In the case of Jordin Sparks, I've always had a soft spot for 'Battlefield'. The lyrics are so emotional and hyperbole, in a way reminiscent of everything good Phil Spector did. And the mid-tempo, yet euphoric nature of the song is actually pretty similar to most of Florence and the Machine's album. By disguising good music as shitty R'n'B, Jordin's doing really well. I don't know where the hell she's come from, I'm guessing it's an American talent show competition...
There we go. I just wikipediad (sp?!) her, and she's the winner of the sixth American Idol and looks a fair bit like America Ferrera.
I've recently become partial to latin freestyle music, starting with Nayobe's 'Please Don't Go'. Not only do I like the idea of going to Mexico in the 1980's to score, I really like women with strong voices barking on about their weak souls and wildly romantic dispositions. When I discovered that Jordin's 'S.O.S. Let the Music Play' uses a sample of Shannon's 'Let the Music Play', I jumped up out of my seat. I've been a fan of Shannon's 'Give me Tonight' for a while, but apparently it was nowhere near as commercially successful as her debut single, 'Let the Music Play'. The latter pushed dance music to a new place, and is a credited as a revolutionary song, putting dance music back in the mainstream, when so many had shunned disco that it had spent the past couple of years hidden away in the exclusive gay clubs of the big cities (Paradise Garage, Chicago Warehouse etc).
A little more exploration has informed me that there are loads of remixes of Shannon's 1983 hit, but they are all abominations to the ears, and are most probably heard in the less glamorous Mediterranean holiday resorts. Jordin's sampling is very splendid, though. Just like old-school Xenomania, the producers and writers have crammed in a brilliant middle 8, and as many melodies as they can get their grubby mitts on. Embedding is disabled by request, so there you go.
These disco tracks really need to be played from start to finish, despite all being around 8 minutes long. The length of the songs is a brilliant thing, however. There are two reasons why these songs, and many others of the 1970's, were so long.
1. In the 1970's people did not have last.fm, itunes or spotify (in the case of the latter, still no-one uses it). This meant the only way people could arrange playlists would be to use a live DJ, and even Isaac Hayes, at the height of his resplendent decadence and overspending, probably wouldn't have employed someone to mix next to the bed as he got his jig on. In the 1970's, people would have to shag to an album, or an 8minute single. A pre-coital selection of a three-minute punk song could have serious consequences for a man attempting to ensure his partner could expect at least something half-decent in the sack.
2. In the 1970's, someone predicted that the quality of albums would deterioriate and that people would like to buy singles individually from online resources. This oracle of music realised that people would want to get their money's worth for 79p, so would prefer long songs than slow songs.
My dissertation is coming along beautifully. The structuring just fell into place today. I've put everything nicely into its context, I like to think. And instead of disagreeing or agreeing with one critic, I'm analysing the two texts (Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Apartment) and picking and choosing critics to agree with me. I feel confident and smarmy about it. Here's what's helped me along tonight to get to the 1100 mark:
and this is more of a surprise but again confirms my hopes/desires that rap has got a soul to it:
You see, last week at fuel4life, at 1.58am, I whacked on this:
After a good two hours of bassline, fidget and dubstep, the crowd didn't falter. I usually whack on a soul track so as to clear the dancefloor, but everyone stayed on, proving how fucking good soul can be.
ALSO. Bangers&Tash are playing Beach Break Live on the 16th-19th June. I don't really know who reads this, if anyone. But come along.
On the search for more Larry Levan, I got to this.
I sent it to a dear dear friend who's mostly into soul/motown and does have a certain affinity for cheese club nights. This is probably because she gets to convince the DJ that it's our friend's barmitzvah. And that our friend is called Barchard. And is a girl. Queue Barchard dancing to Kool + The Gang's 'Celebration' on a podium, with Devonshire deejay shouting 'HAPPY BARMITZVAH BARCHARD', unawares to all of the errors of his chant.
However, my friend really likes this song. It's sexy. Apologies for the lack of video content. Do something else when you're listening. Go for a pace around the room. Did your hair. Fix your nails. Sharpen your talons. Whatever, bitch.
A couple of Popbitches ago this marvellous piece was featured:
>> Miami splice << Sam/LiLo: not the new Larry Levan
Honk writes:
"A friend was in a Miami club this week where
Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan were booked to DJ.
They shared a single laptop between them, indeed Lohan seemed to be 'rocking' a room of 600
using nothing more sophisticated than iTunes.
And it showed, as her four-second attention
span meant guests were treated to something
akin to the 'intros' round of a pub quiz. Lohan
disappeared to a crouching position behind
the decks for a good 10 minutes whilst she er,
blew her nose and Ronson took over. She at least
tried. 15 minutes later, they'd packed up, the
club emptied immediately, and a real DJ took
over and played to a near-empty club."
I wrote an article about Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson. Why, despite not being amazing role models, are brilliant because their relationship can serve to teach some home truths. Like: not all girls need to be super-feminine to get laid, but that's cool. Or that really generically astoundingly hot girls do fancy other girls. Or that people don't have to define their sexuality anymore.
The shortened article is here. The full article is remarkably defunct now, as a whole load of shit happened. But I wouldn't want to write any further on that in case the whole thing changes again.
Changes is the name of a song by Larry Levan. He was a DJ and producer in the 70's- 80's.
He's credited as the founder of dub, and dubstep is meant to be a derivative of dub. But I think it's a bit like taking that little plastic thing on the tip of your shoelace of your Nike Air Force IIs and putting it in your nose. Dubstep takes a small, irrelevant element of dub and makes it really dangerous for no particular reason other than to look a bit hard.
Larry used to play at the Paradise Garage in New York. People used to have sex on the dancefloor. Men used to wear heels and big hair and women were mostly made of sequins. The Paradise Garage probably reeked of poppers. When I was 14, my mum found some poppers in my bag and made me pour them in the sink. She muttered "Smells like Studio 54".
Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when Jenn-nay is in a bar doing lines and KC and the Sunshine band is playing? Well, yeah, a bit like that. I think Jenn-nay had a cooler life than Forrest. Like when Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird is playing and she's about to jump out of a window a gajillion storeys high? That was cool. She was played by Robin Wright Penn who was married to Sean Penn who was married to Madonna and is also known to hang out with Lindsay Lohan. Who got compared to Larry Levan.
Madonna used to go the Paradise Garage. The promotional video to Madonna's first song, Everybody, was filmed there. Not that Youtube will let me find it. Wikipedia says: "The song introduced classic Madonna themes like individuality, dancing and singing as forms of self-expression, as well as the optimism that dominated the first five years of her career."
And now I kind of wish, oncemore, I could do my dissertation on Madonna. Enjoy:
