The realisation that you don't really like house music much any more...

[baboon2004]

ooh, you're my type of guy/girl (delete as appropriate, or don't delete at all - I'm easy)...

 

[adverb]

ooh, you're my type of guy/girl (delete as appropriate, or don't delete at all - I'm easy)...

i'm married to tom cruise - let's get it on!

 

[baboon2004]

i'm having it off with David Icke and some giant space lizards on Altern-4 just at the moment, but when I've finished that I'm all yours...

 

[AshRa]

And then there's Marshall, Chip E, Master C&J, Wayne Williams, Jesse Saunders, Vince Lawrence; all straight etc. I'm not saying there were NO gays, but it's surprising how many were straight.

You mean Marshall Jefferson ISN'T gay?! Crikey!

And Larry Heard is a longstanding mystery. I even asked his manager Rene and he had no idea. Mysterious figure, but probably gay.

"Mystery Of Love" indeed

 

[baboon2004]

Good thing we didn't have this thread about music in Idi Amin's Uganda, because homosexuality didn't exist there....

 

[Canada J Soup]

After re-reading this thread, I stumbled across an old Frank Broughton article about the early days of house music and the 'fresh breeze blowing through the Windy City' in 1995. Nothing that I hadn't read about elsewhere (albeit probably in 'Last Night a DJ Saved My Life'), although I hadn't previously heard that Rocky Jones and Larry Sherman were as unpopular in Chicago as the piece makes out.

What I did find was that it got me more fired up to dig out some old house tracks than I have been in a long time...which brought with it the realization that no matter how stagnant the current crop of music might seem it'll always be informed by an amazing legacy. It also reminded me that, just when you think things have reached a natural end with a musical form, there's often some new life waiting to jump into it.

Also, it's had me loudly humming the bassline to 'No Way Back' for the last hour which I think might be starting to piss off my co-workers.

Linky: http://www.djhistory.com/djhistory/featuresDisplay.php?writings_id=86

 

[mms]

oh no - please don't let's call anything post house! it's all house anyhow - even techno.

bring back calling everything house!

i was being silly really - that would be dry and nasty - very un house
call everything abstract dance i reckon

 

[AshRa]

What I did find was that it got me more fired up to dig out some old house tracks than I have been in a long time...which brought with it the realization that no matter how stagnant the current crop of music might seem it'll always be informed by an amazing legacy.

Hear hear! Just thinking about things like this makes me think "I'll never get bored of house!"

 

[dominic]

It was their common practise to buy tracks outright with a minimal contract and no mention of royalties or publishing. They did nothing to invest for future successes, instead concentrating on quick foreign licensing deals, the proceeds of which were kept secret from most of the producers. They managed also to frighten away almost all the major label interest in Chicago. “They took the money and ran with it,” recalls Farley, “instead of developing any artists.” And when hip hop rose inexorably into the consciousness of the city’s black youth, displacing their loyalties to house, this loss of a local audience . . . .

i find this bit really depressing

seems like the question is why and how did chicago house lose its local following, such that it became overly dependent on selling records to europeans -- thereby setting the stage for "gentrification"

(and just to be clear, i like a lot of european house from the 89/92 era, and moreover, had house music not become "hip" among white folk, i myself would likely have never been drawn into it -- so despite the negative connotations of the word "gentrification," i use it descriptively as well as anti-prescriptively)

(ALSO, i'll acknowledge that the broughton article contradicts my remarks upthread about mid 80s being the height of homophobia and the isolation of the gay black community -- i.e., broughton paints a picture of fast sex and unbridled hedonism untouched by AIDS consciousness in places like the Music Box -- and he also paints of picture of the hip straight people lining up at the door to these clubs as early as 82/83 -- so who really knows? -- ANYWAY, whatever the actual facts, broughton's description of the early scene sounds like my idea of utopia)

 

[mms]

It was their common practise to buy tracks outright with a minimal contract and no mention of royalties or publishing. They did nothing to invest for future successes, instead concentrating on quick foreign licensing deals, the proceeds of which were kept secret from most of the producers. They managed also to frighten away almost all the major label interest in Chicago. “They took the money and ran with it,” recalls Farley, “instead of developing any artists.” And when hip hop rose inexorably into the consciousness of the city’s black youth, displacing their loyalties to house, this loss of a local audience .


see also i nyc with warlock records and men like gerald simpson and todd terry.
badness.

