Clash of the Titans.
Initially I think a bit of humility from me is in order. I know a mere fraction
of what Reynolds knows about Hardcore AND, as we all know well, he's not just
THE gutter scholar. Hopefully the Post-Punk book will be finished soon.
I also know
a mere fraction of what Kirk Degiorgio knows about Fusion/Disco. If you think
this is the juncture when I slap myself on the back for knowing a little about
both, well you'd be wrong. Often the join-the-dots relativism with which
I approach music results in my leaching meaning from distinct cultural entities.
It's the same as watching Marcello coming unstuck explaining that Evan Parker,
cos he plays on the Spring Heel Jack LP, is in Girls Aloud's pocket (same producer).
Bored of this argument rumbling on? In truth it's been dead for months, we're
really raking over the ashes now. I had to BEG Degiorgio to let me run this,
he didn't want to be wheeled out again. However I thought our exchange was fun,
and it's packed full of choice spotter info as well as being a deeper elucidation
of Degiorgio's theories (which he self-mockingly compared to Martin Bernal's
Black Athena Theory)
As for sowing peace in the land. Well that's not necessarily a good thing.
Though I do sincerely hope both parties feel "more settled" in
consequence, or at the very least that I don't hack either of them
off unduly. We don't go
too much into the history of THAT tiff, but more or less pick up after my Detroit
piece, in which Kirk came out okay, but not exactly smelling of roses.
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COLOUR CODE:
>KIRK'S ORIGINAL EMAIL - QUOTING MY DETROIT PIECE "THUS"<
>MY REPLIES<
>HIS FURTHER REFLECTIONS<
>{OFF THE RECORD!}<
>{MY CHEEKY LAST WORDS - HEY ITS MY BLOG!}<
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HELLO
Hi mate, Thanks for dropping me a line, and also for being so civil.
" That Mayday only said he liked Frankie Goes to Hollywood to get a record
deal"
Simon's had a humour by-pass... in his desperate attempts to prove Derrick
genuinely loves Frankie Goes To Hollywood he quoted me some sleevenotes
on a ZTT release
that Derrick had been quoted on... I just asked him whether these comments
were made before or after his proposed 6 figure deal with ZTT fell thru ;-)
Well I thought it was funny anyway...
Sure Derrick likes FGTH - anybody who went to his apartment in the early
90's would have seen lyrics to FGTH songs on his walls...
Well that's that one cleared up! {insert}
One-Nil to Reynolds!
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" That they infinitely preferred George Clinton to Cabaret Voltaire"
well
that's probably true... but I don't like speaking for anybody. what I actually
said was that going thru record collections and checking out sets at the
time or archived on the net that I saw/heard a lot more disco tunes than any
Cab V
from the Detroit pioneers - same with Ron Hardy, etc. I asked Simon to check
out the Ron Hardy sets dotted around the net and listen to the main influences
on guys like Derrick at the time... mostly disco classics-odd disco/electronic
hybrids like Elektrik Funk: On A Journey...some Italo-Disco, Klein & MBO,
etc, etc.
I imagine they would prefer Clinton. Not least because Cabaret Voltaire (in my humble opinion, whisper it, not gonna make me popular) aren't THAT GREAT. I have a few of theirs, the best: Red Mecca, the John Robie Yashar mix, Mayday's mix of (can't remember what its called).
Keep On (Mayday Mix) is the only Cabs record I've ever heard that appealed
to me.
It has always amazed me how the Music Box is credited
with being thrustingly transgressive and unafraid to play "white" music and yet (you're totally
right) the only Ron Hardy mixes I have found have NOTHING BUT DISCO in them.
What's weird is that all the crew: Jamie Principle, DJ Pierre, Mayday go on about
what "out-there" music he played. Have you seen this recent Music Box
4 LP bootleg? NO DISCO AT ALL ON IT. It seems he played very little of this music
or (possibly) the people curating/offering up these mixes (like DeepHouse.org)
don't really value the "white stuff". You have to consider that's
a possibilty....
Matt Cogger copied a couple of Derricks cassette tapes
he got from either F Knuckles or Ron himself...they are again ALL disco so
I don't think its
DeepHouse
being
selective. There were a few 'oddballs' thrown in but the 'out-there' stuff
I reckon are the more radical disco tracks like Slick's 'Space Bass', 'Dancin
In
Outer Space', Elektrik Funk 'On A Journey', Edna Holt 'Serious Serius Space
Party' (which was a very sought after 12" when I went record hunting
in Detroit ' and the only copy I saw was in Juan's personal collection -
he declined
to
sell it), Loose Jointz 'All Over My Face' (speeded up - Derrick still plays
this out), 3 Degrees 'The Runner' (Moroder production)...
other 'out-there' tracks were more electro-related tracks: Shannon's 'Let
the Music Play' (quoted by Marshall Jefferson as being one of the 'wilder'
tracks
played by Ron Hardy.. wild? hardly - I didn't think this was good enough
to play at my Ipswich Electro jams!), Fantasy Machines, Man Parrish -
loads of stuff off the 1st album (6 Simple Synthesisers, Man Made, etc -
again verified
by Marshall Jefferson), The Future 'Nuclear Holocaust' (instrumental version
speeded up)
the much quoted "Ron Hardy played New Order" was simply him playing
'Blue Monday' but more commonly probably 'Confusion' which I played at electro
jams when it came out and was more a John Robie track than anything else.
