Let's talk about Derrick May

Just got some sad news -- a big reason (and why I'm posting on this thread) is at the end:

this note from brad hales - his shop was in the forest arms building on the wayne state campus that burned today. please let your friends and fellow record store geeks know this info.

Friends,

I am sorry to report that Detroit's Forest Arms apartment building was lost early this morning to a massive fire. The building is toast. Our new location is in the basement of my apartment, at 5835 Third St., just south of Antoinette.

If anybody wishes to help out, how about sending a prayer out to the hundred or so people who lived there who are now homeless, and lost pets, and probably in a lot of cases, everything they owned to the blaze.

People's Records will continue on without even really ever stopping. Unfortunately, I have to just about start over. Everything there is under about 4 feet of water. Literally.

Also, if you have any photos of the old place, email peoplesrecordsdetr✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧

I think we may be having a benefit at the Bohemian within the next week or so; details to follow.

So, if anybody wants to stop by the house on Third, Zac, Anibal and I are preparing the basement, and getting things ready for our newest incarnation.
That's today. I don't think anything can be done at the store right now; it's going to take a whole lot of sump pumps to eventually get all the water out of that basement. 5,000 gallons A MINUTE were being pumped in.

Phone calls don't really help right now; my voicemail is already full. Stop by the house on Third if you want to help.

best,
brad

p.s. I needed a vacation anyway.

p.p.s. Still paying CA$H for old records.

p.p.p.s. this is also the building where derrick may recorded "strings of life", "the dance", "nude photo" etc..... nuff respect....

Bizarre. I spent nearly five years down the street, and not to be a pain, but I think Brad is incorrect. I’ve heard from Derrick that he wrote most of those songs two blocks down at the Sheridan Court, which is now the neighborhood crack den. But it’s possible, like everything about Derrick that he made either story up.

I was under the impression he recorded his big tracks at the Atlas Building, but what do I know...

in any event, it's always sad when the D loses another grand old building, and good luck to the residents...

sad news. reminds me of this: http://flickr.com/photos/sweetjuniper/2050168942/

For ex-Detroit people: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22821077@N04/sets/72157603860521532/

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=1001082564&albumID=0&imageID=373897

^^ LOL

as someone who is nearly completely ignorant abt these genre and subgenres and doesnt really care abt musical importantness id like to take this opportunity to weigh in on derrik may v techno.

firstly he is so delightfully funky. so so much! this shit is way more that than most house. how did techno become the uptight brother?

also the way its constructed and the sounds. the analog sounds and programing they are v distinctive and wonderful.

this is great great music.

the mike taylor posts are a truly stunning synergy of insight and wrongheadedness. ingenious!

how did techno become the uptight brother?

berlin

yah i know but but its still kinda weird and inexplicable

well a lot of the europeans weren't just following along from the detroit sounds, they were imitating straight-ahead kraftwerk and moroder and early hi-nrg material too

its interesting that it instantly comes to this question. i mean detroit shit was the key ingredient right?

mayday mix is :D
love that he used 'get down get horny'

i mean detroit shit was the key ingredient right?

you can make this argument, but bloonkity doonkity shuffle DX basslines like May is so fond of didn't seem to catch on as much as the space cadet stuff on top. White people, you know.

is this related to why stuffwhitepeoplelike.com doesnt lol me?

it doesn't lol me either

hmmm

tbh there's a lot of stuff on Innovator that I find lame

that drama bassline caught on, i think

May's personal quality control seems to have started out where Craig's has ended up :(((

can you elaborate?

well I said I thought a lot of stuff on innovator was lame, and compared to the wall of hits that is TSToDr.E or other comps of earlier material, craig's last couple of efforts have seemed, uh, to contain many lame things

IMHO

how come kaos isnt on innovator wtf

the mike taylor posts are a truly stunning synergy of insight and wrongheadedness. ingenious!

It is a very special talent...

I wish I could be bothered to argue over things like this anymore. The blood cools with age.

I did manage to pick up a copy of Wiggin a couple days ago for a few bucks. Hard knock life.

As far as techno becoming uptight, the answer is Plus8/UR and the hidden influence of industrial music on techno.

^^ tightie-whities

The thing that is most interesting to me is how different my perspective on the big picture of dance music is after all these years.

Myopia is both the beauty and problem with living in Detroit.

Two weeks ago in Ghent, I had the rare opportunity to see Derrick May DJ in a club with a capacity of no more than 150 ppl. AMAZING SET: solid, tight, funky, unrelenting. For at least the last half of the three-and-a-half hours, the bass (in the style of Oscar G & Ralph Falcon, i.e. Murk-style) never let up. As the minute hand crept closer to 5:00, I sensed tension building and I was right: on the basis of past sets (and the plethora of mp3's of past Derrick May live sets that until recently were available on MixesDB.com), one might have expected him to do a mostly techno set. Guess again: it was all DEEP HOUSE, few if any vocals, and with the tiny club you could imagine what it must have been like to have one of these guys do a loft party back in the day. In any case, getting toward five o'clock, things got to a point where he would cut to the sort of techno record that the crowd was jonesin' for, then cut back to the other record with the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM Miami-style bass, then back to four bars of the techno record, then BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, back and forth, and then suddenly, right at 5, he segged to "Killa Bite" by Ben Sims [you get the picture? Techno + Deep House averages out to Tech-House!], and the room just exploded! It was the climax/release that everyone was waiting for. Brilliant.

