Music for the Melbourne Shuffle
garry shepherd
need to work out how to dance to Techno, as it was called in the early
1990's. It was a new form, different to the Acid House that was around
late 1980's.
The early parties had quite a range of music, trance being one of the
style's which has survived. However what is called trance these days,
is more Hard Style rather than trance, and is confusing for people
trying to do the shuffle to. It has a limited range for dancing which
results in a fairly limited range of steps you can use.
The Melbourne Oldskool encouraged people to experiment both with
music, the clothing and the shuffle. It's time once more to do that I
reckon, otherwise we get stuck in a rut, get bored and end up doing
something else.
So lets get the ball rolling again, and experiment, to take the now
international Melbourne Shuffle into a new era, something we can call
our own, something you can say...Yep I helped create that, we all did,
dancers and music producers alike.
Lets hear some of the music you love doing the Melbourne Shuffle to.
Post links, and particularly please give credits to the music
composers, so we can hunt down more of their work, enjoy it, dance to
it, and please (as a musician) buy it. It's our job. The more time we
can spend creating music, instead of working in a factory or office,
the more music we can create and share. It helps everybody in the long
run. Most of the independant musicians have lots of free mp3 dowloads,
hoping one day you might buy the cd. So if you like it, when you can,
please buy it. Most of it you can get by mail order online.
-------------------------------------------------
To immediatly break the rule of giving credit to the music makers,
Here's an oldskool mix from Cyberdada - PBS radio Melbourne, by good
friend Andrez, January 1995. Now living and working in Tokyo Japan.
I'd love to know who the music was made by, but unfortunetly not all
the credits survived on this mix tape. So if anyone has a clue please
let us know. It's not all shuffle music, but it'll give you an idea of
the range of styles common during the Melbourne Oldskool era that
influenced the Shuffle's creation.
Cyberdada 1995 - Andrez
http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/49745/andrez951.mp3
The call out at the begining by Andrez to TOE - Theory Of Eveything,
was my weelky TV show. You can see some clips of it in the Media
section of the CybaFaeries site. Link below:
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/cybafaer/web/cyb905/media.htm
-----------------------------------
I've worked with dance music since the 1970's as a composer and live
musician. With what is often called Contemporary Dance, where the
shuffle is more what is called Social dance, in particular street
style. Often the contemporary dancer, classical, butoh, dance theatre
etc take inspiration from music they don't end up using in the final
dance work.
This is to broaden their movement range, which is usually called a
vocabulary in dance language. Vocabulary just like using written or
spoken language. The broader the range, the more you can draw on to
make your Shuffle interesting.
So, please experiment, don't rule out anything. It can even be
traditional folk music forms, which go back thousands of years. After
all, humans have been dancing since caveman days. For instance the
Melbourne Shuffle has a wide range of traditional folk music in it
drawn from Celtic, middle eastern, Greek and central European folk
styles, mainly as there are large communities from those regions
living in Melbourne
The 'T' made with your feet which Bigmilan describes in his Melbourne
Shuffle lessons as a starting point, is actually a ballet position -
Position 1 ! There were lots of girls dancing in the oldskool era,
most of them had been dancing since they were 5-6 years old at the
local dance school. Melbourne has as many of these as it has sporting
fields. So stuff they learned, such as ballet and tap, became mixed
with the bboy steps as they watched each other dancing.
So now the Melbourne Shuffle is international, lets see some other
cultural influences become part of the Melbourne Shuffle. There's some
brilliant moves from all over the world online these days, don't be
afraid of including your local infuences. In fact do it!! :) We wanna
see. Melbourne has over 180 languages spoken in a population of 5
million. We're not afraid of diversity, WE LOVE IT!!
So as far as music and the Melbourne Shuffle... It's about Freedom,
include what you like.
No rules, No limits, More power to us!! :)))
garry shepherd
REPLY, to add your post.
You can read posts on the forum, or by email. You can choose and
change these settings on your member page. You need to register to
post - it's easy. Anyone can register.
garry shepherd
it doesn't have an edit function for posts, unless you delete and redo
the post...groan. Maybe they'll fix it soon :)
So when I said...For instance the Melbourne Shuffle has a wide range
of traditional folk music in it drawn from Celtic, middle eastern,
Greek and central European folkstyles I meant 'folk dance'.
