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boxedjoy

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I think if Levan had lived on he wouldn't have been playing deep house and serious techno, he would have loved songs like "1 Thing" and "Boogie 2Nite" more
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I think if Levan had lived on he wouldn't have been playing deep house and serious techno, he would have loved songs like "1 Thing" and "Boogie 2Nite" more

That's hard to say. I def think hardy would have been all over hard techno, the more africanised chicago variety. probably would play some jungle as well. Levan though, I don't know.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
in 2020, (rhetorically) gay still carries an inner city urban connotation - working class trans people prefering to use gay than queer if they are not het in my experience, whereas queer is more a suburban, almost punk thing
that feels very 5ish years ago to me, but I also don't want to get sidetracked into an argument about it, we agree on the historical context

and yeah from what I know about it the Music Box (or Muzic Box) certainly was not what we'd now call a safe space, by all accounts v wild

tbf I don't think the concept really existed in the early 80s

I've mentioned here before - this idk if you'd now - Hardy's first residency as a teenager was a gay disco in Oldtown, which at the time was the gay/redlight district and is now the most gentrified of yuppie enclaves. it's also about a mile from where Cabrini-Green used to be, and a part of his regular crowd was - so goes the story - young queer kids from the projects. he was famous for doing shit like taking the 5-minute open break in this record and using two copies to extend it out to 20 or 30 minutes and just hammer people.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Ive even heard Jeff Mills drop dead or alive in a techno set tbh
yeah I once saw Paul Johnson to play to an essentially abandoned dancefloor - long story - in full give no fucks mode and he was dropping all kinds of 80s cheese, as well as punishing 90s Dance Mania business

and yeah it's always the purists who are deadset against cheese
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
yeah I once saw Paul Johnson to play to an essentially abandoned dancefloor - long story - in full give no fucks mode and he was dropping all kinds of 80s cheese, as well as punishing 90s Dance Mania business

and yeah it's always the purists who are deadset against cheese

my approach is there is manic cheese and boring cheese.

extreme cheese vs corny middle of the road cheese.

I always go for the former. So cheesy it almost becomes seriously intense.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think if Levan had lived on he wouldn't have been playing deep house and serious techno, he would have loved songs like "1 Thing" and "Boogie 2Nite" more
yeah I agree with third it's really hard to say, hard to extrapolate and project, things changed so much

Frankie Knuckles obv aged gracefully sticking to classic, conservative house - tho he retained his remixing ear, i.e. that Hercules + Love Affair one

Levan is IMO the greatest DJ ever to do it, but he was also tied to a particular sound in a way Hardy wasn't, in no small part due to his prolific remixing and to a lesser extent producing. obv they both had amazing ears and feel, but it's hard to say what he would have done as he aged.

Hardy was the wildest, furthest out of all those dudes so he'd probably have been the most the likely to keep innovating
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
A lot of late period Knuckles strikes me as polite and nondescript - Blind is wonderful and he did wonders on Holly Johnson and Whitney but a lot of that "Directors Cut" material is blandly unlistenable
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it's uncanny how closely the final years and deaths of Levan and Hardy parallel one another

or perhaps it's more that it speaks to the difficulties and precarity of being a gay male artist of color in the 80s

it always makes me very sad to think of them dying before they were justly rewarded for their titanic accomplishments

obv they were legends in their lifetimes but to think of the likes of Paul Oakenfold etc reaping the rewards of global DJ superstardom while the two greatest DJs to ever walk the face of the earth - the men who literally conjured house music into being - died young of heroin and AIDS, it sits very ill

Walter Gibbons too
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
A lot of late period Knuckles strikes me as polite and nondescript
yeah, everything he did after he moved back to NY strikes me as polite and nondescript

that's what I meant by aging gracefully in a very safe, conservative notion of house music

otoh I think the longevity and blandness of later years overshadows his Chicago era work

this wonderful remix of an Italo banger perfectly exemplifies the tracky Italo->early Chicago house transition noted above
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also I would be pretty surprised if that remix isn't where Lenny Dee + Tommy Musto nicked the bassline etc from for this

undoubtedly a classic in its own right but it's pretty much note for note (not that Knuckles was above that kinda thing i.e. Jamie Principle)
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
ken Colier from detroit is actually the dj who doesn't get enough love, probably closer to ron hardy, mayday occasionally namedrops him but nowhere near enough, just their boring high school parties.

Also funny that one of the first clubs to play house 84-85 in UK, Colin dale/faver was club heaven, and the detroit club was also called heaven.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
if you listen to the few collier tapes you can see that May basically plagiarised his djing style. fast paced cut up style house with loads of disco/funk samples.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
that's popped up on every Defected/Glitterbox compilation I've heard in the past few years and it almost is excellent but it never seems to quite come together for me - but I can imagine in it's proper environment it works much better
 

Leo

Well-known member
yeah, honestly I think it's because the song itself is good, not necessarily the DC mix of it. the mix just stretched out the front end.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
shudders. proper hypersoul. no spiritual yearning just pure material desire. 2000 when you were infatuated with the feminin only to realise 10 years later in a skunked up techstep haze that the feminin are just as competitive as the masculine. naive innocence lost, never regained. now you make love to an Italian firebrand to filthy trace and nico tunes. how things change....

top choon mate, im urban book me. better than Mariah and then some.

 
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