The US equivilent to the 'nuum

[elgato]

I've thought about this relationship alot. to what extent is the hardcore continuum a uk thing. obviously london, as the hub of the black atlantic has been it's base, but when the music transcends geography does it stop being part of it. i'm interesting in this idea particularly related to dubstep.

i dont know really, i guess it depends what our goal is in discerning a continuum... if its purely for documentation then i dont see why one should restrict it to particular geographical areas. a good example is when techno crossed the atlantic to berlin with maurizio and basic channel. purely for documentary, there is no reason to remove this evolution of techno on this side of the atlantic from its detroit roots

 

[Clubberlang]

Again I don't think there is any possible way of making a continuum of American music. It's way way way too messy. But looking at your list hip hop >>> electro >>> garage/house is way way off on a basic level. Garage/house is just where disco lived after the Great Chicago Record Fire (it basically skipped hip hop entirely and only borrowed a bit from electro and even that was more in terms of technology than sound.) And electro itself is far from a direct descendent of hip hop itself (if anything it is also more a disco offshoot--the more robotic Kraftwerk/Moroder influenced strain of disco-- than it is a child of Sugarhill/Bambatta/etc.)

 

[elgato]

Garage/house is just where disco lived after the Great Chicago Record Fire (it basically skipped hip hop entirely and only borrowed a bit from electro and even that was more in terms of technology than sound.)

whats the Great Chicago Record Fire? Im very interested in learning about house, garage and techno history, do you know any good books/resources on the topic?

And electro itself is far from a direct descendent of hip hop itself (if anything it is also more a disco offshoot--the more robotic Kraftwerk/Moroder influenced strain of disco-- than it is a child of Sugarhill/Bambatta/etc.)

yeh you're clearly right when i think about it, bambaata constantly emphasises how much kraftwerk influenced his electro bits, hip-hop didnt spawn electro it just kind of occassionally intersects with it

 

[dubble-u-c]

whats the Great Chicago Record Fire? Im very interested in learning about house, garage and techno history, do you know any good books/resources on the topic?

http://www.geocities.com/jahsonic/DiscoSucks.html

taken from above:


The 'Disco Sucks' campaign was a white, macho reaction against gay liberation and black pride more than a musical reaction against drum machines. In England, in the same year as the 'Disco Sucks' demo in America, The Young Nationalist - a British National Party publication - told its readers: 'Disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys.'

July 12, 1979, This was Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois. Two Chicago radio DJs [Steve Dahl and Garry Meier] came up with the idea of having people bring unwanted disco records to the stadium. The spurned records would be burned between doubleheader games with the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Lead by the chant, “Disco Sucks!”, most of the records weren’t burned, but sailed through the stands during the game -- nearly inciting a riot. Some fans started their own fires and mini-riots. There was so much commotion that the ballplayers couldn’t even finish the last game of the doubleheader; the White Sox forfeited.

Then WLUP-DJ Steve Dahl is credited by many with singlehandedly ending the disco era. On July 12, 1979, after several smaller anti-disco events, Dahl's "Disco Demolition" between games of a twi-night doubleheader at old Comiskey park, ended up with the field completely trashed, and the White Sox forced to forfeit the second game.
# http://fmfc.ezenet.com:8080/disco/jsp/features.jsp# “disco sucks” - a slideshow presentation detailing the events of the july 12th, 1979 comiskey park “disco sucks” riot with audio from Steve Dahl's radio show on WLUP chicago the morning after.

 

[Clubberlang]

Great Chicago Record Fire=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

House/Garage/Techno history is given a brief, but good summation in Energy Flash otherise I have no idea.

There is a great Peter Shapiro book on disco Turn the Beat Around also Tim Lawrence's Love Saves The Day is supposed to be good.

 

[the undisputed truth]

Funk and disco were big band relics and as backasswards looking now as much as the nu-indy thing is now. How many actual real instrument playing r'n'b or hiphop bands do you know of ?

Ehhhh???????

If the US equivalent to the hardcore continuum were hiphop and that started with kool herc and GM flash, then funk and disco had already had its day making the big bands which were indicative of those genres merely sample banks worth robbing to support the breakbeat revolution.

Real instrument playing big bands like the famous flames or parliament and the lush orchestral arrangements behind many a disco song don't have any place in the hiphop 'nuum which in a linear sense from coining the word 'hiphop' would have started around 1978.

Live bands playing hiphop these days are therfore mostly retro funksters and nu-indy bands likewise. Harking back to glory days with little of value to add to what went before thus only really good for nostalgic value by mostly ripping off classic riffs, basslines and beats and spitting a few rhymes over them.

IMO

 

[the undisputed truth]

With turntablism coming from hiphop one could argue the cult of the DJ taken up by early house and techno DJs/producers in detroit and chicago in the mid 80 was directly attributable to what had been going on in hiphop/electro at the time. Tunes like cybotron -clear are obvious testament as is soulsonic force. Where they differed was in the street and the club and their attitudes towards homosexuality but musically there wasn't much difference. Mantronix could have swung either way. Put a rhyme over house and techno, cross the black atlantic, call it hiphouse or whatever but it's still hiphop based on the turntable aspect.

 

[Clubberlang]

No offense, but you don't know what you are talking about. Those Detroit techno and Chicago house guys cared a hell of a lot more about the more robotic end of disco than they did about hip hop DJs or breakbeats. Disco created the cult of the DJ and the fetish of the 12" mix. That hip hop and house/techno both picked up on it, doesn't mean that the latter followed the former at all.

 

[Clubberlang]

Have you even read an interview with any of those Detroit techno guys? I mean they were far from obsessed with hip hop. They didn't care about it all. They were all over P-Funk stuff like "Flashlight" and Ital Disco and the colder end of new wave, not Bambatta and Grandmaster Flash. If there is a connection between "Clear" and "Planet Rock" it is Kraftwerk, not Bronx block parties (I should add that I think they were produced just about simultaneously anyway.)

