The Soundboard: Those are the breaks

Last week we closed up the Drum and Bass lesson. I forgot to include a short history of the style in either of the weeks that it was featured, mostly due to my being tired after a long night at work. I’ll just say this, Acid Jazz evolved and branched into D&B.

Now, I’d love to whip up some Acid Jazz here, but seeing as how I like y’all and would hate to see good people arrested for running around with your respective shirts wrapped around your heads screaming ‘Ave Maria’ at the top of your lungs, I’ll refrain. That and I doubt I have all that many female readers, so what would be the point?

This week I’m going to try and ease y’all into a style called “House”. This is the style you’d hear in most clubs if you ever got the urge to go to an overpriced meat-market with watered down drinks. I prefer shows myself, but with me getting grumpy in my old age, elbowing my way through a crowd could prove fatal for some rude club kids and I stay home.

“House” music evolves and then regresses in cycles every couple years, as “the old guard” move on and “the new schoolers” take over only to turn into “the old guard” in a few short months. I’ll listen to the evolving stuff, but I carry holy water to guard against the regression times, which unfortunately is what is about to happen here in a couple months if it hasn’t already started.

House music started in the 70’s with the rise of disco. The death of disco was actually a good thing for reasons other than everyone was using the same drum track in that the records stayed in the hands of urban kids who got creative with the things and started using the emerging electronics technology to sample them into ‘Breaks’, that they would mix together and take to the underground clubs of the day.

You may remember ‘Breakdancing’ from the early 80’s, well, that came from kids trying to impress their friends with their new moves while dancing over the breaks.

And despite the lack of corny movies, breakdancing and ‘BreakBeat’ music are still around and popular in more than a few circles.

But we’ll go there in the near future. Today, were going back, way back, to 1982 with a mega mix of the seminal tune of that helped along the evolution of rap.

Afrika Bambaataa – Planet Rock (Classic Mix)

Now, if you’re looking for the original version of this tune, you’ll have to go here and buy it. While I enjoy a decent amount of rap and hip hop, one of the things I absolutely cannot stand is when some loudmouth MC or MC’s go and ruin a good bit of sampling and programming with their braggadocio, so you will find that this mix contains very few vocals.

And that concludes the longest Soundboard post I think I’ve ever written (and believe it or not, I left an assload of history out).