OK, I'm re-starting this bitch... updates are now Thursday and Monday.
So, I was at a rather excellent party last night, hosted by my fam, The FAM, and there was a DJ who was playing a lot of shit with analog synths, which I really enjoyed. So, to show my love for analog synths, and to show my appreciation to The FAM, here's the best of early rave, as presented by Dart on the Bus.
1) The Prodigy - "Charly" (1991)
What happens when you combine four wasted lads from Essex, an absolutely terrifying PSA aimed at children, and 120 beats per minute? You get "Charly," The Prodigy's first British hit. For those of you who are innocent, or thick, Charly refers to cocaine. It's also the name of the manic, wild-eyed cat from the ads.
I have no proof of this, but it's probably no coincidence that the song is about blow, and the cat looks pretty high.
This is one of those songs that makes me dance to my iPod on the streetcar. I blame this song for making me look like an idiot on many occasions.
2) The Shamen - "Move Any Mountain" (1991)
When "Move Any Mountain" came out, I wasn't old enough to go out, get pilled up and dance all night. I was ten, and I was in day camp.
One day during lunch, all the counselors started freaking out to a song that someone had on a mixtape. Most of my fellow campers were either indifferent to it, or thought it was crap, due to it's total failure to sound anything like either New Kids on the Block or Warrant. I was transfixed. I made them play it again. And again. And again. Then, the weekend, I made my dad drive me to the mall so I could buy the cassette single.
That song, as you've figured out by now, was "Move Any Mountain." I heard it for the first time in YEARS a few weeks ago. It's funny, because ten years ago, this song would have sounded super dated, but since "Nu Rave" has put analog synths back in fashion, it actually sounds pretty fresh.
3) Moby - "Go" (1991)
Before Moby was a weird, bald, famous, Vegan electronic music producer, he was a weird, unknown, Vegan electronic music producer with hair.
This is my absolute favourite Moby track ever. That's it.
Don't feel bad if you're not familiar with "Uptown Top Ranking." Like so many great reggae singles of the 1970s and '80s, it was a huge hit in Jamaica, obviously, and the UK, but was ignored in North America by everyone apart from Jamaican immigrants and record nerds.
The song is based around Alton Ellis' "Still in Love" riddim, which is such a classic in and of itself that modern reggae artists still trot it out occasionally. (See Sean Paul and Sasha's 2004 hit, also called "Still in Love.") Apparently it's meant as a ladies' response to Trinity's mack daddy anthem "Three Piece Suit," which uses the same riddim.
What's really remarkable about this song is how it's stood the test of time. Not only does it still sound pretty fresh today, but it's been covered by scores of artists, ranging from indie rockers Black Box Recorder, to Simon Cowell produced girl group Tight'n Up, to Sisters of Mercy. (No, seriously, here's evidence.)
I read a review that accused it of being the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" of '70s roots reggae, and maybe that's true. (In addition to being one hit wonders, Althea and Donna were thoroughly middle class by Jamaican standards, resulting in a severe lack of street cred in the reggae community.)
That said, when a song pops up in not one but two TV shows thirty years after it's original release -- it was played in both a 2008 episode of Skins and a 2007 episode of Entourage -- that says something.
2. "Ring the Alarm" - Tenor Saw (1985)
Despite dying in a traffic accident at the tender age of 22, Tenor Saw is, in my humble, white, Canadian, no-nothing opinion, one of the more influential reggae artists of the 1980s.
He was one of the artists who helped usher in the digital/dancehall era of reggae music, and while it's hard to prove this on a chart, one would have to assume that his half-sung vocal style made the transition from the singers of the 1970s to the hard rhymers of the late '80s and beyond a little smoother.
Those of you who are old enough may remember a period in the early '90s where dancehall reggae started getting some significant burn on American "urban" radio stations. Shabba Ranks and Chaka Demus and Pliers had chart hits and suddenly every rapper wanted a reggae singer, or barring that, some idiot with a faux-Jamaican accent, to rock a verse on their single.
Into this fray cam Super Cat, already a legend in Jamaica, Cat took the rap-reggae crossover bull by the horns at wrestled it into submission. In two years, he managed to collaborate with everyone from Kris Kross to Mary J. Blige to a then-unknown Notorious BIG. He started making multiple remixes of his songs, creating one version with a more traditional dancehall sound, intended for Jamaican audiences, and another over a hip-hop beat, meant for export.
