Drugs and Music - what up with it these days?

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Diaz

Well-known member
[I almost called this Drugs In Music,]

I know its been a thing, especially in some threads of music journalism/appreciation but especially , as regards things coming out of rave, to study the history of drugs alongside the history of music as a means of gauging the general psyche of music qua its context and its creators. This has always had ties to the authenticity/creative aspects of talking-about-music for me, and I thought I might at least throw it out there in light of my ignorance of the rest of the world, and my\e on the subject.
Viz.,
It was Reynolds who first implanted the cognizance of this particular tack to me, although I suspect its history lies more with older heroes, recently departed and not .


uh, enough for the introduction to this damn essay, i was thinking about how many of responded to k-punk's thread about weed, and i was listening to one of the first ever actual grime sets i've ever heard that was being all live...and and i was like 'huh, incongruity', since a few of the mcs espoused it and it's prolly a part of the scene. And I listened to some baile funk and thought about it, and I listened to some old what-I'd-call-Acid-House and thought about it, and came to 'a thinkeration'.

And since I can't ask about whether or not y'all take drugs and listen to something and then it makes sense, I'm shortenin' the old thesis and ask a few: I know around where I am (los angeles), marijuana and alcohol and cocaine and speed(but only for the girls) still pretty much fuel most of the drug diets around here, creatively and not. And Los Angeles' scene, for a good 90% of it, sucks ass. Are on y'all something we don't know about or can't get here? Does marijuana affect my understanding of grime [ or worse, authenticity at all?] and what its doing [i listen, i like, but it doesn't grip me. A lot of good things don't- I didn't like hip-hop till my freshman year of college when I saw girls dancing to Tribe)? Would Sodium Pentothal allow us to solve the "MIA - authentic, false, post-modern, or something else entirely" debate?

if you want some justification, once you've connected music + drugs connection, music + politics is easy as calculus.

please spout away, for edification or logorrheatics.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
i don't think the THC factor really comes across in how grime sounds. maybe it does in the breakier, darker, stuff like plasticman and loefah and kode9 and whatever, with all the permutations of really heavy bass pressure you get in that stuff, but in MC grime, i don't think the fact that the artists smoke a lot really affects the sound that much.

[one pos exception tho: jammer- who smokes like the rasta he is- and who's doing these hyper-dense, viscous basslines at the moment. also, he sounds mashed whenever he MCs].

nnnnnnneccckle!!


on a sidenote, jack dripdropdrap was telling me once that villalobos is well into ketamine and that's why his music sounds so crazy.
 
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Backjob

Well-known member
I think villalobos is probably into all sorts of exciting drugs that the rest of us can't get hold of. If I could party with anyone in the world it'd probably be him. You can just tell from the music that it'd be unbelievable.

I reckon grime is coke+booze music. It's got that aggro shoutiness and self-aggrandisement. You could jump up and down and shout "serious" while drinking something sticky and strong, then nip into the bogs for a line and come out moshing.

On the flip I think there's a lot of prescription drug use these days. Valium and whisky - choice of a new generation.
 
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jack

Well-known member
I don't remember saying the Villalobos thing. maybe i was OFF MY FACE!!!! ON DRUDS!!!

dunno whether grime seems boozy, apart from the high-ballin champagne at Fabric kind of thing (oh and that gross blue sizzurp that flo dan likes). The most odd thing about Conflict DVD is that the pub closing time aggro that breaks out is only fueled by Ribena. Wiley gets accusations of coke use doesn't he? Derek W also said his album is kind of forcefully egotistical like a coke-up monologue. Maybe it would suit grime in it's exactness and obv the one-upmanship. The way some people are descibing the Roll Deep album, it could be grime's 'Be Here Now' ;)

Whenever I've taken hallucinagens and listened to hallucinagen-inspired music (like droney, detatched space music) I can't get into it. I get all cynical and think I can see through it's contrived 'trippy-ness'. Maybe this is why there will be no other drugs that mirror the ecstacy/rave music thing; no other drugs have the empathetic 'we're feeling this together, lets rally round this music'. Other drugs are probebly too insular and not community-consciousness forming enough.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
simon silverdollar said:
i don't think the THC factor really comes across in how grime sounds.
Click to expand...

I do :).

simon silverdollar said:
maybe it does in the breakier, darker, stuff like plasticman and loefah and kode9 and whatever, with all the permutations of really heavy bass pressure you get in that stuff
Click to expand...

Yeah, collie herb and amphetamine psychosis, the twin chemical poles of the ardkore current.

simon silverdollar said:
but in MC grime, i don't think the fact that the artists smoke a lot really affects the sound that much.
Click to expand...