{insert} that last point (raising eyebrow) hmmm.
Other stuff from europe was undoubtedly Gino Soccio (Dancer, etc), Donna
Summer's 'I Feel Love', Liasons Dangereuses (sp) (the classic Mayday anthem "Etre
Assis Ou Danser" sampled by Carl Craig on the BFC ep), Yello, Nitzer
Ebb (Join in the Chant), YMO (Firecracker), Telex 'Moscow Disco', Giorgio
Moroder
'The Chase', Kraftwerk (mostly 'Numbers') generally the faster, rougher
end of the alternative type material played by Levan at P Garage.
add the others you've already mentioned and that's pretty all I can pretty
much confirm Hardy played in this vein.... the rest is all the sort of uplifting
disco
F Knuckles would have played. I gave the tapes I had to Sean P - the guy
who compiled the Disco Not Disco comps cos there were a few disco tracks
I didn't
know... he's had them ever since!! One side of 1 of the cassettes was somebody
messing around with a 303 over roughly edited disco breaks... obviously the
birth of Acid House.
Maybe Mayday et al seized on the european elements
and AMPLIFIED THEM. After
all "Dirty Talk" must be the basis for "Nude Photo".
Yes, I agree with that. The first Derrick May set I
heard was at the Town & Country
Club when he warmed up for Inner City in 1990. He played mostly his own stuff
- Wiggin, The Dance, etc + acetates of Vice "Fade To Black" ep,
Suburban Knight, Psyche, etc - the only other stuff he played was the Liasons
Dangereuses
track but there was certainly no disco. That was the night he invited me
to stay with him in Detroit so I could go record hunting. :-)
For the record I'm aware of all that Kebekeletrik/Klein & MBO/Alexander Robotnik/Telex/Morodor/Magic
Fly thing.
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"
All this "Detroit-Techno-is-a-tradition-emerging-from-Jazz-Funk" is
nonsense"
Of course it's nonsense.. i've said this many times - jazz is the opposite
of techno in a way... one is totally spontaneous and improvised.. the other
is completely
planned and sequenced to a rigid grid. Polar opposites I'd say... any reference
to early black music with electronics that I've made is simply to offer a
reminder that it wasn't just in europe or in the avant garde field that electronic
advancements
were made in music. Just giving 'props' basically. Just like I felt honoured
to do the sleevenotes to the Placebo/Marc Moulin retrospective... a white
european jazz musician who went on to form Telex but who's early pioneering
work was/is
rarely mentioned...
"
Just giving props" makes total sense. I appreciate that.
I just think you needn't give as many props as you do.
Nobody else does... and there is so much bullshit around that I think its
good to have a perspective from somebody who was 'in the thick of it' as
it were...
But of course your strain of music you see as emerging
from that tradition, and I imagine you feel at pains to point it out. And
that's a good thing
really......
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"
that's about 3 Blue Note records, Herbie Hancock's "Nobu" and "Sextant" and
Bernie Worrell and Julian Priester's synth work"
you're betraying a similar lack of knowledge now :-)
there's lots of good stuff out there... not that much of it had an influence
on techno but some of it may have... don't underestimate guys like Claude
Young and Anthony Shakir - they were both around in the early days of techno
and
are serious collectors... it was Shakir who turned me on to Les McCann's
all electronic
album 'Layers' from 1973 -these guys know their shit...
Well that's not entirely fair (though I know you're
taking the mick). My central point, and you seem to concede a bit, was that
the line from "planet rock" was
the dominant one. And I believe what was ground-breaking about Detroit was the
break with continuity. Like Kodwo Eshun said : "Dusseldorf was their
Mississippi Delta."
Kodwo likes his abstract aestheticly pleasing quotes {excerpt} I happen
to like Kodwo - he was a regular at the record store I worked in in the
late
80's
Everything else is (interesting!) musicology. Of course
there's a lot of black synth music: Weldon Irvine, Ramsey Lewis, Norman
Connors, George Lewis, Wally Badarou, Timmy Thomas, Patrick Adams etc etc
etc etc etc etc
etc
facts like Sun Ra using electronic keyboards in 1958 -pre-just-about-everybody
should not be overlooked or underestimated... its as bad as those quotes
giving The Yardbirds, The Beatles, etc credit with first introducing Classical
Indian
music into western popular culture... 10 years after Yusef Lateef, Coltrane,
etc had done that in jazz.
