pow wow mik

the 'they' was the hypothetical young folk in cover-up's scenario. Just making the point that they might not care for the rules and customs of old baldy scenes, and it might just be 'all about the music', but if in the end they're having to have their records, their choice of tunes, spoon fed to them via re-issues, then it's just a youth club version of the northern scene and musically, they'd be better off at lifeline. Unless, of course, theyre putting their own twist on the sound, as in europe. Still waiting for someone to tell me if they are or not . Along the lines of inner city soul, who really seemed to create their own sound, or at least continue to evolve a style from the likes of ian wright and adam leaver

agree with you to an extent, it's what I did at 18 after all, but just one point without wanting to bogged down in ovo : if they dont look for original vinyl, what do they play? Just stuff off re-issues? In which case, they're not really doing anything new are they? Just a cheapo version of the old baldy nights without the new records? And if they're just doing accross the board party nights, or dub step nights then fair enough, but thats got nothing to with what were talking about.

Edu? are you meaning eduardo? I knew him since the 90s, and I was young then but I'm not now, he'd have had to be about 10 then if he's still young now! in case you havent realised yet henning, the situation in the uk is completely different to europe - only a handful of serious young djs come through in the last 10 years here. As far as i know anyway, happy to be told otherwise...

I dont think djing is necesarily about ego. It was a response to henning who said 'let the young guys on, its not about ego'...surely implying that old folks are motivated by ego but young folks not?. Cover -ups, stopping young people from djing.... all the world's mis deeds are done by ego driven old djs it seems, how very British.

Support the young ones how? By letting them dj? If it's not an ego thing, why do they all want to dj? fuck that. Support whoever's doing it well at the time, who cares if they're 18 or 80? I remember having callum on when he was pretty young, but not as some patronising favour to him, as a favour to me, he was one of the best djs i'd heard. Unfortunately, the nature of djing this stuff now, the fact that it requires the purchase of expensive antique records, makes it very hard to make an impact. There's great cheap records of course, but playing the best of these, are you ever going to compete with someone who's playing the latest hot in demand biggie? e

If I was 20 could I come!? henning, no one is saying that there's no good young djs, or that it isnt possible. The guy said that he'd booked a fair few, and most of them were underwhelming, so he's speaking from experience and evidently, the experience of someone who really wanted to give young djs an opportunity. some sort of positive discrimination isnt going to make anything any better is it? And getting a young dj on playing boots at the expense of a older dj with more interesting records is just a bizarre scenario. it may be different in europe but over here youre playing to knowledgable people. I started collecting at 16, djing at 18, but I didnt get behind the decks at a specialist soul/r&b club until my late 20s, and then only cos I was playing things no one else was. That should be the standard surely? Not some equal opportunities shit. I'm not involved these days as much as I'd like to be, but I cant see any way you could put an exciting soul or r&b set together these days without a lot of money. I couldnt do it if I had to start now, even with 20 years knowledge. .

Have you ever heard a dj under 20 who was worth listening to? And why do you need 20 year old djs to attract other 20 year olds? Do they play a certain kind of set that appeals to the younger generations? Serious open question - not directed at you, mixercora - Every generation shapes its own taste, even in old music, and it should do. What is distinctive about the sets of the younger folks, that their sets appeal particularly to their age group? cheers

and mine, and ending with the best record ever (imo!)

Falcons $760?

yeah, same here!

Is this the one with same backing as leadell brown / johnny hartsman? Used to have this I'm sure

mate, your first quote chopped the second half from my sentense, completely changing the meaning. No point going on if that's how it is. just like to say at this point, in case this whole massive non-issue gives the impression of mean-spiritedness or personal digs occurring on this site - despite our disagreements over certain things, I have complete respect for 'mr outsider' and what we have in common is far stronger than what we disagree on. hate to sound like a hippy, but I'd like to commend the possibility on this site of having genuine grown up arguments without people crying or resorting to insults - a pretty rare thing. Respect to all involved