Sadly, Super Cat is best known in North America for his pathetic attempt to re-capture the spotlight in 1997 with a guest appearance on Sugar Ray's fly, but we shouldn't let that bit of bad judgment overshadow the fact that, between 1990 and 1995, Super Cat made some of the hardest rudeboy anthems of all time.
OK, so this is the flip side of Get Fresh Tuesdays. Instead of searching for something new, I'm going to highlight some old favourites that have recently recaptured my attention.
1) Del the Funky Homosapien and El-P - "Offspring" (2000)
When I was about 19, I sort of "retired" from the punk rock scene. After five or so years of going to all ages shows, sewing band patches on my hoodies, and protesting something every weekend -- and getting blind-drunk afterward, I burned out. I was sick of being part of a subculture that claimed to be about "rebellion," but actually placed incredibly tight restrictions on what you could listen to, wear, and be interested in. Being a basketball fan was massively uncool, the only acceptable sport to watch was English soccer. If you listened to anything other than punk -- and no pop punk, you dirty sellout -- classic ska, and certain types of pre-dancehall reggae, people looked at you like you were insane.
Most of my friends in the scene were moving on to even more restrictive subsects of punk: skinhead, psychobilly, d-beat. Instead, I left.
I started listening to a bunch of different thing, particularly the Rawkus Records-style alt rap that was coming out at the time. (Truth be told, I'd been listening to that sort of stuff for a while and hiding it from my punk friends.)
I bought Del's Both Sides of the Brain in summer between my last year of high school and my first year of universtiy. This collabo between Del and El-P was my favourite song on the album. I would listen to it over and over again on the way to class. I'd sit in my res room and scream along with the lyrics.
This is song is like a time machine for me. It instantly makes me 19 again, and if there's one thing my life needs, it's more 19.
2) "Raspberry Beret" - Prince (as Prince and the Revolution) (1985)
So, I don't want to get to serious and maudlin on a blog dedicated to quality tunes and idiocy, but my Uncle Giles died about six weeks ago. He was my mum's younger brother, one of eight children, born in the UK and raised in Canada. He was both an athlete (rowing, rugby and football) and a musician (guitar, keyboard, bass, and vocals.) He had a few songs receive airplay on local alt-rock station CFNY in the late '80s and early '90s. He also struggled with substance abuse issues, which may have contributed to his death.
My inheritance from Uncle Giles consisted of about a dozen CDs, which have turned out to be a massive windfall of enjoyment. One of them was Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides compilation.
I've always liked Prince, but I never thought of myself as a full-fledged Prince fan until I got a hold of this album. The man is a genius, and some of his early material -- and The Hits/The B-Sides features only early-to-mid career material -- may be some of the best pop music of the last fifty years.
I feel like my words can't do justice to the greatness that is young Prince, so instead I'll just say thanks to Uncle Giles.
3) X - "Los Angeles" (1980)
I don't actually have a really in depth explanation as to why I chose this song. It's just one of my all-time favourite songs.
It's also the song that's gotten X accused of some rather unpleasant shit.
The first verse of the song features the line "She started to hate every nigger and Jew/ every Mexican that gave her a lot of shit/ every homosexual and the idol rich."
Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote about the song in 1981, as part of a bigger article on racism in the Los Angeles punk scene.
"The opening lines of X's searing 'Los Angeles' ('She had started to hate/ Every nigger and Jew/ Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit/ Every homosexual and the idle rich') tell us not that the subject of the song has her hangups but that the objects of her rage are types, not like us, deserving of the contempt they get: crimes against nature. The song has enough musical bite to make any nigger, Jew, Mexican, homosexual or idle rich want to hear the tune again, and then think 'That's not me, I'm not like that,' and that is the true black hole of the number, and of L.A. punk: attacked, one may side with one's attacker, and accept the terms of the attack."
Unfortunately for Greil, who's actually one of my bigger inspirations, he got it wrong. In We've Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk, the members of X explain that the song was, more or less, about a girl who had a lot of hang-ups, and how her hang-ups were eating her alive.
The song was written about one of Exene's best friends, who was her road buddy in her move from Florida to LA. Unfortunately, the friend didn't take to LA nearly as well as Exene, and suffered a sort of breakdown. Part of that breakdown involved an ugly slide into racism.
This sort of shit is why X is one of the best bands of all time. They're able to write beautifully crafted, poetic lyrics about deep, complex shit, and then throw it over top of a rip-roaring rockabilly-punk hybrid.
