Sorry for being so M.I.A. lately (speaking of which, have you heard M.I.A.'s new single? It's sick and bizarre and I'm dying to hear it in a club. It's also another Switch production, which I'm very happy about), but I've been kind of spacey for a while now. I'm trying to set a course for my life (#heavy), and I'm still not sure what that entails. And every time I started a post, I would second guess what I was saying, trash it, attempt to start over, and eventually lose focus. That's about as typical me as typical me gets, and it's a pattern I'm determined cut out of my life. Here's to future consistency and productivity.
ON TO THE NEXT ONE:
The featured track of my post is the 1987 Frankie Knuckles version of the house classic, "Your Love." The track was originally a song by Jamie Principle, an early Chicago house fixture, with vocals by Adrienne Jett. I've known about it for a while now, but until today, I had no idea it was connected to one of my favorite releases of the new millennium. More on that at the end.
From what I've uncovered, this is an unreleased version of the first version of the song, though I was not able to locate the actual first version, because, according to Wikipedia it "was a 1984 demo only made available to DJs on acetates or reel-to-reel tapes."
This was the first commercial release, which was produced by Mark "Hot Rod" Trollan in 1986 on Persona Records. Knuckles made the original popular by spinning it constantly in the clubs, eventually prompting the release of Trollan's track.
The next year, 1987, Knuckles released his own version of the track on Trax Records, which is very similar, but with cleaner production, more depth, and a shorter running time. This is the above song, and it's considered to be one of the most important tracks in house music history. Other than releasing Phuture's seminal "Acid Tracks," which began the "Acid House" genre, this version of "Your Love" is probably Trax Records greatest claim to fame.
(Speaking of "Acid Tracks," you might not be aware that Kanye West heavily sampled the song on "On Sight," the opening track of his fantastic new album Yeezus. The track is co-written and co-produced by Daft Punk, so I'm guessing the idea to sample Phuture came from them, but still, he was one of the first to bring electro/dance/house into hip-hop when sampled the robots on "Stronger." While I was aware of both artists before "Stronger," it was that track that got me actively listening to not just Daft Punk and Kanye, but dance and hip-hop as a whole. It rocked the pop world, and it quite heavily changed mine. People talk a lot of shit about Kanye, and I suppose his persona is troubling at times, but you have to give respect to a person who is both a master of their craft and an extremely well versed historian of it. I'm still a little in shock that Kanye opened his new album with acid house. He somehow managed to take something pop music has been so overly saturated with in the past few years (house music) and make it both fresh and old school. All the respect.)
REFOCUS!
The progression doesn't stop there. Dance music never stops evolving, and it never stops borrowing. In the early 1980's Candi Stanton recorded a song for a documentary about the worlds fattest man, titled, "You Got the Love." Here's the original track, released by Source records in 1986.
And here's a great Guardian article about Candi that states that "she had no idea she had even recorded such a song."
In 1989, a new version "You Got the Love" was released on a bootleg by John Truelove, who had been spinning the a cappella track over the Knuckles version of "Your Love." Though it's very difficult to pin down exactly who did what first and which version is which, I believe this is the original 1989 bootleg by Truelove, released under the alias The Source.
In 1991, Truelove, again under the name The Source, released a mix of it by DJ Eren titled "You Got The Love (Erens Bootleg Mix)." That version reached number 4 on the UK Singles chart. It's pretty sick.
Now for the reason I'm talking about this in the first place. In 2008, the British band Florence + the Machine released a cover of the song, also titled "You Got the Love." I'm not the biggest fan of Florence Welch, but it's a pretty solid track, and the harps are excellent. But in regards to this version of the song, I didn't hear her's first. My introduction to this version of the song was a re-work of the Florence track by Jamie xx featuring his band The xx. It's unique for a cover. It is both a remix, because it uses (and chops up) Florence's vocals and some of her instrumentals (namely that harp), and it is a cover, because it features new lead vocals from Romy and Oliver of The xx, as well as new production work and instrumentation from Jamie xx himself. I was hooked the very first time I heard it, and my friends and I have been losing our minds to the track for years now. It's a big hit every single time I play it, and I still haven't gotten tired of it.
This is where the trail ends. Though there are other covers of the song, this was the line I followed, given that the track I identify most with is at the very end of it, and so my analyzation ends here.
I find dance music fascinating. Like I stated earlier, it never stops borrowing, and on top of that, more than any other genre, there are numerous versions for almost every dance hit. Read the comments for the Youtube videos of the tracks I posted. In very single one, a war rages on regarding the authenticity of the rip, the legitimacy of the version, and which one was "the REAL one," which one was "the best." I'm not sure which one I find "the best." I'm not even sure there is a best. All of them are bring something different in to the fray, and all of them go hard.
Before this afternoon, I was under the impression that "You Got the Love" was a Florence orignal. Additionally, though I knew about Trax, and I knew about Frankie Knuckles "Your Love," I hadn't done enough research to find out that not only is that not an original, but that the track was also connected to one of my favorite re-works/remixes/covers of all time.
When I play new tracks for my dad, he often immediately picks out the influences from artists of his time (and he's usually spot on). He loves to mention that "there's nothing new under the Sun." To a degree he's right. Dance music, more generally pop music, even more generally music in general, and by extension art itself, lives to be copied, borrowed, reworked, expanded upon, and transformed. (OK, that's probably just pretentious drivel, but don't roll your eyes off the page just yet.) Though just because something always comes from something else doesn't mean there is nothing new to be created and experienced. Dance music has a rich history, but it is also the music of our generation and the music of our future. Jamie xx is by far my favorite producer to emerge in the last five years. His sound is fresh, and his ear is impeccable. I'd guess he was very aware of the extensive timeline he was inserting himself into when he re-worked "You Got the Love." Still, he made it his own, and even though it's not a totally original creation, I find it one of the most modern, infectious tracks to come out in the last decade.
Like I mentioned about Kanye earlier, the best artists are able to channel the past while creating a new vision. Kanye is also keenly aware of this balance. In the opening verse of "On Sight," he says to disregard what we've been hearing. He knows what he's doing (channeling house) isn't that far from what we've been hearing, yet he also knows that he's doing it in a way that most of his audience hasn't experienced. He also knows, by enlisting Daft Punk, that he's enlisting THE most important, innovative force in dance music of his generation. It's all pretty mind-blowing when you stop and think about it. Both Jamie and Kanye know their history, but they don't let it stifle their work, they use it to propel them far, far into the future, and that's one of the primary reasons why I have nothing but respect for them.
Long live dance, long live pop, and long live art.
I'm done, y'all; thanks for staying with me.
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