DIRTY BOOTS

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i'm fascinated by this here boom selection site. is this some sort of thriving underground? cut and paste pop? or is it just guttersnipe plunderphonia (not that it would necessarily be a bad thing.)

― jess, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

also, are the TUNES any GOOD? (stupid slow computer.) who should i be looking out for?

(a 6 CD set of dj frenchbloke boots? jesus, how long has this been going on?)

― jess, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Some of the tunes are good, many aren't. I love it, absolutely love it - can't think of anything that's exciting me more at the moment. Pretty much everything that's been said about this stuff, good or bad, is true, by the way.

― Tom, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Y"know, I always *hated* Soulwax (or the Fucking DeWaele Bros) but now downloading their remixes from said site, I sort of appreciate it more. I realize that their knowledge of popmusic enables them to make great remixes *and* make shit records. hah!
The Sugababes MP3 is currently rawking me house.

― helenfordsdale, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

currently listening to Radio 1's 2 hour Soul Wax deejay set - is v good, little annoying in places, but overall i like these bootlegs

guess the current phases started back with that Stardust/Madonna 'Holiday' one (in 98?)

the Herb Alpert/NWA one is fantastic

― michael, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

is it the same Soulwax? we were trying to decide in the office, and presumed no. interesting, if yes

― michael, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's D.I.Y. Pop. Pretty nifty.

― bnw, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pretty much everything that's been said about this stuff, good or bad, is true, by the way

Previous related question is here; I'd be happy to see some additional opinions on my question ;-)

― Jeff W, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Most of the ones I thought I'd get bored of I actually ended up thinking were terrific. Really really must get writing on these tonight (which means getting off the boards now heh and doing my real work).

― Tom, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yeah, the Soulwax remixes are indeed those damn Belgiums (spelling on website, not mine). Actually it should say The Fucking DeWaele Bros since it's just the two brothers doing the remixes. They have a huge recordcollection (partially thanks to radio dj daddy oh). The band however should be avoided (in my opinion, naturally). It's like Belgian Waffle Bush Lite. I think they're Blackstreet VS Grandmaster remix is really good but really weird (it's like uptown vs rough life, no?). I am rambling. Whatever.
Stroke of Genius and I wanna Dance with Nrs are the best of the bunch. Getting a bit sick of all the Missy E meetings though. :-)

― helenfordsdale, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

freaky coincidences department. not sure if agree with it (on either a. the quality of "stroke of genius" or b. the end thesis [that either song was "missing something"]...sorry douglas!), but it does show that this "thing" is blowing up.

side note: where the hell is pazz and jop?

― jess, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

All credit due to the Evolution Control Committee, dear friends. The legendary Chuck D/Herb Alpert fusion is now seven years old or so.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

take yer negativland fetish elsewhere, raggett. ;)

― jess, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Bah! The point is, YOU IS ALL LATE IN THE GAME. Or something. ;-) Though unsurprisingly, the trick to make this thing really connect was a combination of improved technology and an open embrace of the obvious, ie immediately recent hits.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No, fair point - the Chuck D thing doesnt go much past the gag level of bootlegging but it still sounds funny and fresh, and it is maybe the grandaddy of this current wave. The precedents go way back of course and do include some really naff records (Stars on 45!).

― Tom, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it's more than that though Ned - my favourite bootlegs have backing tracks by the Strokes and Missy, sure, but also by FischerSpooner, Numan, Kraftwerk album-tracks, Devo..it's not just about the obvious. MP3 copying and CD burning means these things can be very easily distributed, which is why it's blown up, but also the best ones are working on levels the Evolution Control Committee never bothered exploring because the whole thing IS so self-evidently a 'novelty'.

― Tom, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A good observation, to be sure. I'm trying to put my finger on what I find intriguing/bemusing about all this, and I think it has to do with a logical extension of the ol' curator approach Eno muttered about back in the seventies combined with all the tech innovations. The most exciting scene in years helped along by the simplest of moves, theoretically -- question that should be asked: how/why is it more exciting to hear the tracks this way than on their lonesome?

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dull now. Amusing until about 2:30 am on New Year's Day but really just equivalent of '86/87 "sonic theft merchants" - oh look! we're ripping off the Beatles/Sam Fox/MC5 aren't we naughty nudgkins? Already creating its own pseudo-Masonic hierarchy - all options open = oh let's do the Strokes/Kylie/Britney/Missy.

The interesting thing about the Sugababes/Girls on Top thing is that it actually works better than the GoT/Adina Howard-sampled original purely because of the fact that the Sugababes are actively contributing "humanity" to the record - and again, it will make much more sense and have much more purpose when the thing actually comes out commercially and gets to #1. At the moment it's like scribbling comedy cigars and moustaches all over the cover of your "Is This It" CD - yes very good, now what else can you do?

