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Introducing Amazon Music Unlimited. It features 40 million songs and bags of lovingly curated playlists and stations. Own an Echo? Just ask “Alexa: sign me up for Amazon Music Unlimited” – or click here:
http://amazon.co.uk/gounlimited
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“It’s nonsense. It’s bollocks. You can translate ‘bollocks’ into Czech” – Boris Johnson
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|_| |_|17.11.16 ISSUE 808
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* Club Classics for our 808th
* Elton John to finally spill?
* Charts: Clean Bandit/Sean Paul
>> 808, great <<
Our birthday celebration
Popbitch has always been put together by, and for, people who love pop music. So when we realised this week would be our 808th issue, we decided to commemorate it the only way we know how: weirdly.
The Roland 808 drum machine has soundtracked our lives. It changed the world of music with its contributions to hip-hop, club culture, dance production – and still remains a pre-eminent sound of pop.
So this week, intertwined with the usual celebrity filth and media gossip, are some of our favourite stories from the club and music scenes – as well as a few playlists which highlight some 808 classics.
We hope you enjoy.
Following in Farage’s inglorious footsteps, Ronnie O’Sullivan was spotted on a plane to Belfast this week reading his own novel, Framed.
>> Sight for sore eyes <<
Dance until you drop
House music lost one of its founding fathers this week. David Mancuso mentored many of the great club DJs through his disco-era club, The Loft, including Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles and Tony Humphries.
We remember one of his trips to London. Noticing that Mancuso was putting eye-drops in after pretty much every record, we asked one of his crew if he was ill, or was suffering from bad allergies or something.
Erm no, we were told. “That’s liquid acid. He’s been at it all day”.
Respect. And RIP.
DJ Lisa I’Anson was once spotted at a party in Ibiza’s Manumission Motel having liquid LSD dropped in her eyes, while being pleasured by a lady with a strap-on.
>> Big Questions <<
Who’s asking what this week?
Which usually-beloved British actor wasn’t making many new friends on a recent trip to a London hospital? He feared a Pink Floyd gig had caused him permanent ear damage – which maybe explains why so many people heard him shout “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” at hospital staff who didn’t give him immediate attention.
(We’d name him, but he’s already threatened legal action against one paper on this story…)
808 State say their music only took off when Radio 1 DJ “Woo” Gary Davies heard Pacific State in Ibiza and started playing it on his show.
>> Hairs and greases <<
The cost of cosmetics
At a recent corporate event at a London studio, producer Mark Ronson asked for his hair stylist to be present at a cost of 1,500 quid to the client.
What miracles does a stylist have to perform in order to warrant a pricetag of a grand and a half? Not much. One application of hair gel – and that was that.
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Amazon’s Dance Right Now Playlist: The state of all things musical and electronic at the business end of 2016 gets a summing up in Dance Right Now. You heard. Dance. Right Now. It’s not up for discussion. http://amzn.to/2fIiLFr
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>> Vinaigrette rien <<
The devil’s in the details
Elton John has announced that he’s signed a deal to write the memoir of his “crazy life”.
The idea of Elton telling all is a tantalising one, and the book is slated for release in 2019. But what with all the various out-of-court settlements, non-disclosure agreements and other such arrangements he’s demanded over the years, we’re not entirely sure what details he’s going to be able to include.
Regardless, he may want to run his proposed manuscript by his legal team. We’re not experts but if he attempts to publish some of the details he’s been pitching to his editors, he may well find himself in a little bit of trouble.
A new episode of Law & Order SVU which featured Gary Cole as a Trump-like presidential candidate with a penchant for sexual aggrandisement has been dropped.
>> House keeping <<
American creation myths
Juan Atkins bought an 808 early in the 80s and, together with schoolfriend Derrick May, started to play around on synthesisers until they developed the sound that came to be Detroit techno.
The story goes that one month May couldn’t pay his rent so decided to sell some of his production equipment. Atkins warned him not to sell to any of their rival Detroit DJs or producers, who might copy them.
So May went off to Chicago and sold an 808 to Frankie Knuckles, DJ at the Warehouse club. And Chicago house was born.
