Pump up the volume....ARSE!

MARRS - Pump up the volume.

I remember this hitting number one in the UK singles chart. I hated it. As a person into goth, new wave, indie, punk, prog and electronic synth music at the time and sometimes liking the odd pop tune, I found it to be yet another trend starting up where all of a sudden DJ's instead of musicians were starting to become highlighted as artists. I found the music to be quite offensive to the ear and was also the start of using samples   to fill out the song.

There were a lot of issues over sampling. The music that was used or the audio pinched from a film to be used on a song was used without permission. I understand that at the time the thought never entered the head of the person putting the song together, after all, if you're a DJ, you don't go around every artist asking to play their songs before playing one at a club, so using a sample was pretty much the same I suppose. Over the next couple of years in the late eighties, there would be a few court battles over the use of sampling in music.

It was a shock, some years later to learn that MARRS was a 4AD signing, a collaboration between Colourbox, AR Kane and a few others.

I still don't rate the song much. I know this must be heresy to some 4AD enthusiasts, but I don't love everything that 4AD put out. But for me that is a good thing, it shows that the label had some diversity and if there is diversity, not everything will be to everyone's taste. Pump up the volume has since been stamped as one of music's most influential or genre changing moments in music history. I remember Q magazine having it amongst their top 50 music changing releases.

I can appreciate that, all of a sudden this music opened up in the UK after this single. But for me that just made matters worse. It's just my little personal opinion, but I have never took stock in a DJ being a creative artist, pretty much the same as a producer. Don't get me wrong, I think that a DJ and producers have to have some artistic flair, but they are making music off the back of others greater artistic talents and as such short cutting the creative process. I'm sure many of you would disagree, but I saw a distinct change in the late eighties between the lines of what was art and what was just a commercial process.

It's a bit like pottery. There are a lot of artists that create 3d works of art from clay, but how does a cup, a mug or a bowl suddenly become an art piece as well. Where is the line drawn between a plain cup made from pottery and the same piece cup painted and decorated as art? I have the same issue with music that is made using other artists work, I'm not talking about cover versions, cover versions are generally done as homage to the original artist, but using another song as the backdrop for any easy win new song is not artistic in my opinion, it's just lazy and talentless.

So why am I whining on about sampling and DJ's? MARRS single Pump Up The Volume has arguably been the most successful single 4AD has released and, unfortunately, has so far had around 50 versions released and on top of that, because of it's success, ended up in countless chart compilations, dance compilations, DJ remix versions and compilation remix versions as well as film soundtracks, I have to collect all these as I included those as part of my collection remit. If I wasn't so enamoured with Pump Of The Volume some 25 years ago, I'm just about sick to the teeth of it now. This makes it so hard to try and collect all of the many versions and appearances of this bloody song!

Don't ever ask me if there is any difference in the music between any of the versions as I will certainly not be listening and comparing every version of it that I will acquire, I will leave that privilege to some other fan who has no problem listening to the same sodding thing over and over again. If I am asked there would be a polite reply......

There looks to be more than 60 appearances on compilations before the end of 1990, on top of the 50 something versions of the actual release.

Breathe deep and just get on with it,.....sigh

Whoa, woe and wow

Arse...in fact double arse with a couple of damns and a flippin 'eck thrown in as well. You see, I know how to swear.

Ok its been too long by far since I last posted. Its been a difficult month. I have been struggling to find items just lately that aren't stupidly overpriced. There has been a respite in the last week or so though, so collecting has been back on again. But in the meantime the number of items newly discovered has shot my want list up so far that I have a want list larger than 8 months ago. Very frustrating!

The over enthusiastic alternative language is down to an amendment I have had to do to the what was 7 versions of the Bauhaus single Dark Entries. I was buying a version going cheap on ebay that I thought I could sell on. First of all I was hit by the poor state of the record when it arrived, it looked as though someone had eaten their dinner on it, but then on closer inspection realised that it was none of the 7 versions I had compiled for my blog last year.

I thought I had the seven versions pinned down, but this poor condition extra has hit me with another matrices. I have added the extra details onto the original blog entry here :

http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bauhaus-dark-entries-7-heavenly.html

I had a version with matrices with W-3 and W-4 on them, but this has a W-2 and a W1KD and some very small little stamps on as well. I do wonder if the W's are Warner matrices as highlighted with the text on the back of the third version listed.

Good news though, some wonderful person from Colombia called Daniel has won the Cocteau Twins vinyl album of Garlands that I was giving away and it has been shipped out, congratulations Daniel.

Dead Can Dance are releasing a new live triple vinyl album soon that's already sold out before its release date, I wonder how many traders have bought these up just to sell for extortionate prices?

http://www.deadcandance.com/

I must also apologise for taking so long to write on my blog this time. There are no excuses except that as I have mentioned before, I am prone to fits and starts and having stupid ideas that I get very excited about, then lose interest quickly and leave things unfinished. This years typically stupendous idea was to write my memoirs, as much for personal reasons, as in do it while I still have a memory intact, but also because I seemed to have had an interesting and strangely varied life. Well in typical fashion, doing this has taken on a life of its own, and what was meant to be perhaps a 10,000 word short and satisfying story has currently worked up to a 125,000 novel that still about 2/3rds of the way through. I'm determined to get it finished, although I have no idea what I'm going to do with it when I have. So this has been taking time away from concentrating on my blog. But I promise to get the sodding thing finished and out of the way so that I properly concentrate back on collecting 4AD the first decade once more.