-
Coming Soon: Oldschool Renegades
A new documentary on house, techno and rave from 1988-1992, starring 40 or so renegades from the time. To be released in October 2011. Details at oldschoolrenegades.com. Can’t wait!
-
Abe Duque ft. Blake Baxter - Disco Lights (What Happened?, Abe Duque Records, 2004)
“House music to me is nothing more than an extension of disco,” says Juan Atkins, the senior representative of the “Belleville three”, the founding fathers of Detroit techno, who hailed from suburban Belleville (Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson completed the troika). “Chicago came out with its own version of techno a couple of years down the road with Larry Heard and Marshall Jefferson, but they didn’t call it techno because we already had the term, so they called it acid house.” Atkins adds: “It was a little take-off. I think there was somebody there trying to emulate a Detroit record… It seems like an awful coincidence that our records were selling so well in Chicago and all of a sudden acid house came on the scene.”
— Tim Lawrence, Acid: Can You Jack? (2005)
Club nights, disco lights… laser lights light the way… to the dance floor.
(footnote: track appears as “Disco Nights” on the 2006 mix CD, When The Fever Breaks)
-
Chip E. - It’s House (Jack Trax, Gotta Dance Records, 1985)
In the early/mid eighties, Chip E. (Irwin Larry Eberhart II) studied marketing and music, worked at Importes Etc. record store in Chicago, DJed at high school and basement parties, and started producing his own music. In an interview published on Gridface (2010), he talks about the first track recorded for his debut EP, Jack Trax:
I know you’ve heard a lot of stories about where “house” comes from. Actually what happened was, people would come into Importes asking for some of the old disco music that Frankie [Knuckles] played. Now Frankie at The Warehouse never played house music, ‘cause house music didn’t exist… There was no such thing. But people would come into Importes Etc. and they would say, “Do you have any of that old music that Frankie played at The Warehouse?” Some people would just start saying, “Do you have any of that old music Frankie played at the ‘house?” So we started putting up signs that would say, “As Heard at The Warehouse,” or me being lazy, I’d just put up a sign that said, “As Heard at The House,” and we’d find that anything that we put up that said “As Heard at The House,” people would just pick it up without even listening to it. So I knew this term “house” was something that was going to be marketable.
(credit: Gridface)
So the first record I recorded as part of my seven-track EP was a song called “It’s House,” and the entirety of the lyrics are “It’s House.” That’s it: “It’s house, it’s house, it’s house, it’s house,” just in different pitches. I put together the right rhythms behind it and some nice bass note lines and melodies, but that was the first house record.
Now [Chicago-based DJ/producer] Jesse Saunders claims that he created the first house record. True, he created a record before me, but it was not a house record because house music did not exist, and his record, “On and On” was a re-make of a New York disco edit. You cannot make a new genre of music by re-making a disco edit. He just re-made a disco edit, period. It was not new music. “It’s House” was completely new music. It created the genre of music we know as house, because it was minimalistic, it was tribal, it was driving, it was the four on the floor, and it was the sampling. It was based on the 808 and then later progressed into a 909 drum machine. That is the beginning of house music.
Read the rest of the interview by Jacob Arnold on Gridface.
-
Jesse Saunders - On & On (Jes Say Records, 1984)
Saunders in an interview published on Beatportal, 2010:
What was it like during the early days of house?
The early days were spent finding the best, most soulful, and uplifting disco records out of New York and Philly. I’m talking the late 1970s. There was only one place that carried them and it was called Sounds Good, on the northside of Chicago.
When Frankie [Knuckles] arrived, he would get them directly from New York although Ron Hardy was already playing them at Den One before Frankie.
Lil Louis was also on top of things on the west side. A DJ by the name of Mike Ezebuku was doing it on the southside. I was 15 or so at this time, around 1977 to ‘78.
As we started to progress and bring this deep house music (as it should be called to differentiate it from the 1980s Chicago house) to the masses — teenagers and college students that didn’t go to gay clubs — the term house stuck because we would often associate it to the style that Frankie played at the Warehouse.
