Outhud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again

Actually, there are at least two other threads on this album, but the search function is slow ass right now.

i'll say it again though - i think it's fanfuckingtastic.

what would you recommend for indie dweebs or dweebs or anyone who does go dancing? why can't one dance to this? must your dances maintain regularity?

(point of reference: some of this "indie dweeb's" alltime fave dance tunes: I Can't Stand It When You Touch Me/Eighth Wonder/
Think (About It)/I Feel Love/Holy Ghost)

x-post

x-post

and outhud still sucks, fools.

For you guys who liked earlier Out Hud, GET ONE PELL MELL ALBUM. Flow, Interstate, Star City are all great. (Not to ignore Rhyming Guitars nor The Bumper Crop, but those are earlier more snappy fast-paced post-punkish Pell Mell releases... great, but not a great segue out of early Out Hud)

( xpost )

x-post

xpost!

It just seems that most of these bands tilt the scale to indie instead of dance, when I'd like to see more results of what happens when the scale is tilted the other way, ie the Superpitcher Remix of "The Dream of Evan and Chan," Martini Bros remixing Tok-Tok's "Missy Queen," the latest techno-rock records by Jake Fairley, Alter Ego, Quasimodo Jones, and T Raumschiere, etc.

What are three of your alltime fave dance tunes? I only ask so that those who haven't heard this thread's album can make a clearer choice based on reference points that are more substantial than "sucks", "indie dweebs", "white man's overbite", etc.

BTW, I don't mind the dissenting opinion. Its not like we don't agree on other things. Same goes for me and donut, who I share many opinions with, but certainly not SHeads.

I guess I was refering to the whiny Ben Gibbard/Grandaddy/Flaming Lips type vocals that seldom appear in House.

xpost

Even when I started getting into more aggressive music, the disco/dance aspect remained, hence my love of Wax Trax!/Nettwerk/Antler/Subway type stuff in the mid to late 80s...(I did get to discover non dance bands like Fugazi and Minor Threat via Pailhead.. and then there were the 12" one-offs by Foetus/Wiseblood, Coil, Minimal Compact, Blackouts, and other off-the-beaten-path stuff on Wax Trax! that way.. they were, oddly enough, a gateway record label for me. If it weren't for that first Meat Beat album for example, issued on Wax Trax stateside way back when, I wouldn't have gotten into hip hop so rabidly in the early 90s... (I liked Run DMC and Beastie Boys and the Sugarhill Gang back then, but more for their novelty value, admittedly)

(for anyone that cared...)

heh, well Pell Mell started in 1980.. did you mean post-punk instead of post-rock? :) Yeah, no scene wanted them, so I'll stop talking about them, since they're irrelevant by that definition.

Jaymc is correct. Additionally, this record doesn't sound like it's saying "this is a band" or "this can be reproduced live" or "we care that this is reproduceable live". The fact that the vocals are so faceless adds to the house-ness, and they don't really seem indie at all. They're very detached yet rhythmic (as has already been said). The Severed Heads comparison is interesting and superficially correct, but they're coming from very different places, and again the overall vibe I get from the Out Hud record is Tom Tom Club as opposed to something on Nettwerk. There's something almost Balearic (vague term I know) about this record too.

hard to say, there's so many good ones from so many different eras! and i know it's perverse but sometimes i take the chuck eddy line and think that a lot of rock is funkier/more danceable than some "dance music."

but 3 off the top of my head: "acid tracks," "quebec nightclub," "demented drums"

These do not in any way relate to authenticity; they are subjective assessments.

