Dreams Come True
Classic First Wave Electro, 1982-87 (Domino, 2008)
[sleeve notes]
‘Along with the pure pleasure play of aural redoctoring, the salient characteristic of new disco is total electronification of the music. While many longtime music fans despair of microchip music, the mass audience of modern dancers respond to it like automata. The nexus of this beat box sensibility is the Funhouse, where Jellybean, who remixed many of the Tommy Boy/ Streetwise records, spins every weekend’.
Steven Harvey, “The Perfect Beat”, FACE 42, October 1983
‘I said I know that you look good on the dancefloor
Dancing to Electropop like a robot from 1984′The Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”, 2005
‘You can make your dreams come true,’ sang Klein & MBO on “Dirty Talk”, and this chronologically ordered compilation of Eighties twelves revisits an explosion in black american dance music that remains unrivalled for its creativity, swing and most of all, sheer glee at being alive. Although it has since been overshadowed by Rap, R&B and all that followed, Electro was the moment when funk met electronics and nothing was the same again.
Its origins lie in 1980, when Disco was eclipsed and dance music was temporarily discredited as a pop force. Sent underground, DJ’s and musicians worked in the shadows, honing the regional variations that would explode in the later decade: House in Chicago, Techno in Detroit, and Electro in New York. Just as Disco had been highly technological – listen to “Magic Fly” by Space or Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and “Our Love” – so then this future would hold the electronic torch high.
The way had been shown by Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk. In the very early days, Electro and Rap were intertwined under the name Hip Hop, and indeed many examples of Imperial Electro, like Nuance’s “Love Ride”, would combine the two. If there’s one founding record, it’s Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock”, which took the melody of “Trans-Europe Express and fused it with elements from Babe Ruth’s “The Mexican” and G.L.O.B.E’s raps, as Europe met the Bronx. Arthur Baker, John Robie and Jellybean Benitez all worked on this 1982 breakthrough.
Another key record was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s extraordinary “Adventures on the Wheels of Steel”, which, released in 1981, was the first record since avant-garde statements like the Residents’ “Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life” to incorporate existing records into a new whole. Featuring material from the Hellers, Blondie, Queen among others, “Adventures” brought DJ wizardry to the forefront and prefigured the whole sample culture to come.
The genie was out of the bottle and initially, NY dance clubs like the Paradise Garage, the Funhouse, the Loft and Danceteria were the laboratories for the new culture. Danceteria mainly catered to a Downtown crowd, and relied on the No Wave and New Wave end of things, just as groups like New Order were discovering the delights of Moroder motorik in 12″s like “Everything’s Gone Green”. Other synth-pop groups like the Human League, Yazoo, and Depeche Mode had a big impact on the scene.
Paradise Garage was funkier and, under the direction of legendary DJ Larry Levan, aimed at a slightly older, mixed gay crowd. It was tied in to Mel Cheren’s West End Records, which in 1982 released what for many is the founding Electro statement, “Don’t Make Me Wait” by the Peech Boys – all of whom were Garage regulars. Another Larry Levan favourite was “Week End” by Class Action, which was produced by Bob Blank, another example of the Downtown/ Dance crossover of this period.
Another Garage DJ was Francois Kevorkian, who by 1982 had already made his name with Musique’s single-entendre disco classic, “In the Bush” and D-Train’s “You’re The One For Me”. That year he had two huge dance remix hits with his reworking of Yazoo’s “Situation” and Dinosaur L’s “Go Bang”. Kevorkian also worked at the Loft that extraordinary, long-running house party that had helped to create Disco – and the open, spacey sound of these records chimed with David Mancuso’s ‘sound as science’ approach.
26th St’s The Funhouse may well have been the purest expression of Electro’s lust for life. With a young Latino crowd, DJ’s Arthur Baker and Jellybean Benitez both of whom had worked on mixes of “Planet Rock” had the perfect audience for their experiments. ‘Three thousand kids are out on the floor,’ wrote Stephen Harvey in 1983; ‘the rhythms of the Roland and Linn drum computers build songs weekend after weekend, programming them into memory/ response, creating a kind of cumulative choreography’.
