Shocking Pink and Clause 28

Shocking Pink was a feminist zine put out by a collective of young women in London, including my friend Katy Watson who died in the summer. As the organiser of last year's Women's Library Zine Fest! described it 'Shocking Pink, which ran from the late 1980s to early 1990s, billed itself as a “radical magazine for young women”. Part magazine with serious political coverage, part school-club magazine (if your classmates were hot-headed, deliciously witty, rebel grrrls) this magazine pre-dated riot grrrl zines with its fusion of sass, cultural appropriation and sprawling biro-made doodles all over the margins and type face'.

I've scanned in some pages from a 1988 issue (click on images to enlarge), a time when the Conservative government was embarking on a New Right 'family values' moral crusade. Most notably a law known as Clause 28 was introduced which prohibited local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality'. This issue of Shocking Pink gave prominence to the movement against the Clause, with a two page spread on a big demonstration in Manchester on 20th February 1988.

What I like about this report is that it is based around a tape recording of the event, giving a real sense of what it sounded like - the crowd running under a bridge and wailing 'Wooo Wooo', chanting slogans and singing songs.

Extracts: 'Where are we? There's people dancing in the street here, the Police are trying to move them on'... 'Singing Dykes - We're abseiling, we're abseiling, down a washing line to the lords, we're abseiling, never failing, we're abseiling against the clause'... 'This is a violin woman, she's excellent she uses just her voice and works with the violin and drumbeat. It's kind of melodic, I think you'll like it (SCREECH SCREECH, WHINE, WAIL... PUT YOUR LAWS DOWN YOUR DRAWS, WE ARE GONNA STOP THE CLAUSE).

The abseiling song refers to a famous protest against the clause, also featured in this issue, next to a Shocking Pink 'Guide to Party Games' including 'Musical Riots: Rules - while the music is playing all the girlies run around gaily (no offence). When it stops all run into the streets with arms eg bricks, metal piping, broom handles and other ordinary household weaponry. Then smash windows (whilst shouting a lot. This can be difficult to do at the same time)'

Berlin - 21 days and counting

Advance warning – I will be doing a talk in Berlin on Friday October 31st, part of an event to mark the tenth issue of Datacide zine. Not sure of details yet, but the plan is to have talks in the afternoon followed by a party, with other participants probably including John Eden (Uncarved), Stewart Home, Dan Hekate, Controlled Weirdness and Christoph Fringeli (Datacide, Praxis records and once upon a time Dead by Dawn). If you’re within reach, put it in your diary. Details to follow.

Decoder: The Sound of Muzak

Another classic article from the zine vaults, again incredibly not already online. 'Decoder: the sound of muzak' by Tom Vague was first printed in Zig-Zag in Feburary 1985 and then reprinted in his own Vague zine (May 1985). This article had a big impact on me, not so much in terms of the film it describes, but in introducing to me the notion of music as a form of control.

As far as the Concise Oxford Dictionary is concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the majority of people are concerned it doesn't exist. As far as the Muzak Corporation is concerned that's just fine. Muzak Corp is the only company in the world that doesn't advertise it's product to the public. In fact they don't even want it widely known that Muzak is a product. They're quite happy for it to be known as harmless background music.

That's not to say that the people who create and use Muzak don't think highly of it; 'Muzak is more than music. It's an environment,' is the catchphrase used in the Muzak manual. And that's not boastful hard-sell either, that's factual information. 'Muzak is scientifically-engineered sound,' continues the manual, 'The sound of Muzak is subtle and musical. But it is not music which is meant to entertain. Because music is art. But Muzak is science. So it does not require a conscious listening effort. Yet it has an enormous effect on those who hear it ... Muzak is programmed to motivate office and industrial workers, relax restaurant patrons and medical patients, make shopping more pleasant and less hurried ... The entire process is known as Muzak Stimulus Progression ... It provides an overall feeling of forward movement, can mitigate stress and produce beneficial psychological changes.'

However, not everyone is in a state of stimulated, blissful ignorance of Muzak's supposedly beneficial psychological effects. Beneficial to whom and who decides what is beneficial, you may well ask. Hamburg journalist/director, Klaus Maeck did so, at great length. Eventually turning his obsession with Muzak and the harm it does into the new German underground movie, 'Decoder’.