DJs such as myself, my brother Wayne Williams, and eventually Alan King, Tony Hatchett, and Andre Hatchett were in a crew called the Chosen Few.
We DJed every major event in Chicago from 1978 through 1984 when I made the first house record! DJs in those days had lots of love for each other — there was no fighting as to who was the best.
(credit: Beatportal)
You’ve been quoted as saying that there are some ‘misconceptions’ with the origins of house music. Please explain what you meant.
[laughs] There are lots of misconceptions. Most of them are due to people taking credit when they weren’t even around to witness what is was all about! Others are because people feel the need to embellish their role in the evolution.
Why did you decide to produce ‘On & On’ in 1984?
My records got stolen, which contained the original bootleg ‘On & On’ (which was my moniker). I used the bassline from Space Invaders and I wrote original arrangements around it to produce and write ‘Fantasy’!
Back then, had the term ‘house music’ been coined yet?
House music had been coined, but it wasn’t really associated with what we were doing. People were shortening the term Warehouse to house as early as 1978.
It was a term used to describe the style of disco that Frankie, Ronnie, and Mike were playing. Since I was capturing the essence of the style with my On & On tracks, it was a great marketing tool to utilize when we released ‘On & On’ in 1984 on Jes Say Records.
What were your musical influences at the time that you produced the track?
Electronic records such as Dr.’s Cat ‘Love Is The Drug’, anything by Kraftwerk, and the bootleg mix of ‘On & On’. It was because this record was stolen from my collection that led me to make ‘On & On’!
What is the track an ode to?
The bootleg version of ‘On & On’ was my signature record. I was the only one to play it at the time. No one knew what it was, and I wasn’t telling. What it actually was, was the B side of a Mega Mix record, which is like a mix or podcast today on vinyl.
Vince [Lawrence] and I were basically talking nonsense on ‘On & On’! Just random things about how the music makes you feel.
Read the rest of the interview by Terry Church on Beatportal.
-
Julio Bashmore - Jack got Macked
While we’re on the topic of Jack and his groove. This is a keeper. Some unreleased Jackin’ from Bristol, sounding like it got routed via Chi-town and Mamelodi. Julio Bashmore is one to look for.
http://thecurbcrawlers.com/audio/june2009/JackgotMacked.mp3
-
Marshall Jefferson - Move Your Body (The House Music Anthem, Trax Records, 1986)
Tim Lawrence writes on how the now-defunct disco label Salsoul provided Marshall Jefferson with the “foundations of house”:
The story begins, like so many of the best stories about Chicago house, on the dance floor of the Music Box, where Ron Hardy began to formulate a peculiarly manic blend of disco, new wave and electro when the venue opened at the end of 1983. Hardy had only been offered the job when Robert Williams, the ex-owner of the Warehouse, which had closed in June, failed to entice Frankie Knuckles to join him at his new club, but the relatively unknown spinner soon generated a reputation for generating ferociously emotive sets and Jefferson, who was lured to the venue by an attractive co-worker, was soon caught up in the DJ’s bewildering slipstream. “I wasn’t interested in dance music before I went to the Music Box,” he says. “I was listening to rock’n’roll because it was so hard. I was young and disco wasn’t rebellious enough for me. But at the Music Box the volume really swept me away.”
Wearing a dog collar around his neck and a little bowler hat on his head, Jefferson effortlessly blended into the off-the-wall scene at the Music Box, where the young straight crowd was flipping out to Hardy’s dark and delirious programming, and the newcomer soon started to record music that combined rock’s hard-edged aesthetic with the sensuous rhythms of disco. The recordings worked perfectly at the Music Box and, following their subsequent release as “Virgo Go Wild Rhythm Tracks” in early 1985, Jefferson teamed up with Sleezy D to record the demented, burbling “I’ve Lost Control”, which, thanks to its inversion of the uplifting delivery of the impassioned disco diva, became Hardy’s celebrated anti-anthem. “‘I’ve Lost Control’ came from rock music,” says Jefferson. “I tried to bring a little Jimi Hendrix into the picture. ‘I’ve Lost Control’ was house music’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’.”