 

[adverb]

i was being silly really - that would be dry and nasty - very un house
call everything abstract dance i reckon

oh - apologies. although with music journos about you can't be too careful

 

[Chef Napalm]

I’ve been following this thread and thinking about what’s been said since stelfox started it over two weeks ago. I must admit that I’m torn between his assertion that he’s just sick of the whole dance music thing and what seems like a lot of love from Dissensians for the current crop of dance music stuff.

I came to it on saturday... when i say house music, i also mean techno and what have you. i get really bored in clubs now, especially when the whole evening is one thing, no variation in speed, tempo, rhythm structure (it's not like that at hip-hop/ragga/grime things!). i don't even like the way people dance to this sort of stuff any more, it's kinda half-arsed and like they can't be bothered to really dance. yup, 4/4 club music, i'm through with you... anyone else feel the same?

I remember when this happened to me with the early nineties crop of pop-grunge power-pop. I went to university in St.John’s, Newfoundland, which was kind of the hub of the east coast grunge scene in Canada. Bands like Hardship Post, Bung, Lizband, and Whodafunkit (who were technically a ska band using power chords) were the flavour, and their whole schtick fit in nicely with the Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana songs populating the charts.

It was the Smashing Pumpkins “The Aeroplane Flies Higher” singles box that did it. I remember buying it and spending the next few days working the 5 discs. I was shocked and dismayed at the mediocrity of all those extra tracks. When I went back to “Mellon Collie”, it too sounded bland. Suddenly, my music collection came crashing down around my ears. Everything that I had thought was great now sounded, well, stale. I had reached my saturation point.

I picked up Dubnobasswithmyheadman, and never looked back.

Don’t get me wrong, I still listen to “Badmotorfinger’, “Versus”, and “Nevermind”, but more for nostalgia than anything. It’s still good, mind, it just doesn’t make my pulse race the way it used to.

I’ve gone through the same thing with Drum ‘n’ Bass, French house (a la Crydamoure, Roule, Fiat Lux), Big Beat, and I’m sure I’ll tire of many more House offshoots. But never (capital “h”) House. It’s too varied, too diverse. There are too many heads on the hydra to kill them all off.

In the meantime, I am really feeling this “electrohouse”. Not all of it, (I can’t stand Tiefschwartz or that Alter Ego rubbish) but I really do love the way this crop of producers are blending the groove-driven (as in minimal techno) with twinkling melodies and house-diva vocals. Makes me smile like a fool.

For what it’s worth.

 

[luka]

@trilliam when did you realise you were a house guy? Was it a drug realisation? How did you become a house guy? Talk us through your conversion

 

[luka]

Don't sidestep the question talk to me because I'm interested. I want to know more about the house vibration and how people sync up to it.

 

[luka]

I feel like there is a massive spiritual energy centre pumping out a house vibration into the world and anyone can get attuned to it under the correct conditions

 

[WashYourHands]

Pete Burch died recently. If you're a Facefucker their group thing is open and you'll see what House means.

People will post things you won't like, but it sustained itself as as 'a celebration of three decades of the unspoken ideology of liberation through fun'.

That might not be what you're looking for, in which case this may not be a quest that sustains you. There's theory and practice.

 

[WashYourHands]

Pete 'Woosh' Birch on the History of DiY Soundsystem - Leftlion - Nottingham Culture

The DiY Soundsystem were one of the biggest raving crews of the nineties. Their ethos was all about rejecting profits and putting on damn good parties. Founding member Pete Woosh talks us through some of the highs and lows of being in the gang during the nineties...

www.leftlion.co.uk

Editors note: We have received sad news of the passing of DiY Soundsystem legend Peter 'Woosh' Birch on Friday 2 October 2020, after a long battle with cancer. He originally wrote this piece for us in January 2020 and it was first published as part of our Overall Magazine project, where we digitally archived a Nottingham culture magazine of the nineties and put out a new one-off print issue telling stories of Nottingham culture in the nineties. We send our love out to Pete's friends, family and all those associated with DiY and Spirit Wrestlers at this time. Rest in Party.
------------------------------------

The date is Thursday 23 November, 1989. There are a handful of people dancing in the Garage nightclub. This happens to be the birthday of my friend Harry, as well as the first official club night of what would become the DiY Soundsystem.