Klaus used to run Hamburg's 'Rip-Off' Records and as a journalist covered the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten, Abwarts, Xmal Deutschland, Malaria and Psychic TV. He had previously documented the likes of the aforementioned on Super-8 and gained some recognition as a Punk film maker, because in his words, "Nobody else was doing it in Hamburg." After the collapse of 'Rip-Off' and disillusionment with journalism, Klaus began to concentrate on his idea of making a film about Muzak. Over a couple of years he researched the phenomena and compiled the 'Decoder Handbook'; to support the film with information about Muzak and related subjects; like Cut-ups, Infra-sound, Dream machines, cassette-piracy and frogs. (Still don't see how that last one fits in.)

His research entailed visiting Muzak control offices - In every main city in Germany - Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Munich - there is one office for this purpose - And he got to interview one of the directors, but found himself responding in a peculiar way; "I sat there talking with him and I really felt something. When I arrived there I wanted to ask him some quite provocative questions. After one hour I was really calm and talking with him very gently. He explained to me, really he told me and I really believed him, that Muzak is good in hospitals. Instead of having valium, you hear some Muzak and you're really calm before an operation.

"I think that's the good thing about Muzak." Klaus concedes, "To be used in that way instead of chemicals, pills and so on. But that's the only good thing about it. You can manipulate the brain with it. Mainly it’s negative, but it could have some good effects. I still can't believe, this director told me they use the same Muzak in hospitals, supermarkets, fast­food chains, offices, factories. I cannot believe that, because in supermarkets its purpose is to make you comfortable to buy more. In offices it's to make the working atmosphere more relaxed to increase efficiency. But he told me it's the same. And there is only one tape reel running in this office, going by telephone cable to all the different places. You don't get anything on tape or record. It's just through cable.

"It's built up on the human bio-rhythm, on the normal daily rhythm people have; like you start work at 8, so around 11 they make the Muzak more exciting because you're thinking about lunchbreak. Then in the afternoon it’s calm because you've just had a break. Then at 3 they make the Muzak more exciting again. The tape runs and runs all day, endless. You can't decide for yourself which Muzak you want to hear. They decide in the office. Even if you turn it off you're still in that rhythm. I think it's pretty dangerous. You never know when Muzak is on the radio - many major groups arrange their music using Muzak techniques. You never can be sure."

And so using the basic theme of Muzak; the damage it can cause, how to deal with it and ultimately decode it, scriptwriting began for 'Decoder’. At this stage Klaus brought in Muscha, a young film maker from Düsseldorf, who had the experience necessary to direct the proposed one and a half hour film. And together with Volker Schaefer and Trini Trimpop, they set about building a plot around three central characters: The main protagonist, a young noise-freak, played by Mufti of Neubauten/Abwarts fame, sets out to decode the hidden information of Muzak. But Mufti's quest doesn't interest his girlfriend, who works in a sleazy sex show on Hamburg's Reeperbahn. She's played by another familiar figure from the German underground, Christiane F, who in the film is obsessed with frogs. In real life of course it’s something else.

As Mufti and Christiane's relationship breaks down, a sub­ plot develops around Jager, the Muzak Corporation hitman, who's being blackmailed back to work to bring an end to Mufti’s decoding. During Jager's frequent social jaunts down the Reeperbahn, he begins to show more interest in Christiane than Mufti does. But he doesn't discover the connection until the end, when he decides, too late, to finish the job in his own interest.

The Jager role is played by the only pro-actor in 'Decoder', Bill Rice, the star of another nocturnal delight 'Subway Riders', and a well known face on the New York theatre scene. In fact his desperately appealing, sad face was why he got the part. "He's not famous but he had such a good face we just had to have him," enthuses Klaus.

Finally the Austrian-American director of photography, Johanna Heer was recruited to the team, and shooting began in sterile computer centres, even more sterile hamburger joints and, as a contrast, glaringly Iit peep-shows and underground sound-labs. At times I found it a bit hard to follow the sub-titles and I was watching it in the morning, the wrong time of day to watch it according to Klaus, but I thought the story did well to unravel itself from the various ongoing sub-plots and themes. And the use of colour and tone carries the film through; each central character is Iit in different fluorescent shades between neon and argon, which often explode into 'architectures of fire’.

