Weedle Guide.

This harks back to the first blog post I ever submitted here.  I explained what a Tibbet was (and you can see what a Tibbet is from our header) but not what a Weedle was or rather Wheedle as it was back then.

A W(h)eedle is basically a black and white cat with a white tip to its tail, its colouration should be medium neither too white or too black. He was my pet cat growing up and was called Whisky as we wanted a gender neutral name (or more accurately not saddle him with a girls/ boys name if he was the opposite gender).

Better photos when I get round to scanning our old albums there's lots of this guy.

To help you with this I've appropriated a guide from Wiki to help you understand what the various shades of Weedle are.
Incidentally that maybe catloaf stance Whisk is adopting there but we called that stance a meat pie when growing up.

If a Weedle has a black nose it is called a Kitler.

Hackney Trip

Took a trip out to that great progressive land of the East end, or as you may know it Hackney. An upmarket hipster paradise that also has its fair share of hideous stabbings and is of course a left wing hell hole, its also a great place to go searching.  Like every progressive shopping area there are no real shops that ordinary people go in such as Poundland or WH Smiths but plenty of boutique shit with inflated prices and such.

There are a few good charity shops even if they are few and far between, I always seem to pick up stuff from the Salvation's Barmy and this is no different.  We had a Disney T Shirt, a noise comp CD and an original Hardy Boys detective novel (the original version of The Secret Of The Old Mill) in hard back.  Have a complete armada run of the UK titles so will have to read them to see what differences there are from revised to Original.

No the most important thing is that there is a pretty good cactus shop just down from the Toy Museum at Bethnal Green.  Its called Plant Warehouse and is almost opposite the pricey flower warehouse, I first took notice whilst walking down the street and they had some large plants in the window that looked decidedly succulent.  A Cyphostemma no less so with that I had to take a further look.  There were a lot of massive plants in the window including a Cleistocactus with dried flower remains for £1200 and a few of the bigger Euphorbias including a Tirucalli type and Ingens.  They had smaller Mammilarias for £10 in pretty nice clay pots and a few Hoya leaves in pots for £5.

Worst of all were some strange bowl garden selections including 3 columnar types a few  Mammilaria's  a Titanopsis and a Faucaria.  Also they had Ganoderma mushrooms for sale in  a small wooden arrangement, they are the ones with the dubious health claims and such.  Also our Pilea Peperomioides* is worth £20, which is pretty cool.  All in all the stuff they had there was massively pricey, if you have deep pockets and the heat to keep some of this stuff then good luck, me I'll stick to our club shows and stuff.

Didn't come out properly but £20

*this fucking site. really. I got my original Pilea from an old lady who came to the club who called it the Oriental Jade Plant.  Its a massive progenitor of offspring which means that unless you send them out to people you will be stuck with ever more piles of Pilea.  Like all nettle family its flowers are insignificant green string although perversely would love to see a macro shot of the bloom itself.

See nothing to write home about.

Club History Part 2.

This is the final part of this BBC4, 3 part series looking into the birth of dance and its continued degeneracy at the hands of American club culture.  I signed off last time with the words fuck my life, or something similar.  Yeah that was pretty prophetic to say the least.

It starts off OK with a look at DJing with DJ Greg Credit to the Edit Wilson explaining the basics of beatmatching and a classic clip of him doing the same on the tube.  Works up through hip hop exploring the whole two turntables mixer style and lands firmly in Ibiza some time in the mid 80's.

Alfredo playing various tracks from the broadest beats around to a mega diverse crowd, something to get the crowd moving no matter who they are.  Its a leftfield choice but also quite a good pick,  I would have gone with Ron Hardy at the Muzic box here, but its how house and acid was seen outside the states.  Later on its Danny Rampling transporting these sounds back to Shoom and dear old Oakie at Spectrum and later mixing the Happy Mondays album Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches, bringing in the rock kids to the clubs, See also Stone Roses Fools Gold.

