Genesis...
Not the band, but the formation of musical taste
Firstly, Happy New Year to all of you. I hope you had a good holiday season. I came down with Covid for most of it so just spent a lot of time on the sofa and in bed. It was very relaxing, but sad not to be able to see much in the way of family. Anyway…
I wrote in a previous post a back in November about the memories we have around dance music, and the earliest memories of mine listening to dance music. If you remember I said that Utah Saints Something Good was one of my formative dance records but today (inspired in part by The Guardians 20 Best Underworld Songs) I wanted to expand on that a bit as they were a band that were hugely important to my musical tastes growing up.
Everyone knows Born Slippy - whether it was from Trainspotting or from the fact it got to like Number Two in the Charts anyone who grew up in the mid-90’s will know the Lager Lager Lager chorus. I loved Born Slippy when it was on the radio back then (I’d have been 13 in the summer of 1996 so really starting to get into and consume popular culture at that time) and you couldn’t move for it being played constantly. It basically became a pop song - your mum and dad knew it as that lager song - and it was on pretty much every chart compilation CD released at the time. It’s still a banger - hearing those opening chords live or in a club still can tug on my heartstrings like not much else. I got a pirate VHS copy of Trainspotting from a friend who had an older brother, watched it with my mother (which was as awkward as you can imagine for a 13 year old) on afternoon and then asked for an actual copy of the film for my birthday. I had it all - the poster, the video, the soundtrack CD. Everything but the heroin addiction basically. There were tracks on the CD I knew (Born Slippy, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Sleeper’s Blondie cover), bands I was aware of (Pulp, New Order, Blur) but also things I didn’t know (Eno, Leftfield, more Underworld) that I avidly dug into and tried to find out everything I could about.
Whilst Born Slippy was the big Underworld tune (and probably the only one most people know) and Dark & Long the other track from the film it wasn’t until later that year when I got a cassette copy of Now 35 for Christmas that I really *got* Underworld. The second tape had Pearl’s Girl on the second side (nestled alongside other mainstream-ish dance tracks such as BBE - Seven Days & One Week, Stretch N Vern - I’m Alive and Faithless - Insomnia) and when I heard that it was like an epiphany. What the fuck is this? The incessant drums, the repetitive intro, the nonsensical lyrics - it sounded MASSIVE, and not like anything I’d heard before. I love it when music does that to you - if Utah Saints was the gateway drug then Pearls Girl was the first hit of class A’s.
From then on Underworld became my favourite band - it marked me as an outsider at school in the great Blur vs Oasis debate (Pulp were always better anyway) - and I did everything I could to find Underworld tapes, CD’s & records. I read all their interviews, I watched the Everything, Everything Live DVD religiously once a week whilst getting ready to go out clubbing as I got older. Eventually I saw them live, and then live again, and again. I saw them do a Radio 1 set at Maida Vale to an audience of 20. I blagged my way to the side of the stage to watch them at SW4, I saw them at Wembley Arena, Alexandra Palace, Brixton Academy and Glastonbury. I watched them play dubnobasswithmyheadman in full as a special 20th anniversary show at the Royal Festival Hall (still one of the Top 3 gigs I’ve ever been to).
They’re both in their sixties now, and they’re probably not that cool or trendy to bang on about any more, but to be honest, nor am I. I’ve heard them described as the musical equivalent of Limmy’s Eccied Da, or that clip of David Moyes dancing after West Ham won a trophy last year, and maybe that’s unfair but maybe it’s bang on. Either way, Underworld sent me on a musical journey from Born Slippy & Pearl’s Girl into the deeper, darker, harder realms of Techno and IDM. It’s not a straight line from Underworld to Surgeon or AFX, but you can just about join the dots.
For what it’s worth, I don’t disagree too much with that Guardian article - I’d have Pearl’s Girl a bit higher, obviously, and Jumbo a bit further down. Scribble should be in there (the best thing they’ve done post Hundred Days Off era), as should Luetin and Moaner. It’s light on the earlier Emerson era stuff, doesn’t include any of their remixes (the Bjork one is the highlight) and thankfully doesn’t touch upon the pre-Emerson new wave Depeche Mode tribute act they started off as (if you don’t know about this bit of Underworld’s history do yourself a favour and don’t look).
I might as well finish with my own personal Underworld Top 10 then (I can’t be bothered to do 20)
Cherry Pie
Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream of Love
Cups
Push Upstairs
Scribble
Born Slippy.NUXX
Dark & Long
Cowgirl
Two Months Off
Pearl’s Girl
New Music
I’m still catching up with all those Boomkat lists I wrote about before Christmas. I’ve found some good stuff so far. It’s still a bit of a light time for new releases, but here’s some music anyway (warning: contains a lot of Underworld)
That Dark Entries reissue of Nervous Gender’s Welcome To Hell starts off with a doozy of a nightmarish Cher-influenced track. Worth checking out for sure. I can’t remember who recommended that Collective 5 compilation but there’s some decent tunes on it so far (I’ve not listened to the whole thing yet). The Craven Faults album is a nice slice of atmospheric ambient - the kind of stuff you’d listen to whilst trying to conduct some kind of ritual at some standing stones - the artwork suits the music perfectly.
That’s probably enough for now, I’ll be back next week. Thanks as always for reading, sharing, subscribing!