However the soundtrack (available on 'Some Bizarre') is probably its most endearing feature. Regular Zig-Zag readers may already be familiar with 'Decoder' because of Dave Ball's work on it, which he said something about in the March issue. Various Psychic Tellys, Collapsing New Buildings and Some Bizarros did their bit to add to the general ambience. And I even found myself liking Marc Almond's 'Sleazy City' in the peep-show sequences. Their soundtrack is cut with FM news broadcasts and the scientifically programmed art-product of industrial psychologists, musicologists and marketing engineers. There's a war on, as Klaus outlines;

"I think Muzak or music in general can be used to manipulate the brain, in any way· for relaxing, or getting you excited. And they work with it. They do it. And I think you, we, whoever can do it also in a different way, like Mufti does in the film; he does the opposite. He develops Anti-Muzak for his own purposes, to provoke in the end street riots; first to make people puke instead of feeling relaxed in the burger place. I'm still convinced, even if it sounds funny, that you really can do it. If you have 3 or 4 people with tape recorders on the streets you can provoke something like that. You get manipulated all the time by the media. So why shouldn't we use the same techniques for our purpose, to try to break that down. I think that's okay, necessary even."

There's a war on. An information war: 'Decoder' credits its two major influences in this field with cameo roles of their own design: Genesis P.Orridge appears as an anti-pope sort of figure, leading an underground resistance movement - I think all the people in 'Decoder' parody themselves to a certain extent, but Gen's parody is the funniest. In one scene Mufti stumbles into his bunker, where he becomes a not entirely willing participant in a nihilistic noise ritual. Gen's main line to Mufti before he's sent packing is; "Information is like a bank, and we have to rob this bank."

Rob a Bank. Storm the Reality Studio and Retake the Universe: Ironically the development of functional music and subliminal techniques owes a great deal to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Advertisers and god knows who else have been using their Cut-up technique to manipulate people ever since Burroughs first applied it to his literary works. He used it to seemingly rearrange a text at random to create new words and watch the future flood out. But it can of course be used for more down to earth motives, such as profit and greed.

Burroughs also wrote a book called 'The Revised Boy Scout Manual', which gave instructions on how to use his techniques on the streets. It was planned for this to be incorporated into 'Decoder', with tape-terrorists/pirates using cut-up tapes to provoke a riot in the final scene. But when the 'Decoder' crew arrived in Berlin to shoot footage of the anti­-Reagan riots, they were astounded to find the cassette-pirates already there. Ghetto blasters had been set up in open windows and helicopter and gunfire noises were being played in the streets. Hundreds of tape recorders were confiscated as a result.

As an acknowledgement of the debt the film owes him, Burroughs himself crops up in Mufti's dream sequences; first leading Christiane across a field in Jarmanesque ambience. The second time handing Mufti a broken tape recorder on Mufti's TV - this was shot when Burroughs was staying in Tottenham Court Road for 'The Final Academy' in 1982 – Ain’t nothing here now but the recordings. So hit it! Pause it! Record it and play! C-30! C-60! C-90! GO!

Here's a section from the film Decoder (1984), featuring Genesis P.Orridge. His speech seems quite prophetic now of the internet age, just on the horizon at the time of the film: "Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich, some of us are poor with information. All of us can be rich. Our job, your job is to rob the bank"



See also: Sonic Attack

Dead by Dawn, Brixton, 1994-96

Dead by Dawn was a techno and speedcore club in Brixton, South London that ran from 26 February 1994 until 6 April 1996. In itself this was nothing particularly unusual – at the time it felt that every available social space was being taken over by record decks, speaker stacks and dancers, and in Brixton there was plenty of techno to be heard of various varieties. But Dead by Dawn was unique, and not just because its music was the hardest and fastest to be heard in London.

