Can You Feel It - How Dance Music Conquered the World

[monkfromhavana]

Anyone going to be watching this tonight (BBC4 10 o'clock)?

I watch all of these documentaries and am always left distinctly underwhelmed, but at least this one seems to feature some of the history of Chicago etc.

I dread to think that when it gets to the UK it's going to be about Oakenfold, Rampling et al "discovering house music" in Ibiza in 1987, ten minutes on The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses and only focusing on London and Manchester (props to Sasha the last time one of these docs was out, for tweeting about this and the lack of mentions regarding Blackburn, Coventry & Stoke-On-Trent).

I'm sure it will also jump from house music to drum 'n' bass as if hardcore and all those big raves etc never happened.

Anyway, I'm gonna give it a go

[Better Midlands]

You're probably the same as me Monk, lived through it, read all the books, seem every youtube video and know the history back to front. This looks like a rehash of Channel 4's Pump Up The Volume which was pretty good. Aiming for the twenty something Disclosure/Hot Since '82 crowd I guess.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I was going to mention the channel 4 one. I also thought it was decent.

If it's as good as synth brittania or music for misfits it'll be worth watching though I think.

[NoSleep]

Did nobody dance before the 1980's?

[mobias]

Did nobody dance before the 1980's?

Yes but disco isn't dance music its disco music. To played at the disco. Where people err.....dance.

[monkfromhavana]

If they interview people like Noel Watson, Mark Moore, Mr. C and Jazzy M as well as Oakenfold etc, I can live with that.

[the]

From the trailer, I already know it's not for me. The implication already seems to be that the logical goal of dance music is superclubs and big DJs and industry. Well who the fuck goes to superclubs, and do you think the acres of stuff that's happening outside the industry mechanism is a triviality to the whole.

But then I'm not really interested in a punter-centric view. Be far more interested to hear about the thought and invention and process behind making the music.

Did nobody dance before the 1980's?

Before then it was called Twang 'n' Thud.

[steveh]

Hopefully it will at least be better than Sky Arts' The Agony and the Ecstasy series from last autumn which was full of basic errors. The episode 'presented' by Paul Oakenfold was especially bad as he mumbled his way through pieces to camera and his presence seemed to get progressively cut as the programme went on. If ever there was a man who happened to be in the right place at the right time despite never really having any talent beyond a reasonable pair of ears.

Jazzy M, Eddie Richards, Colin Faver and Steve Jackson were all playing house in London in clubs and on the pirates way before the usual 'Went for a holiday in Ibiza and brought it back with us' suspects but with each retelling their role gets more and more diminished.

[Better Midlands]

Hopefully it will at least be better than Sky Arts' The Agony and the Ecstasy series from last autumn which was full of basic errors. The episode 'presented' by Paul Oakenfold was especially bad as he mumbled his way through pieces to camera and his presence seemed to get progressively cut as the programme went on. If ever there was a man who happened to be in the right place at the right time despite never really having any talent beyond a reasonable pair of ears.

Jazzy M, Eddie Richards, Colin Faver and Steve Jackson were all playing house in London in clubs and on the pirates way before the usual 'Went for a holiday in Ibiza and brought it back with us' suspects but with each retelling their role gets more and more diminished.

House was being played everywhere before that famous Ibiza trip, we used to dance to Jack Your Body/Can U Dance/This Brutal House/You Used To Hold Me etc at under 18's in the mid 80s - it was when the pills hit in 88 that everything changed, the fashion became very Ibiza orientated that year too (at least in the south).

[monkfromhavana]

They don't even get the Ibiza angle correct as Trevor Fung had been going out there (he worked as a travel agent) from 1982.

The Ibiza crew should get covered for pills and the hippy-ish PLUR ideals, but considered Jack Your Body had already reached number one in the charts about a year before Shoom started in November '87, they were a bit late on the music. Plus, Shoom was Balearic, house was part of the playlist, but then again so was U2 & Bruce Hornsby.

There are too many good stories to miss, Maurice Watson convincing his brother to switch from hip-hop and rare groove to house & classic disco and having to put a mesh fence around the DJ booth to stop them getting bottled. Smiley Culture and his crew attempting to take over and steal the taking from an Energy rave and being thwarted by an ex-Gurkha Tin Tin had hired as a bodyguard, Larry Sherman refusing to press Marshall Jefferson's "move Your Body" because it wasn't house music, then just nicking it and sticking it out on Trax anyway, everybody hearing and knowing that On & On was made in Chicago and shit, but still Jesse & Vince were buying new cars with the proceeds, and thinking "we can do better than that". Jamie Principle not being able to see the crowd go ape to Your Love in 1983/84 because he had to be up to sing in church in the morning. Ron Hardy playing Acid Trax constantly through the night until the crowd's drugs had kicked in...