Ok. Your argument seems to be based on two points, both of which I think are just personal bug-bears which you're trying to dress up as moral issues. one is this perception you have of masculine egoism with djs, which, honestly, seems to loom large in your psyche. There may be examples of it, but you can find badly motivated examples of anything. The predominant purpose of a cover-up is to play a record to people so that they can enjoy the music - I'm always slightly mistrustful of people who cant decide whether to like something or not until they know all the peripheral info. - but to hide the information for a while, specifically from other djs and dealers, who are pretty much the only people who care anyway. this friendly competition amongst djs is possibly one of the most positive and harmless examples of competition in human endeavor. It is extraordinarily middle class to be offended by it. it is not testosterone fueled egoism to be mildly competitive, it is fun and an extra bit of motivation to djs who mostly face a world of indifference to their efforts. secondly, you have the misconception of djs getting rewards, and this beibg the crux of your moral argument - that they are benefitting from others' art. I think the benefit any dj is getting is so slight, it makes your argument look a bit ridiculous. The only people who milked it are people like keb, andy smith (?) etc, who took it to a professional level where your argument might stand up. at the moment you're just attacking the little people who actually collectively fuel the whole thing, simply for the love of it. the dancers and club goers get the most benefit from the djs efforts, by hearing great music. Doesn't matter how good the original artists were if noone ever hears it. You dont ever seem to want to acknowledge that point, in your strange, somewhat self-loathing, anti-dj crusade. ]

A. What 'benefit' is the dj getting, really? It's a fucking hobby for christ's sake. B. Honestly? I dont think the artist would give a fuck in either case. One is personal, the other grass roots, non profit culture, I think tbe artist would respect both. C. Youre still missing the point about keeping the record at home. I mean that aren't I, by chosing to keep the record to myself, depriving the world of it and the artist the recognition. I just wonder why you dont care about that? cheers

I think you're tripping out now mate! Dont be so dramatic, how is playing a record in a club with confidence or at least hope that others will love it and dance to it, a 'fuckkoff' to the artist!? That's insane. You dont announce the records anyway, you play em, people hopefully dance and no one gives a fuck who the artist is except other djs. Where do I start the process of accreditation? all through this thread you're substituting 'not doing something good' for ' doing something bad', as if by covering a record up, you're depriving the artist of something. Like if you dont give money to this childrens' charity you're stopping a child from going to disneyland. You still havent explained whether not djing at all is more acceptable than djing with cover-ups! You're obsessed with djs egos, but every good dj i know is an average working man or woman. i djed years, got nothing out of it except the experience of djing, didnt want anything more than that, dudnt even really want that! all thus preaching humility and morality and raging against the arrogance of scene djs, but the person who's milking it all the most...well, it's you!

lots of people have articulated that point, you just dont want to hear it because you're still living in this fantasy world where records sell because they are good. I guess because you dont want to accept, for your own reasons, that demand for your re-issues is created by the scenes that you dislike so much, and you sell them to people who are getting the cool sloppy seconds from real djs and collectors. as much as you'd like to think that all this music would just sell to normal people and it'd be appreciated and would have survived without the scenes, it wouldn't. And the folks who buy your re-issues are doing so because, a few years earlier, the same sort of stuff was hip on one scene or other, whether they know it or not and whether you accept it or not :

so let me understand - it is ok for me to own an unknown record and never tell anybody about it or play it anybody but it isn't alright for me to play it in clubs and put it on youtube for strangers all over the world to enjoy, but with a false name? are you for real?

The harm done by cover-ups seems to be so trivial - seems to boil down to intangibles such as 'respect' and 'dignity' which are impossible to quantify - the potential benefits that the practise denies the artists so minimal, that it doesn't seem to be worth arguing about. to talk about a dj, without whom the record mightn't be known at all, playing a record that they love to a room of people who also might love it and accuse this scenario of somehow being disrespectful to the artist is just bizarre. it is about the only place where the artist is respected and appreciated, how captious to abstract this one feature from a whole culture that overwhelmingly has saved 10000s of records and bought them to wider awareness. I'll leave you to get tangled in your own 'moral' arguments but be aware that your reasoning in this case would also lead to this : i find a record that is an unknown one-off, I quite like it but it has a 3/4 waltz bit in the middle that makes it unsuitable for me to dj with. Should I have to play it? Sell it to a more waltz-friendly dj? Isn't it arrogant to hide it from the world? Am I compelled to put it on youtube? Who am I to have that responsibility to decide if it deserves exposure or not, some sort of caesar!? see? It's an infinite maze of decreasing moral details. Sometimes you have to stick to pragmatics. Most important is the enjoyment of the music, if that has evolved with cover-ups somehow, then let it be. The total gain is good, better, probably even then a few artists dying marginally happier or richer - something only a few people seem to be patronising enough to quantify anyway. I'm sure there's worse cases of arrogance or immorality to get worked up about - maybe start with the bootleg guy - everyone knows who he is but no one says shit.