Skip the records. 20 years ago you would have been wasting your time if you bought Grateful Dead records, because the real goods were the live sets. It's the same with Derrick May -- the real joy is when he's on the decks. RESPECT.

To understand what the man is capable of, track down a copy of "The Mayday Mix". 11 years on, it's still the best DJ set on CD that I've ever heard. On other boards I've seen discussions where knowledgeable readers absolutely could not determine whether he was using 1 or 2 copies of Green Velvet's "The Preacher Man"; whether the record that samples "Let No Man Put Asunder" is "What Has Been Joined by G.O.D.", or is it "Car Crash Mixer"; how he managed to do what he does with "ONLY" three turntables. And he plays Jeff Mills' "Alarms" and Phuture's "Spank Spank" on top of each other as though they were intended to be part of the same recording. Phenomenal.

If this were a just world, people would be trading mp3s of Derrick May sets the way that they used to trade bootleg tapes of Dead shows.

<3 mayday mix, one of the best ever

Anyone hear his mix on 6 music a few weeks ago? Just listening now, about 15 mins through, very very good.

i'm the only one who finds mayday mix irritatingly choppy?

Yeah it never really clicked with me even though the choppiness and relentlessness is one of his signatures. In my experience, it goes over way better in a live setting as j.w. attests above.

Saw that Innovator got re-pressed recently. Maybe they'll do Relics next.

Gonna have to really read this thread at some point.

i like the choppiness of it! There's so much live-ness to it

yeah and on second thought it does sorta take into account the way people actually dance or move vis-a-vis BOOM BOOM BOOM mills style techno which doesn't really let up long enough for a breath or a change of form, i have to say i appreciated that when i was working out to mayday mix earlier today

What the fuck is up with Innovator!?! Half the tracks on here are like a minute or less in length (the first disc is only 45 minutes long! he could have included real tracks), with different mixes and all. And this is to say nothing of the megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur featured in the liner notes. Ah well, I guess that's just Derrick May?

he's always loved doing that...check out the Transmat Relics compilation from many years before Innovator.

Has someone compiled the full Relics and Innovator tracks on a handy torrent yet?

ah come on, innovator is excellent. i think it works so well as a, um, narrative, that including full tracks would've stifled its impact. compare innovator to the more recent juan atkins metroplex 2-disc for example, or even the kevin saunderson faces and phases thing, yeah unimpeachably wonderful music obviously but all those full tracks get tiresome in the long run. and if you really want to be completist, buy the vinyls! they've pretty much all been repressed by now

i love those short interludes on the relics album and innovator, they really give those albums a sense of being an actual piece of art as opposed to just a victory lap career retrospective

i don't know maybe i'm slightly biased; i spent much of last winter walking to and from work at night through south london with innovator on the discman -- i've never experienced a marriage of sound and environment quite like that before, just perfect, and i can totally sympathise with all those people who talk about driving through detroit late at night listening to rhythm is rhythm and truly understanding his music. it's music that somehow seems completely tied to this feeling of night time in the city, sodium streetlamps illuminating the rainfall on dirty pavements, all that corny cliched rubbish that's been written about a thousand times already

btw i saw derrick may dj a couple of months back and he took the room and shook it like a snowglobe. so much energy that night

that wasn't the sound of a train wreck shacking the room? is he capable of matching beats? i bought some japanese mix disc he did and it was the most awful display of 'mixing' i've ever heard. i don't think he can actually beat match. if someone can point out a mix of his that includes a good blend from one track to another, i'd love to hear it.

I've heard his DJ sets were pretty bad, too. I believe the name "Derrick Meh" was cited.

that wasn't the sound of a train wreck shacking the room? is he capable of matching beats? i bought some japanese mix disc he did and it was the most awful display of 'mixing' i've ever heard. i don't think he can actually beat match. if someone can point out a mix of his that includes a good blend from one track to another, i'd love to hear it.

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, August 2, 2010 4:21 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the mayday mix? fwiw dudes beatmatching is super easy esp w techno of the style he plays & im sure hes figured it out by now

pretty sure he was replying to me there

yeah i guess derrick may is known for his less than perfect beat matching skills, as is jeff mills, but with both djs i think it kind of adds to the manic energy. that style of djing is not about long blends at all, it's about counterpoint and flair, and yeah there's plenty of great djs out there who can balance perfect mixing with adventurous equing styles and tricks (claude young for instance) but somehow i think we've been spoilt by this kind of post-hawtin long transition stye of mixing in recent years and it was refreshing to hear that old kinda hip hop style of djing. plus he played some really good music that night -- i'm not the kind who walks out of the club as soon as i hear some kick drums galloping

i saw shake play this year as well and again, mixing wasn't perfect, there were no super long blends or transitions, just tons of energy, enthusiasm, flair, and most importantly, amazing records

actually i guess he was also talking mayday mix, sorry

odd. every time i've heard him dj his mixing has been impeccable. inspirational even.

i meant 'mayday mix' as an example of good mixing.

sorry, nobody under eighty. i’m getting old.