— Tom Doyle
Back in my days as an undergraduate, I took a handful of music history classes as options. They were all taught by Victor Coelho, an urbane American who played lute recitals and was a passionate fan of The Rolling Stones. Quickly realising this was someone I could learn a lot from, I showed up early and stayed late for class just on the outside chance of having a chat with him. I took so many of these courses — I did four or five — that on the first day of one of them he came galavanting into the lecture theatre, spotted me and shook my hand. Coelho's teaching assistant for every one of these classes was a unkempt, balding guy called Paul, who I had previously known as my bass guitar instructor a few years' earlier.
At one point in the early part of 1998, they both asked me about the state of current music and if it was possible for groups to affect change the way people like The Beatles and Bob Dylan had back in the sixties. I had been occupying myself with discovering the works of Miles Davis and The Byrds at the time so I didn't have much of an idea but I chose to bluff rather than risk them going to some other young student for such information. I was still listening to some current stuff a year earlier so I dug out Radiohead's OK Computer and The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole so they could sample a bit of the newish stuff. They both liked Radiohead but questioned the idea that the Oxford quintet were accomplishing anything particularly fresh, which they weren't wrong about, even if I didn't want to be told so at the time. The Chemical Brothers, however, were a non-starter for both them. "It's just that same old dance thing," Paul observed; I was confident that he didn't even manage to get past opening track "Block Rockin' Beats". (I never heard what, if anything, Coelho had to say about them but I wouldn't have been surprised if he ended up passing on them completely)
That same old dance thing. It's not unlike when old timers used to dismiss rock 'n' roll as 'noise'. Yet, what made the comment from an individual I liked and respected so irritating was that there was a ring of truth to it. Dance music can be samey and it's often better off whenever it is. Club DJ's play what will keep people on the dance floor, shifting up their setlist with clever choices isn't going to do so. When EDM came along this past decade (or was it earlier?) it smacked of a cynical corporate rebrand: this stuff was just techno under another name. The labels changed while the music remained much the same. There have always been innovators but your Goldies and your Roni Sizes tended to be listened to much more than played in that trendy club with that cute but surly coat check girl. That same old dance thing did well precisely because it was that same old dance thing.
There had been a time, however, when it was incumbent upon dance music boffins to craft something that might excite people as well. To make recordings that didn't rely upon cliches but which utilized "fresh" samples that had never been heard on a single before. One of the defining albums of 1989 was De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, a radical take on hip hop with flower power imagery, playful verses and raps that were accessible to those of us who weren't quite ready for the likes of Public Enemy and NWA. It was also awash in sampling and not just from that James Brown "Funky Drummer" bit and those all-too-common "ooh's" and "ah's" you hear from early house and rap. There was even the hint that De La Soul were fans of all kinds of music. Soon enough this approach would be adopted by Saint Etienne and then it all came to be associated with irony but there's every indication sampling would have gone that way without them.
Indeed, "Lovegroove" could almost have been an early Saint Etienne recording. There are plenty of chugging guitar samples, the various sources used to cobble it together come from all over the place and it's mercifully free of the usual suspects that house DJ's relied upon. Again, like De La Soul and Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, James Brett and Richard Symons of Squeezebrain & The Machine are clearly music obsessed rather than just mad for that same old dance thing. But their catholocism meant that "Lovegroove" was an island and it wasn't able to communicate with other dance records that "know you gonna dig this" while they "pump up the volume". Dance music had that trajectory of familiar samples and there wasn't room for a record that spoke in a parlance free of common syntax.
Acid house had been the culturally dominant type of dance music in 1988 but the new year brought about a desire to move on. An acid house mentally remained as rave culture continued to thrive and the 'Madchester' groups grew in popularity but there was little interest in recreating "Stakker Humanoid". Perhaps with this in mind, a more easy going dance music began to take hold, while pop groups like Pet Shop Boys, The Style Council and The Blow Monkeys started to dabble in deep house. Within this landscape, an active but chilled out "Lovegroove" should have found a home — and it may well have found one had it come out closer to the summer when nouveau hippie chic was peaking.
Squeezebrain & The Machine was a short-lived project and, in spite of Tom Doyle's best efforts, "Lovegroove" failed to get much attention in the early part of the year. A fortnight earlier, Nick Heyward had been jobbed out of a hit with the wonderful "Tell Me Why" but this track's lack of success is much easier to explain. It could easily have done well but it isn't a crime that didn't. I can't bring myself to get nearly as thrilled by it as Doyle but I appreciate the effort. J.J. Jones has a wonderfully elastic voice but she lacks the flirtatious playfulness of Yazz or Lisa Stansfield and probably isn't on the same eclectic page as Brett or Symons. (I've long suspected that the tastes of Saint Etienne's Sarah Cracknell are as diverse as Stanley and Wiggs)
This is the second straight non-charting single to get a Single of the Fortnight but a January of flops would give way to a lengthy and unprecedented streak of hit singles recommended by Smash Hits critics and guest pop star reviewers. For the next thirteen issues, the SOTF would belong exclusively to relevant chart acts. And they're a diverse bunch and represent several different genres: pop, rock, hip hop and even that same old dance thing.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
Morrissey: "The Last of the Famous International Playboys"
A third glorious solo hit on the bounce for Moz, even if its Top 40 "run" of 6, 8 and 21 was worringly suggestive of a record only his fans were purchasing. ("The Last of the Famous International Playboys" had such a brief lifespan that it passed me by completely since I was on a ferry to Ireland while he was performing it on Top of the Pops) It may not have sold any newbies on Morrissey but it's a phenomenal record and one that give no indication that a rot would soon begin to set in. The Smiths were supposedly a thing of the past, yet here was his nibs being backed by Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce and unofficial fifth member Craig Gannon just to remind everyone of what might have been — something he's continued to unknowingly jog the collective memory of ever since.
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