Also here's the link to the Bigmilan learn the shuffle vid I mentioned
about the ballet 'T' First Position
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/cybafaer/web/cyb905/melbourne_shuffle.htm
There's another vid lesson by HKshuffler there too, as well as a stack
of great vids if you're unfamiliar with the Melbourne Shuffle
This link is for the CybaFaeries Melbourne Shuffle Channel. There's
updated links to over 70 regular Youtube Shuffle vids that are being
added to daily. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/profile_subscriptions?user=cybafaeries
andrez...@gmail.com
> To immediatly break the rule of giving credit to the music makers,
> Here's an oldskool mix from Cyberdada - PBS radio Melbourne, by good
> friend Andrez, January 1995. Now living and working in Tokyo Japan.
> I'd love to know who the music was made by, but unfortunetly not all
> the credits survived on this mix tape. So if anyone has a clue please
> let us know. It's not all shuffle music, but it'll give you an idea of
> the range of styles common during the Melbourne Oldskool era that
> influenced the Shuffle's creation.
>
> Cyberdada 1995 - Andrezhttp://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/49745/andrez951.mp3
Hey Gaz - arigato for uploading this!!! It's the only copy of the 7-
year show still floating around!!
So, after a quick listen, here you'll find lots of Nasenbluten and
associated (Aussie label) Bloody Fist stuff, German act Speedfreak
(Martin Damm), Dumb Type, the Bunker label, some sampled Orchestra Of
Skin & Bone (Ollie Olsen's old outfit), Force Inc., etc, etc - and
finishing on the brilliant "Planet Of Drums" 12-inch, and Biochip C.
Some cool; some downright scary - was I listening to this stuff 12
years ago? Zounds!!
Also some pretty shoddy mixing and some inane rambling... apologies!!
Andrez
garry shepherd
Drums track is bloody amazing, except the tape ran out before the
track finished as I was recording it. I remember running around
frantically to find a spare to catch the rest of the track, but alas,
it was not to be. :( So I mixed the following track into it.
I've just posted a free MP3 download of Kate Bathgate's RRR FM 'Beat
In The Street' show, you can find out more info about the post and the
flyers to the party Nebula on the Melbourne Shuffle Oldskool post:
link below. It has what I believe is Spiro's (pre-Earthcore) first
radio interview promoting Nebula the following week at the Sarah Sands
hotel, and the beginnings of the Kate and MadRod melt down, just
before Rod left to start his own show Tronic Voodoo Exorcism on PBS
FMa few weeks later.
Nebula Post Link:
http://www2.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=4750099299009228761&postID=6766965741195791901
Here's the MP3 link, it's about 43MB, 96k/MP3 around 1 hour long. It's
an original tape so has all the track titles and artists included. If
someone would like to go thru the mix and list all the trax and
artists to post in this thread, that would be wonderful. I'm sure
everyone would appreciate it. I haven't had time.
Kate Bathgate - Beat In The Street RRR FM. Feb 1993. Nebula interview
with Spiro pre-Earthcore
http://groups.google.com/group/melbourneshuffleoldskool/web/nebula-27-feb-1993
garry shepherd
Street -
Nebula
http://www.esnips.com/doc/18698f04-25b8-481c-9692-f6e4c040d6a2/kate-bits-nebula-1.1
garry shepherd
Street RRR FM 21 Feb 1993
No track lists as yet if someone would like to identify them and post
them, that'd be great.
This is the second hour of the show ( it went for 4 hours) with the
final bit of Rave Data with Madrod as Kate - still in meltdown down
but giving an idea of how good they were together when it worked. This
part features a set by Andrew Till and Jeff Tyler.
http://www.esnips.com/doc/6470aa94-3992-4826-b6d2-b3e16c950242/kate-bits-nebula-2.1
garry shepherd
Rod are on best behavior, and sounding quite tense. Sorry Rod and
Kate, the only shows I've got left on tape - but thar ya go :) Just
glad it wasn't me in the studio in front of the mic! But that's all
history now, and that's why we're here. This show gives a good idea of
how busy it was around town at the time, Rave Data goes for nearly 15
mins with just gig after gig. This was the peak party era 92-95 and
Feb 93 things were really starting to look like the buzz was beginning
to boom.
There's a great set by Steve Robbins and I'm not sure who's on side 2
of the cassette, perhaps FSOM - Future Sounds Of Melbourne. Later in
the show the guest DJ's took over and did some fine mixes and this MP3
has a good 45 mins of that.
There's no announcement as to the trax, although Kate mentions Frank
DeWolf at the beginning. So if some industrious soul would like to
figure it out and post the details, that would be fantastic. There's
some really fine trax I remember hearing at a number of parties and
have no clue to who they were. I'm trying to track down some trax to
include on the Melbourne Shuffle Oldskool double audio CD which will
come out with the DVD doc. So even if you know just a few please post,
and collectively we'll try and fill in the gaps.
