I’m currently reading two related books at the same time:
“Turn the beat around - the secret history of disco” by Peter Shapiro
“Last night a DJ saved my life - the history of the disc jockey” by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton
Both speak about a phenomenon of the 60’s-70’s: Northern Soul. It is the unlikely emergence of a subculture of English white working-class youths that only danced to American upbeat soul music. It started in Manchester, the Twisted Wheel club and spread from there.
The original northern soul scene lasted from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and is considered a retrogressive or revivalist movement based on a style of music created years earlier. At the height of its popularity in the 1970s, African American artists had moved on to newer genres such as funk, jazz funk and disco, so the northern soul scene relied on a finite supply of 1960s recordings.
If you ever wanted proof that hip-hop & rap are a disruptive music genre, take a look at this study/art work by Fernanda Viegas, Martin Wattenberg & the crowdsourcing specialists at Dolores Labs: Fleshlabs.
They’ve take the lyrics of a lot of songs and figured out which body parts are most mentioned.
Based on a compilation of more than 10,000 songs, the piece visualizes the use of words representing body parts in popular culture. Each musical genre exhibits its own characteristic set of words, with more frequently used terms showing up as bigger images. The entrance image shows how many times different body parts are mentioned; the charts for each genre go into more detail, showing the usage of different synonyms for each part.
For reasons I won’t disclose, I’ve had the following song in my head for quite a while now: “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band (1974). For me the funny thing is the contrast between the innocuous country-music image of the band (with the really pretty Margot Chapman - born in Hawai) and the lyrics of the song that are a bit, let’s say, suggestive.
I subscribe to less and less podcasts (not enough time to listen), but there is one I always install on every newly installed iTunes. It’s called the Basic Soul Radio Show, it’s presented by Simon Harrison. Every week Simon selects two hours of old and new funk, soul and electronic music, which makes for a 200MB MP3 every time (upgrade that hard disk!). I have discovered lots of little pearls thanks to it. Some examples from the top of my head:
Expect to encounter a lot of artists/groups that you’ve never heard of. Some of it you won’t like, some you will adore. Because I wanted a better tool to search the 5+ years of archive, I built a little search engine on
that allows me to search for artists, titles and labels. Per found occurrence it allows me to view the full playlist (reformatted from the original page) and if the podcast MP3 is still online, to listen to it (with a SMIL playlist, a M3U playlist or a Flash based MP3 player). I enjoy using it, to see when a track was first played, what other tracks that artist made etc …
Check it out!
PS: Every podcast episode starts with: “Today is the shadow of tomorrow. Today is the present future of yesterday. Yesterday is the shadow of today. The darkness of the past is yesterday. And the light of the past is yesterday“, a piece of lyric from “Shadows of Tomorrow” - Madvillain & Quasimoto.
This is a nice concept: make you own online mixtape with Mixwit. The music comes from other people’s MP3 files found through Seeqpod, and not all of those are still online, but it’s easy to check and the result is worth it.
This is some music I listed earlier in Music for sad days.
Studio Brussel wordt 25 jaar en viert dat met een week ‘alles op zijn kop’. Ze lanceren “Brudio Stussel” van 25 maart tot 1 april met een geweldige campagne van de Mortierbrigade. Bruno Vanden Broecke speelt een Tien-om-te-zien producer die probeert de ruwe kantjes af te schaven van ‘t Hof van Commerce (”Zeg ekji oe loatist“) en Belgian Asociality (”Da’k et morgen ga doen“). Heerlijk!
Not that I’m particularly sad today, but I was recently thinking about the music I play over and over again on less happy days. For some reason, it’s still the same songs I play as 10-15 years ago. So now that we have Youtube:
I play out my role
Why I’ve even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when I’m beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
An the tears for real not acted, anymore
“Long Hot Summer” (1983) - Style Council (with Paul Weller on Bass)
This is a song I like to play when I’m DJing, it makes people smile: “Porque Te Vas” by Jeanette (Dimech).
I got reminded of this song by a newsletter of the Beursschouwburg, they’re doing a “Porque Te Vas” contest where people can bring new versions of this classic. Inscription before Oct 10th, and the event is held on Oct 24th, with hosts STIJN and Pieter De Buysser, the jury consists of Maria Tarantino and Stijn Meuris.
Hoy en mi ventana brilla el sol
Y el corazon
Se pone triste contemplando la ciudad
Porque te vas
I’m currently reading two related books at the same time:
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