‘There is a constant shifting of bodies throughout the huge space: girls with bleached blond patches and “tails” (little ponytails hanging from otherwise short haircuts) wearing black leather, studs and spray-on pants; the men in cut-off shirts and baggy drawstring trousers. This kind of cool macho look of the Funhouse kids reflects the demographics of this once mainly Italian disco. Nowadays the clientele is drawn from a network of kids principally from New York’s boroughs and serious about dancing’
‘In the DJ booth a clown’s open mouth overlooking the dancefloor – Jellybean is seaming tracks together into a hard, endless rhythm. His studio work with the principal electro-beat composers like John Robie, Arthur Baker and Richard Scher of Warp 9, with rappers like Sweet G and Kurtis Blow, and with Madonna (for whom he has done her first solo production, “Holiday”, on her new album) make the Funhouse a testing ground for artists who bring in tapes-in-progress to check out on the audience.’
With the smash success of “The Message” in 1982, Electro/ Rap became big business. That year saw key records like Man Parrish’s “Hip Hop Don’t Stop”, Tyrone Brunson’s “The Smurf”, Planet Patrol’s “Play At Your Own Risk”, the Extras’ “Haven’t Been Funked Enough”, Jellybean Benitez’s “Nunk (New Wave Funk)” with Warp 9, John Robie’s great ‘(Re)Prod-uction’ of Cabaret Voltaire’s “Yashar” and Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat”.
Electro’s popularity mushroomed during 1983, with Arthur Baker powering away at Tommy Boy Records, John Robie’s “Get Wet” with C-Bank, Sylvester’s “Rock The Box”, Herbie Hancocks’ “Rock It”, Keith LeBlanc’s sampling of Malcolm X on “No Sell Out”. In the autumn, “(Hey You) The Rocksteady Crew” went UK top ten, with its video of young Puerto Ricans disporting themselves around several very expensive items of US naval hardware, and its inaugural manifesto, blankly delivered: ‘digital’.
During 1983, the traffic went the other way across the Atlantic, with New Order playing at Paradise Garage and visiting the Funhouse to get the vibe for Jellybean and Arthur Baker’s reworking of “Confusion”. In the meantime, “Blue Monday” with its “Our Love” drum pattern – became the best selling 12″ of all time. That summer, Baker Robie and Benitez remixed “I.O.U” by Freeez into a number 2 UK hit and a Funhouse staple.
Clubs like Cha Cha in London and Legends and the Hacienda in Manchester played the new music, despite hostility from funk and Northern Soul fans. Morgan Kahn started the Electro compilations that did more than anything else to make the music accessible in the UK: first track first side of “Street Sounds Electro 1″ was “I’m The Packman (Eat Everything I Can)” by the Packman. Featuring full-length 12″ mixes, this long running series (over 15 volumes) removed the need to fork out for expensive imports.
With Madonna’s “Holiday”, Electro went mainstream in the UK and during 1984 it became imperial, with Shannon’s “Let The Music Play” and “Give Me Tonight” and “Love Ride”. It began to pull in producers and performers from outside New York: to name a few, Debbie Deb from Miami, Pamela Joy from Philadelphia, Cybotron (featuring Juan Atkins and Richard Davies, aka 3080) from Detroit whose “Techno City” prefigured the genre that Atkins, among others, would make famous later in the decade.
Another huge UK hit that year was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s epochal “White Lines”: a top ten record that stayed on the charts for nine months. This carried on the fruitful dialogue with white post punk, lifting the bass line from Liquid Liquid’s “Cavern”. At the same time, the Euro influence bore fruit with Italian records like Klein & MBO’s “Dirty Talk” and Alexander Robotnick’s “Probleme d’Amour” and “A Love Supreme” (yes, an Electro cover of John Coltrane).
As befitted a technological genre, there was a definite science fiction slant to Electro as there had been to Disco (think of Slik’s “Space Bass”, “Magic Fly” or Patrick Cowley’s “Mind Warp”). With a whole cosmology based on the decayed inner city, Cybotron were more dystopian than the goofier records about Smurfs, Packmen, Star Wars characters and other aliens (the irresistable “E.T.Boogie” by the Extra T’s). On another level, deciding that you’re a space boy or girl is a great way of avoiding your earthly troubles.
Electro’s relationship to the future was totally pop. Sourcing cartoon characters, video games, and ‘arkade funk machines’, the movement wholeheartedly embraced modern digital technology with all its bleeps, tinny noises and aural gimmicks. Despite the funk basslines, the whole point was not to be classically soulful: most of the female vocalists were blank, if not expressionless, and more often than not whacked through a vocoder to make them sound even more robotic.