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Amazon Music Best of Classic House: Classic House is probably the best kind of house – along with Run’s House, Bleak House, the TV show House, and any public house. But yeah, Classic House is the best. Clue’s in the name. http://amzn.to/2fjP1Ov
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>> Happy clappy <<
Like a room without a roof
Pharrell Williams’ Happy was built using an 808. The clapping was programmed with one, which still defines what we think of as hand-claps on any record.
When Pharrell took Happy into the studio, he asked the mix engineer to make it sound like a combination of three things:
1/ Motown
2/ OutKast’s Hey Ya, and
3/ “A Phil Collins song”
The 808 first emerged in SOS Band’s Just Be Good To Me, Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and Freeez’s I.O.U.
>> Load of Cox <<
Tackling the decks
Leeds amateur Rugby League team, The Queens, went on a team-bonding break to Ibiza. They were queuing for Manumission when one of their forwards was mistaken for DJ Carl Cox. Ten minutes later they were all in the VIP area drinking free champagne.
By 3am the group was still in the VIP lounge. Staff came over to ask ‘Carl’ to DJ, saying “Look lads, you’ve done in a few grand of free booze… come on Carl, give us half an hour”.
Introduced as “special guest Carl Cox”, the rugby player went up to the decks, turned every dial he could see up to the maximum and started shouting “We are Queens. We are Queens.”
It was only at this point that the Manumission team started to wonder if perhaps this wasn’t Carl Cox after all.
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Amazon Music’s 80s Dance Classics: Hugely influential sounds of Joyce Sims, ESG and Dinosaur L do their best to put the next three decades of electronic music to shame. http://amzn.to/2fYQVDZ
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>> Wall of sound <<
The BBC vs The DPRK
BBC World Service has announced that it will be broadcasting to North Korea next year. Hopefully it will pay off but the citizens of DPRK are not all massive fans of radio.
Cemented into the wall of every home is a state-issued radio. Every morning and evening for a couple of hours, the radio comes on automatically to play propaganda, news and nationalist music. And you can’t turn it off.
The BBC isn’t really flavour of the month out there either. BBC World was available to expats and tourists in the international hotels, until that Panorama documentary screened earlier this summer. Now there’s just Al Jazeera.
Nominative Determinism Of The Week: The statement on the Lauri Love extradition was sent out to hacks by a Home Office press officer… Rosie Libell!
>> Stroke victims <<
Noel loves little people
At the opening of Space in Ibiza one year, the club-owners did what party promoters since the start of time have done to create a splash: they hired a truckload of dwarves.
Particularly enamoured of them was Noel Gallagher, who stroked the nape of each little person as they passed him, claiming that tickling a dwarf’s neck was “good luck”.
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It’s not all about the rave though. Just ask “Alexa: play me sad indie from the 90s” or “Alexa: play me heavy metal from the 80s”. Try the Amazon Music app, or visit: https://music.amazon.co.uk/playlists
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>> Hmmms <<
Pup, tyres, XTC
A drop-and-drag Trump Wall – see which countries you can demonise and alienate!
http://bit.ly/2f3tPeq
Various tyres being flung down a ski jump:
http://bit.ly/2fYO12a
Think you know London? What about a pre-Christmas quiz outing on a Routemaster bus?
http://thisbus.com/CapitalQuiz
Cool interactive chart of 10,000 words ranked by ‘Trumpiness’:
http://bit.ly/2fIz5Gb
Local News Of The Week – Where Are They Now? edition:
http://bit.ly/2f7p5YA
That James Corden Sainsbury’s Christmas ad tune…
http://bit.ly/2fYL1Uu
…has echoes of Nilsson’s Gotta Get Up, no?
http://bit.ly/2gk0yl6
The Vogue guide to political activism – How To Wear Safety Pins. That’ll be sure to win over the Rust Belt:
http://bit.ly/2f3zUYn
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Thanks to: opus, JS, poshduckhunter RL, AM, NS, PC, RL, bobbifleckmann, JMC, AH, RK
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Old Jokes Home:
Q/ What’s the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?
A/ You only have to punch the info into a drum machine once.
Still Bored?
Fancy a Rolf Harris original?
http://bit.ly/2g03e6O