Dead by Dawn was only discovered by the mainstream dance music press after it had ceased. A Mixmag article by Tony Marcus on 'Hooligan Hardcore: the story of Gabber' (July 1997) stated that 'In London, the music is supported by the crustie scene or parties like last year's Dead by Dawn events, hosted by the Praxis label, conceptual events that were preceded by Mexican Revolutionary films or talks on topics like Lesbians in Modern Warfare'. Likewise it wasn't until September 1997 that The Face published an article by Jacques Peretti, 'Is this the most diabolical club in Britain', documenting the speedcore/noise scene: 'Like any embryonic scene, no one quite knows what to call it yet. But at the clubs where it's being played (Rampant, Sick and Twisted, Dead by Dawn, Acid Munchies) they're also calling it Black Noise, Titanic Noise, Hooligan Hardcore, Gabber Metal, Hellcore, Fuck-You-Hardcore or, my favourite, my a severed arm's length, Third World War' (the 'diabolical' club written about was incidentally Rampant at Club 414, also in Brixton).

Dead by Dawn is also (mis)name-checked in Simon Reynolds' book Energy Flash (1998): 'The anarcho-crusties belong to an underground London scene in which gabba serves as the militant sound of post-Criminal Justice Act anger. A key player in this London scene is an organisation called Praxis, who put out records, throw monthly Death by Dawn and publish the magazine Alien Underground'. All of these references contain some truth, but don't really convey the real flavour of the night. This is my attempt to do so.

121 Centre

Dead by Dawn took place on the first Saturday of the month at the 121 Centre, an anarchist squat centre at 121 Railton Road first occupied in 1981 (and finally evicted in 1999).

The Centre was essentially a three storey (plus cellar) Victorian end of terrace house. At the top was a print room and an office used by radical publications including Bad Attitude (a feminist paper) and Contraflow. Below that was a cafe space, decorated with graffiti art murals, and on the groundfloor there was a bookshop. Down a wooden staircase was a small damp basement used for gigs and parties.

The basement was where the decks and dancefloor were set up for Dead by Dawn, but the rest of the building was used too: 'Dead by Dawn has never been conceived as a normal club or party series: the combination of talks, discussions, videos, internet access, movies, an exhibition, stalls etc. with an electronic disturbance zone upstairs and the best underground DJs in the basement has made DbD totally unique and given it a special intensity and atmosphere' (Praxis Newsletter 7, October 1995).

Praxis

The musical driving force behind DbD was Chrisoph Fringeli of Praxis records. The notion of praxis, of a critical practice informed by reflection and thought informed by action, was concretely expressed at Dead by Dawn with a programme of speakers and films before the party started. A key theme played with around Dead by Dawn was that of the Invisible College, a sense of kindred spirits operating in different spheres connecting with each other. Those invited to give talks were seen as operating on similar lines to Dead by Dawn. I particularly remember a talk by Sadie Plant, author of 'The Most Radical Gesture: the Situationist International in the Post-Modern Age'.

Of course, only a minority of those who came to party came to the earlier events, but I recall intense discussions going on throughout the night on staircases and in corners. The discussions continued in print (this was one of the last scenes before the internet really took off). Dead by Dawn was one of those places where a very high proportion of people present were also making music, writing about it or otherwise involved in some DIY publishing or activism. There was a whole scene of zines put out by people around it, including Praxis newsletter, Alien Underground, Fatuous Times, Technet and Turbulent Times. My modest contribution to this DIY publishing boom, other than a couple of short articles for Alien Underground, was The Battle for Hyde Park: Ruffians, Radicals and Ravers 1855 -1955, an attempt to put the movement against the anti-rave Criminal Justice Act in some kind of historical context . People who occasionally came to DbD from outside of London also put out zines, including the Cardiff-based Panacea and Sheffield's Autotoxicity.

The writing about music was in some ways an attempt to make sense of the intensities of places like DbD. If there was one source quoted more than any other if was Jacques Attali's 'Noise: the Political Economy of Music', in particular the statement that 'nothing essential happens in the absence of noise'. Other ideas in the mix included Deleuze & Guattari, the Situationists, ultra-leftism and William Burroughs (particularly ideas of control and de-conditioning partially filtered through Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth). As well as music there were various other projects brewing, such as the Association of Autonomous Astronauts.

The mob

All of the above might make it sound as if DbD was some kind of abstract, beard stroking affair. I'm pretty sure though that there was no facial hair on display, and I can certainly vouch for the fact that DbD was a real club, complete with smoke, sweat, drugs (definitely more of a speed than an ecstasy vibe), people copping off with each other and general messiness.