By this time, there was a definite Electro patch, and it was comprised of: synthetic drums (played on a Roland 808 or a Linn or a DMX) or triggered drum samples, vocal samples (played on an Emulator), Orchestra hits (also played on an Emulator, originally sampled from Beethoven), programmed and real Latin percussion, simple yet strident melody lines (a la Kraftwerk), and proper ‘Poppers Bits’ a sequence of crash edits, usually at the end of the break, which would send the audience into orgasms. The masters of this technique were the Latin Rascals, Arthur Baker discoveries, who would make these edits in real time, using razor blades.
The reference to orgasms isn’t made lightly. ‘Electro is aural sex’, ran the slogan on the first few Street Sounds comps, and, as anyone who went to the NY clubs of the period can attest, that was the case. Certainly songs like “Love Ride” and “Dirty Talk” simulate the sexual act to a satisfying degree, while many lyrics often from a female standpoint offer advice on how to pick up partners on the dancefloor and how to quickly move on: “Think Fast” or “Let The Music Play”. And what on earth could “Get Wet” mean?
Stephen Harvey offered an interesting argument on Electro Sex in his FACE article: ‘as critic Carol Cooper once said, it is easy for writers to forget that dancing is a metaphor for sex, and in disco the lyrics have been traditionally regarded as a throwaway element because their primary subject is love and sex. In the Eighties, as the clamps come down on all kinds of freedoms, dealing with sexuality, particularly since disco has always had more room for women’s views than rock, is a progressive stance’.
Paralleling the height of Gender-Bending (Culture Club > Eurythmics > Marilyn) and the rise of gay music in mainstream UK pop (Bronski Beat > Frankie Goes To Hollywood), the age of Electro offered a moment of sexual freedom that today, after a decade and a half of Lad Culture, seems extraordinary. Certainly, it did not last. Pop music never stays static and dance music least of all, and the tide began to ebb away from Electro during 1985 although great records were still being made.
As far as mainstream pop went, the Live Aid effect renewed AOR’s pop dominance. Hip Hop (ie Rap and Electro) began to spin off into Latin Hip Hop and tougher Rap Run DMC > Def Jam > early gangstas like Schoolly D while sections of the hardcore dance music explored Hi NRG, Rare Groove and the very beginnings of House. In Britain, the Pet Shop Boys took up the synth pop duo mantle when everything around them was going ‘authentic’: the start of an illustrious and unparalleled twenty-two year Electro odyssey.
There was another factor. If Electro had celebrated a full-blooded joie de vivre, then that had gone by mid-decade. The full onset of AIDS began to devastate New York and crossed the Atlantic. The party was over, as governments and press barons alike pursued a punitive and restrictive morality that demonized sufferers of the disease and promoted intolerance of all high-risk categories (especially gays and blacks). You can hear the chill in one of the last classic genre records, Noel’s 1987 “Silent Morning”.
Twenty-five years on from Electro’s heyday, its delight in technology has made it a touchstone for young musicians and club-goers. From today’s perspective, it seems like the real origin of today’s hypnotic, compressed R&B and Rap beats, prefiguring as it did the wave of cut-up records that hit during the later decade: M/A/R/R/S, Eric B. & Rakim, and Double Dee & Steinski’s “Lessons One, Two and Three” 12″, which, released on Tommy Boy during 1985, remains the Rosetta Stone of Cut Chemistry.
Writing in the FACE‘s May 1984 Electro cover story (‘The Beat That Won’t Be Beaten’), David Toop observed that ‘nothing is sacred in the computer age. As computer programmers, copyright lawyers and corporations struggle to protect themselves against micro-raiders and mashers, the vidkids swarm down from the top of the screen, hungry for the cosmic crash’. Among those vidkids was Gerald Simpson, who as A Guy Called Gerald produced the definitive UK house track, “Voodoo Ray”.
Writing about Greg Wilson’s Wednesday night at Legends, Simpson remembers the impact of Electro as ‘almost unbelievable for me. It was like the music was from inside my head but what was appealing was the synthesised sounds. Early kinds of synth music seemed to me to be always trying to mimic traditional instruments or songs. Whereas this new sound, this Electro, was definitely not trying to hide the fact that it was electronic. There was something raw and exciting about it.’
