A Way of Life

 

60s mod (reenacted late '70s)

90s mod 

Yaman eye candy

 

Track 1½

 

Listening again to this fun  DJ SS track from '92, "Respect to the Following"  - a tribute rollcall to scene luminaries each deemed "hard-core", the word delivered in a sing-songy tone-drone presumably by SS himself - I noticed a little detail on the label. On the first side of the EP, "Respect to the Following" is followed by a brief extension titled "A Little More Respect" -  so brief it is marked not as track 2 but track 1½ !

"A Little More Respect" is not to be found on YouTube, but I had vague memories of hearing it, or a bit of it, in a mix. Sure enough, here it is, at the start of a Mumdance mix. 

Below I have extracted it for a vidclip - it appears to be a composite of the intro to "Respect to the Following" and some unknown portion of a "A Little More Respect". 

YouTube has several postings of "Respect to the Following" 

 

But "A Little More Respect" is disrespected by the ardkore archivists, who clearly regard it as a trifle too trivial for preservation and dissemination. Oddly discriminating, giving the amount of absolute garbage piled up there for posterity. 

Now I have the vinyl of the EP (DJ SS  Breakbeat Pressure Vol. 1) on which these tunes appear but it's stowed in storage far out of my reach. So if anyone happens to have the whole (small) extent of "A Little More Respect" handy and shareable, I would love to hear it. 

Perhaps even release it into the wild. Even a half-a-track deserves its moment. 

Another funny little stubby bit of a 1/2 track - but in this case it is given full status as Track 3 of The Psycho EP

Stop press  - mixologist supreme Selectabwoy comes through with the whole track! I don't think it's much longer than what Mumdance used - here it is, though, for posterity's sake.

Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996, Vol.2 - already!!!

  

Luke Owen of Death Is Not The End has swiftly followed up Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996 Vol. 1.  with Pause for the Cause: London Rave Adverts 1991-1996 Vol. 2 - another bumper collection of pirate ads from back in the rave days, including some more audio contributions from me. And here's the blurb I came up with: 

 "Back in the early ‘90s, whenever the pirate radio MC announced “a pause for the cause”, I usually pressed pause on my cassette recorder. That’s something I would regret years later, when ad breaks had become cherished mementos of the hardcore rave era. Luckily, back in the day I often left the tape running while I went off to do something else. So a fair number of ad breaks got captured accidentally for my later delectation. Not nearly enough, though. So in recent years I started combing through the immense number of pirate radio sets archived on the internet.  Sometimes the tracklists would note “ad break” or “ads”, helping to narrow the search. But often I’d just stumble on a bunch in the middle of a pirate show preserved on YouTube or an old skool blog.  A few of my original unintended “saves” and latterday “finds” are included in this wonderful collection by audio archaeologist Luke Owen. It’s the latest in his series of compilations of UK pirate radio advertisements, with this volume focusing on the audio equivalent of the rave flyer: MCs breathlessly hyping a club night or upcoming rave, listing the lineup of deejays and MCs, boasting about hi-tech attractions like lasers and projections, mentioning prices and nearest landmarks to the venue, and occasionally promising “clean toilets” and “tight but polite security” (“sensible security” is another variation). Some of these ads are etched into my brain as lividly as the classic hardcore and jungle tunes of that time. (Most rave ads incorporate snippets of current music, of course – big anthems and obscure “mystery tracks” alike).   Names of deejays ring out like mythological figures: who were Shaggy & Breeze, Kieran the Herbalist, Tinrib, Food Junkie?  Putting on my serious hat for a moment, I think these ads are valuable deposits of sociocultural data, capturing the hustling energy of an underground micro-economy in which promoters, deejays and MCs competed for a larger slice of the raving audience.   But mostly, they are hard hits of pure nostalgic pleasure, amusing and thrilling through their blend of period charm, endearing amateurism,  and contagiously manic excitement about rave music’s forward-surge into an unknown future. The best of these ads give me a memory-rush to rival the top tunes and MC routines of the era."    

You can hear and buy Pause for the Cause Vol. 2 digitally and as a limited-edition cassette at Bandcamp. 

One of my contributions to Pause for the Cause #2. 

Here's my Guardian piece from last year on the first two collections of UK pirate radio adverts that Death Is Not The End put out. 

And here's a longer interview I did with Luke about his label and the interest in pirate radio transmissions.

Since then Death Is Not The End has out a collection of a different era of pirate radio - Brooklyn Pirates: Neighbourhoods in the Sky, 2014-2021 - compiled by David Goren, an audio archivist based in Brooklyn.