funny thread to catch up to a few days later. taste is such a
subjective thing.
yeah most italo i guess (esp, for me, the stuff beyond 1984) is
crapola and over the top cheese. but the great ones are great. early
stuff very analog drums, overdriven, synthesized, futuristic themes..
crazy synth sounds. It's weird enough (and to an American... alien
enough, culturally) to be interesting. like any genre, (ESPECIALLY
techno... ) most things in a flood of releases are bad, and a very
small amount of cream eventually rises to the top. 95% of it is
pretty bad, like "laugh out loud" bad. . but that's the same with
all art IMHO.. of any kind.
People take dance music too seriously IMHO... you have to laugh at
things that are just ridiculous. there's plenty of fun to be had...
i also like to discover/uncover the oddball italo cuts or b-sides that
are less well known but also fun to mix with house or techno. some of
these are "priced" at a $2 but are "worth" more to me because of what i
can do with them, or they represent a period of electronic music
development i feel is still largely being rediscovered by people who
now consider themselves "Techno". OR WHATEVER... yet some of even
the bad stuff has a certain charm i hold dear in the way i like
synthesized, beat-box driven crude early (raw feeling, underproduced)
dance music. it's innocent, tiny labels, ridiculous lyrics that make
no sense, etc. some of it is just laugh out loud funny to me.. but if
the music is kicking, i can deal and it makes it all the more
interesting to me. i can understand some Europeans not feeling it
because you heard it all along as kids, etc. It was bad radio pop and
the worst of it probably tainted the quality of the early years.
From an American's perspective (i think there's but a handful of us
left on 313 ;) hehe... anyway here in american it hit chicago (and
even detroit - most notably there Robotnik's 'Problems d'Amour'...
later edited rather lamely by carl craig, but i digress) a handful of
years AFTER it was already stale over in europe, and here in chicago it
influenced a whole mess o' chicago house producers who liked the beats
and (to their ears)... Chip E has said his early stuff was trying to
imitate the italo stuff he was hearing... funny. good article in Keep
On about that if you can find it. Tons of old DeepHousePage mixes by
Hotmix 5, Farley, etc. have italo tracks in them. Just for some
perspective, it just worked with what else they were playing at the
time, and "imports" back then made a DJ more exclusive because they
were harder to get your hands on.
but all that shouldn't make you LIKE to listen to italo, everyone likes
what they like. but you should at least understand it's historical
importance to dance music coming from chicago and detroit. i think
being from UK or europe a lot of that is - AHEM - lost in translation.
this was in an era when the dance music world was not globalized to the
extent it is now, when you couldn't go google and order a record from
some dealer or auction site.. records were imported and a small number
of italo would come in and DJs here in chicago scooped it up because it
was WEIRD.. and it was robotic yet had elements of disco.. some had
terrible raps, etc. (Morgan put some of those on his Unclassics CD..
for example... italo raps are an even more alien species of
weirdness!). But many beat tracks of those became blueprints for
basic house drumbox rhythms. that's the stuff i gravitate towards
anyway... I also get them in filthy warehouses for a few bucks each..
I can't stop liking it just because others choose to pay hundreds for
it. People pay way more than for original pressings of motown soul
45s and even weirder stuff so when there is limited original art of any
kind, collectors spring up. don't let confuse monetary value with
artistic merit to your own ears -- there's a huge difference. A record
is only "worth" what someone is willing to pay... as is the case with
rare paintings, sculpture, gemstones, etc. How much someone paid for
it shouldn't affect your ability to judge it's artistic merit on it's
own account.
In one final note about italo.. like any genre of music i feel it's
best mixed with other genres that have similar elements but are yet
still different. I would tire of an 100% italo set just like i would
tired of a 100% techno set, 100% acid house, etc.. it's all about
throwing these curveballs into a mix and adding some variety- the
better / more fun italo cuts are are weirdo things that don't sound
like anything else and have a lot of energy. I've been in a dark room
when Theo Parrish drop the odd italo cut here and there and it's just a
fantastic accent mark on whatever else he's playing before and after
it. It's not all terrible cheese, it's just early dance music that
sounds weird enough to be funky... or whatever.
Ken - finally about you liking italo's logical future offspring
(Viewlexx, Nature/Pigna).. that's like saying "i like minimal tech
things on Kompakt but I just don't care for DBX." I got a chuckle out
of that because I guess i'd say to that give it some time and in a few
years you'll understand what you're missing in the originals that
launched a thousand ships by all the 2nd (or 3rd or whatever) wave of
producers who are taking those sounds forward into electronic music and
keeping sounds/feelings/themes (that have their roots in original
italo) very relevant to modern ears.
thank you and good night
On Jul 14, 2005, at 3:08 AM, Odeluga, Ken wrote:
Acid Man wrote:
Still not getting this italo thing....
I've really been really trying aswell
it's almost as if they know i am enjoying it and then they go and put
this horrible synth or some stupidly bad singing in it just to ruin
it....
some silly money exchanging hands for it aswell
p
***
I'm with you on this I think, Paul. The slightly weird thing is that I
am quite a fan of the stuff which has been *influenced* by so-called
Italo - I-F, Passarani and the Nature/Pigna things in general and more
(inc. some Viewlexx).
I say so-called, 'cause when I were a lad - admittedly, that was about
50 decades ago - Italian dance music was basically straight-up and
quite
'black' disco. All I need to say is Change (and other Mauro Malavasi
projects) for you to know what I'm meaning. That group was a start for
Vandross and Jocelyn Brown after all. And of course one must mention
Moroder. It wasn't this
'so-naff-it's-good-Casio-made-electronic-teen-disco'!
Anyway, I know I'm being slightly harsher than I mean to be and not
entirely serious. But in general, also, I'm not feeling it. And perhaps
the bigger problem is that people who *are* feeling it, seldom play
what
they regard as the really good stuff so I can get some sort of
education
in my idiot head about it! Alex, I don't think you dropped any in
Public
Life did you?!? ;-)
I can't remember the last DJ who bends my ear about Italo, who played
an
Italo track out. Rick Hopkins (Haywire) is a rare exception.
Ken
--
MM
http://sonicsunset.com