Its still bearable at this point, it talks to Normal Cook aka Pizzaman  Fatboy Slim, about DJing and such and the crowds, and Tiesto's "single handed" creation of trance as a gay form of techno. But mainly its about crowd adulation, playing the same style for 8 hours, making cash before burning out and coming back with a more varied sound.   TBH this is still the best thing he ever did.

From then on its down hill all the way with the rise of the mega club and the mega DJ and the whole EDM Degeneracy.  You get a bit of David Guetta, with some Kelly Rowland crossover that finally got the Yanks to play dance on the radio opening the doors for Black eyed Peas and all the other stuff that makes me weep.

Worse we have Steve Aoki a dude that's taken to DJing while prancing about like a little twat. No actual mixing here just poncing about and lobbing cake at the audience when he plays specific tones in his pre mixed sets.  The audience lap it up like Pavlov's Dicks that they are, and I couldn't shift the whole Brasseye  Drugs episode they must have something wrong with their Shatners Bassoons.

It then calmed the fuck down with a few bits and pieces from underground DJs the Black Madonna and Midland (me neither). I have just googled Mike Read's Stalker and her and have been pissing myself laughing as its an uncanny resemblance.

In retrospect if you can ignore the last 30 minutes of this its all you  need to know about DJing plus all the real heroes here are limited to a few sound bites such as Jeff Mills and Nina Kraviz which is a shame as her and Helena Hauff are probably the vanguard of what I call real DJing and welcome female perspective to boot.

BBC Club history.

BBC 4's Can You Feel it is a sort of gun to the head of dance music, you know kinda like a cucked version of what Sky Arts did a back last year but on the BBC instead. I can definitely say this though, it  benefits from the BBC's cash input, as rather than a UK centric outlook, you have full access to all the American DJs this time.

I'm currently two thirds of the way through, with the final bit on DJs recorded to watch this coming Friday, but I feel qualified to put in my two pennorth in, just like the old official games mags did from 10 minutes of playing so here goes.

The first part is actually pretty good giving a lowdown of the origins of the 4/4 beat with a healthy focus on pioneers of house.  Never knew Ron Hardy was bi though his whopping smack addiction was skated over but its always good to see them credit a true master (there's a bit of archive stuff of Frankie Knuckles too).  We get the Belleville 3 on racism and forging Techno from the whole cloth of European synth pop and funk via the Electrifying Mofo / Mojo.  Finally we have its all gone Pete Tong  and his single handed introduction of House to the British public via his house sound of comps.

There's a token poke at the North with 808 State (well A Guy Called Gerald and a weirdly uncredited Graham Massey and some other guy who could be Martin Price). Mostly though its the BBC dollar reigning large here as you have talking head shots from Vince Lawrence, Screaming Rachael, Craig Loftis, Steve Silk Hurley, and Joe Smooth talking about house in the old days and such.

First part here.

The second part is where it all goes wrong for me, it big's up the the whole mega club era and EDM bollocks whilst overlooking the whole warehouse rave aspect.

Its still good mind you. From the Loft to Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage complete with Larry Levan at the controls, to the early days of rave in the UK via the second summer of love. 

Its good to know that:

In the old days that you could run stuff from lamp post electricity to power your illegal rave.

Amnesia was just an after hours club in Streatham.

Danny Rampling's Shoom was located in a basement warehouse out of Southwark

That the Factory in Manchester closed due to massive gangster infiltration (sadly also there from the start).

It goes off the rails at the end speaking to Moby about EDM trash in Vegas and that its more of a fairground experience with showpiece bollocks and actors. Also weirdly glosses over the whole criminal justice bill era of raving, though its nice to see Creamfields get a look in.

Second part here.

Like I say, I've not seen part 3 yet though this does not bode well and I quote.

"With in-depth interviews with David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Black Madonna, Moby and Midland"
and as an afterthought at the bottom.

" Other contributors include Pete Tong, Jeff Mills, Terry Farley, Fabio, Nina Kraviz"
Fuck. My Life.