There were people who came from round London and beyond especially for the night, Brixton Euro-anarcho-squatters for whom 121 was their local (at the time there was a particular concentration of Italians in the area) and the usual random collection of passers-by looking for something to do with the pubs shut, including the odd dodgy geezer: UTR (Underground Techno Resistance) zine warned in August 1995: 'if you go to the Dead by Dawn parties watch out for the bastard hanging around passing off licorice as block on unsuspecting out of their heads party goers. We suggest if he tries it on you that you give him a good kicking. You don't need shit like that at a party'.

Some of the crowd might have fitted Simon Reynolds' description of 'Anarcho-Crusties' but the full-on brew crew tended to be less represented than at some of the larger squat parties in London at the time. Of course we were more civilised in Brixton than in Hackney, and anyway the music policy tended to scare away those looking for the comfort of the squat party staple of hard/acid techno (not that I was averse to some of that).

DbD was one point in a network of sound systems and squat parties stretching across Europe and beyond, through Teknivals, Reclaim the Streets parties and clubs. I remember talking to somebody one night who had just got back from Croatia and Bosnia with Desert Storm Sound System. They'd put on a New Year’s party (January '95) where British UN soldiers brought a load of beer from their base before being chased back to base by their head officer.

Hardcore is not a style

It is true that gabber was played at DbD, as were more black metal-tinged sounds - the black-hooded speedcore satanists Disciples of Belial played at the closing party (though it is not true as suggested here that Jason Mendonca of the Disciples was responsible for DbD - I believe he was more involved in another London club, VFM). But DbD was not defined by either of these genres - indeed what separated DbD from many of the other 'noise' clubs was an ongoing critique of all genre limitations: 'Hardcore is not a style... Hardcore is such a sonic weapon, but only as long as it doesn't play by the rules, not even its own rules (this is where Jungle, Gabber etc. fail). It could be anything that's not laid back, mind-numbing or otherwise reflecting, celebrating or complementing the status quo' (Praxis Newsletter 7, 1995).

This meant that DbD DJs played dark jungle for instance, as well as techno, gabber and speedcore, occasionally winding up purists in the process. Sometimes there were live PAs, for example by Digital Hardcore Recording's Berlin breakbeat merchants, Sonic Subjunkies.

Even with gabber it was possible to get into a kind of automatic trance setting - after all it was still essentially a 4:4 beat, albeit very fast. The experience of dancing at DbD was more like being on one of those fairground rides which fling you in one direction, then turn you upside down, and shoot off at a tangent with no predicable pattern.

A quick roll-call of some of the DJs - Christoph, Scud, Deviant, Jason (vfm), Controlled Weirdness, DJ Jackal, Torah, Stacey, DJ Meinhoff, Terroreyes, Deadly Buda, not forgetting VJ Nomex, responsible for much of the video action.

The last days

DbD quit while it was ahead. Praxis newsletter announced in October 1995: 'In order for this never to become a routine we have decided to limit the number of events to take place as DbD with this concept before we move on to new adventures - to another 5 parties after the re-launch of this newsletter on October 7th'. So it was that the last party took place in April 1996. There was some frustration that the baton was not taken up by others: 'What a relief to be rid of the stress - but six weeks later we start feeling bored already and start looking for new concepts. Why did no one take up the challenge to make this sort of underground party spread? Why was the last discussion avoided by those people who tried to give us shit about stopping the parties?' (Praxis newsletter 8, 1996). The latter article was accompanied by a 1938 quote from Roger Caillois: 'the festival is apt to end frenetically in an orgy, a nocturnal debauch of sound and movement, transformed in to rhythm and dance by the crudest instruments beating in time'.

There was no going back, but many of those who were there have continued to be involved in making music, DJing, writing and other interventions, including Christoph (still doing Praxis and sporadically publishing Datacide), Howard Slater, Jason Aphasic, John Eden and Matthew Fuller.

The final document was a Dead by Dawn double compilation album (Praxis 23, vinyl only) with tracks from Richie Anderson & Brandon Spivey, Sonic Subjunkies, Deadly Buda, Somatic Responses, DJ Delta 9, Controlled Weirdness, Torah, Aphasic, Shitness and The Jackal, plus recordings made at Dead by Dawn parties.

