questions you are dying to ask but are too scared to b/c of music nerd cred?

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paolo

Mechanical phantoms
Tentative Andy said:
When did people switch from saying 'rewinds' to saying 'reloads'? :)
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It's been like this for as long as I can remember (which is since about 2005 :confused:)

Incidentally, I'm going to remember 2009 as the year when just about every DJ started doing wee spinbacks when mixing out of a tune
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
two q's:

1) how widespread is the received wisdom that latter day dancehall reggae peaked in the early part of the noughties and has been on the slide ever since?

2) how fair is it, in your humble opinions?
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Not that widespread because

a) most people think reggae = bob marley
b) lots of hits at the end of the 90s like Beenie Man's Who Am I or Mr Vegas's Heads High. Then into the noughties with Sean Paul etc

There maybe is some truth in it however, cos that mad ragga percussion thing certainly was at its height in the early 90s and you could make a case for that being the last moment of outright energetic mania.

Plus I guess after that, in the UK at least, more homegrown genres came to the fore?

Early 90s stuff is yet to be repacked and revived - seems like people are still on the 80s digi thing. Soon come tho, I bet you.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
usually it's a version that only top djs have/had. often they're never released, so you're meant to feel extra lucky if it comes out on a 12". or, occasionally, a vip (or de facto vip) will have an unclearable sample on it so it never can come out.
 
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gabriel

The Heatwave
mos dan said:
two q's:

1) how widespread is the received wisdom that latter day dancehall reggae peaked in the early part of the noughties and has been on the slide ever since?

2) how fair is it, in your humble opinions?
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when I started listening to dancehall in the early 00s everyone was moaning about how it was better in the 90s

in the mid 00s everyone talked about riddims like Liquid (2001) as being a bygone age

now the same 'rubbish' 'jiggy' 'lightweight' riddims that people from 2002-06 moaned about are being hailed as the last peak for dancehall

I remember being aware back then that people had said the same things at pretty much every stage in reggae or dancehall or musical history before

the only difference now is that I sometimes find myself agreeing with the notion that dancehall isn't quite as good now as it used to be, but I would mainly put that down to the fact that the time when it was new and exciting for me is in the past; I'm more jaded now, I've got more to compare it to, I have less energy to trawl through endless new tunes to find the gems (I still do it though!)

I found when I was putting together my 25 years of digital dancehall mix the other day - http://www.theheatwave.co.uk/events/item/rinse25feb10/ - that there was a huge surfeit of big tunes from 2003-06 or around that time. but that's probably just cos that's when I was most excited by buying records, I dunno.

in a detached, rational way I tend not to think that there is any/much material difference though

however, one thing that has definitely happened since the mid 00s is that it's become much much harder for producers to make money out of music. artists never made money from record sales so they're not affected. but it used to be worthwhile for small labels and producers to make music as they could make their money back. now things are so dominated by the bigger producers like don corleon, shane brown and stephen mcgregor that there is perhaps less variety in production styles

another thing that's happened is that some of the older big producers seem to have retired; possibly cos they are so established and comfortably off that it's simply not worth their time to make music for the current returns you get as a producer. I dunno though, that's a bit of speculation on my part. by people like this I mean dave kelly, tony kelly, bobby digital, richard 'shams' browne, sly & robbie and some other people I can't remember right now.
 
M

michael

Bring out the vacuum
gabriel said:
the only difference now is that I sometimes find myself agreeing with the notion that dancehall isn't quite as good now as it used to be, but I would mainly put that down to the fact that the time when it was new and exciting for me is in the past; I'm more jaded now, I've got more to compare it to, I have less energy to trawl through endless new tunes to find the gems (I still do it though!)
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Yeah I think is nothing to do with any genre, and just one of the facts of life.
 
