An Introduction To The Golden Age Of Big Beat, Skunk-Rock And Hip-Hop Revivalism

It was a dark time for the rebellion...or so the pop history books would have you believe. For years now I've felt short changed by what I perceive to be an inaccurate cultural narrative, populised - it being in their interests to do so -by the NME, which describes the period between 1997 and 2001 as a musical post-Brit Pop wasteland during which the disenfranchised indie masses sat around doin' nothing much 'cept for tutting at the dominance of manufactured pop and waiting for the immense seismic shift which was to be wrought by the appearance of The Strokes.

This history is based largely on NME sales figures; during the late Nineties and early Noughties the paper was in a complete mess, with no domestic indie-rock scene to ally themselves with they floundered, and sales dipped to a spectacular new low with the infamous Godspeed! You Black Emperor front cover in 2000. The NME's stock explanation of this now is basically that there was no good music being made, and that their sales inevitably reflected this general malaise. The Stroke's debut front-cover appearance in 2001 turned their fortunes around dramatically, and a new golden age of guitar pop was ushered in. So thank God for the NME and The Strokes, and we can finally put the last few years behind us, right? Well...not exactly.

    The NME is an almost exclusively white, British indie-rock orientated publication, and it is at it's best when it has a genuinely exciting scene of that nature to cover (see punk, The Smiths, Madchester, Brit-Pop, Libertines). The reason the NME suffered during the 1997-2001 period was that it was unable to get a bead on what exactly they were meant to do while there wasn't much British indie-guitar pop for them to champion. The lead articles from this period reveal a paper in a state of constant, confused flux, with acts as diverse and un-NME-ish as Destiny's Child, Godspeed!, Nas and Slipknot all making the front cover. With no idea what they were meant to be writing about or how to write about what they did choose to cover, the NME just threw a bunch of mud at the wall and watched with increasing frustration as none of it stuck. They were clutching at invisible straws and clearly uncomfortable, and yet a consequence of this enforced scatter-gun approach was that the paper - against it's will - was a more diverse, more interesting, more open-minded publication that it ever has been since. Desperate to find something to improve their sales, they cast their net wide. As soon as they hit pay-dirt with der Strokes, this policy (a policy they were never happy with anyway) was instantly revoked, and a single-minded focus on guitar-pop returned with vengeance. It is to the NME's eternal shame that, instead of being proud of this pre-Strokes period, they are embarrassed by or dismissive of it. Regardless of why they got there, Destiny's Child's appearance on the front cover of the NME can only be regarded as a great, positive thing. And yet the NME would rather shrug and say "oh, that? Shit, we didn't know what we were doing. No idea what that was about. Yeah, sorry. That won't be happening again. More Ting-Tings anyone?" If only we had the luxury of an NME with taste's this Catholic now.

Q. So what were you listening to during this period, then?

A. Big Beat, Skunk Rock & Revivalist Hip-Hop

BIG BEAT

Few pop genres are as widely ridiculed and maligned as Big Beat. There were some shockingly awful records put out under this banner in the late '90s, sub-Fatboy Slim dirges which amounted to little more than an artless hodge-podge of looping soul vocals, bad scratching and an approximation of the Mantronix's 'King Of The Beats' break ad infinitum...but there were some truly brilliant dance-floor monsters hammered out too, and I really liked a bunch of 'em. As an indie-kid with a preference for the, ahem, 'indie-dance' end of things, Big Beat struck a chord with me as being merely another evolution of the Screamadelica / Fools Gold sound, ie Funk Breaks + Rock Attitude & Guitars. Clearly, the real groundbreaking outfit in this arena were The Chemical Brothers. In 1994 'The Chems' were DJ-ing at the legendary Heavenly Social nights at the Albany Pub in London where they would spin anything from The Beatle's Tomorrow Never Knows (a major Big Beat touchstone) to pounding Acid House and old skool hip-hop, to a crowd made up of Brit Pop's hippest scene makers. The sound they developed (huge funk drums, psyche-rock guitars and hammond, acid-house structures, hip-hop vocals) by mashing these influences together was to be named Big Beat, and the rest is yadda yadda yadda.

