DOUBLE TROUBLE & REBEL MC - STREET TUFF

Desire
(L Guest, M Menson, M West)

"Tell me something... you cant play bass!"

Virtually inescapable across the U.K. radio waves and dancefloors during 1989, this hip house anthem worked its way onto a million compilation albums and spawned an equal number of remixes. The brainchild of British MC Michael West, the late Michael Mensen (RIP), Leigh Guest and Garage DJ Karl "Tuff Enuff" Brown, Double Trouble scored two U.K. hits with "Just Keep Rockin" and "Street Tuff" before the Rebel MC went solo with "Better World" off his debut album "Rebel Music". Double Trouble would follow up the success with "Talk Back" and "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" in addition to producing a string of remixes for artists such as Snap!, Fast Eddie and Joe Smooth.

Street Tuff soared to number 3 on the charts. With its infectious bassline, ubiquitous hip house "yeah" vocal sample looped over a shuffling rhythm and Rebel's "good time rhymes" ("Feel the music and ya wonder, is he a yankee? No I'm a Londoner!"), Street Tuff has withstood the test of time and still receives the odd spin on todays dancefloors - a rare feet for the now sadly forgotten hip house genre.

Version Control: 21 Jump Beet!

The 7" and 12" contain the "Scar" and "Ruff" versions. The Scar was the radio/video edit. In an dizzying display of remix mayhem, Street Tuff was released in no less than 11 versions! All versions are included on the Desire EP release "21 Mixes" which contained (you guessed it) 21 mixes of Street Tuff and the former hit "Just Keep Rockin". Longsy D, pre-"Fatboy" mode Norman Cook and Robin Albers contributed to the knob twiddling making the release a very worthwhile pick up.

D MOB - WE CALL IT ACIEEED

FFRR
(Haisman, Danny D)

"Aciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied!!!"

To those involved, 1988's "Summer of Love" was a social revolution. A never-ending party fighting for the right to dance and a hedonistic foray into an unknown world of disused warehouses, squelchy Roland TB303 basslines and ecstasy fuelled excess. Soccer hooligans swapped the knuckledusters for smiley tee shirts and Kickers and joined the luv'd up brigade in listening and dancing to "repetitive beats".

Oakenfold, Walker, Holloway and Rampling might have imported the Balaeric beats from Ibiza into the U.K, but underground truly went overground when Acid house records spiralled to the top of the National pop charts. The accompanying media (read: The Sun) frenzy and its reports of "drug fuelled island kids" only helped popularise the movement and it wasn't long before the official emblem of Acid House -the smiley face- adorned everything from clothing and record covers to magazines and rave flyers.
To let you know it had arrived, London based producer "Dancin Danny D" recruited Gary Haisman -a locally known "nutter" and clubber- and immortalised the catchcry of a generation onto wax. "Aciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!" went the chorus over a sparse rumbling bassline. The chorus ad-libs were provided by an Akai sampler spitting out the word "psychopath" repeatedly. Sheer madness. And the "institution" reacted accordingly: Banned from Top of the Pops and BBC Television. Withdrawn from the shelves of WH Smith Music and blacklisted on the playlists of school discos across the country.

American producer DJ Pierre and his outfit Phuture coined the phrase "Acid House" in reference to the distorted sounds the Roland TB303 would generate by filtering the bass beyond their intended parameters. The genre name then became associated with ecstasy. Not too long after, it was the scenes worst kept secret: "If you thought it was a drug...now you know you're wrong" rapped Haisman. But those dancing to such tunes at illegal warehouse partys knew different. (The ultimate thinly veiled deception would come later in the form of another record which shouted "Es are good, Es are good!" during it's chorus!)

We Call it Acieeed (the additional "e"s in the title not going unnoticed by the press and ravers alike) was not the first acid house record, but its notable for being one of the first to achieve mainstream success and formally announce to the world that Generation X were taking matters into their own hands. Despite its ban, it peaked at number 3 on the Gallup Top 40 and will remain a theme tune for many of the Class of 1988.

Version Control: "Dropping" the right mix...

If 1988 was the time to "get right on one matey", the appropriately named "Matey" radio edit or full length mix is the version that will invoke the most flashbacks of traffic jams along the M25 and baggy hooded tops. The "Living Beat" remix produced by Simon "Bass How Low Can You Go" Harris surfaced later in the year - keep an eye out for the white 12" cover.