[The Boston Crab]

Dance music never got good until Gatecrasher, Mitsis and Gouryella.

A theory

[mojo filters]

Dance music never got good until Gatecrasher

Gatecrasher started out great at Leadmill then The Arches. It remained good at the Adelphi, getting some interesting guests like Scott Hardkiss who mixed Rabbit In The Moon with Elton John rather impressively. It went to shit at Republic, changed the name of the venue, then literally burned to the ground.

[Dr Syntax Head]

To be fair I did have goosebumps all the way through this

[Sebastian Cobb]

From the trailer, I already know it's not for me. The implication already seems to be that the logical goal of dance music is superclubs and big DJs and industry. Well who the fuck goes to superclubs, and do you think the acres of stuff that's happening outside the industry mechanism is a triviality to the whole.

But then I'm not really interested in a punter-centric view. Be far more interested to hear about the thought and invention and process behind making the music.

Before then it was called Twang 'n' Thud.

I suppose this is related to how heavily radio 1 backed superclubs with Tong and Pierce getting daytime/weekend slots and fabio and grooverider getting shunted to the graveyard.

[Better Midlands]

Gatecrasher started out great at Leadmill then The Arches. It remained good at the Adelphi, getting some interesting guests like Scott Hardkiss who mixed Rabbit In The Moon with Elton John rather impressively. It went to shit at Republic, changed the name of the venue, then literally burned to the ground.

Rocketman - Scott Hardkiss Mix
https://youtu.be/rN4m57l7zV0

[steveh]

At 2/3 episodes I think this has generally been a decent, well-researched programme so far. There have been a few omissions but the second one filled in some of the things people complained were missing in the first - think people didn't really get the episodes being done by theme not era. The whole who brought house to the UK and London vs Manchester vs everywhere else thing is never going to be adequately dealt with in a TV documentary with limited time. Would be nice though if BBC 4 commissioned a series on some of the less documented scenes of the past.

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

To be fair I did have goosebumps all the way through this

Finally catching up with this now after being away, and same.

There's few songs (or even moments in songs) that can direct me to a memory or a mental image of being in a club than the opening to Voodoo Ray

[Funcrusher]

So is this series basically 'how black american artists in Chicago, Detroit and New York invented modern dance music, but we're going to mostly talk about english white boys, Shoom, Boy's Own, going to Beefa, get right on one matey etc?'

[monkfromhavana]

The whole who brought house to the UK and London vs Manchester vs everywhere else thing is never going to be adequately dealt with in a TV documentary with limited time.

House came to London first, but was just entered into the rotation with rare groove / Hip-Hop / electro. Manchester went full tilt at it, took over London after Shoom with the advent of ecstacy becoming widespread. Job done.

[Better Midlands]

House came to London first, but was just entered into the rotation with rare groove / Hip-Hop / electro. Manchester went full tilt at it, took over London after Shoom with the advent of ecstacy becoming widespread. Job done.

That sums it up.

I watched most of the first episode and it seemed to fairly cover the black origins. Looked like an edited version of how the first few chapters of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life read.

[steveh]

In the same slot on 12 October there's this, tracing the arc from local reggae and hip hop to jungle to grime in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bmq2tq

[Cuntbeaks]

No mention of the Megadog raves or Berghain?

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

Caught up with Episode 2 last night. I know it's just another stage of the progression and it'll move on and reform again at some point in future, but by god does that EDM scene look depressing. $20k for a table near a DJ? 'koff.

[Better Midlands]

No mention of the Megadog raves or Berghain?

I haven't seen the second episode about clubs yet, but Berghain and the Panorama Bar deserve a mention.

[Better Midlands]

$20k for a table near a DJ? 'koff.

S4C clubbing.

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

I haven't seen the second episode about clubs yet, but Berghain and the Panorama Bar deserve a mention.

The only countries that exist so far are USA, UK and Spain (well, Ibiza). Final episode is centred on DJ's so I doubt Berlin is going to get a mention unless it's part of a 30 second montage right at the end talking about how dance music continues to develop etc.

Love Berlin and been out all over the place loads of times there, but not Berghain. It scares me in a way! Know of any good reading about the place that doesn't involve people bringing frozen faeces in tupperware boxes?

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

S4C clubbing.

By the way for a while I was thinking "what the hell has it got to do with Welsh TV?!"...

[Better Midlands]

By the way for a while I was thinking "what the hell has it got to do with Welsh TV?!"...

Shit for cunts, mate.

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

Shit for cunts, mate.

There's a lot of of that about.

[BlodwynPig]

There's a lot of of that about.

Especially at Berghain it would seem ^^

For me dance music is about the unheralded, so probably not much in these documentaries for me.