I think it's central. Dizzee's said as much in interviews FWIW.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Diaz said:
where I am (los angeles), marijuana and alcohol and cocaine and speed... fuel most of the drug diets around here, creatively and not. And Los Angeles' scene, for a good 90% of it, sucks ass.
Click to expand...

There's more to it than just having drugs. Drugs are just a component of the scenius alongside technology, politics and culture.

On an individual level, it's about mind-set, setting and dosage (cf Leary).
 
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Matt DC

New member
I'd been thinking about this question re: grime for some time. Is it the first point in the (hem hem) continuum where E has been largely taken out of the equation altogether? Has it?
 
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polystyle

Well-known member
down and up

Hey Diaz

Was thinking about some of the same this AM after Diplo @ Rothko last night ...
Soon as i got inside , there is one mate of mine with baggie of brownies filled with green who hands me a chunks and his flask of brandy . Ok , why not ?
Another friend hands me a beer and we have our spot diggin the sounds of opening DJ lady.
Crowd keeps coming in , looks like night of a dozen (silly) caps , we shift from one place to another ,
while Spankrock kept the crowd in the room .
Friends are getting restless , one claims 'I can't move' , and they get ready to split .
I go down with them to coat check , breaking through lines of people blocking the hall
'waiting for the bathroom' (Ok, but if you can just move over a bit ).
Jeez, time to head up in the back dark room and light up nice joint .
Bk upstairs , Diplo's on in rapid clip I hear those old synths from Whodini ( 'Got It Twisted ' ),
a Baile favela funk , here comes a MIA trk or 2 , then grime time .
It all went better with ... can focus on the music and enjoy the beat

Some friends were on Valium and brandy , wanted to do more of that slowness today
(Thanks , but i have to uh ... function today) but me the geezer needed to smoke to get more up .
Far as I could tell not many others were smoking , mainly kids drinking and spilling

Don't go for the ketamine , that's animal trank folks
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
i was a bit young to be raving at the time but would have thought e disappeared from the scene in about 94 with jungle.
 
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henrymiller

Well-known member
depends what scene you mean, i guess. i think e rolled out *even further* in the late 90s. '98 was the big mitsubishi year wasn't it? when i was at uni (98 ->) it had become more of a living room drug.
 
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Mr. Tiger

New member
Diaz raises some interesting questions:

Here in the US (I'm in Chicago) drugs and music (or any other creative endeavor I can think of) don't seem to have any interesting connections going these days, asides maybe from the syrup drinkers in the south.

Obviously rappers are still smoking tons of weed, but I'm not really hearing anything that seems designed in any way to interact with or intensify the weed vibe. Hipsters and indie kids are always drinking and smoking weed, but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on what gets produced (Animal Collective may be an exception--those guys sound like they might be on some good shit); the drug you hear the most about these days is crystal meth, whose demographic--poor, rural whites and big city gays--means any effect it has on music will show up in: country, metal (which maybe it already is) or diva-y house. Meth influenced country could be interesting, though...

The tale end of the '90s, the boom years, everyone I knew was doing coke and ecstasy, and I had high hopes for this somehow affecting the music/art/writing they were doing, and there was that little phase of "b-boys on e" that Reynolds wrote about. Then we had Bush, 9/11 and a recession and it all petered out pretty quickly. Now I don't know anyone who's seen any ecstasy around for years. Since then it's been booze, weed and speed, with a fairly stable contingent of kids getting into heroin every year cuz they want to be like Burroughs/Reed/Cobain/etc.

I've always envied you Brits for having, what seems to me, a much more interesting drug culture and drug/music interface. What's your secret?
 
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Pearsall

Prodigal Son
henrymiller said:
depends what scene you mean, i guess. i think e rolled out *even further* in the late 90s. '98 was the big mitsubishi year wasn't it? when i was at uni (98 ->) it had become more of a living room drug.
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E will never disappear at techno/house/trance/hardcore events, but if we're talking about the specific London hardcore continuum, jungle was probably the splitting point (having said that, I think that e made a big comeback in dnb when it shifted to more of a suburban white audience - the few dnb events I've been to in the last couple years in Britain seemed to have a lot more pop-pupil madness than I remembered from 96/97).
 
