The 20 greatest Detroit techno tracks – ranked!
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sufi
lala
IdleRich
IdleRich
What's this RU t-shirt? It should be in the fashion thread anyway, we need more photos in there.
IdleRich
IdleRich
A couple of bangers on there I didn't know... well, maybe I've hear them but never knew the names. That Star Dancer one is sick.
One weird thing though, it's probably just me, but I've always hated Good Life, somehow the vocal gets right on my tits. Strange cos I normally like the poppier end of things.
One weird thing though, it's probably just me, but I've always hated Good Life, somehow the vocal gets right on my tits. Strange cos I normally like the poppier end of things.
chava
Well-known member
IdleRich
IdleRich
I almost mentioned that I hate Big Fun too... perhaps not quite so much
sufi
lala
Yeah but if he put Strings of Life at No1 that would defeat the whole object?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Why do you say that? I don't really have a strong opinion here on the composition and even less so regarding the order - I hadn't realised it until you got me thinking about it but i think that I'd sort of subconsciously decided that that was arbitrary - like I say, Good Life irritates me personally but I'm not saying he shouldn't have put it in there - if he left it out I'm sure there would have been loads of complaints.
chava
Well-known member
@IdleRich ich I'd love to an extended list, but I find the idea of a unified Detroit techno sound a bit weird. There's nothing really in common of the original Model 500 sound and Jeff Mills for example. Or Moodyman. Or Drexciya. Or Terrence Dixon. Or Daniel Bell for that matter. And as you say lots of Kevin Saunderson production are hardly "techno".
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah I know what you're saying @sufi. For me I heard it as a kid via the same pop mechanism that brought me... well, all the other music I heard that wasn't from Mum and Dad's Simon & Garfunkel records. Years later I heard the word techno. So while in terms of its structure, and who made it, plus the fact that loads of people who know way more than I do about the subject say so, it's totally techno without any debate... but none of that changes my experience of first hearing it on Saturday Morning Superstore next to Five Star or whatever and having filed it in that box which I've never really been able to properly get it out of...
Though that's nothing to do with why I don't like it I should say, or only in as much as when I heard it then I just didn't like it as much as other hits. It's funny actually, I've known lots of people about my age say "When I heard Pump Up the Volume (or whatever bits of the dance music iceberg stuck out of the water) i knew it was the future" - well I absolutely didn't. Anything like that I heard I just didn't understand at all, and if Good Life had been less poppy I would have liked it even less.
I'm trying to be clear here. What I mean is, I heard Good Life as a pop tune that I just didn't like, but if if had been a more austere futuristic thing then I would have no doubt rejected it even more completely without giving it a chance. Though I suppose possibly that might mean I could listen to it now with fresher ears and maybe end up liking it more... but that's an awful lot of ifs and maybes.
Though that's nothing to do with why I don't like it I should say, or only in as much as when I heard it then I just didn't like it as much as other hits. It's funny actually, I've known lots of people about my age say "When I heard Pump Up the Volume (or whatever bits of the dance music iceberg stuck out of the water) i knew it was the future" - well I absolutely didn't. Anything like that I heard I just didn't understand at all, and if Good Life had been less poppy I would have liked it even less.
I'm trying to be clear here. What I mean is, I heard Good Life as a pop tune that I just didn't like, but if if had been a more austere futuristic thing then I would have no doubt rejected it even more completely without giving it a chance. Though I suppose possibly that might mean I could listen to it now with fresher ears and maybe end up liking it more... but that's an awful lot of ifs and maybes.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well I suppose it's just another tool for helping us grasp, dissect and discuss music, but it is a powerfully mythologized one which maybe gets in the way of that a bit.
When I listen/watch tunes on YouTube I'm always surprised (and irritated) by how people in the comments are so specific and didactic about genres - "er no, that's not down tempo juke-influenced turbo folk you fool, it's actually acid jump-up ghettobass" etc. There is something so annoying about people proclaiming with such certainty about something whose lines are way too vague for that to be possible.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
I think it's inappropriate for it to be number 1 because of the vocal; it's like putting together a list of the top 20 rich tea biscuits and giving top spot to a company that once put icing sugar on their rich tea biscuits.