Actually I know about the Herbie Hancock/Mayday project too. Derrick told
me about it in 1993. Classic pub bore material.
{excerpting myself!}
To be honest, I think you'd do your "concept" a lot of favours if you
ran the musical argument right up to and into techno. That mix CD you did years
back, there was an historically rift between the older tracks and the new ones.
Things like Maze's "Twilight" could maybe fill that middle ground?
I'm certain you could fix that.....
"
Twilight" is a great track - but it had just been sampled by Goldie and
it is a bit obvious - I like to dig a bit deeper on my comps...alot of
older drum n bass heads would have known Twilight but not so many about Weather
Report's 'Non-Stop Home' (which incidentally blew Photek away when I played
it to him)
After the initial electro scene fizzled out in 83/84 its hard to find
many
other great electronic tracks that fitted on the comp (Checkone I assume)
without going
into the early house (Z Factor, etc? fairly awful if historically valid)...but
yes, maybe I should have included some electro like R9, Divine Madness,
Man Made, etc. Good point.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" Kirk seems oblivious to the fact that the Detroit crew find him charismatic
BECAUSE
he's a white european"
well I'd like to think they take me as an individual rather than like
me just cos I'm a white european... I don't like them just cos they're
black
and from
Detroit... there are plenty of assholes in that city...
I'm not gonna let you away with that. I reckon
you and Matt Cogger sloping round Detroit must have aroused quite a lot of
interest. And
you can't factor
out the "appeal of the other" you have to recognise (?) that
that must be part of your attraction to black music.
Matt yes, he lived there for a year and is skinny and had bleached blonde hair... me no - I only spent 3 days in Detroit buying records and pilfering stuff from everyones collections and annoying Juan by asking for copies of his pre-Metroplex 7" releases on Deep Space records (he'd thrown them away ages before).
I spent more time in Chicago emptying Barney's Distribution warehouse
of 700 rare House/Techno 12"'s... incredible stuff - JR Lewis (ft Larry Heard),
the mystical 'Missing Records' series (early deep L Heard style house eps), Fantasy
Girl on SRO (sold for £100 a piece on my return), all the Metroplex/KMS/Transmat
releases - I cleaned the place out, sold the lot and bought my first
studio gear :-)
Not exactly appealing behaviour - whereas Matt ran Transmat with no
pay for a year {excerpt}
Personally I think that's a more flattering reading (for all parties)
than you being concerned about giving props and being concerned to
even out
the balance
for the clear state of racial injustice.
Of course, at the end of the day, how you go about managing your attitude
to race is none of my business.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" From all my slagging off of Kirk deGiorgio you'd think I wouldn't appreciate his contibutions. Well no. The first batch of records on ART, right up to Elegy's "Tone Poem", were great UK Techno."
And I did say this Reynolds at the time too!!!!!!!
I think I told him they were classics. "Great" here is a little
ungenerous.
I also liked the Op-Art Photek thingy. Lovely! {insert}
my fave Photek record, the only one I have left too ;-)
without having delusions of grandeur about my label - I {was disappointed}
that Simon knew nothing about it {insert} I'd be surprised if he was
TOTALLY unaware
of it (*wipes away tears* )... both Kodwo and David Toop give brief
but honourable mentions in their books....
thx for the comments - and this was really all I should have quoted
to Simon in response to his accusations to me being a 'soul-boy purist'.
I read Simon's
blog and agree with most if it, if not a fan of his 'listen to music
with my head not my heart' approach (he's never gonna like much of
the
stuff
I love
with this approach but so what). {excerpt}
I simply restate that accusing somebody who was buying records like
Cybotron's 'Clear' and R9, and writing to Tom Silverman at Tommy
Boy to join a Soulsonic Force fan club in 1983 whilst most soulboys
were up in arms against
records
of the sort... cannot be accused of soul boy purism.
Again - would a soulboy purist start up his own label and release some
strange but beautiful tracks by members of an unknown Black Dog in
1992? Collaborate
with the Rephlex label in 1993 on the basis of hearing a couple of
AFX 12"'s?
Shouldn't I have been setting up a re-issue label and licensing obscure £200
JR Bailey albums? Or shouldn't I have been listening to acid jazz instead
of going to Dungeons to check out DJ Randall pre-DnB?