Ok, so your case against is that one of the covered-up artists, if the name was known, might get contacted, at best to license the track, or otherwise to be told that people appreciated their work, and that this possibility, however unlikely, cant be delayed a few years at most because the artist is aging. Yes, I can see how that is ideal, but it is not like the dj is giving nothing to compensate for their appropriation ; for a start, he found the record, recognised the quality and invested the time and money and secondly it is competitive dj culture that sustains the second hand record market, makes it well worthwhile for people to save old vinyl and ensures that vinyl finds a way to the market. A few beardy crate diggers scrounging around for $1 bargains wouldn't have achieved that. The gap between soul bowl etc buying up warehouses full of 45s for the northern soul market and the next wave of collectors who might have bought them was decades, do you think that none would have been lost in that time? a thriving dj / club scene demanded those records, and covering up was a part of that scene. I just dont think the effects of covering up records are dramatic enough to warrant such opposition to it. Any down side is surely balanced by the contribution djs and collectors have made to music awareness and culture. for example : in retrospect, what was more important : jamaican sound system culture, which was based on competition, or a u.s. jazz artist getting credit - only amongst members of that jamaican scene - for a record, something which he would most likely not even have known about. The scene didnt give anything to the artist at that time, true, but neither did it take anything away. what about private collectors who buy unknown rarities, tell no one, play them no one, just hoard them in a vault. Surely this is worse as it has no net benefit other than the preservation of the artifact, yet you dont seem to say anything about that practise. Should these types be compelled to dj!? The fact is, you buy a second hand record, you can do what you want with it, speed it up, slow it down, sell it, cover it up, smash it up. Surely chosing to play it in clubs for people to dance to is pretty positive choice for all, if a few quirks have developed to keep that culture going, then I'd have thought that they would be tolerable. t

neither the bbe comp or trouble's set lists are examples of djs covering up records though, most people who cover up haven't done anything like either of those things. It seems like it's just your own sensibility that is offended here, not any wider ethic. Some people might think putting your own name, as a 'compiler', on a compilation LP in bigger writing than the featured artists is fairly arrogant, or that djing in the first place is something of a conceit, especially flying around the world to do so. the fault with the bbe comp is that they were making money without paying the artists, the fault with troubles top 10 is that it's meaningless. It's hard to see that if neither offence had occurred, what, from the artists' perspective, would be at all different. I never used to cover anything up and the only people this seemed to help was other djs and record dealers.

Maybe, but you end up with the sort of paradox then that is: if it wasn't for the untalented collector / dj, the talented artist wouldn't even be known or heard at all, they'd be in landfill. So what recognition then? it's been said already, but I can't see what difference it would make to artist x if a few 100 people dancing to her record in England knew who the artist credited on the record was or if they didn't, for up to a few years untill it gets uncovered. the artist wouldn't know would they? So if it's just an abstract principle then surely the fact that the record is being enjoyed, appreciated and danced to is a pretty good tribute, credit or not. Better than anything the rest of the world had offered the artist in the years since they cut the record.

Not really, it generally only delays recognition for a while, except on the odd record that's so rare it stays covered up for years, in which case it's fate is still 1000 times better than if the dj hadn't found it and started playing it. With regards royalties, well any record that's unknown is unlikely to be earning any royalties anyway, but the hype behind a good cover up is more likely to build up awareness, credibility and demand for a future release. for obscure records - taste, credibility and demand follow the scenes. however much the re-issuers like to think that public taste is an independent thing, it's actually dripped down from tastemakers on hardcore scenes.. and it's not egoism to want to be good at something and one of the main ways to be good at djing is to have something the next man doesn't have. in all forms of entertainment, novelty is a key element, unless you're churning out classics to the brain-dead.

You could argue that without that dj in cases of rare records, the track wouldn't be heard or known at all, so in fact the dj is doing more for the original artist - by at least bringing to the attention of people the music - than everyone else, who are completely ignorant of the work. is it more morally acceptable to not look for rare records than to look for them and then cover them up?

Is that super supers a modern release?