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mms

sometimes
Backjob said:
I think villalobos is probably into all sorts of exciting drugs that the rest of us can't get hold of. If I could party with anyone in the world it'd probably be him. You can just tell from the music that it'd be unbelievable..
Click to expand...


apparently its ketamine he's a big fan of, the description on the press release prety much says so without ever mentioning ketamine, and a mate who hung out with him a few times said the second lp was ket inspired
 
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cooper

Well-known member
henrymiller said:
depends what scene you mean, i guess. i think e rolled out *even further* in the late 90s. '98 was the big mitsubishi year wasn't it? when i was at uni (98 ->) it had become more of a living room drug.
Click to expand...

yeah, to be honest i don't have any interest anymore in taking mdma in front of a large group of people - it was great at a rave or other permissive environment, but now i would just rather not have my friends laughing at me for running around feeling things and chewing my cheek out. i hardly want to smoke weed when i first go out either; it makes me tired and quiet early. how about your benzodiapenes, xanax and such? those go well with a social atmosphere - make you kind of punchy and chatty - except they'll kill your short-term memory.
 
D

DJL

i'm joking
Matt DC said:
I'd been thinking about this question re: grime for some time. Is it the first point in the (hem hem) continuum where E has been largely taken out of the equation altogether? Has it?
Click to expand...

I think e is still there with grime as are a lot of other drugs but there is no one set thing everyone takes. Its more take whatever makes you have a good time.

I'd agree that its the first time e on its own is not fueling things for a while.
 
D

darknes

New member
(Hi, I'm new here)

Kind of weird that you brought this up, because I've been considering what the "ingredients' have been in the music I've been into lately. It was pretty obvious in the late '90's that US hip-hop producers - Missy, Timba, Outkast - were discovering e. Loopy, tweaked out basslines, jungle-infuenced drum programming, and a bizarre visual sensibility became much more prevalent.

When I go out, it seems that it's either weed or coke that's fueling the party, plus alcohol. I don't like the chatty, greedy coke vibe, but me and weed get along just fine. I used to "do drugs" but now it's a lil alcohol and a bowl or two. The grime-y stuff I like is the half-step style (check the Joe Nice set on www.blentwell.com) and that super dubbed out, slower tempo is definitely wearing its weed heritage on its sleeve.

I feel like we might need a new drug revolution to accelerate the music revolution. A new headspace that forces culture's creators to share the experience and its effects with a wider audience. I felt that the dnb revolution, when taken in the context of the E revolution, was practice for a non-linear future, symbolized by the rise of the click-and-go internet. I think we're ready for a new development...it is just a holistic thing, and it might be lacking an element or two.
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
DJL said:
I think e is still there with grime as are a lot of other drugs but there is no one set thing everyone takes. Its more take whatever makes you have a good time.

I'd agree that its the first time e on its own is not fueling things for a while.
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this seems pretty accurate for new york as well -- there's no one drug -- some like cocaine, others prefer weed, others avoid drugs, and still others only when they have spare change

haven't really seen much ketamine about lately

and yeah, there's supposedly a meth problem in the gay scene . . . . i've actually never done meth -- and of course there's that part of me that wants to know what meth is like, as w/ everything else -- so i keep my eyes & ears pealed -- and that i haven't encountered meth surely speaks to how segregated nightlife has become b/w straights & gays, or perhaps i'm travelling in the wrong circles -- but i simply haven't seen meth, despite the supposed epidemic that's going on in this city

mushrooms were definitely making the rounds last summer -- and i imagine that will pick up again once the weather turns warm
 
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fldsfslmn

excremental futurism
Mr. Tiger said:
Meth influenced country could be interesting, though...
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The future! Blasts of reductive, unstable twang -- sallow skinned and highly desperate. Lots of facial sores, hoodies, video game consoles stolen and pawned, time spent waiting around at bus stops. Guitar solos that give up and go nowhere ... And the end of the Bush administration.

Dear CMT ....
 
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Backjob

Well-known member
Meth in a really horrible, degraded form, is hugely popular in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. It's often sold as little red pills with all sorts of shit in them, which people smoke. Malaysia and Thailand have plenty of strange shit bubbling away under the surface, I wouldn't be surprised to see an interesting drugs/music interface emerge from one of those places - everybody in the west is too jaded for chems to mean anything interesting these days. It's such a drug supermarket, in Europe anyhow, that you can have tried and got sick of virtually everything by the time you're 20...

Malaysians love metal with massive guitar solos and, more recently, hip hop and really nasty drugs. Add poverty and Islam to the mix and I reckon that's a recipe for interesting culture.

I was chatting to a guy in Vietnam and he was saying that a lot of people there look back fondly to the days of opium-smoking because back then the drug users were way less obnoxious than they are now, with the prevalence of meth.

how about your benzodiapenes, xanax and such? those go well with a social atmosphere - make you kind of punchy and chatty - except they'll kill your short-term memory.

Definitely fun, definitely popular, but not exactly a good source of creativity!
 
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