Impression of the Instore concert @ ShoePirates, Apeldoorn. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on May 26, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Impression of the Instore concert @ NoBoysAllowed, Den Haag. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on May 10, 2010 Filed under: Grunge |
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Impression of the Instore concert @FreshKicks, Brussel. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on May 10, 2010 Filed under: Reggae |
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Don’t miss this final concert! the Stutters will give away an insane performance @ the best sneakerstore in the heart of the country: Shoepirates!
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Published on Apr 23, 2010 Filed under: Britpop |
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In retrospect, the Puma Suede (AKA Puma Clyde, AKA Puma State) and hip-hop were made for each other, so it’s no wonder the Suede was THE shoe to rock back in the day. Both are designed to move right while looking tight.
B-boys and graffiti artists needed a shoe that was tough and grippy but that looked clean and sharp everywhere you took it. Fat laces or none at all, perfectly color matched to your clothes or even in mismatched pairs (a la MC Shan), the Suede had you covered.
As Walt “Clyde” Frazier said of his namesake version of the Suede:
It wasn’t just a basketball shoe…you could style in this shoe. Off the court, I used to wear my mink coat and my big hat and I’d have my Clydes on. No one said anything about that. If you wore Clydes man…you were cool. You knew what was happening.
Out-hustling and out-muscling. Driving and mesmerizing. Swooping and hooping and looking cool doing it. Now that’s hip-hop.
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Published on Apr 23, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Folks will argue back and forth all day about where hip-hop was born (see The Bridge Wars, KRS-One vs. MC Shan circa 1987). But you could do worse than say it all got started in the rec room of 1520 Sedgewick Avenue, an exceptionally ugly high-rise apartment building in the Bronx* where on August 11, 1973, Clive Campbell, a young Jamaican immigrant, threw a party to help his sister buy school clothes. For 50 cents (or 25 cents for girls), you could have seen Clive (or DJ Kool Herc, as he’s now known) playing two turntables at once and his friend Coke La Rock shouting over a microphone before anyone else had.
*And for the criminally scientific-minded among you, both Bronx and Brooklyn are corruptions of names left over from the 1600’s when New York was still Nieuw-Nederland.
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Published on Apr 23, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Respect for the past updated by the possibilities of the present. Practical work combined with love. Energetic dancing married to the sophistication of jazz. Is it any wonder that the Suede became the signature shoe of Acid Jazz fans and performers? A classic style, steeped in history, that still comes back year after year in fresh variations. That helps you move like crazy on the dance floor and looks great doing it. The Suede is a shoe that works and a shoe you can love. (Honestly, we get a bit teary just thinking about it.)
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Published on Apr 22, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Published on Apr 15, 2010 Filed under: Grunge |
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Not surprisingly, the marriage of jazz and dance culture has sometimes led to conflicts and misunderstandings. Beyond the dead-end “This is/isn’t real jazz!” argument, there were deep commercial issues to solve when a culture so dedicated to preservation of its legacy met up with a culture based in sampling and remixing.
Fortunately, both sides have seen the benefits of coming to legal accommodation. One of the biggest acid jazz hits ever, and the song that probably introduced the genre to more people than any other, was US3’s 1992 track “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),” a respectful remix of Herbie Hancock’s F-minor groove, “Cantaloupe Island”.
What became Blue Note’s first gold single and platinum album in its 54-year history was the result of a far-sighted decision to give US3 producer Geoff Wilkinson unlimited access to the entire Blue Note catalogue. Norah Jones has since become the label’s cash lifeline, but “Cantaloop” proved that respect for the past and dance floor success need not be mutually exclusive.
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Published on Apr 15, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Three years ago, Nas proclaimed “Hip-Hop is dead”. Not everyone agreed, but enough did that the title alone caused controversy and a wave of answer songs. Which tells you something.
In the past 30 years, hip-hop went from nothing to arguably the dominant form of popular music in the world. And you could say that its success is what has led to all the lyrical hand wringing. Any time an art form gets big, there will be a counter-current of purists who want to go back to some imagined pure origin when definitions and distinctions were clear and everyone knew who the “real” players were. Look at jazz, for example.
What people forget is that no popular art form is born from nothing. They’re all bastards, hybrids, combinations of this and that. That’s where their life comes from and why they continue to grow. The natural lifecycle of a successful form like hip-hop is that it spreads out and drops its seeds into new hybrid forms. The real power of hip-hop is its appeal to young people around the world who see themselves as voiceless. The tools of hip-hop are readily available to them in a way that the tools of, say, classical music, are not.