   As a kid I always dug records that taught me new things about old music. The records that the likes of The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim et al made sent me off in all sorts of directions musically, searching for original sources of the breaks they'd nicked and the rap vocals they looped. The success of this sound led to some great, radical chart hits. The Chemical Brother's 'Setting Son', less we forget, was a Number One hit single, surely one of the very best Number Ones of my lifetime, essentially Beatles '66: Redux, with a suitably Rain soaked Brit-Psyche vocal from Mr N Gallagher. Fatboy Slim's 'Push The Tempo' was a Top 30 hit built around a rampaging guitar & drums loop by Colleseum fer crying out loud. Cut La Roc's phenonemal 'Post-Punk Progression' is basically Nuggets remixed by the Ultramagnetic MCs. This heavy-psyche element had a huge impact on me, and I'm still finding stuff on old prog records that make my ears prick up as I hear something used on a Bentley Ryhthm Ace (!) single I bought 10 years previously. The other major impact Big Beat had on me was that it offered a useful way 'into' hip-hop. Representing this end of the genre were - amongst many others - The Wiseguys, whose second LP, 'The Antidote', was a massive sound 'round my dorm room in 1999. You'll probably remember 'em for their smash hit 'Ooh La La', but the LP as a whole is just great, bouncy, British hip-hop from beginning to end and it still makes me smile every time I throw it on. I'll come back to this old-skool revivalism later.

All in all, Big Beat was often clunky, gauche and 'stoopid', but is was also often fun, funky and packed a real 'punk rock', smash 'n' grab attitude. The accusation that much of it was simply dumb-ass party music stands, but it takes genius to do dumb as well as it is done of some of these records. If you are able to get hold of a copy (I imagine it would be insanely difficult), Fatboy Slim's 'Beat Up The NME' mix tape, which came free with the paper back in 1997, is a brilliant, definitive document of the sound.

SKUNK ROCK

"Uh, I don't mean to hassle you or anything but...WHAT?"

If few genres are as malinged as Big Beat, even fewer as as totally forgotten about as the possibly-never-existed sub-genre of Skunk Rock. This is a genre so unloved that it doesn't even have a Wikepedia entry. (I'm gonna go do one now..) In the depths of their post- Brit Pop breakdown, it seemed like the NME was inventing new genres practically on a weekly basis. 'Stool Rock' anyone? (I'm not kidding.) One such genre was Skunk Rock, and the key exponents of this sound were The Lo-Fidelity Allstars (on Skint Records), the frequently awesome Regular Fries, and Campag Velocet. The Skunk Rock sound was up-dated, hip-hop & house influenced indie-dance characterised by stoned vocals, funk-rock beats, tons of weird retro synths and general Screamadelica-on-a-budget vibes. There were a lot of drugs involved, basically, and none of the records sold very much, but at the end of the 90s the popularity of Big Beat (and, now I think about it, The Beta Band - that '3 EPs' collection is still a mega record) meant there was a small window open for these chancers to drag themselves through and party for at least a couple of months. The Regular Fries in particular made some killer records, loadsa hammond, wah-wah guitar and massive drums. Check out this collaboration with Ultramagnetic MC's Kool Keith (Ultramagnetics are another important Big Beat touchstone; The Progidy half-inched at least two vocal hooks from 'Critical Beatdown') if you need some proof...

