Frank Kogan

Joey Beltram Stands His Ground (Dance Party 1990)

2020-08-02T11:20:50Z

Last month Tom Ewing ran a World Cup Of 1990 on Twitter and nearing the end asked, "For voters here, I'm interested — has the relatively deep dive of this poll changed your opinion of 1990 at all? (assuming you had one!)" My basic response is too long for 280 characters, or even 2800, so I'm blogging it here, also referring to and embedding a YouTube playlist I created, " Dance Party 1990," made up mostly of tracks I heard (and in many cases discovered) through his tournament or that I found or recalled while seeing what 1990 tracks I myself wanted to nominate. Not exactly a best-of (my pool included another 8 or so tracks including Masta Ace and Happy Mondays that never quite fit the flow). I thought of the "Dance Party" moniker after finishing the playlist, so dance wasn't the intent but what I discovered I had: not all tracks in "dance" genres but all inspiringly danceable.

My answer to Tom's question:

I tend to be a More Is More kind of guy, but — in this poll at least, in the general super area of House-Rave-Dance (but not freestyle & hip hop & r&b & hair metal) — Joey Beltram and ilk clean everybody's clock. By "ilk" I don't mean "rave" or any particular genre or style but a tendency within any genre or style to HOLD YOUR OWN, to concentrate on a crucial sound or path or problem, some bone you're chewing, and there you stand your ground rather than synthesize or mash together or collide with or incorporate neighboring styles.*

And of course there's one towering exception, uncleaned and unclocked, Clivillés & Cole's remix of Denise Lopez's "Don't You Want To Be Mine," the only freestyle-house amalgam I've ever heard. Freestyle is basically dead by 1990, the poll's George Lamond track ("Bad Of The Heart") being touching but totally average, a snapshot of a genre that has no forward motion (though there's an unexpected glorious freestyle last gasp the next year from Lisette Melendez and Corina). But now there's an alternate universe in my mind where, instead of stopping dead, freestyle like an alien leaps atop of and claws its way into passing genres like house and techno and New Jack Swing and propagates from there. This kinda sorta DOES happen in 1992 and 1993 in Korea, and for all I know is happening throughout the late '80s and '90s in Japan, the Land Where Italo Lives, but anyway *I* don't find out about any of that for another 17 years.

Speaking of Korea — or Los Angeles — I say in passing, in my kind of in-passing "Legend Of The Glockeater," that the lesson that Drunken Tiger learned from the Wu-Tang Clan is that less is more and more is more, too. In another piece (mostly about rock) I call this Recombinant Dub, to give Jamaica pride of place: My basic attempt is to identify a kind of double direction of contrary motion, which can exist between genres or within a genre or within a person or even within a day: Like, you subdue the thoughts inside your head, taking everything down to a main thing, your breath, say, but then with the inner chatter stilled, sounds around you — crickets, passing cars, tinnitus, a distant jackhammer — come rushing in.

In mid-'70s Bronx you have hip-hop DJs clearing out the rest of a track — taking out the vocals, the flourishes — to bring everything down to the breakbeat, and with 2 turntables and 2 copies of a record you can potentially play that breakbeat forever; but being DJs they use the never-ending breakbeat as a frame for adding sounds and cuts and riffs and melodies and scrapes and flourishes from other records, a whole memory of funk but also Monkees and Kraftwerk, and then tags and shoutouts and rap battles from your crew — potentially anything — and hip-hop is born. And then closing in on the '90s maybe you can hear this within house, acid house being both this singular corrosive 303 sound but also the tendency to sample soundbites. Or think of the house beats added to Denise Lopez. For a related submerged and perhaps otherwise imaginary unknown continent, listen to the second half of Liz Torres's "I Hear Voices (Voices In My Head)" on my playlist; geysers of salsa suddenly emerging from beneath the house beats.

In New Jack Swing ex-boyband New Edition guys find their way into the adventure of hip-hop, in one sense it's all down to a rhythm that sweeps away everything in its path, but it also manages to sweep in a lot: harmonies, black vocal history (a year later: "Motown Philly"). There's a social depth, since New Jack Swing doesn't just put different musics together, it potentially throws different audiences and different musicians together, finds a way for different social streams to coalesce.** (But you can almost feel the need for a pushback, a fight, elements determined to resist.)

On my 1990 Pazz & Jop ballot I put both a Snap! and a Chill Rob G version of "The Power" near the top, behind "Justify My Love," but ahead of LL and Michel'le and "Vogue" and "Roam" and "Ice Ice Baby." Didn't include the New Jack Editions but mentioned Ralph Tresvant and Johnny Gill in my comments. Anyway by 1991 I decided "The Power" didn't hold up, the whole International House thing and its forced raps and diva samples now seeming tiresome and shallow and who cares. No reason in principle that this should be so, but it was.*** I'm glad the Denise Lopez remix showed up in this poll to remind me I don't have to hate C&C. Actually, as far as the sonic feel, Beltram and C&C-Lopez are hardly opposites. Each sounds as solid and obdurate as the other.**** In the Dance Party I've interspersed these blocks of thundering rave but I'll have one of 'em (e.g.) emerging naturally from a dance ditty that precedes it and leading logically to a hard rock song that follows, the raver seemingly giving birth to the rocker.

