in some ways, you're totally right (and for the
record, i'm not in any way doubting that you know what
you're talking about)-- the boundaries of genre,
especially for the prototypes, are pretty hazy and
tend to be post-facto critical handles rather than
distinctions intended by the artists....
but.
i'm not so much pointing out the distinctions between
hip hop and disco because as you point out with the
elloquent example of grandmaster flash, he was just
flipping disco cuts much like a house record ("...on
the wheels of steel" opens with the chic samples, case
in point), but rather different approaches within hip
hop (for example).
mantronix, arthur baker, bambataa,
egyptian lover, dynamixx II, etc were, as they say, on
some different shxt. and definitely a far cry from
disco at that point. (though there were certainly some
euros going there with the disco sound, or ymo, or...)
i can't quite put a name on the distinction i'm trying
to make, but it's something having to do with the
robot/mutant vibe rather than a strictly party thing.
ask Kodwo... he know's what i'm talking about.
and speaking of crazy mutant sounds, i just watched
"Brother from Another Planet" last night. how techno
is that movie?
--- Kent Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I stand corrected; I didn't remember what year
> "Clear" and "Shari
> Vari" came out.
>
> As another data point -- when I asked Kevin
> Saunderson about the
> large number of House, and particularly Deep House
> DJs that were
> booked at Movement in 2004, his response was "we
> don't really see
> house and techno as different things."
>
> It reminds me a bit too of the stuff written about
> early hip hop --
> people like Grandmaster Flash thought of what they
> were doing as
> making their own kind of disco. Nearly 30 years on,
> any commonality
> between Disco and Hip Hop would seem unlikely to
> people who don't know
> the history.
>
> I don't know if any of you all get spammed by Jesse
> Saunders booking
> agent, but all his promotional materials make a big
> deal about him
> being "The Originator Of House Music", and having
> put out the first
> House record in 1983. That claim seems pretty
> absurd to me. A lot of
> people who were making house music early on took a
> long time to get
> around to making records, though they were playing
> reel to reel
> productions in the clubs well before Jesse Saunders'
> record came out.
>
> On 7/5/05, Matt MacQueen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > yeah fair... massive connections between house and
> techno, and that is
> > the way i like it too! But just for the record
> on a historical
> > timeline, the earliest detroit techno things like
> A Number of Names and
> > Cybotron and early Model 500 took more from
> european sounds than they
> > did chicago house, and pre-dated a lot of chicago
> house actually.
> > "Clear" (1982 !) was not a debt nor offshoot of
> chicago house.
> > Chicago house (then and even now) still holds
> disco deep down in it's
> > heart, where when Juan started out there was
> moreso a self-conscious
> > rejection of that that kind of ethos in his early
> work. I know you
> > know this Kent, but just in the interest of the
> public record :)
> >
>