Disco, however, still comprised a significant part of any Hardy set — in part because he loved the music and in part because barely enough house music had been released to fill an entire night — and the DJ’s Salsoul selections left an indelible impression on Jefferson. “The Music Box was the first place I ever heard a Salsoul record,” he says. “Ron Hardy played a whole shitload of Salsoul records — ‘Let No Man Put Asunder’, ‘Love Sensation’, ‘Doctor Love’, all of the classics. The Salsoul records were very influential.”
Jefferson’s seminal recording, “Move Your Body”, a tape of which spread through Chicago and New York like fiercest of fires before it was eventually released in 1986, drew heavily on Salsoul’s aesthetic of uplifting instrumentation, passionate vocals and driving percussion. In contrast to the majority of his Chicago-based peers, Jefferson refused to directly draw on the disco classics, and his desire to produce new music inadvertently drew him closer to the musical practices of the 1970s. “Everybody else in Chicago was just copying old disco records, ripping of bass lines and keyboards, whereas I just played what I could play. Nobody could really identify my music with the old disco stuff, but it was similar, and with ‘Move Your Body’ I think I nailed the Salsoul vibe.”
Read the rest of the essay and many others on the history of dance music on Tim Lawrence’s website.
-
Alex Boman - Purple Drank - 2010
It’s looking like summer in Cape Town at LQF HQ so let’s kick off a summer fiesta selection with this gem off DJ Koze’s Pampa Records. Like the review on discogs says:
“You fall asleep on the patio and wake up in a sweaty basement later that night. Through the shabby speakers of one of those small but friendly Stockholm night clubs, you hear “Purple Drank”, a sleazy, sexy number that draws influences from Houston style screw music, classic deep house and hypnotic techno. The irresistible vocal hook - “I woke up with your name on my lips” has already echoed across dance floors from Tokyo to Amsterdam. Bouncy yet unsettling…”
-
DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues
Midtown 120 Intro
House isn’t so much a sound as a situation.
There must be a hundred records with voice-overs asking, “What is house?” The answer is always some greeting card bullshit about “life, love, happiness….” The House Nation likes to pretend clubs are an oasis from suffering, but suffering is in here with us. (If you can get in, that is. I think of one time in New York when they wouldn’t let me into the Loft, and I could hear they were actually playing one of my records on the dance floor at that very moment. I shit you not.)
Let’s keep sight of the things you’re trying to momentarily escape from. After all, it’s that larger context that created the house movement and brought you here. House is not universal. House is hyper-specific: East Jersey, Loisaida, West Village, Brooklyn - places that conjure specific beats and sounds. As for the sounds of New York dance floors themselves, today’s house classics might have gotten worked into a set once in a while, but the majority of music at every club was major label vocal shit. I don’t care what anybody tells you. Besides, New York Deep House may have started out as minimal, mid-tempo instrumentals, but when distributors began demanding easy selling vocal tracks, even the label “Strictly Rhythm” betrayed the promise of its own name by churning out strictly vocal after strictly vocal. Most Europeans still think “Deep House” means shitty, high energy vocal house.
So what was the New York house sound? House wasn’t so much a sound as a situation. The majority of DJ’s - DJ’s like myself - were nobody’s in nowhere clubs: unheard and unpaid. In the words of Sylvester: reality was less “everybody is a star,” and more “I who have nothing.”
Twenty years later, major distribution gives us Classic House, the same way soundtracks in Vietnam war films gave us Classic Rock. The contexts from which the Deep House sound emerged are forgotten: sexual and gender crises, transgendered sex work, black market hormones, drug and alcohol addiction, loneliness, racism, HIV, ACT-UP, Thompkins Sq. Park, police brutality, queer-bashing, underpayment, unemployment and censorship - all at 120 beats per minute.
These are the Midtown 120 Blues.