Your list of techno classics was my ideal listening material around
89-92. I'm not an idiot - of course Derrick, Juan, Carl, etc picked
up on a
lot of the European
electronic tracks of the early 80's but I feel not enough is made of
the influences already present in black music at the time - reflected
in the
DJ sets these
guys played. I always thought it was mainly because the UK dance music
press wanted
to intellectualise (sp? its fuckin late) techno from the beginning
that they ignored the pure dance influence of disco on techno - (check
my
very 1st
interview in ID magazine 1992 where I roast Mixmaster Morris for calling
techno 'intelligent
dance music' - what an appalling tag) {insert}
kurt there's research, and then there's research. then after a few years of reading the 'indie'
band
bias of
the journos that it was simply cos they would prefer to have The Clash
(yes I do know The Magnificent 7), The Cabs, New Order as the influences
on techno
rather
than any predominantly gay and black artists like Sylvester... but
I actually think the main reason existing black music influences on
techno
are not
much mentioned beyond the occasional Paradise Garage=Deep 'Proper-spiritual'
House
bollox, is cos not many people in the UK know anything about these
tunes. {excerpt}
That list was more a kind of "tracks that escaped notoriety" thing.
My classics list would look a bit more obvious: The beginning, Art
of Stalking, Galaxy etc
OK - nice list all the same... "It Is What It Is" is
still
my all-time fave in the 'classic' Detroit mould.
In defense of Reynolds I'm pleased he took the angle
he did because it was tremendously refreshing. I do understand that you were
probably
called
to
task for things
which you didn't sanction, that's to say myopic Detroit worship (you
say you were checking out Randall's sets etc) and I guess that Neuropolitique
LP (the
ardkore pastiche one) is all the proof one needs that the picture isnt
as basic as it's been painted. I think I made the point that Detroit
shouldn't
be consigned
to the wastebin of history because everyone "loves" ardkore
now. That it wasn't a competition. {insert} like who cares!
{excerpt}
As for hardcore vs techno... well I remember playing
Mr Kirk's Nightmare and a few Shades of Rhythm tracks that were early hardcore
I suppose
but it quickly
became a bit 'gimmicky' for me. I also remember going 'round xxxxxx & xxxxxx's
from xxxxxx and them finally telling me how they funded the label -
they proceeded to play me the hardest most ridiculous hardcore tracks
with huge
distorted
synth stabs and sped up beats... we were rolling around on the floor
laughing - they
sold 10,000 of those eps. How could I take it seriously after that!?
Actually I DON'T THINK he's blind to black music at
all. In the first, and only (ha ha) review I ever got published in 1994 I
took him to
task (well
actually I rather goofily threatened to "clean my gun pon his
nose" for deserting
jungle when it became "too black".) {insert}
shades of Jess Harvell's "patricide" That
was pretty crude. {insert} Though he thought
it was funny. Also refer to his recent piece (his archives seem
to have disappeared) on Hoskyns-tipped "Sweet
Soul Music". Extremely sensitive.
Drum n Bass? Ipswich is a drum n bass heartland - still is... I would
regularly go into see old mates at Red Eye records, etc and kept tabs
on labels and
tunes by old friends (Paul from Certificate 18, Spirit, etc) but it
wasn't until
Photek's stuff constantly caught my ear (94/95) that I really got involved
in that scene.
He lived locally so hooking up with him was easy - he took me to some
amazing nights.... I got *completely* disowned and slagged off by the
techno fraternity
for liking drum n bass.. another example of my narrow-minded soulboy
purism I guess ;-)
I'd refer you to this, which is
a more elegant recent restating of the argument. I sent Simon a tape of some
of those 12"s (to his delight)
and he loved it. I do think he might have oversimplified the complexities
of the whole
scene out there, but in the long run how can we keep tabs on EVERYTHING.
This is
all in the article anyway. {insert} Also I think to create constructing
and liberating
meaning one has to simplify matters from time to time.
----------------------------------------------------------
PS. PLEASE by all means {tell} Simon that you got this email but last
time this argument went public my humble website couldn't handle
the traffic!! So keep
it private if you pls..:-) (Besides aren't people bored of this shit
now??)
I'd love to just paste this on the blog, naturally with all the inflammatory
stuff cropped out (you could trust me). Writing is work, and it
makes my head hurt. {insert} angling for the exclusive,
whore that I am As for the
website
traffic well I could NOT link you, but mate, its all publicity
at
the end of the day isn't it. I don't think people are bored at
all! For
the time
being
(and unless you're happy with me posting it) I will just keep it
between you and me.
OK - sounds fair enough... but pls cut out anything personal to
other people I feel a lot more positive about the debate now
than I did
after Simon's
replies {excerpt}
{insert} for the record, I recollect Kirk throwing substantially
more mud than Simon. But just think how you'd feel if someone compared you to
Paul Weller!
more later.... gotta start a John Beltran remix this week...