An honourable mention must go to a band classier, hipper and less deranged than The Regular Fries and The Lo Fi Allstars, the era's Great Lost Band; Delakota. Lacking the gonzoid trash aesthetics of most Skunk Rockers, Delakota crafted a sampledelic D.A.I.S.Y Age hip-hop influenced, good-vibes 'Loaded' sound and put out two really wonderful singles - 'The Rock' (looping, chilled psychedelia over low slung breakbeats) and 'C'Mon Cincinnati' (Big-Beatish funk-pop with Aretha Franklin style 'Sock It To Me!' girl-group backing vox) and a pretty good LP (One Love) before drifting into obscurity. (You can here 'em here.) The singer, mop-topped Cass Brown, sang in a Dylan via Tim Burgess stoned whisper, and I thought he was the coolest - he now plays drums for Gorillaz. Something at the back of my mind tells me they did a remix of Billy Piper's 'Honey To The Bee'. Which is pretty ace. Me and my girlfriend saw Delakota play with UNKLE twice on the same tour in 1998, and we really loved 'em alot. They're one of those acts who I woulda liked to have sold a million records, but am secretly quite happy they remained small time enough to be just 'my' band.

REVIVALIST HIP-HOP

And finally...The Late Nineties Old Skool Hip-Hop Revival. Big Beat's reliance on huge drum breaks and sampled rap vocals (and the mega success of Jason Nevin's remix of Run DMC's 'It's Like That') generated a certain amount of interest in old skool hip-hop during the late Nineties, and it all sort of got mixed up in the same funky gumbo. The real standout act here were Jurassic 5, whose 'Jurassic 5' EP (1999) stands as one of the Nineties minor league classics, of any genre. I guess they suffered eventually from being so heavily indebted to their influences, and the old skool shtick got kinda tired after the first LP...but 'Jayou' and 'Concrete Schoolyard' are undeniable, summer hip-hop jams the equal of ATCQ, De La or any of their heroes. Nobody who heard these tracks at a BBQ or house party back in the day has anything other than huge love for J5, and they deserve whatever props they got comin' to 'em.

Freddy Fresh's 'The Last True Family Man' LP (1998) provided more Big-Beatish hip-hop thrills (the Fatboy Slim collaboration 'Badder Badder Shwing' practically being the definition of the genre) and some v. cool beat instrumentals. The Wiseguy's 'The Antidote' (1998) - mentioned earlier - is just great, heavily old-skool Brit-Hop with a bunch of tracks which wipe the floor with the formulaic 'Ooh La La'. The Jungle Brothers, genuine Native Tongues survivors, put out their 'VIP' LP in 2000, produced by British Big Beat stalwarts Propellerheads. The Freestylers 'We Rock Hard' LP (1998) was a super-funky mash-up of dancehall, Big Beat, electro and straight up hip-hop bangers. I also recall that definitive old-skool drama doc 'Wildstyle' was re-released on video around this time, again reflecting a general mainstream interest in good-time, block party hip-hop at the dawn of the Noughties.

     So....the thing is, when Lester Bangs was raving about the Count Five and The Sonics and all dem small-fry mid-60s garage bands back in the early '70s, he was writing in praise of bands who were genuinely considered by pretty much everybody else at the time to be utter garbage, and not in a good way. We forget that when we describe about The Shangri Las or Louie Louie as 'glorious trash', we are doing so with the luxury of knowing they are good trash. Like, '5,6,7,8' by Steps is TRASH, but it isn't Orthodox Mojo Authorised Canonised GOOD TRASH, is it? When Lester defended the Count Five he was doing something genuinely radical, something brave, saying 'here's something people have forgotten or think is plain awful. I really like it, and here's why.' By doing so, by taking that chance, by daring to be wrong, he rehabilitated this music, and the great garage bands are now firmly part of the rock establishment. He could have picked something obscure to celebrate, but he didn't, he picked something that was briefly hugely popular, then very, very unpopular. Something UNCOOL. It is in this spirit that I have writen this brief introduction to the late Nineties Big Beat, Skunk Rock and Revivalist Hip-Hop scenes. The NME may tell me that my years at University were conducted in a musical vacuum, but I seriously beg to differ. Let's try and get Bentley Rhythm Ace the respect they deserve. (Paul Fuzz)

Comments

[mof gimmers]

Major props (a very '97 thing to say) goes out of Deejay Punk-Roc's 'Chicken Eye' LP which still makes me grin like a simpleton!

[sanddancer]

This is seriously the best thing I've read about music in a long time. Good to hear genuine passion that isn't filtered through concerns about sounding cool.