A Cheeky Monday Newsletter
One-off start of the week edition
Welcome back to Music Is The Answer, the fortnightly newsletter from myself, Marcus Barnes.
Last Friday I put out a special edition featuring responses to Rosh’s open letter, so my usual reviews and recommendations took a back seat. For any new subscribers (helloooo!) this newsletter usually goes out every fortnight on Fridays, and the general format is a mix featuring new personal/topical writing, my monthly techno reviews, archived interviews from my now-defunct Independent blog and lots of recommendations (mixes, reading etc…).
I’ve had quite a few signups over the past month, so thanks to everyone who’s subscribed, it means a lot to have you on board.
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My Education: Volume 1
Getting started with a new feature that I’ll be including once in a while. My Education will highlight music, albums, TV shows, films, mixes, artists, experiences etc… from various periods in my life, that have played a key role in my development as a music lover. With such a broad range of reference points, you can expect all kinds of insight into my musical upbringing.
Today I start with House Hits ‘88, a compilation album that belonged to my Mum. Now, as far as I can remember, most of my Mum’s record collection was reggae, but I’m sure there were a few bits and pieces in there like House Hits ‘88, too. I absolutely loved this album. I think I swiped it from her collection around 1990. This was around the time when I ended up with my own stacked little stereo unit with a twin cassette deck, radio and a record player. Look at that cover, no wonder I grabbed it for myself!
The main reason I nicked this record was because I didn’t have any vinyl of my own. It’s funny because, though it’s called House Hits ‘88, not all the tunes on there are actually house. There’s R&B and hip hop, too. This was quite common back then, a lot of commercial albums featured music that wasn’t necessarily aligned with the compilation title. I used to play this album on repeat, over and over and over, trying to learn the words to ‘Miracles’ by MC Duke and ‘Gittin' Funky’ by Kid ‘N’ Play, who were absolutely massive at the time thanks to their film House Party. I had a lean top at the time and my best friend at school, Daniel Cox, had a No.1 and referred to himself as an egghead - so we’d call ourselves ‘Egg ‘N’ Slide’. Later on I had a high top as well, just like Kid.
I’d be sniggering at the lyrics to ‘Tramp’ by Salt ‘N’ Pepa, singing along to ‘I Need You’ by B.V.S.M.P. (while I imagined serenading the girl I fancied at school), wondering what the hell ‘Jingo’ by Jellybean was all about (“Go baba, go baba, go baba, go ba!”) and thinking ‘Theme from S-Express’ was the best song ever (it’s definitely up there). I played ‘Faith’ by the Wee Papa Girl Rappers and ‘Bass How Long Can You Go’ so many times it was ridiculous, I must have driven my Mum mad. I never liked ‘Jack The Opera’ though. Nah, not for me. Listening to the album would have almost certainly involved dancing of some kind too and that dancing most likely involved doing the Running Man. Daniel, myself and our other friends messed around doing the Running Man all the time at school. I’ve been known to pull it out of the bag at raves from time to time as well. Classic move.
Being a naive nine-year-old I thought I could be like the cool DJs I’d seen on telly and practice scratching using my stereo’s one belt-drive deck. As you can probably imagine, it didn’t go too well. In fact, it went so badly that some of my favourite songs on the album ended up skipping A LOT. By the time I’d finished with that record it was really badly scratched and I was still really bad at scratching. Fortunately, my Mum wasn’t that precious about the album and I didn’t get the slipper.
It was such an important album to me. I guess mainly because I didn’t have any other records to play (and destroy) but also because it was a very early foray into electronic music, hip hop and R&B. I didn’t have the capacity to understand very much about the music beyond what I liked and what I didn’t. It was such an important part of my education, way before I got into pirate radio, rave music, jungle and everything else that came later in the nineties. I guess it was the first time I was able to be in control of the music I listened to as well. Before I’d only listen to what my mum played, on the stereo in the front room. Having my own stereo was a revelation and being able to play around with House Hits ‘88 was a crucial first step in my appreciation of electronic music. I still think it’s pretty good and, for memory sake, I bought a copy from Discogs a few months ago. It’s been on my mind a lot over the last few years. Before I bought it, I made a playlist on YouTube, which you can listen to here.
Techno Reviews: July 2020
Every month I’ll be compiling a bunch of reviews, just like I did when Mixmag’s print edition was in circulation. There’s a link to buy each of the releases and I’ve also recorded a mix using all the tunes from the page, so please have a listen and consider buying the music if you’re feeling it.
Indie Archive 004: Nile Rodgers
In 2013 I did a big piece on the Daft Punk album Random Access Memories, interviewing all of the collaborators for The Independent. I only used a small quote from each so I decided to publish the full interviews on my blog. Nile is such an easy interview, he’s so happy to chat candidly about himself and this is a prime example of how lovely and open he is.
Mixes
Garage, drum ‘n’ bass, house, techno… All that good stuff.
Heartless VS Pay As U Go - Destiny’s [2001] This is one of the most legendary tapes from the early 2000s. A historic moment in garage history. Bloody funny as well.
Angela Rose: Mercury In Aries Keep an eye out for Angela Rose, she’s a brilliant young DJ from London.
Reading Recommendations
Five Questions Productive People Ask Themselves to Stay Focused
Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier
The Lost Art of Having a Chat: What Happened When I Stopped Texting and Started Talking
The End
That’s it for now. Here’s a tune I found by accident while searching for something else.
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