Choon of the Day

[Corpsey]

Trivia fans: one of Strike went on to be in Freestylers and the other one went on to be in Plump DJs. (There was also a vocalist.)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

"What is Love?" has 300 million plays on Spotify.

Presumably because it was a massive hit in the States, too?

idk about massive but it was up there with C+C Music Factory etc in the wave of early 90s pop house/jock jam hits here

its enduring fame on that level is really due to it soundtracking a pretty terrible repeating 90s SNL skit starring Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan as a pair of clueless mid-90s clubegoers, or SNL writers idea of clubgoers anyway. I can't find any clips of it, but entire joke is basically that they sideways headbang to "What Is Love" (also that they frantically hump any women who agrees to dance with them, which probably seemed much funnier in 1995)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I loved making this playlist today

happy craner is best craner

I don't have a nostalgic connection to any pop music like that. the radio was basically trash when I was a tween, then I stopped paying attention to pop.

also Messiah was on Kickin' Records, one of the first ardkore labels, from bleep techno thru more Belgian/Beltram sounding stuff to proto-jungle. DJ Hype got his start there putting out ca 1990 bleep rave stuff. so did Grant Nelson who went to be one one of the progenitors of UKG, one of the first (maybe the first) junglists to start applying jungle ruffness etc to garage house. Messiah were strictly rave guys tho, never moved on to jungle or anything else so they live forever in the glory of ca. 1990-92.

 

[boxedjoy]

Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex' which was referencing a 1995 plot line in a now cancelled British soap called Brookside, and is therefore an essential cultural artifact

I had no idea this is where this came from! Poor Max, Susannah killed their kids and mutilated her womb in a car accident, then she had that terrible surrogacy before being blown up in a shower while shagging a neighbour. It really did make his life complex, having sex with his ex.

 

[boxedjoy]

the first tape of songs I recorded off the radio started with:

"Don't Give Me Your Life"
"Two Can Play That Game"
"Dreamer" (which is still my favourite song of all time I think)
"U Sure Do"

it is no wonder I have turned out the way I have, really

 

[boxedjoy]

two months ago I got offered a radio show online if I could come up with a pitch for it and the concept I had was "Pure Mince" ie tunes which are a bit naff, but also tunes which you can "mince" to, the way that only songs in the key of poppers can be enjoyed. I've only done two episodes, I'll need to post them in the promo subforum

 

[craner]

I might change the name of my playlist to ‘Songs in the Key of Poppers’, that’s brilliant.

 

[thirdform]

what are the boundaries, roughly, of handbag house?

does it bleed over into early-mid 90s piano type of business?

I was under the impression it was more strictly a later, more thumping affair

That's hardbag. This is a hardbag classic:
Another hardbag tune:


as a rule handbag is more women and hardbag is more gay muscle maries and effeminate men.

Hardbag kinda mutated/cross evolved with Tony De Vit style hard house.

 

[craner]

I had no idea this is where this came from! Poor Max, Susannah killed their kids and mutilated her womb in a car accident, then she had that terrible surrogacy before being blown up in a shower while shagging a neighbour. It really did make his life complex, having sex with his ex.

The woman he cheated on was the same actress who played ‘Bob’ in Blackadder.

 

[craner]

A good rule of thumb is that Handbag would get played in Top Shop and on Top of the Pops.

 

[boxedjoy]

She also was the nutter babymother in Family Affairs.

Why does my mind retain this stuff instead of useful things like how to drive a car

 

[craner]

My mind retains this stuff and I can drive a car. It still doesn’t help.

 

[boxedjoy]

Another hardbag tune:

Love this one, It's particularly great for doing the classic trance Hands In The Air pose during the breakdown

 

[thirdform]

I loved making this playlist today.

I mean, every single track on it was fairly ubiquitous as some point in the UK between 1991-2001 (apart from maybe 'Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex' which was referencing a 1995 plot line in a now cancelled British soap called Brookside, and is therefore an essential cultural artifact, like 'Charly' or 'Sesame's Treet'). I loved all of them at the moment of their Top 20 blitzkrieg. I was a collaborator, climbing into bed with the Eurodance invaders. I have never been a snob about this sort of stuff which is good because it meant I could easily locate the power or poetry or joy in it. I had the intellectual ballast of Simon Price championing this stuff in Melody Maker if I felt the need for moral support. But that was just back-up for something felt instinctively.

It was not jouissance. It was a beauty so obvious it could easily go undetected if you'd already trained yourself in the right (wrong) way. This music was as much the soundtrack to youth and the times as all of the other records I loved at the same moment. Now it's just another history of feeling and desire. Today I had my heart in my mouth for most of those 45 records, when I wasn't pissing myself laughing or prancing around the kitchen table. Between the towering camp crap of 'Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex' and the Teutonic monument of 'Dreamer' is a wild, wide landscape of memory, emotion, passions and dreams.

Banger after banger.

Cape Fear made all of them redundant though. Very white - not saying that as a diss, I absolutely enjoy some of this stuff (it's proper extreme cheese unlike prog house which is portentous middle of the road cheese.) Just an observation.

Although I do have more of a soft spot for some of the happier hardcore which developed in tandum with handbag, mainly cos of the dub bass elements, until late 95.

 

[boxedjoy]

Various - Enter The Hardbag

View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1995 CD release of "Enter The Hardbag" on Discogs.

www.discogs.com

This is good for setting apart the handbag from the hardbag - you can see the interlocking joins but hardbag just has that camp menace that elevates it to a different place

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

hardbag is more gay muscle maries and effeminate men

checks out onomatopoetically

 

[craner]

Of course it’s white - it’s Eurodance, Teutonic titanium pop music.

 

[boxedjoy]

Part of the reason this stuff is so precious to me is because it's pop music that happens to be dance music but it's the pop music of my formative and pivotal years

 

[craner]

Part of the reason this stuff is so precious to me is because it's pop music that happens to be dance music but it's the pop music of my formative and pivotal years

Exactly. It’s also, basically, high street disco. House and techno taxonomy is irrelevant here.

 

[boxedjoy]

The mutation into trance-adjacent hard house really fascinates me. When I was at school this was the music of neds, the toughest and roughest who could and would batter people like me... but it's so frothy and OTT and so obviously gay, I don't know why it ended up the sound of macho and threatening Glasgow lads.