I've tweeked the sound on all these mixes, since they are off 14 year
old cassettes recorded direct off a FM radio broadcast and have been
compressed to MP3. So there's a bit of a boost in the mid hi's to give
it some sparkle, and about a 4:1 compression with the genius
Wavehammer software to make them kick in MP3 format.
Occasionally one of the RRR turntables will crash via the mixing desk,
as happened in the week before for about 15-20 mins during Andrew
Tills set, meaning DJ's just have one turntable to use. Amazing the
speed you can change vinyl when you have to, or use a tape back up or
CD to get you out of trouble. I suspect the same happened in this show
from time to time. It was quite common, just what DJ's need when
trying to concentrate on a live to air mix :)
I'm sure shufflers will find dancing to this mix a real pleasure. As
I've mentioned before, this is really the sort of music the sMelbourne
shuffle was created to dance to, so you'll find your feet and body
moving quite naturally to it with the occasional ambient pause to
catch your breath again. Oldskool Shufflers danced for hours non stop,
rather than a 5 min burst. So pacing in the music was paramount to the
pleasure.
...Enjoy
Kate Beat In The Street - 28 Feb 1993
http://www.esnips.com/doc/0107aa44-081d-44b9-a774-be22494bbc84/kate-bits-280393-1.2
garry shepherd
the above posts. I don't remember who the host was, Kate was on a
break. Anyone know? This mix features a set by Sarah HB from Londons
KISS FM. She was in town for New Years eve 92/93 for Embrace - I'll
post the flyer in the flyer gallery and post a link.
Richard and Heidi, Every Picture Tells A Story brought her in, she was
an old friend. Richard was to pick her up from the airport around 6am
26 Dec 1992, and figured if he was going to stay up all night to drive
out in time, he might as well have a few friends over for a small
party at their place, The Custard Shop in Bourke Street Melb CBD.
So a few dozen of us got together after Christmas committments with
family on Christmas night and had a party while waiting for Sarah to
arrive. Lovely lady, she'd literally just had Christmas dinner in
London, jumped on a plane and flown into a Melbourne Summer from a
winter London. We had a great time talking music, and especially how
we called the same music by different names. For instance what they
called House in London at the time was usually called commercial
Techno in Melbourne. House to Melb was usually more commercial radio
Top 40 stuff Madonna etc. And what we called techno was called garage
in London, London techno was more acid/trance to us, and so it went
on.
The garage label didn't exist in Melb for dance, that usually refered
to indie rock etc. Usually that meant Garage Bands, those rock bands
who rehearsed in their garage, generally beginners who got the
occasional gig at friends birthday parties etc, and never really made
it into the pub scene. So a completely different meaning, locally
usually meaning poor quality amateurs. Not a label electronic dance
music folk could relate to in a 'must get a ticket and go to this
dance party' sort of way.
We didn't care for labels too much in Melb, but the music press
especially, in London had an obsession with labeling everything.
Usually it was music journo's wanting to be famous idenifying the next
big thing - we called that rock n roll envy. Oten the acts hated the
labels too, prefering people to just call it dance music, but the
marketing dept's of record labels insisted, to make their job easier.
Generally the music industry, in Melb and overseas didn't know what to
do with dance. They were still in 'Band' mode for marketing and some
producer with a head phone to their ear, was not 'star' material. they
could just think in concepts of 80's electro acts.
So the DJ mags took over and promoted DJ's as the stars, often
forgetting the actually artists who recorded the music in the first
place. Hence style labels worked well for a DJ's tastes and getting
people to parties. That's fine for certain markets where everyone
understands the labels. But this was the begining of the Global
Village, (as in a global community, not the Melb party venue) and the
world was changing faster than the former music market centres such as
London could cope with. And the labels lost a lot in translation,
even tho we both spoke English. So describing what was essentially
techno/acid/trance to Melb as 'house' was a big turn off, regardless
of what the glossy DJ mags from Europe said. The House market in Melb
was generally a mainstream top 40 one in 92/93, not an underground
party one. The two never mixed, and generally the audiences thought of
each other as wankers. Even the term Rave never really hit the spot in
Melbourne, we generally called them dance parties - emphasis on
'Dance', and dance meaning the Melbourne Shuffle, nothing like they
way people danced overseas.
All that aside there's some great music in this MP3 the stand out
'Lovely Day' my favorite about 50 mins in. The huge Golden Girls -
'Kinetic' anthem, which I've unfortunetly heard far too many times to
really want to hear more than one or twice again :), is played
earlier 22 mins, if ever there was a number one party seller, this was
one. It's a great track and was still fairly fresh in 1992. This was a
Christmas before New Years, so a lot of the years biggies were on the
show. You'll hear a call out from Moby (yes 'that' Moby) too.