LA MIX - CHECK THIS OUT

BCM/A&M Records (UK)/Breakout

(Adams, Freilich)

"Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch check this out y'all!"

Almost everyone involved in the clubbing or house music scene in the late 1980s would have heard of the name "Les Adams". A regular contributor to the Disco Mix Club (DMC) record pool and remix service, Adams name was listed as the official knob twiddler of numerous re-edits including MARRS' groundbreaking "Pump up the Volume", Inner City's "Big Fun" and Cameo's funk masterpiece "Word Up" (to name but a few). So it came as no surprise when in 1988, Adams was revealed as the producer behind a massive sample-based house hit released under the guise of "L.A. Mix" (alongside wife Emma Freilich - talk about holy dance matrimony!). Despite its American sounding moniker, "Check This Out" was another British house release riding hot on the coat-tails of Bomb the Bass' "Beat Dis" and S-Express's "Theme to S-Express" released beforehand. Although it included similar elements of cut n paste soundbites and vocal grabs, "Check This Out" poked fun at the then excessive use of samples in dance music: The ubiquitous "This is a journey into sound" and "pump up the volume" samples were followed up by a voice yelling "Oh not again" and "Get Off"!

Either ironically, or in some post-modernist reference to art imitating art imitating art (yeah, I'm confused to!), the track then jacked the famous "Whoo Yeah!" hip house beat (see: Rob Base & DJ E-z Rock/ Fast Eddie/ Beatmasters et al) before outroing with a interpolation of the Munsters T.V. theme!

Original in its use of samples? Ummm....Not quite. Original sounding track title then? Definitely not! A monster of a house anthem that any self-respecting DJ should have in his/her music collection and saved eBay search list? You betchya!

Version Control: The Cuban Miss Crisis avoided by Fierce warfare!

The "Fierce vocal" mix is the extended version of the radio edit and clocking in at just under six minutes, it's the one that is the most value for money in terms of sample count! Samples used included "This is a Test", "Burn this house down" and the famous "whistling quote" ("You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow. ") from 1944's "To Have and Have Not". The Salt Lake City and Sweaty Cuban Mixes are listenable but drop the major elements that make the track what it is.

BOMB THE BASS - BEAT DIS!

Mister Ron/BCM/Rhythm King
(Emilio Pasquez, Tim Simenon)

"The names have been changed to protect the innocent"

Dance folklore regales that Tim Simenon was a 19 year old DJ working at the trendy Wag Club in London when he produced a sample-laden montage of beats and cut up sounds for 150 pounds. Had that money been spent on a Sega Master System and copy of Out Run instead, the course of dance music might have ran along a different trajectory. Perhaps in an alternative dimension, Beat Dis was not released as a disguised "Mister Ron" imprint (to disguise the fact it was a British -and not American- release) and therefore didn't destroy dancefloors the world over, heralding the arrival of the British house movement. Imagine thousands of compilations not including an "extended dis" version. Imagine millions of human ears deprived of the "Keep this frequency clear!"and "Pump That Bass" vocal samples dropped over a frenetic transformed beep-like hook and earth-shattering drum rhythm.

Well, thank God that Mr Simenon did indeed spend that money on producing one of the greatest and most exhilarating dance anthems of all time - which subsequently led to further singles "Don't Make Me Wait" and "Say a Little Prayer" from the "Into The Dragon" album, in addition to production work for Neneh Cherry ("Buffalo Stance"), Depeche Mode and countless others.

In 1988 Acid House would lead a generation into disused warehouses and fields to dance the night away as the "Summer of Love" signalled a revolution in thought, culture and music. In 1987, Bomb the Bass's "Beat Dis" ensured we were fully prepared as we "got down to the funky beat".

Version Control: Crazy Funky Cool?

"Into the Dragon" replaced the chorus line of "Get down to the funky beat" with "Get down to the crazy beat" and labelled it as the "U.S. version". Music press of the day speculated that stringent music censorship standards in the U.S. might have been responsible for removing a word that "sounded similar" to a swear-word. Interestingly, the actual U.S. single versions retained the original U.K. "funky" version so the renaming may have been an attempt by record label Rhythm King (also home to the Beatmasters, Baby Ford and Merlin) to imply an American connection with the release.

The "extended dis" is the 12" version and extends the breaks of the shorter 7" edit. Additional samples are also used including a quick drop of whistled "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" themetune. Look out also for the "Gangsta boogie" remix.