My own introduction to Electro came in 1982, when I DJ’ed at the Hacienda with Mike Pickering and Hewan Clarke, both of whom gave me an unrepeatable education me in cutting-edge black american music: “Don’t Make Me Wait”, “How Can We Gonna Make That Black Nation Rise?” and many others. Already primed by Donna Summer, Sylvester and Soft Cell, I loved Electro’s gleeful exuberance and still do: it’s been a pleasure going through the records for this compilation and I can’t wait to play them out again.
TRACK BREAKDOWN FOLLOWS:
1: YAZOO, Situation
Nurtured by electro pop pioneer Daniel Miller who, as the Normal, had released the ground-breaking “Warm Leatherette” way back in 1978 Yazoo formed in early 1982 after Vince Clarke quit Depeche Mode. The flip to their first hit, “Only You”, the original “Situation” lasted only two and a half minutes but Francois Kevorkian doubled up the track’s length by boosting the rhythm, repeating the strong synth melody, and inserting a great break. As well as highlighting Alison Moyet’s soulful vocals, it also included her laughter at the breakdown a classic Electro moment (see also “Dirty Talk” and “Weekend” below). Note: Yazoo were renamed Yaz in the US to avoid legals with the established blues reissue label of the same name.
2: CLASS ACTION, Weekend
Reinforcing the close relationship between Disco and Electro, this 1982 classic was a cover of Phreek’s 1978 “Weekend”, the long mix of which was so popular at the Paradise Garage that Bob Blank and Larry Levan decided to update it for the new electronic age. Blank had already worked on Christina’s meta Ze classic, “Disco Clone” and added that loose, wet feel that he would soon explore with Arthur Russell (“Wax The Van”), while Levan sprinkles spacey stardust over eight minutes. The masterstroke is in using original singer Christine Wiltshire to reverse the gender roles from the Phreek version: ‘I’m just going to have to explain something to you,’ she raps; ‘you’re staying home with the kids tonight, honey.’
3: C-BANK, Get Wet
Electro’s oceans of computerised sound become an environment in this minimal John Robie call to arms. Punctuated by splashes (or orgasms), singer Jenny Burton surrenders to the sweat and motion of the dancefloor. In the break, fuzz guitars vie with Moroder motorik and snakey synth melodies, before a quick rap, some Kraftwerk patterns, and the final climax, which like dance tracks from time immemorial (“Dancing in the Street”) namechecks scene leaders, night clubs and major US cities: ‘Afrika Bambaataa’s wet.Copa’s wetDanceteria’s wetFunhouse wetLoft is wet. Broadway 96th is wetNew York’s wet, LA is wet, Detroit and Philly’s wet’.
4: DEBBIE DEB, When I Hear Music
Debbie Deb was only 16 when she was discovered by producer Pretty Tony and set to sing on this early Electro stunner. Her youth gives yearning innocence to that age-old tale of how the music can open up unexplored possibility: ‘went to the disco couldn’t believe my eyes/ I looked on the dancefloor saw so many guys/ I asked myself could this really be?/Whether it is or not I’m gonna go and see’. Right on! As an encapsulation of Electro’s curious innocence it can’t be beaten, as vocal samples and the brutal tones of a sweet synthesizer melody underscore Debbie’s moment of revelation, all the more powerful because she never made a record as good as this again: ‘everybody’s having fun and the music’s on the one/ The lights are shining bright THERE’S A PARTY HERE TONIGHT!’ Originally out of Miami, on Sunnyview Records and much sampled in recent years.
5: NUANCE FEATURING VIKKI LOVE, Loveride
‘Together we’ll reach ecstasy’, sings Vikki Love on this 1984 classic from the first MDMA age. “Loveride” jams in everything for maximum impact: ding-ding-dong-ding-ding-de-dong rhythm patterns, orchestral stabs, a really crap but endearing rap from writer and producer Ron Dean Miller (‘I’ll give it to you like you never had before, I’ll make you scream yell and holler for more’), abandoned orgasmic moans from Ms Love herself, and a truly monumental Poppers Bit from the Latin Rascals at their razor-sharp peak. “Loveride” glanced the UK charts but neither Nuance nor Vikki Love ever reached such heights again, although some kind of vestigial, post-coital afterglow informed 1985′s “Sing, Dance, Rap, Romance”.