So until the world changes in some very fundamental ways, hip-hop is not dead. It’s just gestating.
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Published on Apr 14, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Since at that time we weren’t open on Sunday, I decided to give Television a try out, about three and a half weeks hence, on a Sunday. The admission was one dollar. I thought the band was terrible; screechy, ear-splitting guitars and a jumble of sounds that “I just didn’t get.” I said, ” NEVER AGAIN!!!” After much cajoling and haranguing, however, I was persuaded to let them play again with another “hot’ new rock group from Forest Hills, Queens. They were called “The Ramones.” They were even worse than Television. At that first gig at CBGB, they were the most untogether group I’d ever heard. They kept starting and stopping-equipment breaking down-and yelling at each other. They were a mess.
- Hilly Kristal, Founder of CBGB
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Published on Apr 13, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Classic tools of the hip-hop trade:
Technics 1200SL turntables
Roland TR-808 drum machine
Akai MPC-series sampler
E-mu SP-1200 sampler
Of course, you can also just use a microphone and a tape recorder.
Now go make a record.
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Published on Mar 30, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Back in the days, there was a certain style of dress. One of the major pieces we used to always rock was Puma. There were other sneakers but the focus was the Suede, and if you didn’t have that look you weren’t representing.
Back then it was about looking good. When the Electric Boogie guys used to break, I was in Beat Street at the time, so when I seem ‘em dancing and my boy Wade was dancing he had on the Pumas, you know what I’m saying? It was intense. Puma was one of the best sneakers to dance in too. It felt right for the foot. I remember the way you had to lace them…it was crazy. You could wear ‘em when you were going out or you could wear them just to play ball.
The Puma was always a fly sneaker, man. You had to have a pair of Pumas. If you didn’t, you better not come around here. Brooklyn loved the Puma. Harlem and The Bronx loved the Puma. The Puma was running things.
- Doug E Fresh
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Published on Mar 30, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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The early history of Punk is signposted by a pair of now famous concerts in the summer of 1976. Each was attended by relatively few people at the time, but a very large percentage of those who did attend were inspired to form their own bands:
June 4, 1976: Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. The Sex Pistols play to a scant 40 people, but amongst those few are Tony Wilson (impressario, owner of the Hacienda nightclub and Factory Records), Howard Devoto, Steve Diggle and Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner (Joy Division/New Order), music journalist Paul Morley, producer Martin Hannett and Morrissey. Oh, and Mick Hucknall of Simply Red (Not sure if he counts.)
July 4, 1976: One month later, on the date of the US Bicentennial, The Ramones perform their first UK gig at London’s Roundhouse. In the audience are members of The Clash, The Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks. A monumental date in Anglo-American relations.
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Published on Mar 25, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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The guitar fury of Raw Power coursed from the fingers of one Mr. James Williamson who quit music altogether after falling out with Iggy a few years later. He took a degree in electrical engineering and began a long career in Silicon Valley, retiring as Director of the Technology Standards Office for Sony Electronics before re-joining Iggy for the Stooges reunion and sinfully-delayed induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
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Published on Mar 25, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Like the song says, PUNKS NOT DEAD. But like any living thing, it has grown and mutated into a wide variety of forms over the past four decades: Hardcore, Oi!, Post-punk, Punk pop, Cowpunk, Skate punk, Ska punk, Anarcho punk, Folk punk, Celtic punk, Thrash, Straightedge, New Wave.
Not all of them stuck with the “three chords and a cloud of dust” aesthetic of early Punk, but they all took its stripped-down approach, its love of distortion and noise and most important, they all took on punk’s simple, straight-ahead attitude: “Hand me that thing and get out of the way. I can do this.” You don’t need a lot to get started. You start with what you have. And that spirit, whether expressed through music or art or hacking or politics is the real legacy of the punk movement. Get out of the way. We can do this.
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Published on Mar 25, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Impression of the Instore concert @ ReIssue, Tilburg. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on Mar 17, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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For me the Suede represents when sneakers got fly. Suddenly they went from canvas to the leather and suede and they really made you stand out from the crowd…Puma made sneakers that were more than athletic wear, they made them shoes style icons.
