lot of people aren't feeling so much, and many ex-hardcore ravers i'm sure would say the rave 'scene' in London (as far as it can be jammed into one continuum) was 'ruined'.  but the way those scenes went surely to some extent provided a context which was begging for garage.  likewise would grime and dubstep have emerged as they did without all the coked and champered up excesses of 2step?
for me, all of these forms of music are exciting (at least partially) 
because of their intensity, which im sure everyone can agree is tied closely to use of intense drugs
even within micro-context, in late 2006/7 EVERYONE was moaning about boring halfstep and too many boys smoking weed.  now much of dubstep is rammed with garage drums, freak-out synth-lines - the shift to big rooms and loads of pill-heads has done some bad things but some of the music that has come (at least partially) as a consequence (Joker, Starkey etc) is next level
in any case, major trends in drug use usually reflect social trends of some sort, and undoubtedly reflect on something which is at the least 
interesting, if not always conducive to the funnest times for someone who isn't into that specific vibe
EDIT
Slothrop wrote:claw wrote:i think that increased tempos...more stateside oriented influence, and the dnb influx in general will ruin dumbstep way more than we can even imagine
They're too late. It's already been ruined by the influx of moshers, nu-rave kids, trendies, chavs, pill monsters, emo kids, internet neeks, ginger people, opera fans, teddy boy revivalists etc etc cf dubstepforum passim. It's also the first genre ever to be simultaneously too fast and too slow.

We're doomed!
 
lol