Rock bands in 1985 aren't especially relevant to the development of Acid House. It basically comes from black and/or gay clubs and the radio in Chicago in the mid 80s. It traveled to Europe and eventually indie bands began to consciously incorporate electronic "dance" elements (especially '89-'91). But LCD Soundsystem seems to be celebrating the rawness of that '86 sound and reappropriating it as rock - which I don't have a particular problem with, but it's nice to remember how revolutionary it was and part of that is it's provenance and what it meant for many listeners at the time.

that wasn't my question. and obv. since it has been recentered around other things, isn't there more than one way to perceive it? isn't it a rather, um, rockist view to say it can only have one version of authenticity (Chicago '85, maaaaan)?

they suck because they're shitty people who make craptastic music that even if it was danceable, would still suck - that good enough for ya oops?

And Hstencil, if you read my words carefully, you'll notice that I am very careful about not saying that there's only one way to perceive/receive Acid House - obviously I would never say that there's only one authentic history. I will say that Out Hud are truer in spirit to the way I experienced house music "back in the day" than say LCD Soundsystem.

Well, the crux of my point is that the album just really bores me. That's mainly it, and usually enough. We'll agree to disagree here.

As for the whole MIDI thing.. well, this is probably just the software music geek in me talking, but if you've ever played with any music making software, downloaded from a demo, for example, they usually come with demo songs you can open and play, so you can see how it all works. Usually these demo songs are really awful, written off just for the purpose of the demo, and not for a greater purpose. Also, these demos show are meant to show off the MIDI features. (MIDI in brief is just a way to store note/loudness/timbre information very efficiently without needing to bother with the actual raw sound data itself.. very efficient, and customizable, as you can assign any virtual instrument to a MIDI channel). Usually, your computer is set to these default values for MIDI. You know back in the late 90s when every web page would automatically download a song playing in the background that all sounded like the same cheap software band on your machine playing it? That's MIDI in action. Anyway, my point was that when I listened to a chunk of the new Out Hud, it seemed like they used those default MIDI instruments and didn't bother coming up with more interesting timbres for their music... again, a very specific complaint from a very specific P.O.V... but, unless it's meant to funny or a novelty, cheap MIDI music is just a bad, bad thing in my book... and I'm very surprised that a band like Out Hud chose that aesthetic for their synth sounds.

Punk funk album which is a better effort at dance than others is still inferior to just listening to dance, but as I say, I did quite like what I heard of this (30 minutes in a car journey)

I'm enjoying the Whitey album alot lately too, though that is ALOT more rockey.

But I kinda know what you mean, cuz I don't really like house or Detroit Techno or the such, but I like this Outhud stuff. Maybe cuz its different enough.

what??! where are you hearing this from? also, have u been to firecracker yet, in chinatown?

Chinatown's Firecracker Poppin'

June 14, 2001

By Heseon Park, Special to The Times

The word is out, finally, on the underground scene at Firecracker in Chinatown, a spirited tribal gathering that transcends genre or trends.

Once a strictly word-of-mouth gathering at the Grand Star lounge in old Chinatown, Firecracker is a revolution of sorts in a city rife with clubs built on image and attitude.

Firecracker's promoters, Lisa Yu, Daryl Chou and Jim Kang, took a landmark Chinatown locale, flooded it with a truly diverse club crowd and laced it with a steady dose of urban art, spoken word, hip-hop, street culture and jazz. Being colorblind is de rigueur at Firecracker, and the result is an atmosphere the likes of which is rarely witnessed in L.A.

The turnout and vibe seen at Firecracker have proven to be an inspiration to more than its legion of fans. A documentary about the club is in the works, and a local artist, Chaz Bojorquez, known as the godfather of West Coast graffiti art, has exhibited his work in the lounge. "Chino Latino," his assemblage of chiseled letters and calligraphy, was directly influenced by the diverse scene at Firecracker.

Exhibiting work, both visual and performance-based, from local artists was one of the reasons Firecracker was started. It began as a onetime poetry slam party for friends, gained a loyal following, and recently had its two-year anniversary. Promoter Jim Kang explains, "We wanted to form an intersection of literary arts, new media, vocal talent, poetry and film in a socially enlivening kind of place."