Some Dead by Dawn texts:

Dead by Dawn on 3rd December 1994 - Club Review by the Institute of Fatuous Research (published in Alien Underground 0.1, Spring 1995)

Dead by Dawn is a baptism of fire happening on the first Saturday of every month, organised in conjunction with elaborate astrological cycles. It is an open secret, an anonymous pool of power accessible to guileless travellers of multitudinous potentiality. A new rougher and tender realm and yet another sucker on the beautiful arms of that octopus of desire called the INVISIBLE COLLEGE.

Dead by Dawn is an all-night feast of fire consumption; a self-sustaining palace of pleasure. Aliens advance their individual investigations into involvement with MOB RULE, test-driving hectic notions against believing everything... but minds do burn out (perhaps the effect of swallowing too much dogma and listening to techno played in other clubs that has been made with tired and fatigued formulas) and on this occasion we were sorely disappointed to have to watch the spectacle of certain elements getting angry because some Dark Jungle was playing out. Did this so offend their techno tastebuds that they had to spout their pathetic invective against breakbeats?

Dead by Dawn fires up binary dilemmas, resulting in aphasic implosions of belief structures. All the declared origins for things, all the various shades of after-life theory, are majestically destroyed. The fragile skin between inner and outer space has been punctured; a celebration begins, of incompleteness, the dissolving of categories and the accumulation of ideas. This is a launch pad for a thousand missions into electronic disturbance zones. Nothing is sacred. Dead by Dawn is the realisation and suppression of popular music and attendant social conditions; techno reveals how we find our own uses for magical systems, alchemically transforming machines into play-things, and constantly re-mixing, re-connecting, and re-inventing ourselves. All of this was confirmed by the live PA that night from Berlin technodadaists Sonic Subjunkies.

Dead by Dawn fans its own flames; the key to its success is 'Mind Our Business', cultivating the MOB mentality. By outflanking the administrators of fear, Dead by Dawn gleefully contributes to the breakdown of society, as our contradictions disrupt the whole millennial regeneration of the Renaissance world-view, and the manipulation of reality for the purpose of reality. The whirligig of time speeds up and has its revenges. These digital hardnoises accelerate the displacement of hierarchy, they provide space/time travel to a classless society where there will be no plagues of crap music and stupid club-promoters, no ego-tripping pests and self-promoting bores, no extortionate prices and rip-offs, and where there will be unlimited free drugs, records, dancing and sex. WE ARE INVINCIBLE.

Dead by Dawn - a game of Noise and Politics (from Fatuous Times, issue 4)

"Well done, now you have captured the Seven Angels of Noise you may begin organising your Parties. Parties provide space for you to assemble Noises and begin Composing. But remember, with every Party you organise you take a risk, gambling on slavery or freedom - always avoid the Caricatures, such as Business Head, Drug Casualty and Career Opportunist; they will try to use you.

You must try to create Paradise City. You will need to invent the rules and codes for doing this as you go along. Your Compositions will provide you with new Relations and Meanings, use these as your guides.

The Forces of Restraint will try to stop your Parties. They will use the Four Hands of Power, Eavesdropping, Censorship, Recording and Surveillance, as weapons against you. The Four Hands can be used in various ways - strategies may include Law and Order Campaigns, Soft-Cop/Hard-Cop Routines, and Austerity Measures.


It is advisable to seek help and assistance at all times, to form alliances and collaborate with others.

Composing will allow you to learn the pleasures of doing something for the sake of doing it, without a need for financial reward.

Pleasure in being instead of having - this will make you stronger. Paradise City is made from Noise. Only you know this.

Good luck. Please press return button to continue this game.



Dead by Dawn: the 24th Party, flyer by John Eden at Turbulence, published in Praxis newsletter 8, 1996)

Down with intelligence!

Dance music is primarily functional in a way that no other music is. It should interact with the listener as directly as a fire alarm. Eliciting a response so immediate that it bypasses the conscious mind. If the rhythm isn’t replicated by nervous and muscular responses then it's time to change the record. If it doesn’t make your feet and legs move then you can fucking forget It. Heads down, smiles on. Go.