So, again, both impulses at once: push it altogether, but also, hey STOP, what's that sound, listen, take account of THIS! So, take account of Joey Beltram's pulsating boulders, V.I.M. taking the piss in "Maggie's Last Party," LFO's dark harm, Marina Van-Rooy's sly "Sly One" (okay, I don't have an adjective for this — who is she? — but I like it), Renegade Soundwave's "Thunder" which is a haunted house that they emptied of all its furniture! Rising High's "Magic Roundabout" is like a bunch of STOP moments strung together, a necklace of boulders, both impulses again. All this stuff I mostly missed in 1990, my not having an ongoing story for house, rave, techno. For all I knew, these tracks could've appeared anytime from '86 to '07, me saying "Hello, where are you from?" with no sense of chronological before or after and no feel of "1990" as they loomed into earshot.*****

( Embeds and footnotes )

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Where "Galaxy," naturally enough, means "Italo" (Top Singles, First Third 2019)

2019-06-03T15:15:19Z

Was going to use the title "Trap Hegemony And The Italotrot Question" because I knew it would make Chuck Eddy smile; but I decided "Where 'Galaxy,' naturally enough, means 'Italo'"* was funnier, though maybe David Frazer will be the only one to smile. David's the person who came up with the genre title "Italotrot" to describe Hong Jinyoung's "Love Tonight." I wouldn't say that "Love Tonight" poses a deep question, really: But why is it this song, a trot song — as opposed to, for instance, a K-pop song ("trot" being Official Old Person's Dance Music in Korea**) — that's pulling into itself deliriously catchy freestyle and Italodisco riffs, as if to declare that being trot is no barrier to incorporating any coin and color that makes Frank Kogan feel good? I mean, this is something K-pop itself used to be so good at, insinuating disco and freestyle and Italopop into itself without making a fuss over it or sounding the least bit retro. K-pop still pulls in music left-hand, right-hand, and back-hand, but it's more of a drag these days. See quasi essay below the list.

In the video Jinyoung turns into a cat, or a cat turns into her. —Yes, T-ara did that too, and so I'm sure have many others, that's what comment threads are for if you're so inclined. (Inclined to tell us of other performers who've turned into cats, that is; not inclined to turn into a cat yourself.)

From China, meanwhile, Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco," where "Galaxy," naturally enough, means "Italo":

Sounds just like the music on Italodisco comps out of Singapore and Hong Kong that populated the three-for-a-dollar cassette bins in SF's Chinatown back in the '80s and '90s. I'd assumed then that most of the music was produced originally in Italy or Germany (with input from Miami and Toronto and Montreal: Tapps and Lime were all over those stores, Tapps with not-quite-so-cheap compilations of their own), but there'd be remixes and mashups and stuff — an impressive version of "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" that in a later day would have been screwed and chopped but this used amphetamines rather than cough syrup — and uncredited performers and unknown vocalists, and I was guessing or hoping that some of the talent was Asian. Anyway, "Galaxy Disco" sounds so much like that stuff*** that I wonder if it's actually a cover. It's so familiar. The sound is spot-on, from the reed-thin riffs to the dental-floss vocals.

Of course, most of what's coming is hip-hop, the so-called trap hegemony of my rejected title: though the list itself — here it is! a playlist followed by the list itself, and more commentary below the cut — starts with gqom [UPDATE: now song 3 on the playlist], which is generally considered more a derivative of house.

1. Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"
2. Bhad Bhabie ft. Tory Lanez "Babyface Savage"
3. Jvcki Wai, Young B, Osshun Gum, Han Yo Han "Dding"
4. Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"
5. Lil Pump "Butterfly Doors"
6. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie "Look Back At It"

7. DALsooobin "Katchup"
8. Gasmilla ft. Mr Eazi "K33SHI"
9. Loopy&nafla "Ice King"
10. Marilina Bertoldi "O No?"
11. Rich The Kid "4 Phones"
12. Gunna "Big Shot"

13. KeshYou "Уят емес"
14. Kim Bo Kyung "It's Not Discarded"
15. Lil Pump ft. Lil Wayne "Be Like Me"
16. Gasmilla ft. Kwamz & Flava "Charle Man"
17. Solange "Binz"
18. Brooks & Dunn ft. Luke Combs "Brand New Man"
19. Kidd Kenn "'Next Song' Freestyle"

[UPDATE: Kidd Kenn's "Next Song freestyle" was deleted from YouTube - fortunately, Marcus Life does a reaction vid where he plays the whole thing starting at about 2:07, pretty good fidelity with only a bit of bkgd sound from Marcus.]