P

petergunn

plywood violin
gabriel said:
when I started listening to dancehall in the early 00s everyone was moaning about how it was better in the 90s

in the mid 00s everyone talked about riddims like Liquid (2001) as being a bygone age

now the same 'rubbish' 'jiggy' 'lightweight' riddims that people from 2002-06 moaned about are being hailed as the last peak for dancehall

I remember being aware back then that people had said the same things at pretty much every stage in reggae or dancehall or musical history before

the only difference now is that I sometimes find myself agreeing with the notion that dancehall isn't quite as good now as it used to be, but I would mainly put that down to the fact that the time when it was new and exciting for me is in the past; I'm more jaded now, I've got more to compare it to, I have less energy to trawl through endless new tunes to find the gems (I still do it though!)

I found when I was putting together my 25 years of digital dancehall mix the other day - http://www.theheatwave.co.uk/events/item/rinse25feb10/ - that there was a huge surfeit of big tunes from 2003-06 or around that time. but that's probably just cos that's when I was most excited by buying records, I dunno.

in a detached, rational way I tend not to think that there is any/much material difference though

however, one thing that has definitely happened since the mid 00s is that it's become much much harder for producers to make money out of music. artists never made money from record sales so they're not affected. but it used to be worthwhile for small labels and producers to make music as they could make their money back. now things are so dominated by the bigger producers like don corleon, shane brown and stephen mcgregor that there is perhaps less variety in production styles

another thing that's happened is that some of the older big producers seem to have retired; possibly cos they are so established and comfortably off that it's simply not worth their time to make music for the current returns you get as a producer. I dunno though, that's a bit of speculation on my part. by people like this I mean dave kelly, tony kelly, bobby digital, richard 'shams' browne, sly & robbie and some other people I can't remember right now.
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dancehall is just one or two good sample packs, plug-ins, and new synthe purchase away from sounding good again...

good point re: the "retirement" of the older big dogs like dave kelly, bobby digital, steeley and clevie, etc... these guys all predated the digital era in one way or another, i guess now the game is changed...

my problem with dancehall now is so much of it sounds cheap in a bad way... like just grade-z preset sounds... stupid orchestra hits n stuff...

and of course, "buying records"... they are hardly any... seems like 90% of the records that come out now are new roots stuff, which is ok, but sorta a bummer...
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
ive been listening in a not terribly commited way to dancehall since the early 90s and to me its as good as its ever been and still has all the elements that made me love it in the first place. the humour, the agression, the energy, the fun, maybe less bass now though?
 
D

droid

Guest
I reckon that in terms of originality and variety that things have been winding down since the early - mid 90s. There was loads of good stuff in the mid-late 90's, but there hasn't really been a musical revolution in the last 15 years to compare with the digital>ragga>conscious movements between 85 and 95.

Now I got into dancehall in about 97, and I love a lot of the stuff from that era, but the deeper I delve into post-digi stuff the more astonished I am at just how much music there is, the wild variations in rhythms and styles, the bewildering number of deeyjays, singers, producers and labels, and the ridiculous amount of inter-connectivity between them all.
 
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gumdrops

Well-known member
in an even less not very committed sort of way, i was listening to a recent heatwave show and really liked the energy. to my ears, dancehall doesnt sound that diff from what it did for most of the 00s when things started - to my ears at least - to get a bit lighter and more upbeat. im thinking it kinda peaked in terms of mainstream profile/hits etc back then and since then its just been in that space of still operating in that same kind of (poppier?) aesthetic but without actually getting the mainstream hits. sort of like hip hop really. my own personal favourite era though is the early-mid 90s. all those ragga ragga ragga and just ragga and conscious ragga comps etc. it was really hard, heavy, physical sounding stuff.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Went to Heatwave's night at King's X on Thursday and it was good. Quite a few tunes I recognised from 2003-5, when I really loved dancehall (South Rakkas Crew, all the 'Indian' riddims). Personally, I thought there was a bit of a lull after that, but I'm looking forward to checking out all the recommendations on the other thread :)
 
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