- Fab 5 Freddie
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Published on Mar 15, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Even at the time, it seemed a bit old school. The plot was cliché. The acting was amateurish. But hey, they were amateurs. The actors in 1983’s Wild Style were for the most part the real b-boys, taggers, DJ’s and MC’s who were then inventing the multimedia street art that would become hip-hop. And for that reason, the movie has been rightly recognized as a seminal cultural document that captured a scene and inspired a worldwide movement. (Though, contrary to popular belief, it isn’t actually a documentary.)
Prior to 1983, director Charlie Ahearn’s resumé consisted of the grindhouse martial arts flick, The Deadly Art of Survival. It was while showing this film that he met Fred Braithwaite (AKA Fab 5 Freddie) and within two minutes, they decided to do a film together capturing what was then an extremely local phenomenon.
After bluffing their way to some start-up money from a couple of European tv stations, they gathered together a proto-superstar cast, from lead actor and legendary grafitti artist Lee Quiñones to Rock Steady Crew, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Moe Dee, Grand Mixer DXT, Rammellzee and a number of locals including a guy named Pookie who, when handed a starter pistol to use in a robbery scene, bluntly refused and calmly reached into his car to pull out his (real) sawed-off shotgun instead.
Today, Wild Style is namechecked by everyone from Nas to the Beastie Boys and revered from Berlin to Tokyo as the spark that spread the fire. And watching the spontaneous, infectious energy of the final amphitheatre concert scene, it’s easy to see how this very local culture came to take over the world.
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Published on Mar 15, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Impression of the Instore concert @ Avenue, Antwerpen. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on Mar 12, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Shopping Saturday will never be the same..
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Published on Mar 10, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Re-issue is located in the heart of Tiburg- the telefoonstraat to be exact. This store is know for its fine selection of re-issues and we’re proud to present the third edition of Suede Road Live concert at this joint. This Saturday (the 13th) will not be your ordinary shopping day: it will be a rocking shopping day! See you at 5pm!
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Published on Mar 10, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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1973 was the year that Walt “Clyde” Frazier asked Puma for a simple, straight-ahead low top with a wider last and a smooth but sticky sole to help him manoeuvre on court. That shoe, a signature version of the Suede dubbed the Clyde, immediately became a hit, as much for its understated style as for its toughness and traction.
Those same qualities soon found it a home on-stage and off among the young musicians thrashing, leaping and pounding their way to the musical style that would become punk. Tough. Simple. Cool. (And that extra traction doesn’t hurt when the stage is 10 feet square and slick with beer and sweat.)
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Published on Mar 10, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Today (Sat. march 6) Jonas AKA JtotheC will give away an insane performance @ Avenue in Antwerp. He will be performing along with the Bad Muthas.. do I need to say more?! They’ll bring a Philicorda GM 751 organ, a microkorg and a nord lead synth, 2 rane TTM57 mixers, a roland sp303 sampler, 2 laptops, 3 turntables, a projector and a tambourine. Damn funky! The performance will start @ 4 pm, lange klarenstraat 29.
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Published on Mar 06, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Impression of the Instore concert @ Seventyfive, Amsterdam. If you can’t see this movie, click here.
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Published on Mar 03, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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One of the first things you notice about the acid jazz scene is that it’s primarily a UK-based phenomenon with a few European offshoots, but the musical sources are almost exclusively American. How’d that happen? It’s not unusual for young people in one country to pick up and run with styles from another country. (Just think Chuck Berry > Beatles or Kraftwerk > Afrika Bambaataa.) But in this case, there’s a bit more to it.
By the 1950’s, jazz in America had become mainly something you listened to in a sitting position. As more simple and energetic styles of popular music emerged, jazz left the dance floor and entered the connoisseur’s realm.
In the UK on the other hand, dance culture not only survived but by the mid-80’s, it was exploding as young people stormed the clubs every weekend. And while it was never as big as many other styles, there were groups who still practised the old-style, spectacular form of jazz dance, one of the most famous being the IDJ or I Dance Jazz posse. Jazz loving DJ’s like Gilles Peterson at the Dingwalls club in Camden began to produce regular nights for people who liked to dance to fast-paced jazz and from there it was a natural step to merge old jazz records with the modern technology and techniques that proved so infectious in more, shall we say, drug-n-bass fuelled venues.
