It always seems to amaze me how house music has changed over the past few decades. At one point house music actually meant something specific and familiar. There wasn’t techno, or trance, or any of the alter-egos of house, there was just house music. It had a feeling. I say this because fast forward 20 years from the early days in Chicago and you now have people coming up to me while I’m playing something like “To Be In Love” from Masters At Work asking me to “stop playing so much techno,” or “can I play something that isn’t chill-out.” Songs like “Sandstorm” by Darude ruined it for everyone. Now everything with a 4/4 beat is techno, to those who don’t know. No matter how much you advertise a specific genre for the night, or how packed the dancefloor is, or how long the person has been in the place, you can’t escape them.
Last night I played a really cool party and it was packed and sweaty and the musique du jour was predominantly crossover house and club hits (David Guetta, Fedde Le Grand, Bob Sinclar, etc…). I dig these tracks and they definitely provide the soundtrack for a hands in the air party.
At what point does house music stop becoming house? Is it a bassline? Is it the beat? The tempo? Can a track that starts off as an underground house record be held responsible for it’s success if it should happen to cross over? Should a house producer be condemned for producing a pop or R & B remix? Producers have to eat. Who is the moral authority these days? Is there a committee I don’t know about? Anyone?
I have some of my early house music 12” records on the wall in my studio to remind me of where it all started. I saw it today as I sit down to produce my weekly electro house mix show for iPartyRadio.com. I doubt that many people would find the parallel between something like Steve Poindexter’s “Work That Motherf**ker” and “Smash Disco” from Vandalism but its there if you search your soul. I wonder what early pioneers of house music such as Larry Heard, Chip E, Marshall Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles think of how their children have grown up.
As if ADD wasn’t bad enough in this day and age, Sling Media just upped the ante for your attention. Although it’s been out awhile, the Slingbox has finally got it right. I received a Slingbox A/V as a gift and all I can say is the future WILL be televised, just on your laptop.
After setting up this little red box to your cable device and the Internet (via a standard Ethernet cable) and installing the Sling Player software everything was up and running, except me and my fiance, who were now glued to the computer, watching our cable, in a cyber cafe. It’s a pretty simple concept, it streams your home cable through your Internet connection to your laptop. It works flawlessly, it’s not perfect quality all the time but its hardly anything to complain about. And if you have an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro (or other video out on your laptop) you can stream the signal to any standard TV. (of course one that doesn’t already HAVE cable)
This gadget is great if you have work to do in your office, just start the SlingPlayer and waste the day away. At the library doing research? Research whats on on the USA Network and watch a Law & Order marathon instead. As if having the ability to leave the TV and venture to places where you don’t have one was a good thing, now you can become a couch potato wherever you have Internet access. Did I mention that have a player for mobile devices? (Hey Sling Media, wheres my iPhone Player…)
Buy this and other STROBOTIC RECORDINGS music at:
More stores coming this week…
The only good thing about the 2008 remake of the campy 80’s TV show “Knight Rider” was the cameo from David Hasselhoff in the last 10 minutes. In this day and age, all the cool technology that went into the car is so old news. Anyone remember the TV show “Viper”? And Val Kilmer as the voice of KITT pales in comparison to the original KITT voiced by William Daniels. Frankly I don’t know if anyone made the connection, but Val sounds less like KITT and more like HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey. And judging from how effortlessly KITT was hacked into makes me wonder if he might be running Windows Vista. Maybe they should have gone to Apple for the OS. The goofy pictures KITT displayed and “his” comments during the torturous driving scenes were so cheesy it made the 80’s version seem less campy.
Yes the new KITT (Knight Industries THREE Thousand) certianly pays for itself by not needing that expensive collision insurance and the great gas milage certianly is an advantage in these days of high prices at the pump. Did anyone count the number of Ford vehicles blatently shown? Unfortunately what they forgot to equip KITT with was a better plot and script.
This picture of Val Kilmer below is truly ___________ (fill in the blank).
Even though my single drops at digital stores around the globe today, that is not what this post is about. This single itself has a long history behind it. Back in 2000 I made a white label bootleg with the hook sampled from the original record. Then in 2003 I made another one. Then in 2006 I really set out to actually release it as a record and after Berhouse Snyder (the vocalists) delivered the vocal tracks to me things were set. Many incarnations and remixes later the question has still not been answered. The lyrics “Where do we go from here, now that all of the children are growing up” means so much in this day and time. It can make you reflect on pretty much anything from music to politics, even desciding where to go for dinner. It’s like a musical GPS, but you have to answer the question of where on your own.
Besides that it would make a great bit of tunage for a car commercial or technology company. My image, you see a minivan and the kids heading off to college (or wherever kids go these days when they leave home), the music is playing the and the chorus is going and then the parents look at each other, the beat kicks in and then you see them driving off in one of those mid life crisis cars. And its a no brainer for a technology or communications company. Heck, why not a travel company? Expedia and Travelocity, you listening?
I went to The Firehouse Lounge last night after a few month hiatus and I had forgotten how the deck turns into a huge ashtray the closer it gets to 2am. There is nothing that kills my enjoyment of good house music like hacking up a lung from other peoples need to smoke. Don’t get me wrong, you have every right to torture your body if you so choose, but don’t I have a right to not be tortured in the process? And don’t give me the “well you can go somewhere else or stay home if you don’t like it” speech, because every other state that has introduced and enforced a ban on smoking hasn’t suffered for it and in many cases even prospered. It makes your clothes and hair stink, your eyes burn, and second hand smoke needs no explanation on what it does to your lungs.
Clubs should adopt the what some Airports have done, make a dedicated room where people could smoke. Its very entertaining to look in those glass rooms with people just standing around smoking like a laboratory experiment.
Yet another reason why Pittsburgh is the pitts. They had the smoking ban law passed but then squashed it. Kudos to the owners that decided to uphold it or voluntarily ban smoking in their establishments.
Next week will mark the launch of Strobotic Recordings, a digital electronic music label founded by Geoffe Colon and myself. The first release will be my new single “Where Do We Go” featuring vocals by Charles Berkhouse and Barry Snyder of Retro Electro. With remixes galore and more on the way it’s sure to be a good diversion from following celebrity meltdowns. Our music will be available at all the major digital outlets including iTunes, Beatport, Traxxsource, Juno UK, and DJDownloads. Future releases from Viscosity, Soma Mestizo, Zapology, GRIDLOKR and more available in the coming months.
This is the flyer I designed and made for a new classic soul and funk night spun and hosted by DJ Zimmie. It’s supposed to look like an 8-track tape and although I scanned a real 8-track and made the whole thing look retro and beat to crap the flyer is 4x6 and a real 8-track is 4x5 so it got stretched out but it’s one of my better flyers. www.djzimmie.com
