Sacred cows from the dance canon that are now irrelevant

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Ah, Robin, you could be right, but when I want to get a party started it's 'Good Life' and 'Bounce Your Body To The Box' that do it every time, guaranteed.

Todd Terry's best stuff is great but when you have as many goddamn Todd Terry records as I do, a lot of them are painfully dull. The hits, including most of the stuff on the 2 LPs are all killer of coure, the Oranges Lemon Texican track(doing the Mexican) is dope and the Sound Design EP rocks, but lots of other stuff he did under different names doesn't really stand out.

Interestingly, Pal Joey, who's style picks up right from Terry but is even more simplified, i.e., sample a classic, add your own drums, somehow make it sound uniquely yours at the same time, has dated even less then Todd Terry, and his records, even the played out hits, still sound totally fresh and hot, always rock an danceflore, and it's no suprise he keeps repressing them. I got to spin with him a few months ago and he hooked me up with the Earth People repress that has Dance Dub on it(that wasn't on the bootleg I used to have) and it's just totally amazing. Same with It's Partytime and of course Hot Music.

But you're crazy about Lil Louis! That song is perfect and put in the context of everything else he was doing, it's just pure genius. The hooks, the like one key change, the slowing down, the orgasm. Still totally awesome.

My favorite sacred cow classic that I love to hate is Maurice-This Is Acid. It just reminds me too much of the crap that it directly inspired that I heard coming out of too many white camaros in high school.

oddly this is the massive attack track that feels most dated to me! the one i keep returning to on blue lines is "lately." if you stripped out the vocal, you could add boingy robot sound fx and release it as a beck-ripoff in '97, throw on some laser noises and a disaffected vocal and rerelease it as electroclash in '01. that bloopy bassline works for everything!

oh i guess the ineffectual scratching is v. much 1991 forever, though

But Weekend, I think just has all the worst elements of his style. Actually, I also totally hate on "I'll house you" which is just plain irritating.

And I agree about Lil Louis but the key words you used are "in the context" - that's kind of what i mean. It seems like a lot of the tracks that people pick out as classics are picked because of context and because they were "first" even if they were the first to do something that then became totally played out.

For me, I'm fascinated by the things in music that date and the things that don't. Like the corny hi-nrg Italo is as fascinating to me as the "tasteful" stuff because they have so many of the same elements. And even, I think down to the level that a track like "Hypnotic Tango" which is (deservedly) called a classic, but probably wouldn't be nearly so revered if it had been released in 1987....

But basically, what got me thinking about this was the "Secret History" comp. Because that's a selection that will probably go down now as the "Italo canon". But it's a selection that it seems was made in terms of records that are obvious precursors to 90s techno and 00s electro tunes. And not that there's anything wrong with that.

But the dance canon to me seems very different because it's basically the view of a bunch of middle-aged dance 'historians' who look at the records from the perspective of how much they enjoyed them at the time, rather than from what still stands up as classic now.

I still don't know what's on the Secret History. Speaking of italo canon, see this quick rant I spewed out:

http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000034.html

RE: Todd Terry, I'm talking about even more anonymous records, all those Lake Eerie and such, I can't even remember the names, just like, all these 91 house records you can't walk down the street in NYC without tripping over a dozen.

What I meant about context w/ lil louis is, if you play French Kiss in the context of shitty trance or profressive house, it may not seem so great, but in the context of his other stuff, I'm blanking on names, video crash? Just weird weird stuff.

Corny is a weird, subjective term. I have this pet peeve, when I go to old movies, I always hate people laughing at things that weren't meant to be funny, and really aren't that kitschy. Every time I see Night of the Hunter, some people just think it's the funniest thing. Now some of that hi-nrg italo stuff I'm sure I used to find cheesy, but I also used to find house music cheesy, it's more where you're coming from, and I guess I've grown to like it. When I say i'm playing cheesy italo-disco to people, I'm really saying "well, YOU'LL find this cheesy, but I don't." To be totally honest, I don't find the vocal mix of Hypnotic Tango to be cheesy at all. And while most "techno" djs stick to the instrumentals to avoid this, I love the vocals. Tarzan Boy by Baltimore, now that's cheesy italo. I guess it's a fine line.

what you say about Secret History is interesting, because when trying to research italo-disco one realizes that the stuff that we all love thanks to I-F and mixed up at the hague and such, is a small subset of a much bigger thing, and most of the european italo lovers like a wider range of stuff. Some guy in germany will have every italo record I have, and yet my 10 favorites won't even be on his list of the top 100. Yet, I-F, John Selway, Danny Wang, Morgan Geist and countless italo lovers, who all come from New Wave into Disco backgrounds, will agree on what's hot and not. I suppose at the time the american DJs and then producers and labels did as well. Klein and MBO, Robotnik, Kano etc were released here, while the stuff just to the right of "cheesy" was not. But I think a lot of us move from what type of historian to the other. You start by saying "the instrumental mix of Penguin Invasion by Scotch" is pure techno so I'll mix this in, later you decide that Disco Band and other cheesy vocal pop italo tracks sound so cool and have nothing to do with latter day techno, and you end up looking for new tracks that fit into the old context, as opposed to the vice versa, and there's no shortage of excellent stuff done with a contemporary simplicity and a timeless, if not overly retro/nostalgic feel. I-F/Parallax Corp, Macho Cat Garage, Metro Area, Danny Wang etc. At least that's how I see it. Now everyone's doing it and if you ask me, it's a good thing, because the end result of "90s techno"(and house...and electro) was totally boring.

why do I feel like I'm the only one who writes such long-winded nonsense on I Love Music?

oddly, I am consistently amazed at how much I love "Energy Flash"! it just rocks, and it always sounds like it's right on the cusp between cheesy, menacing, cool (in "the birth of the" sense), and throwaway. ditto "Age of Love"

surely "Promised Land" and most of the '86-'89 era (maybe after too) of post-house qualifies for this thread title. then again, maybe not, if you happen to find classicist vocal house relevant. (I waver.)

also overrated: "Acid Trax." and "Sueno Latino" is not a good record at all.

No, me either, but I don't think "Visitors" or "Void Vision" is cheesy either, so I'm probably not representative on that score...

Track listing for secret history is:

Liasons Dangereuses - "Peut-etre pas"
Alexander Robotnick - "Problemes d'amour"
"Hypnotic tango"
Gaz Nevada - "IC love affair"
Visage - "Frequency 7"
Telex - "Brainwash"
Paul McCartney - "Temporary secretary"
Material - "Secret life"
Klein and MBO - "Wonderful"

The Liasons Dangerous LP has been reissued, don't know if that track is on it, and that Material song is on one of Tigersushi's 12"s. Nothing really suprising.

I say forget about what tracks were the MOST influential, how about amazingly awesome cool tracks that nobody heard? I'd name some but that would spoil it. Rephlex would reissue them before I got the chance to!

Anyway, also check out their reissue of the Black Devil Disco Club stuff coming out, that's the most amazing thing, really deep dark soundtracky stuff crossing the bridge of the earlier more disco-y italo-disco to the spaced out electro-y italo-disco.

The thing about this thread is that its really several threads. I have absolutely no thoughts or opinions on Massive Attack and know nothing about the classic drum and bass and uk garage canon other then some stuff I got on CDr from Simon Reynolds, which I haven't digested and can't put in any context anyway.

But as far as good dance music intros, I always say get all 4 volumes of Tommy Boy's Perfect Beats. and these sights:

www.deephousepage.com and
www.deepdisco.com

Did you know some of the Crystal Waters stuff was produced by Maurice Fulton? Now it's hip! Gypsy Woman was the name of that song and it makes one remember a time when House music was in the US top 10!

'Hideaway' is still amazing, 'Music Sounds Better With You' came out round same time as 'You Can't Hide From Your Bud' but is still the turning point... actually, let's get down to the question who here gets down?

Provincial highstreet clubbing is all about the Neptunes sound. Boring seven minute build-ups are boawrin. So radio edits are the shit, always.

Yeah, how fucking weak-minded to get excited about the most obviously exciting musical development of the nineties!

"Bukem and his label must have been the most over-hyped musicians in history"

This statement has a better chance of standing up, but even then by linking the two together you imply that Bukem and dnb were synonymous which is wrong wrong wrong.

This comes across as really thin and watery. I think we expect monster bass with everything now, and dance tunes that don't have it really suffer.

this i find extraordinary. this is a true classic and the trademark Deep Dish swish metallic beats are pretty tough and dirty - and how can you say it's not bassy? get a proper system!

Well, I dunno if it was the most exciting next to what was happening in hip hop, but even then there was no sense, in a lot of publications, of proportion. I suppose most were written for DJs who did get thru 20 new records a week, but not enough writers said 'this is dull', and a hell of a lot of it was and is (i'm talking late jungle/dnb here).

I'm 20 and I love Derrick May. I think lots of 18 year olds could get into it, it's not obtuse or weird, I would say Strings of Life sounds the most dated, whereas Nude Photo or Beyond The Dance still are pretty solid affirmations of house/techno as weird and wonderful music.

Jacob's second list strikes me as a very good one, mind you Don't You Want Me by Felix is an odd blueprint for the filter disco sound of the late 90s I always feel. It does sound pretty iffy now though unless pitched up heavily and even then.

Papua New Guinea really is top of the list, it owns this thread I agree.

On the subject of Kevin Saunderson, I couldn't disagree more! Stuff like Velocity Funk and Pump The Move still sound brilliant to me, just need a bit more pitch perhaps.

I think a Hideaway is an interesting suggestion. It's a track which has almost ceased to seem like a dance classic and become just a classic to me. I could see a similar argument for Music Sounds Better With You except it did become the blueprint for loads of pop and dance songs after it.

I think CHIME is a now irrelevent, take that canon! Smokebelch II also irrelevent now I agree. Both are good, better than Papua New Guinea but dance has moved beyond "I am spaced out of my mind dude play me heavenly weird noises". Not far beyond but beyond nonetheless.

(as an off-topic, how hard to track down is that Klein and MBO album? slsk maybe?)

I agree, I like Chime, but it does fit the thread I think, in the sense that it's no longer relevent to dancefloors. I don't think including something here has to be a diss.

hmmm. the last track i heard that had that good 'ol kym sims vibe was the "maurice's livegig mix" of "bills, bills, bills". i think when r+b gets this storming there's not really any call for that stuff anymore.