20. Rema "Iron Man"
21. Sofi Tukker "Fantasy"
22. Rocket Girls 101 "Galaxy Disco"
23. Bad Bunny "Solo De Mi"
24. Blueface ft. YG "Thotiana (Remix)"

( Trap hegemony, shining asteroids, wild world, boom and doom )

Hong Jinyoung "Love Tonight"

Heavy-K x Moonchild Sanelly "Yebo Mama"

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Twitter thread Q-pop K-pop etc. 2018

2019-01-21T17:46:57Z

2018 my favorite idol-like tracks were not K-pop but Q-pop from Kazakhstan: Ninety One "Ah!Yah!Ma!" KeshYou & Baller "Swala La La," Crystals "Неге мен?" Off-year for K-pop or just my hearing of it? /1 @MargaretMayHan
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) January 21, 2019

Best K-pop track TheEastLight. "Don't Stop" will forever have asterisk due to bandmembers' saying producer hit and derided them. Other fave K-pop LOOΠΔ/Olivia Hye ft Jin Soul "Egoist," Pungdeng-E "Caramel Macchioto," Stray Kids "Grrr," NCT U "Baby Don't Stop" /2 @MargaretMayHan
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) January 21, 2019

2018 K-pop cont'd Royal KD "Swagchy," Hey Girls "Follow Me," The Boyz "Right Here," Sunmi "Siren," BTS nonsingles "So What" "Anpanman" & "Airplane Pt. 2" But most exciting Korean music probably hip-hop: Jvcki Wai, Kid Milli, NO:EL, Young B, Swings "Work Out"… /3 @MargaretMayHan
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) January 21, 2019

…Jvcki Wai "Enchanted Propaganda" & "dOgMa," Jay Park ft 2 Chainz "SOJU" (only scratches surface, so much K-hip-hop I haven't heard) More Korea: Wonderful Machine "Time's Gone" lounge indie; Hong Jinyoung "Good Bye" trot (ditto barely even pawing at surface) /end @MargaretMayHan
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) January 21, 2019

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Pointillist Haze

2018-07-16T02:12:16Z

I found it! Live recording from the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, 1965, Duke Ellington "Second Portrait of the Lion," first track I heard affixed to the word "jazz": instrumental (so to speak) in fixing in my brain the idea of jazz as quick notes in a pointillist haze.

(Surely I'd heard jazz previously in movie scenes and on TV shows: lounge singers and their accompanists, as private eyes and wise guys pass through. But not part of my sense of a genre "jazz.")

[This is in regard to my post here (The Elephant And The Giraffe) (or in deeper context at Freaky Trigger) regarding my teen jazz tokenism, and the strange early appearance of the Duke.]

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More Japanese freestyle

2018-02-03T15:20:38Z

Remember five years ago we were talking about Japanese freestyle? davidfrazer clues me in to further developments: Fairies "HEY HEY ~Light Me Up~."

The speedbeats and basic pounding rhythm are from '90s Eurobeat, but the doleful melodies are freestyle, so are the hooks (freestyle and Italodisco), not to mention the screeching-brake intro and the "HEY hey hey-hey HEY hey hey-hey HEY— HEY hey hey-hey HEY hey hey-hey HEY" electro-stutters at the start, and the mournful chordings and the "oh oh-oh" vocal riff that come between the brakes and the heys.

[UPDATE: Had a full-length live version embedded above, but YouTube killed it; fortunately, six months down the line, AVEX put forth a full-length dance rehearsal version, which I've embedded in its place.]

Here are some vintage 1980s–early '90s freestyle tracks, to give you an idea what I mean by the term.*

New York:

Cover Girls "Inside Outside"

Judy Torres "Come Into My Arms"

Cynthia "Change On Me"

Lisette Melendez "A Day In My Life (Without You)"

Miami

Debbie Deb "When I Hear Music"

Sequal "It's Not Too Late"

Company B "Fascinated"

*The genre "freestyle" is not to be confused with "freestyle" in hip-hop, which refers to live, improvised or at least off-the-cuff raps.

[UPDATE: David Frazer has now found out that "HEY HEY ~Light Me Up~" is a cover of Vanessa's 1993 Eurobeat track "Hey Hey" (Vanessa likely being Clara Moroni under another name), the Fairies' version not straying far from the original. See David's comment below.

I learn from Wikip that, while the term "Eurobeat" has had many uses, by 1993 it was mainly referring to Italian Italodisco-derived tracks selling almost exclusively to the Japanese market. This song is still definitely, overwhelmingly freestyle, at least on top, with Eurobeat underneath. Of course, Italodisco and freestyle took on each other's characteristics.]

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Dick Enberg: Those were the days when...

2017-12-27T13:32:20Z

Dick Enberg of NBC Sports, watching the Irish team on parade during the opening ceremonies of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona; he goes into a somewhat more-meandering-than-usual monologue about Irish long-distance runners of the past, listing the great ones, concluding with, "Those were the days when Irish guys were miling."

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