The story doesn’t start here though – it really began in local squats and house parties over the previous couple of years. During the late eighties, Nottingham had a thriving squat and house party scene. In Hyson Green and Forest Fields, you would find anarcho punks and ravers regularly dancing next to each other.

In many ways we were fortunate. It was still Margaret Thatcher’s heyday and unlike today it was much easier for creatives to sign on and focus on music, art or whatever it was that was your thing. Most of us had become adept at stretching a dole cheque out to last the week. We were never loaded but we were happy.

One week, a few of us managed to get enough cash together to go to one of the raves that was going off around the M25. We paid what was, for us at the time, an exorbitant amount of money, bought some ecstasy for £25 and found ourselves in a huge warehouse dancing around some half-arsed lights to a crappy sound system. We decided we could do better. Soon after this experience and a lot of bickering over a name, DiY was born.

After the first ‘official’ night we continued doing the squats, parties and benefits. We blagged a regular night at the Stork Club (later known as the Skyy Club) which we called DizzY. We got a regular crowd and before we knew it were being asked to run nights at some of the clubs in town. This was early nineties, and through our festival connections we hooked up with a bunch of travellers who had distanced themselves from the ‘brew crew’ types and had switched on to the rave scene. We took decks and records and they provided sound and a marquee - a great friendship ensued. Things started to move pretty quickly, and soon we had regular nights at the Cookie Club (Serve Chilled) and Venus (Bounce). One of my favourite memories has to be seeing a coach full of travellers and a dog queueing up to get into Venus, one of the trendiest clubs of it’s time.

It was the festivals and free parties which led us to buying the DiY Sound System. We managed to secure a bank loan and borrowed almost ten grand to have our own custom built system with seven-foot bass bins. This became known as the Black Box and was a huge factor in our success. The bass sound, especially outdoors, was nothing short of massive.

By May 1992 the festival scene, which we were now an integral part of, was growing and the authorities were not keen on allowing it to continue. The Avon Free Festival, traditionally held on the May Bank holiday weekend, had an injunction and only thanks to some swift manoeuvres by the travellers, switched to Castlemorton common. This festival has since achieved a legendary status, but it was in many ways a death knell for a way of life, with the government bringing in the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 as a direct result.


Back in Nottingham we were doing Bounce fortnightly at the Dance Factory, a sweat pit if ever there was one. This gave us the opportunity to rent an office and studio space and we began to write some of the music that was in our heads, and we launched a record label called Strictly 4 Groovers. Over time we released over a hundred records, inviting some of the UK’s top producers into the studio with us.

We had a large following of loyal fans who accompanied us all over the world and we held legendary parties in San Francisco, Paris, Amsterdam, Ibiza and Dallas to name a few. In San Francisco we rented an apartment for forty people for a whole month. This was us at our peak, but things couldn’t continue at such a pace. Personal politics between us soured and the advent of heroin in our scene saw things start to fall apart by the late nineties. DiY continued but not in the way that it had done before. Our hedonistic joy was replaced by a dark cloud.

Late last year, DiY celebrated its 30th birthday in Nottingham over a long weekend with events at the Old Angel, The Golden Fleece and Peggy’s Skylight, as well as a free party on the Forest in the early hours of Sunday morning. It continues more as an ideal these days, though you’ll still find many of the DiY DJs playing at festivals and parties. Many of us flew close to the sun and got burnt but there is no room for regret. DiY gave us the chance to travel the world, create a large scene of people that are still in touch with one another to this day, and spread our vibe of peace and love through music.

 

[thirdform]

I feel like there is a massive spiritual energy centre pumping out a house vibration into the world and anyone can get attuned to it under the correct conditions

Jungle from 1986