theo parrish s/d

"love triumphant" is incredible, but i couldn't even *hear* the african percussion until now. definitely a devil-in-the-details type of track.

wow @ "cry freedom" speech in "sundown town"

Yeah, "Love Triumphant" has definitely ascended to the upper echelon of Theo tracks in short order. Still loving the album as a whole.

Just in case interested parties haven't seen this, here's another potentially controversial statement from Theo: http://www.moodmat.com/?p=977

Pipecock's blog has some discussion here:
http://infinitestatemachine.com/2008/07/14/interesting-interview-with-theo-parrish/

Dissensus has some discussion here:
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=7992

"The curtain that supposedly hides all this is the bullshit illusion that dance music has no race, no gender, that its about the celebration of some sort of utopian concept. This mere notion wasn’t even circulated until some white folks were made to feel uncomfortable at a party they had no business being at, and came face to face with the fact that this music like all other music is originated on african/black experience, and that perhaps they were very much like every other Elvis and Eminem that ever came or went, That perhaps they too, are tourists, but they still want to be superstar-dj-such-and-such."

I love Theo like crazy but really dude WTF

"this music, like all other music, is originated on african / black experience" - whatever dude.

No one on ILX really believes this, right?

Ronan weighs in: http://ronanfitzgerald.net/houseisafeeling/2008/07/15/theo-parrish-interview/

If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport

nice work ronan

i do enjoy theo's pts about using afros on album covers and sending bitten work to the artists you bite from as a 'tribute' tho

Ronan, do you write for White Guilt Monthly?

Not to derail this fine thread about Theo and his music, but really, reading that, I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for you.

The only climbdown from all this relativism is that I think a black person really does have more of a right to comment on cultural appropriation or discrimination than a white person

What about a white Jew? How about a white homosexual?

why are you even reading this thread

I don't feel guilty about being white, just a bit cautious about commenting on what a black person should think about how they are treated by white people.

I know that raises issues of sitting on the fence, I don't like either position to be honest.

What do you think about the Theo piece Mr Airport? It's pretty easy to criticise in this without setting out a stall.

I love Theo (though not feeling the new one as much as some folks here) despite his dumb ass opinions. I ain't mad at him. House music needs shit disturbers. I'm glad he's expressing himself, at the very least.

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

as a homo, i sometimes get a little miffed that people have no fcking clue about the real roots of a lot of disco and house music, but as long as those performing it do-- dude from Hercules and Love Affair has done interview with BUTT magazine, for example-- i can't care less.

that said, i agree with theo about a lot of what he says.

House music needs shit disturbers. I'm glad he's expressing himself, at the very least.

people keep saying this, and maybe it's true, but the so called shit disturbers in dance music almost always end up just backing up dumb negative opinions instead of dumb positive ones.

why can't we have a few genuine contrarians who come out and combine diametrically opposite views and genuinely challenge people....in techno a "shit disturber" seems to be any one of the 100 producers a year who does some bitchy interview about the genre du jour, OR A GUY FROM DETROIT.

sounds like one paranoid ass motherfucker that got baited by theakston into putting some dumb generalizations on the record

who is theakston anyways? if you're gonna do a "one question interview" aka give him a good rope you should at least insert a byline.

i think that the UR guys are shit disturbers to the max, and though they certainly have similar talking points to theo's, they're much more positive and inclusive.

I totally disagree.....I think it's a stuck record.

what's more....these guys ARE the status quo! they are the shit! (no negative aspersions intended)

Once they get it ready to put out, they’ll use pictures of little black children, and black women with afros- things they never could be, and never have been -on their cover art to help complete the illusion of having a truly down, soulful product to offer the market. Sometimes they’ll outright sample YOUR song, and copy your drumpattern, send it to a magazine and some adjective limited writer will say the copy sounds ’so-and-so esque’, never making that artist stand on their own, letting the thief who made it ride on the back of original artists.

so, who's this? i think definitely trus'me, but who else?

who is theakston anyways? if you're gonna do a "one question interview" aka give him a good rope you should at least insert a byline.

Some random dude who used to be Carl Craig's right-hand man at Planet E and helped establish both the DEMF and Ghostly.

oh i just read ronan's piece, good point, renders my question sort of moot

(BTW: "Theakston" = anagram for Totes Khan, his birth name.)

by the way, anyone else totally agree with pipecock's recent post about how much Planet-E has completely declined into major suck territoy?

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin

okay, Irving Berlin aside?

by the way, anyone else totally agree with pipecock's recent post about how much Planet-E has completely declined into major suck territoy?

-- the table is the table

yeah, what the hell's with all of this new euro crap. bring back the real detroit shit, like, uh, ibex and jason hogans.

stick your neck out and blast the 4 or 5 planet e releases a year

why is he putting out euro-leaning tech-house when he could be putting out records by common factor, agent x and e-dancer?

"world hold on" (c2 remix #4)

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

???

"yeah, what the hell's with all of this new euro crap. bring back the real detroit shit, like, uh, ibex and jason hogans.

