10
years of House
This piece originally
featured in The Face magazine in 1997 as a kind of Our Man On The Dancefloor
resume of house. It reads a bit pompously State Of The Nation five years
on but, that said, how far further downhill have we slid since then? Looks
like none of you took a blind bit of notice.
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Ten years is a long time. Three score short of a lifetime, I know, but long enough to establish your own space programme and see a piece of metal land on another planet. Long enough to raise a child and look on proudly as he throws bricks at a neighbours windows. Long enough to make a mark. Somewhere. Anywhere. So, what have we done since 1987, since the first wave of US house began to make its mark and the first foundations of what is now a solid, sizeable and extremely lucrative British club culture were laid ? Is this just a story about drugs and money ? Is it possible to be idealistic about, even proud of, a culture whose ambassadors, the DJs, behave like Beatles while playing other people’s records? About a soundtrack that has evolved into a set of interchangeable cliches challenged by only a handful? As, at 2am, you are filed like schoolchildren out of another aircraft hangar carpeted with bottles and flyers full of half-dressed provincial models, you might ask if these are the best days of your life or simply the arse end of a catalogue of greedy moves designed to line the pockets of a crafty few and leave us with Stretch n Vern as a lasting legacy ? If we make year zero the first time Frankie Knuckles hauled his stone washed frame on a bucket flight from Chicago and landed in London- as if from outer space- with a box of music from another planet, then 1987 is the year house was born. Obviously tribes had travelled around the country before- fuelled by drugs and high on some underground sound, but this was the starting point for ten years characterised by a new drug, by gatherings so big old laws were invoked and new ones constructed to try and stem a phenomenal wave of popularity for a new music and a culture so strong, so evolved, that in 1997 its by products- groups like The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and the rest of the big beat elite apparently laying waste to America as we speak- are being exported back to the source. These groups are examples of just how far we have come. In America, a country where the music was never much more than a remix tool for the likes of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey and didn’t really escape the underground gay clubs where it was born, this invasion of migraine inducing 303 manipulation and beats hard enough to take on whole East Ends full of geezers, is the poison sausage that has emerged from the other end of the house machine. What happened in between, though, is really, in every way, quite incredible. It is far more than a graph of the steady growth of certain bank balances. In an interview with THE FACE, DJ Paul Oakenfold describes house as, "the best thing since punk". He's wrong of course. House made punk look like a London party almost immediately boxed and sold. It wasn't too long before the white heat innovations of the pioneers were transformed into Lurkers, Vibrators and UK Subs. It took a long time before the record industry proper cottoned on to house as a marketing tool, despite freak-signal number ones in 1987 and 88 by Steve Silk Hurley and Farley Jackmaster Funk. These bare bones jack trax were dismissed as novelty records and the party continued almost completely undisturbed until Black Box and Ride On Time made the industry realise that urban England was jumping, caned every weekend, and willing to go out on Monday and spend freely on fragments of their weekend soundtrack. By that stage house had developed strongly as a countrywide network with an infrastructure so complex and fragmented-from white gloved hardcore to US-fiaxted garage and fledgling techno- that only those who packed into record shops like Eastern Bloc in Manchester on a Saturday morning listening intently for secret clues, had much of an idea what was going on. The sense of community was and still is almost tangible. And despite the number of people who appear behind record decks who really should be grouting or delivering milk, there have been some inspirational DJs who occasionally seemed to make the music breathe. I personally have never experienced Ecstacy (if I want to neck some domestic cleaning powder I can get it cheaper from Safeways) and have had some of the best times of my life in darkened rooms listening to the different kick drum sounds Roland machines can make. I can therefore only imagine the good times you have had- though Lord knows I have been trapped in enough post club living rooms hearing about them. There are of course some things we would like to forget. People wearing leather trousers and snarling on cocaine. Progressive house with intros longer than traffic jams and getting treated like sheep after paying 15 pounds to get in. Trip hop fakers and enough musical cliches to frighten an entire symphony orchestra. But look beyond, and if you'll excuse the house mix of Land Of Hope And Glory playing in the background, British DJs now rule the world. Most of the best of them don't even play in this country anymore most weekends. The Dave Clarkes, Carl Coxes and Oakenfolds of this scene are just as likely to find themselves waking up Sunday afternoon in Bali or Sydney or Prague. It is Oakenfold himself who has taken things to the most successful extreme- DJ-ing, for Bono's sake as support to U2 and putting records on in Hong Kong recently at the official millenial handover party. This whole thing is clearly a phenomenon that, in terms of its cultural impact if not always in terms of its music, makes punk and it's own precedents like jazz funk and northern soul seem like dim lights in the distance. So when we've all forgotten chasing up and down motorways, standing on podiums in the worst clothes you will ever wear in your entire life and talking shit to total strangers, just what will be left? Will we be paying 500 pounds for early Altern 8 promos and hiring the back rooms of pubs for nostalgic revival nights ? Will house maintain the musical resonance that, mindful of all the parallels, northern soul still has? No it won't. Not if we continue the way we are going. The real problem for house music is that it has never had any critical forum. Those few, like myself, who pipe up when things are patently, obviously fucked up are shouted down by DJs and promoters who should know better. There is still much to celebrate within house, but when the crap rises to the surface, most are either too busy networking, counting their own money or getting shitfaced to speak up. True constructive critisism is born of concern and a dream of just how good things could be. House music doesn't need any more people brushing things under the carpet. It needs more people who are in a position to change things by making their private post-club fears public. I can't be alone in thinking that it is virtually impossible to see a whole bandwagon full of Chemical clones as a tenable future. Speak up now or we'll never make it to the backroom of that pub. John McCready.
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links coming soon.......
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