During most of the semi-monthly Friday sessions, you'll find the Grand Star lounge packed to the point that compatriots spill out into the alleyways as the night wears on. Inside Firecracker, a mix of the past and present seems to unite everyone. In the retro-red Grand Star lounge is a jazz trio made up of Yasuko Kawano, bassist Al Hines and drummer Ed Hinton, downstairs. Upstairs, the "Firecrew," deejays Wing Ko, Logic, Positron, Eric Coleman, Alfred Hawkins and Chris Boogie, help keep the dance floor moving at a steady pace.

"The aesthetic is real hip-hop music, not the fake corporate stuff," says KCRW's Garth Trinidad, who's also been a guest turntablist. "You never know when any of those cats get daring and throw in some surprises." Past deejay guests include Raymond Roker, founder of URB magazine, J-Rocc, Jun from Bossa Nova, Supernatural, Daz and Umoja HiFi. Promoter Kang says that when he's working the front door, he sees the whole thing come together. "The jazz band's playing the standards downstairs, they play things from the bebop era and all kinds of groovy stuff and they end with Frank Sinatra. They're influencing the guys upstairs and there's mutual understanding. You have hip-hop music upstairs drawing the crowd from downstairs, and it flows through this space."

Crossing lines, whether it's color, music, neighborhood or style, is inevitable here. Firecracker regular Christina Ochoa, who works at the arts center Self Help Graphics in East L.A., explains, "The energy at Firecracker is vibrant, there's a pulse to it we're attracted to .... It's a good feel; it's like a familia, it's family oriented there in a sense. That's why Chaz got inspired to do the 'Chino Latino' painting. It was the energy. It's what was happening in L.A."

That was the energy Kang had in mind. "L.A.'s such a sprawling metropolis," he says. "You're either merging on the freeway lanes or in the malls. I wanted to create a place that truly represented the demographics of L.A."

In a city that's known for subdivisions, tracts, neighborhoods, freeways, where going from one locale to the next requires decoding the Thomas Guide, Firecracker defies convention. And if you look close on a Friday night, you'll get a near-perfect, almost futuristic vision of L.A. and its inhabitants commingling in a space that draws inspiration from the past.

Firecracker

Two Fridays a month at Grand Star Restaurant on Broadway in Chinatown
Cover $10 (outside hip-hop party free)

Bustling with shoppers crowding its markets and restaurants by day, L.A.'s Chinatown seems like a ghost town after 10 p.m. on most nights.

However, twice a month on Fridays, Firecracker-an indoor/outdoor hip hop party-bursts onto the Chinatown scene at the Grand Star Restaurant on Broadway, sending sparks of color and energy through the otherwise quiet streets.

Firecracker is probably the closest thing in L.A. you'll get to a New York City street party. Just outside the restaurant, in a well-lit alley of sorts, rotating DJs spin hip hop, reggae, funk, and rare grooves. Everyone hangs out under the streetlamps, dancing in groups or freestyling alone, all the while wearing cool knit caps, stylish jeans, and funky accessories. A large portion of the crowd is made up of Asian men and women of mixed nationalities. Hip hop's wide influence on the Asian community is apparent, but all ethnicities are represented.

The outside scene is the most fun, not to mention free. It is also without question a smoker's paradise. The Friday I went, promoters at the Grand Star were handing out actual firecrackers (probably because it was close to 4th of July), and there were ample lighters on hand to set the ends ablaze. The alley filled with twizzle sticks of spark and cool flame-light danced before our eyes and the mood changed to magical.

For those who want to head inside, the downstairs of the restaurant offers live jazz, a full bar, and dinner if you get there before 10:00 p.m. The cover to go inside is $10. Upstairs, there is another DJ spinning primarily dance tunes, a dance floor, and another bar, but the inside offerings are not as compelling as the outdoor fiesta.

Firecracker is a breath of fresh air as far as the club scene goes in L.A. Mellow and unpretentious yet full of snap and sizzle, it captures the spirit of hip hop-multicultural and organic to the streets. Too bad it only happens twice a month.