Heard Black Betty a few times at Optimo 
. Sean Paul’s Like Glue was another that caused mayhem at certain points.
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Lol yes the same in Cork around this time, curtain came down and he was wearing a white sheet like a ghost… lol mad
I don’t mean to come across as curmudgeonly and tribal, but I thought that stuff was really dull. grime and dubstep were absolutely amazing, bruk was catering for a more sophisticated crowd, people from our walks of life were getting into deep house and ny garage with the advent of funky, etc etc… Even the more arty/student end of that whole nexus was great for a while, early Hessle Audio releases still sound otherworldly, before they got swallowed up by the techno scene.
Didn’t we have shitloads of punk attitude in 90s dance music anyway? if anything that was the last flowering of what could be called the so-called ‘punk’ attitude, and it was time to retire it after that.
I mean, did DFA or Erol make or play anything as Sleazy as this?
or
I thought the unearthing and discovery of Baldelli and the Italian cosmic scene was the best sort of thing that happened to the house continuum (for lack of a better phrase) but it was not related to the trash/DFA thing I don’t think. More the demographic of this forum and old dj history.
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can you hook a brother up with obscure ge-ology sets? he always makes me ashamed of my music collection, which is the best thing ever.
cheers.
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check this out mate
also he passed away yesterday, RIP Terror
This somehow made Weatherall’s plate
As did this, I think
This mix with the volume in the car turned way way up, preferably somewhere abandoned, windows and doors closed is a near cosmic experience
Shy One did two grime specials on nts the past two weeks. check them soup to nuts. Some amazing electronic music which still sounds fresh today. Will post both later if interested. love her radio presenter style.
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Not exactly obscure- but his Mixcloud is here:
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Well I hated grime, dubstep, bassline and broken beat. Gave me a headache.
Wasn’t the brilliant thing about London around that time that all this stuff could co-exist often within 5-10 minutes of each other?
Or are we back to the “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” arguments that used to rule forums?
Maybe cos it was so much more popular here and had things like the NME writing about it all every week? Also, the bands were all either fast-tracked to superstardom (albeit briefly) or A&R people just signed another band that sounded like them-but more commercial and it lead to the landfill indie period.
A lot of the bands that made up the Nu-Rave era were quite fun bands to see live (CSS, Datarock, Klaxons, Shitdisco etc) but I doubt many people would be clamoring to read a book about it.
New York had a feeling of untouchable coolness in that period, and whereas London looked the same (if not slightly better in many ways) if you knew what you were looking at I doubt your casual fan who wasn’t there would agree nowadays that it was as cool.
The Rapture were getting pissed & passing out with Courtney Love live on MTV, whereas the Libertines were making polite jokes on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
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all true. Maybe also, the likes of Shoreditch Twat or Nathan Barley were sending up any pretensions to cool? maybe the kiss of death in London is to wear a badge before you get parodied?
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I guess the point I’m kinda making here is that it wasn’t always totally the hot bed of eclectic freedom it sometimes gets made out to be. And often from people who never spent much time in Glasgow as well to be honest. I’m a being a bit cheeky obviously but I kinda don’t buy the “play the fuck we want” angle, because whilst dropping pop tunes / black Betty etc did go against the restrictive nature of the prevalent “dance music” landscape at the time (great, obviously) there’s the other side of it.
You also heard that shit in student unions and poppier venues all the time. Still do. There was a very significant element of not losing the interest of people who only listen to popular music or shit they know when they’re pissed. I think being honest about that is balanced and I don’t think it takes anything away from them being a much needed tonic in general. But they absolutely weren’t playing punk / new beat / minimal wave / UR shit hours on end without heavily appeasing a student crowd. I think they gained more and more trust over time, and I think that is really amazing. At the time I went, the balance felt more studenty than eclectic but I wasn’t there loads or consistently. And to be fair, Glasgow has always had plenty of good options for music alot lesser sung ones as well which I favoured at the time. Best music city I lived in hands down.
Love the DFA stuff, would go and see the Optimo lads in a flash these days and with regret missed them just gone over my way due to a very pregnant partner.
And all respect to everyone who supported that night because I’m glad it was there and thrived. That’s some stint @Discophrenia fair play!
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Library music……ducks for cover
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The first hour or so was always the highlight for me
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Even the queue to get into Optimo was fun back in the day.
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aren’t you just being the old man who yells at cloud here because dance music didn’t conform to your idea of what it should be past 1999? I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, personal taste is personal taste, but why does the indie continuum always get a free pass and us who were raised and participated in blacker (/urban) scenes or scenes of black origin have to be held to ever more stringent standards? Just reads a bit morressey coded to me.
I’m not saying you’re engaging in a racist attitude here, so don’t take it that way. But if we dismiss whole genres like you have done here we’ll get a million people telling us how we’re being myopic.
I’m unsure as to how bruk could ever give you a headache though, it’s pretty much a london take on deep house and techno with jazz funk influences.
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I mean this is why I have a policy of never going to berghain or in fact most German clubs. Yes, I could definitely eventually get in provided I had a white spokesperson. Otherwise I look and present as too muslim, too Turkish, etc to go alone or with people I know in Kreuzberg. So I think to claim it’s a case of my dad is bigger than your dad is off the mark.
But Tony Teasedale started bigging up LCD sound system the other year with some hyperbolic stuff about how the kids wanted punk attitude, they were sick of club culture. The working class kids round my way (of all races!) never wanted guitars and never hugely cared for indie rock. Don’t fabricate arguments for clickbait lol.
We certainly weren’t sick of club culture because we’ve always had a transactional relationship with it, depending on the moods of club owners and the police. ‘the wrong types etc’. There was an old article where Norman Jay was saying he told Jules to put on his poshest oxbridge accent when talking to the old bill. Many things have changed but that hasn’t really. In fact, the idea of ‘club culture’ is an insulated construct that prioritises the histories and experiences of middle class white people and the rare token minority (almost invariably middle class as well.) So it has always been about the modalities through which class is lived in ‘clubland’.
There’s certainly truth to the idea that raving enabled people from different walks of british class society to interact, but like most things it is heavily romanticised. even the ‘acid ted’ thing was pretty dodgy in retrospect, though as someone who uses the term chelsea shed-ted (instead of shed head) I can appreciate how it intended to come across as facetious in '89.
sigh
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didn’t mean to kick up a hornet’s nest. just find I have to be on the defensive when I talk about 00s multicultural london dance music. Apologies all.
God… do you remember how often you’d hear those phrases back then? That really must have had some impact on things over here.
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I can only speak for me, but you dont have to be on the defensive or apologise. I think most of us just think that music is the answer, the bond, the salve and the thing that connects us all…
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I mean I get it, but there are some absolute bangers! Keith Mansfield etc. It’s the rarity value I think…
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