Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Anyone else read this? History of black music scenes in London from about 1920 to the present, written by That Bloke Who Wrote Bass Culture.
I generally found it pretty interesting - there's a bit of a cosy, celebratory vibe to the whole thing, but there's loads of stuff about scenes that I knew very little about, eg calypso, steel pan, 70s UK soul, and some cool stuff about the US and Caribbean influence on afro-funk being channelled through the London scene. So I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't already an expert on that stuff.
But oh my days the last couple of chapters (jungle, garage, dubstep, grime, pop-grime) are shoddy. To pick a few examples
* on jungle, talks about V Records and Congo Natty but doesn't mention Reinforced, Sub Base or Moving Shadow
* "it wasn't unusual to find black kids at hardcore raves, however, this had more to do with increased multi-cultural socializing than their being genuinely engaged in the scene"
* weirdly, quotes Wookie as saying that "the hardcore scene was mostly Manchester"
* label shot of Ripgroove is clearly the 2006 Skint remix 12"
* talks at length about grime without mentioning Wiley except in passing
* "Pretty quickly, grime had acheived a self-sustaining upward spiral..."
* "it's not hard to see [...] why grime went mass-market so quickly"
etc.
I thought at first that he had an interesting thesis to advance that challenged the nuumologists by positioning the core of jungle as basically an organic development of ragga soundsystem culture rather than a development of hardcore rave, but on further reading I got the impression that he knows roughly feck all about anything that happened after about 1990, interviewed a couple of people and pulled together a few odds and ends that fitted his general narrative.
So yeah, in a weird symmetry with Bass Culture, read the book but stop before the last couple of chapters.
I generally found it pretty interesting - there's a bit of a cosy, celebratory vibe to the whole thing, but there's loads of stuff about scenes that I knew very little about, eg calypso, steel pan, 70s UK soul, and some cool stuff about the US and Caribbean influence on afro-funk being channelled through the London scene. So I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't already an expert on that stuff.
But oh my days the last couple of chapters (jungle, garage, dubstep, grime, pop-grime) are shoddy. To pick a few examples
* on jungle, talks about V Records and Congo Natty but doesn't mention Reinforced, Sub Base or Moving Shadow
* "it wasn't unusual to find black kids at hardcore raves, however, this had more to do with increased multi-cultural socializing than their being genuinely engaged in the scene"
* weirdly, quotes Wookie as saying that "the hardcore scene was mostly Manchester"
* label shot of Ripgroove is clearly the 2006 Skint remix 12"
* talks at length about grime without mentioning Wiley except in passing
* "Pretty quickly, grime had acheived a self-sustaining upward spiral..."
* "it's not hard to see [...] why grime went mass-market so quickly"
etc.
I thought at first that he had an interesting thesis to advance that challenged the nuumologists by positioning the core of jungle as basically an organic development of ragga soundsystem culture rather than a development of hardcore rave, but on further reading I got the impression that he knows roughly feck all about anything that happened after about 1990, interviewed a couple of people and pulled together a few odds and ends that fitted his general narrative.
So yeah, in a weird symmetry with Bass Culture, read the book but stop before the last couple of chapters.