1990s hypes revisited - loose series installmant 02 - "Big Beat"
- Thread starter firefinga
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
You never struck me as fat, if that's any consolation. And you came out the other side, which is more than some people do.
But I guess it also shows that there's no-one more zealous than the recanting ex-heretic...
john eden
male pale and stale
Well it’s hard to measure these things of course but those legendary sessions at The Rocket did include a whole bunch of students, it being part of a University. (Also the venue for Megadog which was great too but no doubt not up to the standards of the Rave Committee here).
john eden
male pale and stale
See this cracks me up but also makes we slightly sad. The Jungle Jihad on here maintains that the music became crap on a wet Wednesday in 1994 but none of them were actually raving to it at the time. In parallel to this they have all sorts of weird complexes about what was going on in their youthful wild days.
What did you lot do when the hot girls invited you clubbing in 1997? Grimace about Doc Scott being past his best and say that you were staying home to listen to your older brothers' Kool FM tapes?
I had a wicked time at Formation and nights by Tru Playaz and Ram Records AND Dead by Dawn at the 121 Centre AND reggae nights AND gigs by Tortoise and Belle and Sebastian around this time.
It's much better to be honest and say that your first gig was Howard Jones with a smile on your face than this weird protestant purism. I'm supposed to be the po-faced serious one here, remember?
luka
Well-known member
i went to garage nights. i also went to drum and bass nights with friends that still followed that scene but they were shit (eg the ganja records thing at the end) i went out in romford, ilford and dagenham a lot. i went to gilles peterson things (blue note, bar rhumba) until being 20 years younger than everyone else started to get me down.
firefinga
Well-known member
I am digressing, but Doc Scott '97 was awesome. The Shadow Boxing remix was such a relentlessly great techstepper:
Leo
Well-known member
contender for funniest line of the year.
droid
Well-known member
Funny to see you get so tetchy. Big beat is your Smaug's belly.
Dunno if you recall, but I'm virulently opposed to the jungle jihad and have made passionate appeals for 95/96. In terms of a delayed scene. I went to my first jungle gig - completely by chance - in '94. in 95/96 in Dublin we were dancing to jungle made from 93 on, it wasnt until 97/98 when things caught up.
There's nothing wrong with going to gigs with shit music and having a good time, Ive been to a few myself. Nor is it about credibility. It is possible to acknowledge that you enjoyed yourself on nights out but also that, in retrospect the music wasn't all that great, you wonder what attracted you to it, and in mature reflection certain scenes/artists/tunes were emblematic of some very negative musical trends.
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luka
Well-known member
i do think the music is very very very bad but i was more indulging in a rant about the cultural moment. the effect of a dedicated, organised pushback against rave culture bearing fruit. from the Criminal Justice Bill, to alcopops, to Britpop, to the (then) new beer barns, to Loaded magazine etc etc etc it was, in a very real sense, a counter-revolution. progress was rolled back and that ground has not been regained. we are still behind 1992 culturally speaking.
a rant i would have thought eden (and reynolds for that matter) would be sympathetic towards.
a rant i would have thought eden (and reynolds for that matter) would be sympathetic towards.
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droid
Well-known member
Its objectively true. You look at the history of British music - not just dance music - and Big Beat is a nadir by nearly every metric, a trough that seemed even deeper because of the crests that preceded it. I honestly cant think of many other UK scenes that produced worse music or was as culturally/symbolically toxic.
LOL. I was going to say to Firefinga yesterday that there's more chance of Skrewdriver being recuperated into the canon than Big Beat.
I'm not sure how Big Beat was part of an attempt to destroy rave? Unless you seriously thought Spiral Tribe were going to lead the revolution. As for the CJA, well it was introduced in the same year Depth Charge put out Seven Deadly Venoms album, which is significantly better and more fun than anything associated with techstep, goa trance, romo or 'nu-rave'. Also, even if you hate Monkey Mafia, Jon Carter did some great reggae and ragga mixes and clearly wasn't just a pisstaking, post-ironic drunk student. Major Lazer's way more embarrassing...
I'm not sure how Big Beat was part of an attempt to destroy rave? Unless you seriously thought Spiral Tribe were going to lead the revolution. As for the CJA, well it was introduced in the same year Depth Charge put out Seven Deadly Venoms album, which is significantly better and more fun than anything associated with techstep, goa trance, romo or 'nu-rave'. Also, even if you hate Monkey Mafia, Jon Carter did some great reggae and ragga mixes and clearly wasn't just a pisstaking, post-ironic drunk student. Major Lazer's way more embarrassing...
john eden
male pale and stale
I just don’t see those things (all of which I objected to at the time and some of which I actively protested against) were synonymous with getting mashed up on a Friday night and dancing to things with breakbeats in. Though I accept that there was some convergence between Britpop and Bigbeat later on.
firefinga
Well-known member
Big Beat got popular in 96/97. Rave was already dead a long time before that, killed by a grotesque over commercialisation. Why not blame the energy drink vendors for a change?
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Libellous against Baddiel and Skinner.
That mid-90s moment when the mainstream of dance music started to become dominated by bands and albums and superclubs and Mixmag, was mightily depressing, even if I loved loads of the individual records at the time. Massively regressive on a macro-level. Underworld and Leftfield and the Chemical Bros and Fatboy Slim....it's just bizarre to me that the Prodigy were part of both the revolution and the counter-revolution, if we put it in those terms. Firestarter, Breathe etc are horrible records in retrospect, whereas anything at all off Experience is unfeasibly thrilling.
There was a time I thought I could not imagine never hearing The Rockefeller Skank again, but I don't think I've heard it in 15 years until just now. Global domination and then vanished.
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