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Published on Mar 03, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Like many other genre names, “acid jazz” started as a joke. Gilles Peterson and Chris Bangs were DJing at this art centre in 1987 when…well, we’ll let Gilles tell it…
“Acid jazz happened when Bangsy and me were playing at the Waterman’s Art Centre in Brentford. A one-off gig by Nicky Holloway. I think Paul Oakenfold or Pete Tong were DJing. It was all ‘get on one, matey’ and it was banging acid house. They’d just got back from Ibiza, and they were introducing stuff like Phuture ‘Acid Trax’ and all that stuff. Bangsy and I were like, ‘what the fuck are we gonna play’, because it was different; something had changed. So Bangsy pulled out ‘Iron Leg’ by Mickey & the Soul Generation, put the record on, and “F*** that, if that was acid house, this is acid jazz!”
What he doesn’t mention here is that he was also messing with the speed of the turntable, which gave the song, with its single held note distorted guitar intro, an even trippier feel.
And for the record (so to speak) Mickey and the Soul Generation were a smoking local funk (not jazz) band from San Antonio, Texas back in the 60’s. UK rare groove diggers discovered their massive breaks potential in the late 80’s, but it wasn’t until DJ Shadow started repping them that they became more widely known in their own country.
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Published on Mar 03, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Interview Dret & Krulle op raptalent.nl.
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Published on Feb 26, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Dret & Krulle Finale Grote Prijs 12 December ‘09 Paradiso, Amsterdam. Check out Samen Sterk Records and GPvNL for more info. If you can’t see the video, check out here.
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Published on Feb 25, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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About 25 square meters. A narrow street with a dozen of people. A booming soundsystem. Free beers and the Best Hip Hop act around. This Saturday @ Seventyfive, Nieuwe Hoogstraat 24, Amsterdam. Don’t miss it!
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Published on Feb 25, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Never Stop was the first single of this UK/US jazz-funk group. It reached up to number 43 in the UK TOP 75 October 1991. Can’t see this video? click here!
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Published on Feb 25, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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“It seems every decade I get resurgence in my audiences. I remember coming to London and the vibe was very chilled. A lot of young stylish people would come to my shows and the Suede was part of their look.”
- Roy Ayers
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Published on Feb 25, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Our funk zooms like you hit the Mary Jane
They flock to booms man boogie had to change
Who freaks the clips with mad amount percussion
Where kinky hair goes to unthought-of dimensions
Why’s it so fly cause hip hop kept some drama
When Butterfly rocked his light blue-suede Pumas
Digable Planets’ 1992 classic “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” reminds us that the spirit of acid jazz combines respect for the past with the possibilities of the present. Beyond that, it’s difficult to pin down an exact definition. Sometimes described as a combination of jazz, funk, hip-hop and electronics or “jazz for club people,” acid jazz is as much a self-identification as a musical genre.
To be into acid jazz is to be first and foremost a digger, someone who combs second-hand stores for vintage vinyl, at least in spirit. While there are acid jazz musicians who don’t use existing recordings and even pride themselves on playing only traditional instruments, the goal and the mentality are generally the same: incorporating the sound of jazz/funk/soul circa 1960 to 1980 to make something new that still retains that authentic feel.
Which brings us to the subject of love. It is no disrespect to say that acid jazz is a derivative form. Because at its heart is a love for the music on which it’s based. Because really, whether you’re digging through dusty shop basements in search of an obscure killer groove or learning complex jazz progressions, you have to work. You have to be dedicated. You have to know your stuff. You have to love it.
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Published on Feb 23, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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1973 is the year that CBGB opened at the corner of Bowery and Bleeker. The club would soon become the premier showcase for punk and new wave bands, but the founder’s original plan was to feature Country, Bluegrass and Blues (which is where the name came from.)
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Published on Feb 23, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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Published on Feb 18, 2010 Filed under: Acid Jazz |
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Published on Feb 18, 2010 Filed under: Hip Hop |
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Published on Feb 18, 2010 Filed under: Punk |
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The first local signposts along the Suede Road are now standing.
Which is another way of saying that the custom illustrated display stands for three new Puma Suede colorways are now in selected sneaker boutiques around Belgium and Holland.
Sneakerhead pilgrims travelling the Road of musical history (and who just want to get their feet into the latest and greatest Suedes) are advised to get down to their nearest emporium of sneaker sweetness to check out the fresh color combinations and the Suede’s contributions to the worlds of punk, hip-hop and acid jazz.
The retailer section of the site has a full list of the locations, which include SeventyFive (Amsterdam), Re-issue (Tilburg), Avenue (Antwerp) and Fresh Kicks (Brussels).
And keep an eye here for in-store concerts and other events at these locations.
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Published on Feb 12, 2010 Filed under: News & Events |