 

[elgato]

yeh the impression ive got from the brief history ive just scampered off to read is that house was very much a spawn of disco, with some influence coming from electronic innovations in europe. so in that sense, it ran almost completely in parallel to hip-hop (except for hip-hop's heavier influence from funk, although having said that i wouldve thought that the more processed funk of parliament and george clinton came into house somewhere, and Derrick May, one of the originators of techno has been quoted as saying that techno could be thought of as "George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator" - lol)

 

[mistersloane]

Mantronix could have swung either way.

I heard he did n all

 

[the undisputed truth]

No offense, but you don't know what you are talking about. Those Detroit techno and Chicago house guys cared a hell of a lot more about the more robotic end of disco than they did about hip hop DJs or breakbeats. Disco created the cult of the DJ and the fetish of the 12" mix. That hip hop and house/techno both picked up on it, doesn't mean that the latter followed the former at all.

None taken and therin lies the problem of defining a linear continuum as mentioned in a previous post. Funnily enough i just finished that 'techno rebels- Dan Sicko' book a couple of weeks ago. It is suggested there that both detroit and chicago scenes were influenced by the big disco stuff coming out of NY and the early hiphop/electro stuff of Bambaataa/soulsonic/Arthur Baker. Breakbeats or 4 on the floor stuff using TR808 makes things sound practically the same. Cybotron sound more electro and proto hiphop than proto techno and the parallels between NY block parties and detroit club parties are strikingly similar too.

on a side note about mantronix swinging, isn't GM flash gay and maybe scorpio or cowboy from the furious 5 were too?

 

[nomadologist]

Cybotron sound more electro and proto hiphop than proto techno and the parallels between NY block parties and detroit club parties are strikingly similar too.

Cybotron aren't "proto-"anything, they WERE the original TECHNO act. "Techno" is not a feel, or a general sonics, it's a BEAT, made on a Roland 808 and 909 sequencers first popularized in Detroit clubs by Juan Atkins, Saunderson, and co.

There is no continuum. I guess I really don't like that idea at all.

 

[Clubberlang]

the parallels between NY block parties and detroit club parties are strikingly similar too.

Uh no they weren't. Detroit techno was primarily a black middle class phenomenon in a city which had yet to fall into absolute grimness. In NY hip hop was happening in the midst of a city which was absolutely grim. And once it "crossed-over" it became a totally arty bohemian phenomenon for a second which was still nothing like Detroit's scene.

 

[the undisputed truth]

Being black of whatever class in an early 80's american urban setting making electronica using the same technology and ethos then putting on parties in different cities contemporaneously regardless of the sub genre they were making does have striking similarities. It's not like we're comparing it to white upper class cali surf bunnies putting on stoner luau's in malibu to hawaiian steel guitar music.

Are you then saying nomadologist that if a tune doesn't have among other things as rhythmic signifiers, a straight 4 on the floor beat with offset hihats and clap fills from an 808 then it isn't techno ?

 

[Troy]

the parallels between NY block parties and detroit club parties

I'm trying to remember the jams from MY block party days in Lodi, California. Hmmm...

Shannon - Let the Music Play
Madonna - Holiday
Egyptian Lover
Salt n Peppa - Push It (The JAM!!!)
Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey

And tons of Latin Freestyle jams. Quite a unique electro/breakbeaty type of beat...

 

[Clubberlang]

Being black of whatever class in an early 80's american urban setting making electronica using the same technology and ethos then putting on parties in different cities contemporaneously regardless of the sub genre they were making does have striking similarities.

So all black people making music with synthesizers/samples/beats are the same? Oooookay.

 

[the undisputed truth]

That's just silly, can you honestly not see the striking similarities between what black people in NY and those in Chicago and Detroit were doing with regards to electronic music and putting on parties in the early 80's ? Well how about the turntablism of Jeff Mills/the wizard/UR I suppose you're going to tell me he wasn't influenced by what the hiphoppaz were doing either and had no bearing on what May, Atkins and Saunderson did ? but if you check his lineage NY>>chicago>>detroit = hiphop >>house>>techno

 

[Clubberlang]

Crisp clean answers:

No I can't.

Yes. Mills clearly was. But Underground Resistance were probably the only Detroit techno who actively borrowed ideas from hip hop. They also like jazz a lot I hear.

No I don't think that. Nothing indicates to me that anything that was going on in NY in the late-70s/early-80s hip hop-wise had much to do with what Saunders/May/Atkins ended up doing. I think Prince was way way more important to those guys than Grandmaster Flash was.

No he doesn't say that.

 

[the undisputed truth]

JM: My job description at the time was a DJ that went out in the streets and found anything up and coming. That was my job.
Being in Detroit and being young and in the street I was aware what was happening with House music and Techno, in electronic music.
When Detroit Techno basically solidified and the structure was created, I was basically there and it was just one of the things I picked out of the streets and brought back to radio.
As a result of playing it and growing with it, after Hip Hop I went to House and then from House to Techno.

Cybotrons clear was an electro trak but credited as the first techno trak also. Electro was a derivative of hiphop through Bamabaataa who by 1982 when clear was recorded by Atkins had along with his soulsonic force already laid the blueprint for electro and was organising hiphop tours to europe. Atkins must have known what was going on in the electro/hiphop scene and been influenced by the DIY ethos of hiphop though not neccessarily the same musical influences yet both were clearly inspired by kraftwerk.

My point being if there is a US equivalent to the UK 'nuum it's genesis was hiphop and the electronic revolution it inspired led by black youth primarily in the east.