Hooky demonstrates the highly technical ‘pointing’ technique
Famous for pursing his lips while playing his bass guitar far too low down in a couple of quite good bands, and for having hair that looks like he is permanently driving a convertible at high speed, Hooky has recently transformed himself into the most embarrassing Dad in the world.
We’ll gloss over the possibility that he isn’t actually DJing. Who gives a toss? DJ skills are overrated. Playing two similar records at the same speed isn’t hard.
This is what all Techno Dads look like to our kids when we’re drunk. Come to think of it, DJing well when drunk – that’s a skill worth celebrating.
Tony Wilson was always the archetypal embarrassing dad in a jumper. He was a media twat, but with pretty good taste in music and interesting ideas about how to run a record label. All that has been documented elsewhere, though. It’s a shame there aren’t more media twats like him around today.
Anyway, here’s a mildly amusing clip from The Tube. It looks like it’s some sort of music industry/media shindig happening in the Hacienda, pre Madchester when it was still necessary to remind people in London that Manchester existed. We love how scared the presenter is.
Wilson is joined by the bizarrely self-conscious Paul Morley and a leering Peter Hook who looks like he dried his hair in a wind tunnel.
Once upon a time there was Jack. And Jack had a groove, a groove called House.
And House begat an evil child. And Lo! That child was named Acid.
Acid spread throughout the world and became responsible for tabloid hysteria, smiley T shirts, Mike Ink’s hair, and abominations like Goa Trance.
The hype made a lot of people forget it was actually a dirty lo fi music scene spawned in Chicago by producers too skint to afford proper equipment. Like The Hoover, Acid was there waiting to be discovered, in the analogue circuitry of the 303.
Responsibility for the creation of the wee silver beastie lies with a faceless genius, Tadao Kikumoto, who now happens to be the Roland Corporation’s senior managing director. Kikumoto also invented the 909. Wow.
Acid was an accident waiting to happen. The 303 was not designed for it – it was supposed to do away with bass players. The weird sequencer makes it quite hard to programme actual music, but easy make something odd happen, as many an idiot did.
We will very soon hit you with a 303-heavy dadcast especially for the acid dads out there. Till then here’s some different flavours of dad acid to keep you smiling. Quack quack!
The Original Chicago Acid House Track
Phuture – Acid Trax (1987)
Phuture’s debut release on Trax was the first acid house record. Everyone who heard it wanted to copy it. Chicago’s local house music scene was flooded with 303 records, some of them crossed the Atlantic, and soon saucer-eyed dads in dungarees were pulling elaborate chicken dance moves at The Hacienda.
Hip House Acid
The Wee Papa Girl Rappers – Heat It Up (Acid House Mix)
Detroit uber-dad Kevin Saunderson on the mix here. We actually only discovered this tune a few months ago and have been caning it a bit ever since. It’s good.
‘Daddy I’m Scared’ Acid
Bam Bam – Where’s Your Child? (1988)
Probably our favourite scary techno vocal track. Where IS your child? Soundtrack to the London riots right there…
Cologne Acid
Mike Ink – Playtex (1994)
While Eurotrance was really starting to stink out the dancefloors of the world with its manky stench, some people in the small German city of Cologne got the acid bug bad, but did much better things with it. The result: loads of filthy, distorted, much too fast releases on labels like Force Inc and DJungle Fever by people with funny names like Gizz TV and Jammin Unit. The pinnacle of Cologne Acid came when it calmed down a bit, courtesy of Mike Ink’s minimalist Dadajack EP on weirdo symbolic label Profan. This EP’s ability to cut through in the mix is second to none…a real DJ’s record. All of the tracks are great but this one is on Youtube.
Acid Techno
FUSE – Substance Abuse (1991)
Richie Hawtin made a lot of acid tracks. We chose this one for its lame repetition of the word ‘Overdose’. Picture all the arc-line strobes going off at Pure. Sweaty.