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

what else? have a look at this

― michael, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Currently writing piece that's largely on how with stuff like the Girls On Top tracks we're witnessing the evolution of bootlegs through the nudge-wink stage into what sounds like serious meta-commentary pop. The Girls On Top singles taken as a connected series resemble something of a pop manifesto. I think though what can't be dismissed is how regular pop has really come and met bootlegs halfway. If it wasn't for Puffy's blatant rips, for example, would the general POPulace be able to accept this stuff so readily as it's starting to (see the v. successful in clubs official Pink/Eurythmics remix)?

― Tim, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well that's been going on since the mid-'80s - the sonic theft merchant/hip-hop interface.

I mean, if you dig it, then dig it, but I'm just getting fed up with "meta-commentary" and self-reference (ironic or not) in music - it's just running away from the experience of absorbing yourself completely in music, in surrendering to music for its own sake, not because it reminds you of something that topped the charts when you were nine.

Again, perhaps symptomatic of creeping conservatism (or not?) but I would much rather sit down now and listen to a group like The Necks, doing something with traditional instruments that has NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE, than a 10CD-worth box set of Missy meets ver Strokes. Like I said previously, the bootlegging thing is already saddled down by its own "tradition."

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"And yes, actually the Strokes do understand disco. And yes, maybe anyone could have put this album out on Sire Records in 1979, and we can sneer accordingly, but doesn't that just put us in the same category as Cliff Richard in '76 moaning "nothing new about the Pistols, the Who were doing it in '65"? What we do need a lot more of is fun and love - and I don't see much evidence of either on these boards at present; just a lot of fairly useless sniping and point- scoring or attempts to, as Don Letts put it, theorise yourself into not getting out of your armchair....Otherwise I'm just going to come across as an old fart who drones on about the good old '80s but can't get a proper handle on what's happening now."

Sorry to quote you so snarkily Marcello - I have some sympathy with what you're saying but I think bootlegs both are and aren't novelty and are and aren't ironic - I think the shelf-life of the scene is short and the quality I see in them is maybe accidental (as far as I can tell all the people making them are making 'proper music' too and caring more about that) - but I theorised myself out of my armchair and down to the club last week and that really really helped. As someone in a dance message board review said, hearing 'proper' dance music - dance music without the potential of a punchline, so to speak - sounded stale afterwards. The similarities between the naughty hip-hop aesthetic then and the bootlegging scene now are crucial of course but the differences are important too. What's struck me so much about the bootleg CD I've been playing is that with the good ones - like any good 'comedy' really - you know when the joke is coming and you get it and you still love it, and also you can get something that isn't just comedy out of it too.

Hopefully I can explain all this a lot better in the article I'm writing.

― Tom, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Aphex Twin's Windowlicker meets MJ's Smooth Criminal is really good. I like how they find the hidden sonic possibilities in a song and sorta like Tracer said elsewhere, illustrate how essentially similar the various trends of music are. & as to Marcello's q: about why particular artists -- i suspect precisely because the parasitic nature of the scene relies on cultural highlights with an already present visceral social response. Some of the mixes are really just junglified or mildly cut-up versions of single songs. Madonna's Music, for example. Which puts us back in Kid 606 Straight Outa Compton territory -- the only question is if that track sounds dated now.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

it sounded dated in 1990. there's nothing to really seperate "straight outta compton" from john oswalds "dab", except perhaps context and that the 606 was supposed to be "homage." (yeah, right.)

― jess, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i'm also interested in precisely why tom likes this "scene" so much, since it seems to fall within his "real-pop/fake-pop" divide (cf. argument a while back where he wondered - perhaps devils advocated style? - about why anyone would want to listen to fuzzed-up purposefully convoluted "avant" pop rather than the "real thing"?) of course he'll probably just reply "i'll get to it in my essay." ;)

― jess, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

That question was devil's advocacy kind of.

Reasons why I like it summarise to:

i) same reasons I like any good remix.

ii) same reasons I liked Orange Juice, Scritti Politti, and the Happy Mondays.

― Tom, Wednesday, 13 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

where can I get the skeelo v eye of the tiger thing that monsieur carsmile is known to play.

― Alan Trewartha, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"I mean, if you dig it, then dig it, but I'm just getting fed up with "meta-commentary" and self-reference (ironic or not) in music - it's just running away from the experience of absorbing yourself completely in music, in surrendering to music for its own sake, not because it reminds you of something that topped the charts when you were nine."

Yeah okay fair enough Marcello, but Girls On Top are doing the opposite I think - using stuff from the past to remind the listener of the here and now, only in a slightly eerie manner. That's where the culture shock is; again like The Avalanches (whose entire purpose IMO is to take the irony out of kitsch sampladelica) the best thing about GOT is that it's *not* what it initially appears to be (an early-eighties revivalist project).

― Tim, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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