WOEBOT

Brighter Days.

A few events have conspired to make me reflect on the glory days of Garage. One of Simon's offhand remarks was the catalyst. He noted that it was only a few years ago that Garage was ram-raiding the charts, an event which is always mirrored in my mind with Ardkore's Toy-Town Techno triumphs ("Smart E's", "Charley Says" etc), yet now the scene struggles to sell a handful of white-labels. Crikey, I thought, that pop incursion is still fresh in my memory but feels at once distant.

Thumbing through newly-acquired back issues of Deuce magazine served to bring this sensation into closer focus. The mag sprung to life at the tail-end of that boom in mainstream interest in Garage. Ms Dynamite's "Boo" and the So Solid LP must have seemed like (marketing speak) "the birth of a new demographic" whereas in reality this was the beginning of Garage's slide into obscurity. Of course the scene has a very powerful cultural currency, but in music industry terms (Raves and Pirate Radio is all black-market biznis), it must count for nothing these days. No units.

I can't help but pin the scene's demise on the vector of our worsening economic situation in the UK. Big companies with their PR budgets can prop up the impression of a perpetuating "pop" market, even though the figures tell a different story, one of shrinking sales in music; but a cottage industry like Garage's doesn't have recourse to such tactics.

What mathmatical equation is it that defines the acceptable amount of time before a past wave of the Ardkore Continuum is deemed ripe for revival? "Back to 1992" raves and "Back to 1994" raves are now jostling with "Back to 1998" raves. The pirates are still pumping with the slinky sound of 2-Step. (thinks, wish I made it down to Twice as Nice back in the day, it would have been a whole heap more fun than Eskimo Dance. I WAS buying the tunes mind, and rocking the FM dial more than I do at the moment).

One track I heard in a retro speed garage set perfectly caught the cheerful champagne optimism of the day. The lyrics went like this (and who knows maybe this is a modern tune, the sort of thing in Norris "Da Boss" Windross and MJ Cole's sets, it may even be a re-rub of new R'n'B tune, bear with me!):

"Monifa.....she was the girl with a Mercedes,
Jennifer.....she was the one in the Gucci,
But what was the name of the girl in the taxi?"

This cracked me up. Posit that sentiment against "Cockback"! What an endearing contrast! Where's that gentility and goofy upwardly-mobile optimism vanished to?