definitely miles wide of the mark there, Rob.... :mellow: by the late 90s, dance music began to morph into cheese....the classic era for dance was 93-96....

 

miles?... i said later in the 90's as opposed to early ... and again, id suggest its all down to personal taste.

I remember in the early 90's alot of critcism being leveled at the music scene because there were no original songs, it was filled with rave tunes that hardly had any words or cover versions, this didnt chanGe untill the mid 90s when britpop came along. No SAW werent brilliant, and they did do some covers but alot of there stuff were original pop songs. No one was doing this in the early 90s until britpop filled the gap.

 

surely the rave scene WAS original... and what about grunge and our own indie/madchester scene? SAW hardly figured in the early 90's. plus there was ragga, along with dance... now i didnt like the early 90's music scene but there was plenty of new original music going on even though it wasnt to my taste. imho the music in he early 90's was far superior to most of what SAW did.

definitely miles wide of the mark there, Rob.... :mellow: by the late 90s, dance music began to morph into cheese....the classic era for dance was 93-96....

 

Yep, I'd agree with that... Early 90s Dance/Rave was where pretty much all the experimentation and "free spirit" attitude was taking place...The likes of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The KLF, Faithless, Autechre, Aphex Twin, etc, were really pushing the envelope and took the genre to its creative peaks... I honestly cannot think of ANY mainstream Dance act at the moment who can even hold a candle to this lot.... Well, certainly not in UK really, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming out of Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, etc, but this tends to be very much attached on to the "Industrial Dance" or "EBM" scene which also had its roots in the 80s....

surely the rave scene WAS original... and what about grunge and our own indie/madchester scene?

 

Totally... Why is it that some people seem to just mentally block all that stuff out.... Jesus, have they just forgotten the fact that the likes of The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, James, Nirvana, The Charlatans and Inspiral Carpets were just about everywhere you looked between the years 90-93.....?

 

And, of course, Rave - The Prodigy, 808 State, The Shamen, Altern8, Orbital.... This was all completely original music.... And probably the last genuine Grass Roots youth musical movement in this country.... Rave happened without the permission of the record industry and the fukkin' Meeeeeeddjaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, and that's why the "moral majority", the authorities and the Govt totally shat itself over illegal raves, etc..... :rolleyes:

looks like the buggers gonna do it... i mean, wtf?

 

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/xfactor/news/a...ctor-final.html

Face it. Stock Aitken and Waterman were geniuses. Perhaps their music isn't to every taste, but they were WAY ahead of their time in treating music as a product and exploiting all commercial angles.

 

Agreed. Yes they certainly are not to everyone's taste, but do appeal to others. Maybe they had some rubbish singles, but overall i didn't think they were that bad, but

each to their own. Some people who grew up and liked them, their music will being back happy memories.

 

They'd produced some classic singles like You Spin Me Round (Like A Record), Say I'm Your Number One, Never Gonna Give You Up, and Respectable, and others.

 

They're never going to appeal to music purists and rock fans, but let's face it, their music isn't aimed at those people.

 

Bloody brilliant- but I think there is an important distinction to make it seems to me, between those who were of a certain age at the time and those who were older. I was only 12 in 1988 so i suppose I was the ideal demographic for them and I admit I love them but then they are always associated with my youth and that time in my life, I'm not sure I would have such love for them now had I not been at that age at the time.

 

I also don't buy that "well they were only youngsters what did they know about music" argument. This may be true that at that age you haven't listened to that wide a spectrum of music but 12 yr olds can be as fanatical / fickle as the rest of the market. I grew up with a father who had music on all the time (mainly 60s/70s stuff) and so to me the S/A/W sound was exciting/ young/ fresh etc.

 

One angle I do agree with is there is an argument to be made that S/A/W were quite subversive in terms of sexuality. They essentially took music which was being made for a gay audience exclusively in the early 80s and turned it not only into the dominant chart force but also music that was being played in every heterosexual club up and down the land, right under the mainstream's nose. Waterman in an interview back in 99 said that "essentially I make music for gay men" and that's true.

 

Now obviously the same argument can be made for disco in the 70s but it was more impressive this time around is that they did it in the immediate aftermath of the breaking of the AIDS epidemic (they compensated for this by making their stars asexual and unthreatening in many respects).

 

Now I don't make a claim for them bsing some pioneers of anything (they were in it for the money just like 99% of the industry) but that what they achieved was remarkable in a social context. Not that people thought that at the time or indeed in any kind of explicit manner.

Bloody brilliant- but I think there is an important distinction to make it seems to me, between those who were of a certain age at the time and those who were older. I was only 12 in 1988 so i suppose I was the ideal demographic for them and I admit I love them but then they are always associated with my youth and that time in my life, I'm not sure I would have such love for them now had I not been at that age at the time.

 

I also don't buy that "well they were only youngsters what did they know about music" argument. This may be true that at that age you haven't listened to that wide a spectrum of music but 12 yr olds can be as fanatical / fickle as the rest of the market. I grew up with a father who had music on all the time (mainly 60s/70s stuff) and so to me the S/A/W sound was exciting/ young/ fresh etc.

 

One angle I do agree with is there is an argument to be made that S/A/W were quite subversive in terms of sexuality. They essentially took music which was being made for a gay audience exclusively in the early 80s and turned it not only into the dominant chart force but also music that was being played in every heterosexual club up and down the land, right under the mainstream's nose. Waterman in an interview back in 99 said that "essentially I make music for gay men" and that's true.

 

Now obviously the same argument can be made for disco in the 70s but it was more impressive this time around is that they did it in the immediate aftermath of the breaking of the AIDS epidemic (they compensated for this by making their stars asexual and unthreatening in many respects).

 

Now I don't make a claim for them bsing some pioneers of anything (they were in it for the money just like 99% of the industry) but that what they achieved was remarkable in a social context. Not that people thought that at the time or indeed in any kind of explicit manner.

 

Naaah, no one ever got into "moral panic" mode over what Waterman did, Frankie Goes To Hollywood on the other hand..... Absolute sh"t-storm, and they had three of the biggest selling singles of the 80s.... "Relax" and "Two Tribes" in particular sold by the tankerload... PWL never even came close to those levels of sales that Frankie's first three singles got....

 

^ Yes but they did it by ramming it (excuse the pun) down people's throat, which folk stood for for about 12 months then moved on, but S/A/W/ was much more subtle in their subversion. I don't say people were in a moral panic, it wasn't what they wrote about (normally bog standard stuff boy meets girl etc) but the medium they used. In many ways FGTH had it easier as they became big in the immediate aftermath of new romanticism, in short the charts were having a gay old time in general (Culture Club, Jimmy Sommerville, FGTH, Marilyn, Divine etc) but the AIDS epidemic made it kinda taboo once again to be a gay star (this still exists to some extent today)

 

To do this again theough a gay medium of gay music and subvert it so that your average Joe would be in a club bopping away to it in chingford in 1988, given all of that, was a delicious irony.....

Edited June 2, 201114 yr by gezza76

mel and kim get fresh at the weekend!