Bodies jammed together have no space for pretension. Technology is utilised to elicit a peculiarly 'primitive' response. No time to think, only time to keep up. The third mind of the dancefloor is fully occupied. No need for packaging. Our bodies don't care about record labels, music labels. Every man and every woman is a star here. The dancefloor is in another dimension to the coffee table. All of the body begs for a frequency to vibrate to, not just the ears.

The oxymoron of making "listening" techno is an insult. Music for consumers so passive that they don't even leave the sofa and move about. Voyeurs of a subculture that demands physical activity and secretions. The spectre of "Intelligent" jungle or techno. The removal from the party with all its smells, interactions, exhaustions and into a tidy category for the post-modern tourist.

"Don't go in there! There's people flailing their arms around and sweating!" Save us from a dance music that distances itself from the mob of whirling people we have come to love. There are no footnotes when the bass drum kicks in. No time for roles. Intelligence implies a certain sophistication, a superiority to the plebs that are prepared to make fools out of themselves in the name of Hedonism. We reject it.

Well that's my version - more contributions and comments welcome. Also I can't find copy I thought I had of the DbD album - anybody care to record a copy? See also More Dead by Dawn

Woofah

Nobody writes letters anymore, so outside of birthdays and Christmas I never receive anything worth opening in the post. But last week was the exception as the first issue of Woofah magazine landed on the doormat. Woofah is a new 'reggae - grime - dubstep' magazine edited by John Eden and Paul Meme, aiming to provide some intelligent coverage of scenes which just don't get enough written about them. Woofah combines high production values (glossy paper!) with some really good content. I particularly liked the interviews with Mark Iration (of Iration Steppas) and MC/thoughtist Lez Henry (author of the excellent What the deejay said).

These interviews made me reflect on how a feature of UK dance musics is the cross-pollination between genres in defiance of the efforts of various style border police to keep them separate, cf. Mark Iration's background in house music and bass'n'bleeps as well as dub. Also, how much of the history of these musics is largely undocumented - so much follows a familiar trajectory of central London and Manchester clubs. How about a history that was able to give credit where its due to places like Lewisham Boys Club (scene of some legendary reggae soundclashes) or the Checkpoint club in Bradford (where Mark Iration played house and bashment for the youth of
Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds)?

In a time when so much stuff is chucked on the web and skimmed rather than read, Woofah have taken a deliberate step back, arguing that some things have enough value to be worth stopping for a while and paying attenion to. So if you want to read it, you're going to have to get your hands on a copy.

Dancing Times 1943

One of my favourite pastimes is browsing through books and vinyl in car boot sales, jumble sales and charity shops, so I was delighted today to come across a stack of vintage dance magazines in Haynes Lane Market in Crystal Palace, South London (still plenty left there in the book stall there if that's your thing too).

The English magazine 'The Dancing Times' was 'a review of dancing in its many phases' covering ballet, ballroom and other styles. The March 1943 issue (cover here) included various reviews and an article on dance films with the headline 'colour films have come to stay'.

The adverts included ones for The Astoria and the Hammersmith Palais de Danse in London, two venues which have survived down to the present but which are both now under threat of closure.

Both of these venues in 1943 (during the height of World War Two) offered dances every day at 3 pm as well as in the evening. This was a time of more or less full employment so who was dancing at this time of day - shiftworkers? I am fascinated by this daytime dancing culture, which seems to have continued down to the 1970s (Robert Elms mentions going to a lunchtime disco club, and the mod daytime scene in the 1960s was famously described as The Noonday Underground by Tom Wolfe). Who has time to go out clubbing at lunchtime now if they're working, and even if they did where would they go? This is surely due a revival!

Adverts from The Dancing Times, March 1943:

Rave Magazine 1950s

This US magazine cover is from 1954. By this point the word 'rave' was already being used in London to describe all night parties in the jazz scene.

Was it being similarly used in the US? I suspect that this magazine was using 'rave' in the earlier sense as in 'rave reviews' or even 'raving mad'. Buddy Holly seems to have this sense of raving - rather than dancing -in his 1958 hit 'Rave On':

"Rave on, rave on and tell me, Tell me not to be lonely, Tell me you love me only, rave on to me".

If anyone can find evidence of 'rave' being used as a noun to describe a party in the USA in this period, or even earlier, I would be interested to hear about it.