So here it is
Beat In The Street RRR Fm 27 December 1992. Sarah HB
http://www.esnips.com/doc/dc541e6d-c3d7-4385-be8e-0ff832149e8e/bits-sarah-hb-271292.-1.2
garry shepherd
Melbourne April 1993. You can read more about this in the Tronik
Voodoo Exorcism post, link below
http://melbourneshuffleoldskool.blogspot.com/2007/04/tronik-voodoo-exorcism.html
The first 14 mins are the show before, Rod accidentally cut his thanks
to the show, he was getting used to the nuances of the PBS mixing
desk, just as temperamental as the RRR desk :)
This MP3 is from a 14 year old cassette, and the tracking is a bit out
at the beginning and drifts here and there, but it's fine otherwise.
The second hour of the show is in the next MP3 with a set by Jason
Rudeboy.
This mix has a great example of oldskool hardcore, usually just called
'hard' or hard techno at the time. It's the forerunner of hard style
today. People only familiar with hardstyle today will find the
oldskool far more raw, experimental and untamed, which I kinda prefer.
For lovers of dirty 8bit samples and an edge that will bite your ear
off while putting a smile on your face, you'll love this stuff.
Generally you wouldn't hear this sort of hardcore at the bigger
parties, it mainly got played at the seriously underground hardcore
clubs and parties, of the already underground scene. Hence it being
dubbed Hardcore. It was generally too extreme for the main party scene
in 1993. However this style of music was a great influence on the
original Melbourne Shufflers, as they were seriously hardcore.
By about 1995 hardcore was becoming wide spread with it's own sub
genre's such as speed metal and happy hardcore, then led into
hardstyle late 1990's.
This mix has Rod back announcing all the trax, many of them 'white
labels' which were called that because the vinyl would just have a
white record label with the track title and no other info on it.
Usually white label discs were limited pressings of a few hundred
globally, with just a dozen or so reaching retail outlets. DJ's would
generally line up to grab one as they were so rare, and you could only
hear them when that DJ played. Rod broke that tradition and aired
pretty well everything that came into town, mostly thru Octave Records
in Greville street Prahran, which he Jason Rudeboy and Terrance Ho
(H2O) operated. It was a small underground dedicated shop - now
closed.
I'm sure hardcore shufflers of today will love dancing to this and
wonder what they've been missing all this time.
Enjoy
Tronik Voodoo Exorcism 1
http://www.esnips.com/doc/9fc5005c-29a1-42d8-a2ee-18d4a969ee43/tve1
garry shepherd
Rudeboys 90 min set.
Tronik Voodoo Exorcism 2
http://www.esnips.com/doc/eb3b99e6-13db-4b5d-93e4-c5838570d2e3/tve2.1
garry shepherd
Here's mix 3 of TVE. Week 2 of the show.
Some killer dance trax in this mix, with some used in the sound track
to the Every Picture Tells A Story vid by Source
http://melbourneshuffleoldskool.blogspot.com/2007/03/every-party-tells-story.html
Tronik Voodoo Exorcism 2 MP3
http://www.esnips.com/doc/2a102f45-1478-4a02-9007-1fe7401679b7/tve3.1
garry shepherd
'esnips' downloads (someone alerted it to me). So I've logged into the
account, and the files are still active, and now I've tried again they
seem to work....weird I can only guess it's a new service with some
bugs.
Try a right click on the link as well (open in new tab/page) or right
click for download. Also this Google forum has some quirks and not all
the link displays in some browsers, so try a copy and paste into you
browser as well.
Please let me know if you come across any difficulties, you're
probably not the only person :) so I'll try and sort it out for you.
garry shepherd
end
http://www.esnips.com/doc/dc541e6d-c3d7-4385-be8e-0ff832149e8e/bits-sarah-hb-271292.-1.2
garry shepherd
which chops off the end of the link on the page. So try a copy and
paste into your browser window if you have troubles.
Bits Kate + Rod
http://www.esnips.com/doc/0107aa44-081d-44b9-a774-be22494bbc84/kate-bits-280393-1.2
Bits Sarah HB
http://www.esnips.com/doc/dc541e6d-c3d7-4385-be8e-0ff832149e8e/bits-sarah-hb-271292.-1.2
TVE 1
http://www.esnips.com/doc/9fc5005c-29a1-42d8-a2ee-18d4a969ee43/tve1
TVE 2
http://www.esnips.com/doc/eb3b99e6-13db-4b5d-93e4-c5838570d2e3/tve2.1
TVE 3
http://www.esnips.com/doc/2a102f45-1478-4a02-9007-1fe7401679b7/tve3.1
garry shepherd
life so much easier.