I feel like Hanna’s stuff didn’t tend to be on labels with great distribution back in the pre-napster era when record shops were central to finding new stuff - I never really remember seeing any of his, only really picked up on him much later. Also that he afaik doesn’t dj or if he does I never remember him coming to europe. That second one one reissued on Floating Points’ label is the only 12" of his I’ve got. Also reissued this Mood II Swing mix that completely passed me by at the time.
And I’ve been meaning to order this, been in my waitlist for ages, but Hanna cover /tribute of Deepburnt:
Until today I’d always thought that Wamdue were German. Used to buy a lot of this smooth west coast stuff back then, some of it hasn’t aged well but I think this one holds up, definitely a very specific flavour though.
You can hear the entire 90s stuff from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis inspired by sounds like this.
It’s easy to forget that house, at some point, became the counter-cultural differentiator that launched Madonna into the next level of her career.
Therefore, making it mainstream. I was too young to club, but I can only imagine what it must’ve been like to hear these tunes played for the first time on a proper sound system.
Okay so this is a very obscure thing but I feel like I am among the right people to ask - does anyone know/remember a website from roughly 99/00, ran by a person who lived through the whole house era and wrote first hand experiences with the birth of scene.
It had whole tracks or maybe also just samples (in real audio format - talking about prehistory of internet). However the twist is that the person was also in late stages of AIDS and sadly I don’t think they lived for long after that and it was sort of a legacy project of theirs.
I think what made it special was the difficulty in obtaining the music and the underground nature of it. You could only buy the records at a handful of independent music stores and a lot of music released on small labels, then the top DJs would be really up on this. Quite often tunes would break in clubs so you had to be there to experience the latest music. A real buzz about wanting to go out every weekend not to miss anything. Easily forgotten in the digital age.
Plenty of great new music being released these days but the obscurity of the scene was quite something. You heard by word of mouth and had to really search it out.
All against the background of cheesy pop music of the time, it was breath of fresh air.
What also really stuck out to me was that DJs built sets including B sides and instrumentals, not necessarily intended for dance floors, and scoured from all genres of music. Like Ron Hardy was obviously one of the pioneers of this, but it was widespread into the late 80s after which an explosion of dance specific releases came about.
That’s a sad story. I don’t remember such a site, I guess it could have been one of the old blogs from that period.
Obviously there are a few mini documentary’s amateur / pro production on YouTube that touch on the scenes in NY / Chicago / Detroit.
I visited Chicago fairly recently and was a little disappointed at the lack of visible history of it. Even the record stores had very little of the vinyl from the 80s, maybe it was all exported! Or maybe I needed to research more
I got a lot of my musical education from Ron Hardy mixes off deephousepage in glorious realaudio.
Was a hell of a resource.
Also brings to mind the links between deep house and disco and jazz and soul and more eclectic things. I tend to think of house music as including all of that - how Ron Trent put it:
“Deep house" was a phrase we used back in the day to describe music that [Chicago house originators] Frankie [Knuckles] and Ronnie [Hardy] were playing. People had this perspective that house music was electronic shit, but that was considered eccentric. The stuff that Ronnie and Frankie were playing was disco and jazz and underground stuff. So we called that deep house
A big chunk of my education when it comes to US house is from the New York tip of it, the soulful/disco adjacent side of it for the most part, I was lucky enough to meet some legends like Victor Simonelli, Eric Kupper (one half of Directors Cut with Frankie Knuckles), Lenny Fontana… among many others, thanks to being involved with the core of the house scene where I grew up in when I worked my first job more than twenty years ago at a vinyl shop whose owner and contacts were involved in it since the disco days and were bringing guys like these. It was an invaluable experience I am so lucky to have had.
So much good music in this thread. I looove that early pre house/post disco era. Loads of experimentation going on, so many unique tracks. Everything around paradise garage and Larry Levan was so forward thinking.
This for me is the absolute housiest house bassline i’ve ever heard. The absolute core of what it’s about if you ask me:
Any mention of Ron Hardy gets nothing but love from me.
I listen to his sets on occasion and how he extended the mix with doubles. Going between different styles of music, and breaking records for the first time.
I like to imagine the atmosphere and rawness of the venue and overall integrity of the audience’s intention: people who came to dance to what the selector has curated.
Frankie was a major icon in the popularization of it all, but I can understand why certain DJs tip their hat to Ron.
I heard Ron would play a track in the beginning of a set and play it again later that night. There is something emotionally honest and sort of rebellious in that. Not like he didn’t have cuts. But it’s almost like he’s saying it’s so good, I’m not afraid to remind y’all one more time where you heard it! Now hear like this!
Absolute legend. Remember seeing him years ago, he hung around the club hours after his headline set, came upstairs to room 2 and started mixing vinyl with his shoes!