6: PAMELA JOY, Think Fast
More relationship strategies from the aptly named Ms. Joy. Recorded and mixed at Sigma Sound, the centre of Disco’s Philly Sound, this is very much from the funkier, deeper end of Electro, with warm electro piano interjections, chicken rhythm guitar and latin percussion, but the simple synthesizer melodies, vocoder title phrase vocals and the strong female message place it squarely within the genre: ‘you better hold on, because if you ever let go, I might be gone.’ The whole track has a strange, paranoid atmosphere: ‘watch the things you say, watch the things you do, cause you never know who is watching you’.
7: THE LATIN RASCALS, Lisa’s Coming
Orgasmic moans and shimmering vocal samples dominate this fast and furious electro instrumental that, if “Love Ride” was not enough, served as the Latin Rascals vinyl calling card. Influenced by Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons, Albert Cabrera and Tony Moran had worked with Arthur Baker as well as hosting an influential radio mix show, but by 1984 were striking out on their own. This intense torrent of electro sound, punctuated only by the words ‘I wonder’ and ‘ooh baby’, was released as a one-sided promo 12″ for the Tommy Boy “Masters of the Beat” album, which also featured Hashim, Keith LeBlanc, and Rick Rubin. The Latin Rascals went on to remix the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money” among many others.
8: KLEIN & MBO, Dirty Talk
Beginning with the filthiest female laugh possible, “Dirty Talk” is another epic at nearly eight and a half minutes a veritable Electro symphony. It’s all there: loose, minimal synthesizer patterns, erotic/ druggy lyrics (‘I thought of you with ecstasy/can a love story be heavenly’), louche male vocals ramming home the chorus/ title, plenty of breakdowns, and a fantastic counter-melody. Disco had always had a strong European element (made explicit by Boris Midneys’ great 1979 album, “USA-European Connection”) and this Electro classic (and a huge influence on the emerging House scene) was made by the two Italian producers Tomas Ramirez Carrasco and M. Boncaldo. Long distance love and telephone sex never sounded so good.
9: DHAR BRAXTON, Set Me Free
Continuing the strong female standpoint is Dhar Braxton on this huge dance hit from 1986, as she sticks it to her man: ‘he’s a nice guy but he’s poiled rotten.what do I get out the deal but a hard way to go? And I’m tired of it’. Stuffed with key Electro features vocal samples in the breakdown, squeaking synthesizer melodies, and endlessly reverbed, chattering electronic handclaps but the spacious feel marks it as on the cusp of early House. Produced and written by Jhon Fair, it also featured edit master Chep Nunez and Robert Clivilles, later of Clivilles & Cole fame.
10: JANICE, Bye Bye
Electro’s aural open-mindedness if not gimmickry is apotheosized on this late flash. While Janice relates exactly why she’s giving her man the kiss-off, the backdrop shifts from scratching samples and heavily treated, almost duck-like vocal rhythms to quick breaks that feature cartoon melodies, in particular the theme from “The Flintstones”. Late in this dazzling aural assemblage, deeper voices come in: it’s the flying monkey chant from the Wizard of Oz. “Bye Bye” was written by Irwin Lee, produced by Tom McCarthy and released on 4th & B’way during 1986.
11: NOEL, Silent Morning
This masterpiece was the debut record by Noel Pagan, a Cuban/American New Yorker. Produced by Roman Ricardo, remixed by “Little” Louie Vega, and written by Noel himself, it has the classic Miami Electro patch particularly in the strong, simple synthesizer melody and vocal samples.With its vulnerability, it also partakes of the genre’s overt lack of machismo ‘they say a man’s supposed not to cry’. However it’s hard not to feel the foreboding and sorrow behind the electronic uplift, and many saw “Silent Morning” as a response to the AIDS crisis a marker of how much the mood had changed since Electro’s early Eighties heyday.
- Although comedy artist Dickie Goodman had huge hits in the 1950′s with his cut-ups of existing rock’n roll records. See for instance “The Flying Saucer Pt 1″ (+3, 1956).
- Unfortunately the court case that resulted from the lack of credit put 99 label owner Ed Bahlman out of business. 99 Records had put out Liquid Liquid and ESG among others.
- They would reputedly watch porn on TV while doing their edits.
- The first House record I ever heard was “Mystery of Love” by Fingers Inc in spring 1986. Nobody could make head or tail of it in the UK, but I loved the fact it was brutally minimal, psychedelic and sexy Electro moved on to the next phase.
- The definitive account of this toxic brew is given in Richard Davenport-Hines, “Sex Death and Punishment” (Colllins, 1990)
- Ecstasy was used in New York clubland as early as 1982.