luka
Well-known member
not being mean but it might be difficult for you to gauge what was going on here in the '90s solely by flicking through back issues of mixmag.
1990s hypes revisited - loose series installmant 02 - "Big Beat"
- Thread starter firefinga
- Start date
not being mean but it might be difficult for you to gauge what was going on here in the '90s solely by flicking through back issues of mixmag.
Some of the descriptions of the average punters are totally wrong too - don't really recognise any of these drunk student twat stereotypes (in this thread, or the one Buick did here yonks ago). I remember people who were into garage rock and Cramps-style stuff, people into rap, electronic, pop. Crate-digger types - the sort who probably knew who William Onyeabor and Charanjit Singh were in 1997 and would spend all day hunting down rare Giallo soundtracks and Parliament stuff.
droid
Well-known member
Thats true to some extent, rave was more or less dead by then, though some tendrils did thrive. What big beat represents for me is the consolidation of many of the factors that opposed rave - corporatisation, alcohol, MOR, predictability, conservatism etc. into one big fist that was violently inserted into the mainstream cultural space vacated by the underground.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
the colonisation of dance music by rock music norms in both sonic and lifestyle terms. I blame Oasis and Michael Howard
luka
Well-known member
well put.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Rage Against the Machine at the Aragon. my mom's "cool" friend from work took us. Tom Morello's 60ish mom introduced them and cursed a lot and I thought it was the coolest shit I'd ever seen. It was on a night the Bulls clinched a title (2nd three-peat, one of the years they beat the Jazz, so 97 or 98) and Uptown was full of riot cops to preemptively head off the inevitable sports rioting. Zack dlR lead a largely white tween-teen suburban audience in fuck the police chants for a solid 10 minutes. also bought a pro-Zapatista shirt cos it looked cool, ofc had no idea who they were at the time.
remains to this day one of the best shows I've ever been to.
2nd was pre-Adore Smashing Pumpkins with peak bald angsty Corgan. big letdown, I can tell you.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
top level Martin bon mot
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
they pre-empted it again in 94...strikes me that the Run DMC/Ultramagnetics strain of mid 80s hip hop was a big influence in big beat, through Liam Howlett, Tim Simenon and the rest
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luka
Well-known member
definite FIFA fave
luka
Well-known member
i fell out with k-punk partly cos i wound him up by having him come round one day and there was a big bag of skunk lying on the table,some magic mushrooms, and i was playing FIFA on my brothers playstation.
i was just trying to say that you can be clever without playacting clever the whole time but something got lost in translation.
i was just trying to say that you can be clever without playacting clever the whole time but something got lost in translation.
luka
Well-known member
at least oasis had something about them. liam in particular was fairly messianic. had an aura. that's why i stick up for them. it's an extra dimension. a little bit of soul-force.
blissblogger
Well-known member
this tune virtually is Sonz of the Loop Da Loop Era
for me Big Beat was a sort of stop gap / one-step-backwards-two-steps-sideways / spirit-restorative thing
bringing back fun at a time when drum & bass had either gone up the techstep ear-punishment path or the liquid-funk Gilles Pee route
well there was happy hardcore as an option also at that time - but happy hardcore is too manically FUN like a rictus smile (and bit too fast for dancing by 96 unless you had necked 10 pills)
having been a student i never could quite get into the hating-students mode
and i'd rather they had their own scene than actually going into d&b and spoiling that
(which they ended up doing in fact - turned it into trance with breaks ultimately)
i didn't go to many big beat clubs as such but i don't remember them being that laddish or lager-ish, if anything they could have been more party hard, more messy
you could see it as rockification dilute version of rave if you wanted, sure, but also it could see it as rave actually changing the mainstream - changing the sound of the charts.
for me Big Beat was a sort of stop gap / one-step-backwards-two-steps-sideways / spirit-restorative thing
bringing back fun at a time when drum & bass had either gone up the techstep ear-punishment path or the liquid-funk Gilles Pee route
well there was happy hardcore as an option also at that time - but happy hardcore is too manically FUN like a rictus smile (and bit too fast for dancing by 96 unless you had necked 10 pills)
having been a student i never could quite get into the hating-students mode
and i'd rather they had their own scene than actually going into d&b and spoiling that
(which they ended up doing in fact - turned it into trance with breaks ultimately)
i didn't go to many big beat clubs as such but i don't remember them being that laddish or lager-ish, if anything they could have been more party hard, more messy
you could see it as rockification dilute version of rave if you wanted, sure, but also it could see it as rave actually changing the mainstream - changing the sound of the charts.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I love that PS1 story Luka :crylarf:
Would be interesting to trace the influence (if any) of video games on rave culture. The games of the early 90s somehow seem much more attuned to ardkore than the games of the late 90s. Bright, neon, brash, garish vs. gritty, (more) realistic...
Interesting comment above re: Prodigy being revolutionary Vs counterevolutionary. Since it's basically Liam howlett I wonder what his explanation would be. Perhaps some thing seemed rebellious and 'revolutionary' at the time that now seem quaint and regressive? Or maybe it was cocaine, or wanting a slice of Oasis's meat pie?
Would be interesting to trace the influence (if any) of video games on rave culture. The games of the early 90s somehow seem much more attuned to ardkore than the games of the late 90s. Bright, neon, brash, garish vs. gritty, (more) realistic...
Interesting comment above re: Prodigy being revolutionary Vs counterevolutionary. Since it's basically Liam howlett I wonder what his explanation would be. Perhaps some thing seemed rebellious and 'revolutionary' at the time that now seem quaint and regressive? Or maybe it was cocaine, or wanting a slice of Oasis's meat pie?