-- moonship journey to baja"

the jason hogans records are not my favorite, but those Ibex records are both the hotness. Tony Ollivera is the shit, a highly underrated producer. his records on his own Dynamite Soul label are no joke either, neither are the DJ Genesis records he put out. i actually have a post about the new Ibex 12" he put out a few months back in the pipeline at ISM, that shit flew way under everyone's radar yet still manages to be better than almost every other techno record this year.

go ahead and keep clowning on shit you don't know about. the only one wearing a red nose and big floppy shoes is you.

"why is he putting out euro-leaning tech-house when he could be putting out records by common factor, agent x and e-dancer?

-- moonship journey to baja"

again showing your lack of knowledge. i just played that Agent X record on friday night, it is one of the best dancefloor Planet E's not by carl or recloose. of course Agent X is Mike Clark, only one of the best deejays on the planet and one of the people behind the Beatdown Sounds comps. he has only been putting out excellent records since 1992, you should probably clown on him and go buy Martin Buttrich records instead. the common factor records on Planet E are very nice as well, never been a fan of Saunderson's E Dancer project but i wouldnt call the records bad by any means.

"oh i just read ronan's piece, good point, renders my question sort of moot

-- moonship journey to baja"

does it? Ronan is laughable. i love quotes like this:

"In fact I’m imagining some hippy-dippy 90s strawman when I hear it suggested that white people eulogise about how race doesn’t matter in dance music."

i have seen THIS EXACT ARGUMENT only about 100 times on this message board alone.

"And why is racial militancy so much more a part of dance music discourse than sexual militancy? Wouldn’t it be quite easy to construct similar arguments about gay people in the music industry? About the theft of disco?"

this is another good one. disco music came from gay people listening to mostly black and mostly straight soul music. there were some gay artists initially, but that really changed as the dynamics of the audience listening to the music changed. regardless, i dont know anyone who doesn't acknowledge the gayness in dance music in the US even if the gay crowd has largely moved on to different stuff. in fact, the gayness was probably the largest factor in disco's "death" in mainstream culture here. it is not like the apparent secret that dance music is black, since it is widely known and appreciated probably due to the obvious gayness of the poppy disco artists.

"Above and beyond all of that, I can’t help but feel that there are much more serious issues of prejudice in the wider world than in the world of techno. Okay, so that’s easy for me to say, I’m not a black techno musician. And sure, making the world a better place is less about making prioritised lists of goals and more about a series of them being achieved in tandem, but still. Is the music industry really the first place you think of when you think of injustice? Of racial injustice?"

gee, i wonder why it doesnt matter to you, Ronan. could it be because you get paid to write about white artists for dance publications owned by white people and marketed to white audiences? it IS completely meaningless to you, you are part of the problem.

"In the end, like other Parrish interviews, the piece is so very scriptural, so biblical."

the only scripture is this: "and god said Ronan is a fucking moron". end of story.

"Beyond that, as soon as a white person begins to talk about or agree too keenly with the idea of white people “stealing” music of black origin, you must ask what right a white person has to define such a theft? Isn’t that once again seizing the controls?"

seriously, how does this guy get taken seriously by anyone? how does he get PAID to write about dance music? this boggles the mind. i think my 6 year old understands more about how not to be an asshole than he does.

"I wonder which race invented the idea of cultural appropriation in the first place. If you know the answer, please tell me."

coming from a white person, i love it. love it love it love it.

disco music came from gay people listening to mostly black and mostly straight soul music.

no, THIS is a great one!

blaming gays for the death of disco!

'the gay crowd' moved on, naturally - because the straight crowd continues to rep for 'real dance music' and couldn't POSSIBLY have shifted the boundaries of 'dance music' to fit their worldview of what that actually means

for better or worse (in the morning is a pretty decent track) that agent x ep sounds like a david guetta (or other generic french filterhouse) tune. i was listening to it a lot right after i graduated college, along with a lot of crydamoure records and similar sounding stuff.

you're right about disco's death, pipecock-- ie, this country's horrific homophobia, especially amidst the beginnings of AIDS, was a-raging-- but disco was definitely and pretty defiantly gay well until after the Disco Inferno incident, and well into when house music started piping out of clubs in Chicago.

and disco's death is more a timely thing-- more appropriate would be 'disco's decline in popularity.'

i love his claim to the straight origins of dance music though ... as if the gay clubs that essentially created disco as a dj form were somehow allllll full of white gays appropriating the sounds of straight blacks

and deej, he is right, he just doesn't talk about the reasons for it. which are mainly AIDS, the shutting down of various super-star US clubs due to various issues, and the arrivial of a little thing called house music.

any implication that 'the gay crowd' (L.O.L.) has 'moved on' from dance music = pipecock has never actually spent any time in chicago whatsoever

yeah, that is a bit off-- it was pretty much full of italians, latinos and blacks spinning to mostly-mixed audiences. and by mixed, we're talking economically, racially, sexually, etc.

never been a fan of Saunderson's E Dancer project but i wouldnt call the records bad by any means

ha ha, why not, will you lose your detroit patriot status?

or if he meant 'moved on' simply from disco ... also inaccurate

to be fair, deej, it is just his scene and his generalization about that scene-- techno is pretty much dead to gay people in the US, at least from what i've seen and experienced first hand. progressive house, shitty club house, hip-house and then disco reign.

"shitty club house"