‘Dad’s Crying Again’ Acid
Choice – Acid Eiffel (1993)
‘Get a grip dad, you’re pathetic’. French uber-dad Laurent ‘Laboratoire’ Garnier with his Gallic chords reminding us of raves gone by. Like Joey Beltram dropping this over the gargantuan Rezerection PA, aaahhh, that was a moment. And Derrick May playing it at the Volcano on a Sunday night. Derrick May in Partick, on a Sunday? Stuff like that happened in the 90s.
Detroit Acid
Underground Resistance – The Final Frontier (1991)
‘Mad’ Mike Banks – another Techno uber-Dad demonstrating his ability to come up with weepy chord sequences. Made you feel nostalgic for the future in 1991. He’s a genius, but thankfully here eschewed his tendency for synthisax noodling in favour of acid. This tune pretty much laid the blueprint for his offshoot label, Red Planet. A Detroit dadcast is a future necessity.
Aphex Acid
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker Acid Edit
There are any number of Richard D James tunes we could choose, but we chose this one, get over it. Takes a while for the acid to get going but it’s worth it.
Bollywood Acid
Charanjit Singh
Powerful evidence that Acid was discovered, not invented. The rerelease in 2011 of an obscure Bollywood album of instrumentals sounds exactly like acid house. We thought it was a hoax when we first heard it. One of those records that is only interesting because of the story – it’s actually a load of old toss.
Hollywood Acid
Blade Opening Scene – Pump Panel remix of New Order Confusion
What a pleasant cinematic surprise we got as the opening distorted kick and 303 line of Tim Taylor’s acid techno remix blasted out of the Odeon PA. Quite a good club scene up until the blood. Seen plenty zombies over the years, but no actual vampires.
Errzi big slab of acid cheese. Get it right up ye.
Occasional dad-house disc jockey MC Vimto takes a dirty great pair of scissors to William Orbit’s daft but fairly rare Spatial Expansion acid remix of the already quite daft pop house tune, Hey Music Lover by S’Express.
In 1991 Castlemorton was a mere twinkle in the Spiral crew’s googly eyes. What you have here is the remnants of a party, still going at it the next day. Dancing in a library.
Looks exactly like every party ever that has gone on way past the time when people should really be in their beds. Watch at 2 minutes when the bloke in the red hat pulls some nice arm moves, and the impressively bendy guy next to him thinks ‘I can top that’, combines the arm move with a knee dip. Class.
Where are they now, the crusty ravers? They have cut off their dreadlocks and become web designers. A few have gone to France and are still at it, because people in France like 180 bpm acid techno even today. And the weather’s a bit less depressing if you’ve made a lifestyle decision to live in a bus.
This clip is properly embarrassing. Great early 90s hair: the bouncing bob. They used to be everywhere.
How can you take yourself seriously, pretending to play a synth and wearing cast-offs from a Janet Jackson video?
As we’ve seen before in the Hitman And Her clips, blokes in ties all over the place. Why dress like you’re going for a job interview to be in the crowd on Top Of The Pops? Answer: cos it’s 1990. Some clubs wouldn’t even let you in unless you dressed like that.
Classic bassline though. Really used to hit you in the chest coming out of a 100K rig.
Web things like the Boiler Room are what have replaced Dance Energy now. That’s all a bit serious though. The clothes, the hair and above all the dancing were much more fun back in 1991. The key word is ‘energy’, there was a lot of it about.
We are a bit obsessed by the music of 1991. As with a lot of stuff from that golden year, this tune totally stands up, still sounds fat. It stuck in my head the first time I went to Pure in, you guessed it, 1991. And I’m still not done with it, 21 years later.
Properly mental underground music, on network TV, at tea time.
RIP Caspar Pound, the eponymous ‘Hippie’ who was the man behind early trance label Rising High.
Errzi big slab of acid cheese. Get it right up ye.
