I remember Dance Your Ass Off best the way I first heard it, covered by That Petrol Emotion in about 1986. It was part of that boomlet of indie / rock bands covering disco or funk hits, including Age Of Chance's Disco Inferno. It felt like a complete evolutionary dead end at the time. Little did we know that was the sound that would swallow Rock whole in the 90s.
Was there a whole bunch of them? I remember Age of Chance doing "Kiss" - turning a silk purse into a sow's ear, I think, is how David Stubbs put it. And somebody did a cover of Cameo "Word Up" I believe (Wedding Present?). What else was there?
AoC actually eventually turned themselves into a pretty tight, slick, mainstream-aspiring outfit who could put on a show. We are not talking Zapp-level, but I was grudgingly impressed by how much they'd improved.
Also curious what you mean by the swallowing Rock whole in the '90s thing? Struggling to recall alt-rock bands doing Funk and Disco covers...
There was a kind of parodic alt thing vis a vis black music, Ween, that whole 'sex' album that Beck did etc etc. Almost a way of bypassing the shame of appropriation and redundancy - we're doing it, doing it actually well, but we're honkies so there's got to be a wink involved.
Yes I remember that Word Up cover, but I can't think who did it. And perhaps it was only a very small boomlet. It felt like an idea that was in the air, though. Run-DMC and the Beasties having such massive success with a kind of funk-rock fusion clearly inspired a few people to try to get to the same destination from the other direction.
By "swallowing Rock whole", I mean what came after Grunge: funk-metal, basically. The Red Hot Chili Peppers becoming the biggest band in the world for a while. Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock. And at the highbrow end, Rage Against the Machine.
I recently watched the horrifying Woodstock '99 documentary, though, and I'm still suffering secondhand trauma from that. So maybe I am overstating the importance of that sound!
I think what you are talking about is really nu-metal. A student of mine did quite a convincing paper on this, arguing for its experimental pop status. Not convincing enough to make me want to give it all a re-listen, though. I did quite like Korn for a moment - "Freak on A Leash" has that weird geek-rap bit in it, in that so-bad-its-good zone. A later video they did had the band substituted for by gangsta rappers, and it was quite a funky grind of tune as well.
Funk-metal I associate more with the early '90s when there was droves of bands closely modelled on the Chilli Peppers. I once did a piece on the phenom, which involved listening to loads of awful bands whose names I forget. Well, here it is in fact https://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2013/02/metal-breakdown-funk-metal-phenomenon.html
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I remember Dance Your Ass Off best the way I first heard it, covered by That Petrol Emotion in about 1986. It was part of that boomlet of indie / rock bands covering disco or funk hits, including Age Of Chance's Disco Inferno. It felt like a complete evolutionary dead end at the time. Little did we know that was the sound that would swallow Rock whole in the 90s.
Was there a whole bunch of them? I remember Age of Chance doing "Kiss" - turning a silk purse into a sow's ear, I think, is how David Stubbs put it. And somebody did a cover of Cameo "Word Up" I believe (Wedding Present?). What else was there?
AoC actually eventually turned themselves into a pretty tight, slick, mainstream-aspiring outfit who could put on a show. We are not talking Zapp-level, but I was grudgingly impressed by how much they'd improved.
Also curious what you mean by the swallowing Rock whole in the '90s thing? Struggling to recall alt-rock bands doing Funk and Disco covers...
There was a kind of parodic alt thing vis a vis black music, Ween, that whole 'sex' album that Beck did etc etc. Almost a way of bypassing the shame of appropriation and redundancy - we're doing it, doing it actually well, but we're honkies so there's got to be a wink involved.
Yes I remember that Word Up cover, but I can't think who did it. And perhaps it was only a very small boomlet. It felt like an idea that was in the air, though. Run-DMC and the Beasties having such massive success with a kind of funk-rock fusion clearly inspired a few people to try to get to the same destination from the other direction.
By "swallowing Rock whole", I mean what came after Grunge: funk-metal, basically. The Red Hot Chili Peppers becoming the biggest band in the world for a while. Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock. And at the highbrow end, Rage Against the Machine.
I recently watched the horrifying Woodstock '99 documentary, though, and I'm still suffering secondhand trauma from that. So maybe I am overstating the importance of that sound!
Oh right, I see what you mean.
I think what you are talking about is really nu-metal. A student of mine did quite a convincing paper on this, arguing for its experimental pop status. Not convincing enough to make me want to give it all a re-listen, though. I did quite like Korn for a moment - "Freak on A Leash" has that weird geek-rap bit in it, in that so-bad-its-good zone. A later video they did had the band substituted for by gangsta rappers, and it was quite a funky grind of tune as well.
Funk-metal I associate more with the early '90s when there was droves of bands closely modelled on the Chilli Peppers. I once did a piece on the phenom, which involved listening to loads of awful bands whose names I forget. Well, here it is in fact https://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2013/02/metal-breakdown-funk-metal-phenomenon.html
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