1990s hypes revisited - loose series installmant 02 - "Big Beat"

john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
luka said:
again i think youre misreading the thrust of the discussion.
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It's been an interesting discussion but broad brush strokes can never paint the full picture.

Clearly people will have investment in the period so it's not like we'll be as detached as we would be about the French Revolution or whatever.

If you want to go really broad you'd need to look at the international context and what was going on economically, the dotcom bubble etc as well. Not just the mainstream media.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
Ol' long John liked dancing, he partied all night long,
He drank the brew the Cook served up and banged the big beat drum,
His wild eyes all a swivel, oblivious to our pain,
Never noticing the glory that was being flushed down the drain
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
possibly. but it would have been nice to be able to communicate what i was trying
to communicate without the confusion. i certainly didnt think id buried the humour
so deeply that it was invisible. it's a comic riff as much as it is a Very Serious
Intellectual Analysis you know!
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
droid said:
Gave it a good listen there and can't agree. There's a superficial resemblance but Its Sonz of the Loop drawn with crayons. Its too slow, the break is far too bombastic and clunky, there's no air in the production, the guitar breakdown is an abomination, there's no poise, no guile, no manic collage energy...

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the sonz of the loop da loop era encodes a transcendental euphoria. the fbs encodes going wahay! with your mates. for two peices of music that share so many ingredients they really couldnt be more different.

even the way fsb muddies and disavows the piano break speaks volumes. spirit caught in matter. very different from SotLdLE's programmatic statement let your mind be free.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
i think you'd have had to have lived through the Eighties and the first half of the Nineties as a conscious adult (or near-adult in my case re. Thatcher's first term as PM - which was the first of three terms as PM - and which was followed by another Conservative term of office - making for a grand total of eighteen years of Tory rule) - lived through all that, and the mainstream cultural reflections of it - with an adult awareness of it - to truly know how daft it is to say that the late Nineties was the worst time in Britain since the Blitz.

Second half of the 90s was a top time on many fronts, compared with what came before, and certainly compared with what came next from Iraq War onwards.

In retrospect all that pre-millennium tension and "cold cold world" and "darkness" and apocalyptic vibes that suffused certain quarters of Nineties music and that we used to bang on about as critics / fans, that is the stuff that seems misplaced. Things weren't that dark. True dark would be coming soon enough.

The happy happy up-up-UP! vibe circa 96-97-98 - Hype Williams videos, UKG, Timbaland & B, Daft Punk, and yes Big Beat, and yes Spice Girls too - seems more and more apt, and something to be wistful about.
 
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craner

craner

Beast of Burden
That is a good point - even as a baby of 78 I remember doing Protect and Survive drills in infants school. Didn't understand what it was then, obviously, but in retrospect it was pretty terrifying and dark.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Mind you the PMT schtick seemed absurd and kitsch even then - the second Tricky album was a bit absurd; Taylor Parkes' review of 'OK Computer' over-egging it a bit; other examples.

The best music from that short period didn't engage in it at all: UK Garage and Ma$e
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The 90s were pretty much heaven for me cos I was a child/teenager. Seems too neat to pinpoint 9/11 as the turning point but perhaps it really was.

The optimism of music from the early 90s (I mean dance/house music really) is so palpable and poignant. Very easy to idealise that time now, especially as it was pre internet...
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
On the other hand, I did once write a long early post on a blog about how the 90s was pregnant with darkness.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
when people get past a certain age do they lose the ability to recognise what is hyperbole for
comic effect?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
big beat was bad. me craner and droid all reading from the same hymn sheet proves it.
how often does that happen
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
...lived through all that, and the mainstream cultural reflections of it - with an adult awareness of it - to truly know how daft it is to say that the late Nineties was the worst time in Britain since the Blitz.
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I dunno, Ive just been reading about the winter famine in Rotterdam in 44/45, people dropping dead in the streets, holes in your hands from vitamin deficiency, diarrhoea and chronic malnutrition from the meagre diet of sugar beet paste - and yet all of this seems infinitely preferable to Noel Gallagher's union Jack guitar and Brian May playing God save the queen on the roof of Buckingham palace.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i'll never get my head around what you choose to read for pleasure and lesuire but you hate big beat
and thats all that matters to me.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
its weird u lot talk about the optimism of rave cos late 92 into 93 it was almost a reactivation of that heavy belgian vibe of 90-91. if euro was the first truly rave (not club music)

and hardly anyone played prodigy etc. randall didn't, not on any of the gachet sets i have, not on any kool/don/defection fm tapes.

killer mackenzie joint from 90. feel the darkness.

 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Corpsey said:
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?
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The way I take it is that Liam Howlett started out making something that transformed his influences, and then regressed into making something that sounded like his influences, more or less - in both cases he was riding the zeitgeist and raking in the cash, it's just that the zeitgeist was going backwards. Also by 1997 the Prodigy was a brand based around band image, so the music was second fiddle to Keith acting 'crazy'. But yeah, Oasis is probably the main part of the answer.
 
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