i used to wear my hair long in the early 90’s as a kid of the grunge movement that came out of seattle and took over the world for a few short years. i kicked off my sneakers for a pair of black military boots, and went shopping for the requisite lumberjack looking table clothe looking shirt. you had to love the raw energy and angst that came with nirvana and pearl jam, and even tho we were thousands of miles away from seattle, kids all over the world identified with the music.
then kurt cobain went and shot himself. (or maybe someone else had him shot.)
pearl jam went and got all artsy fartsy on us.
and chris cornell and soundgarden started making pop music.
rage against the machine stayed the same and stopped evolving,.. then eventually disbanded.
i did hop onto the hiphop train.
i hiphoped on and off 😛
and with the current state of bullshit hiphop doing the rounds, i’ve decided to walk instead of ride. i wouldnt be caught dead on some lame ass blingbling train.
house never really did it for me. for some reason it always seemed rather effeminate. and altho i did briefly enjoy waving glowsticks in one drunken stupor or another, it always left me hollow.
strangely i didnt even take to drum & bass when it was underground and kicking off in the UK while i was there. atleast nothing much beyond the roni size and goldie stuff, or grooverider on bbc radio 1.
but holy crap this shit is great!
if you like uptempo stuff but the bog standard crap on mtv leaves you wondering what happened to the music.
if you think emo kids need a bloody haircut, a slap in the face and a loud yelling of “cheer the fuck up!”…..
if youve decided that you cant take another watered down “rock” band who have manicures and are older than your dad, or still too young to drink,…..
if you cringe at the sight of 16 year olds who go to private schools, in a chauffeur driven car, who are anything other than black, who have probably never even spoken to an african american but dress like they came out of a south central LA ghetto,….
then check this out:
you wont really appreciate it until youre in a club with massive speakers, so try and get to one the next time youre overseas.
just wait till the huge subwoofers start battering you with the “bass” bit of the drum&bass. you’ll feel like the music is vibrating in your bones, and coursing thru your colon,….. (careful if you drink too much and have a weak sphincter).
youre gonna love the way you “feel” the shockwaves of the sub bass tones a split second after you hear the bass kick in. its almost as if the dj is reaching inside your ribcage and pumping your heart for you at speeds of 170 bpm.
and the amazing thing is that it doesnt even matter that you’ve never heard the tune before, cos you’ll know the general beat, and the bass sounds, and the shockwaves. so unlike other types of music where you go “WTF is he playing?”, you simply wont care.
it can be aggro and all “arraAARRGGHHHH!!!!” or as chilled as a spliff at the end of a night, even at speeds of 170bpm, depending on what youre into.
its one of the last forms of music where there is very little “superstar dj” type shit going on, altho how long that will last is anyones guess. but it is certainly one of the last genres where the emphasis is on the music and not on what the hell theyre wearing, who they are or who theyre dating.
the funny thing is that some of the producers look hard as nails and yet put out chilled out dnb, while some of the meekest looking ones put out the hardest hitting of the stuff.
give it a shot, you wont be sorry 😛
it's gone a lil wonky 