In the UK at least, acid house changed everything. It represented a punk-style year zero for dance music in the UK, influencing everything that followed, particularly rave, jungle and the bleeps of early Warp recordings. You could still hear this a year or so afterwards, when I started listening to John Peel, a keen supporter of both Warp and techno, particularly if it came from Belgium.
The producers of most of the above were faceless types, but the early '90s saw the beginnings of dance acts starting to behave like rock bands. Chief among these, of course, were The Prodigy, though their first hit Charly hardly seemed the work of people with one eye on headlining Donington in 2012. If this introductory shot seemed destined to be remembered merely for being the trailblazer for Toytown Techno (see also: Sesame's Treet by Smart E's and A Trip To Trumpton by Urban Hype, or, preferably, don't), the following tracks released from the band's Experience album revealed them to be the first dance act to deserve the epithet "singles band", all different, all tremendously exciting. When they returned in '94 with the harder Music For The Jilted Generation, they found themselves playing rock festivals and getting spun on alternative dancefloors, setting them on the road to Kerrang! covers and leading us, ultimately, to Chase And flipping Status.
If The Prodge, as I fear we must call them, seemed to actively court rockist attention, a more modest outfit punched above their weight without seeming to try as hard. The influence of Orbital, and particularly their second album, in drawing metallers and indie kids into dance music's, er, orbit, is something I've come across time and time again when speaking to contemporaries. Perhaps this was because, while ver Prodge came across as cheeky, E-fuelled artful dodgers who drew cross-genre appreciation based on the sheer energy rush they harnessed, Orbital were studious fellows who could draw on a wide-ranging musical background, with punk rock, early industrial, classical music and electro all feeding into a sound so lush they had to call one of their songs Lush 3, then split it in two in case anyone was overwhelmed by its sheer lushness. They started pretty low-key, as seen in a Top Of The Pops outing for the evergreen Chime which looks excruciating for everybody involved, but gradually built an image based partly on their very anonymity, and partly on the tactical wearing of head-torches.
Another single, Satan, made more explicit their links to rock; it opened with a sample of Jello Biafra speaking, lifted from a Butthole Surfers record, and it was called Satan, ferchrissakes, making it like catnip for easily-swayed metalheads. Hell, Kirk Hammett even once contributed to a version, for the soundtrack to the poorly-received movie Spawn, a work which also featured such irresistible pairings as Silverchair & Vitro and Filter & The Crystal Method.
It's often said of metal bands that their third albums are key, a cliche backed up by Master Of Puppets, The Number Of The Beast and Reign In Blood. In dance music, maybe it's the second album - as with Music For The Jilted Generation, Orbital's second (untitled, but brown in hue) record was the one which saw their potential delivered several times over. Along with the afore-mentioned Lush 3-1 and Lush 3-2, it featured their career high watermark Halcyon & On & On, other deathless classics like Planet Of The Shapes and Impact (The Earth Is Burning), and slightly annoying intro/outro vocal loops.
This was the arsenal with which they battered Glastonbury 1994, a performance which swiftly went down in the annals of Worthy Farm as one of the all-time great performances. I wasn't there, but picked up the album that summer and took it on holiday to Scotland with Sophie, driving around in her brother's car alternating between Orbital's second album and punk/new wave compilation The Sound Of The Suburbs. It was while soaking in Scottish scenery to the sound of two electronic composers from Sevenoaks that I realised what it is about Orbital - they're brilliant at moments, points in their tunes where things shift gears or move into new sections, conjuring emotion from a music still derided as being cold and mechanical from non-converts. It's this, along with a growing skill in background visuals, which made them perfect for Glastonbury, with their second album the first example of stadium-ready techno.
It's appropriate that I should mention Sophie above as we catch up with the timeline of this blog, but anyone with no interest in my private life should skip a couple of paragraphs - we'll get back to the music by then, honest.
Anyway, at the end of '94, Sophie decided to spend the second semester of the academic year on an exchange trip to Hofstra University on Long Island. I was pretty unchuffed - Sophie was my first proper girlfriend, not counting ten days going out with Lucy Howard in the Sixth Form, and now she was going to spend several months on the other side of an ocean? Nonetheless, we decided to maintain a long distance relationship, which in the days before widespread e-mail, let alone Skype, meant air mail letters and the occasional phone call, conducted on my side by chucking coins into a payphone to save the shared phone bill from Transatlantic phone charges.
One of the least pleasant sides of my personality is a jealous streak (it's been under control for a while, but subsequent girlfriends can vouch that it took a while). So while Sophie quite rightly got on with making the most of her time at Hofstra, I hated hearing about new friends and going clubbing in New York. Lucy made plans to go see her, but I couldn't afford to, and absence only made my heart get more resentful of the situation. The last straw, stupid as this is gonna sound, was when Sophie sent me a photo of her new, short haircut. Now, as anyone will tell you (including my mum, every time she's tried to convince me to get a haircut in the last twenty years), HAIR GROWS BACK. But in my self-appointed role of wronged boyfriend, I seethed at the idea that my girlfriend had shorn the hair I loved, and was, quite honestly, an absolute shit about it. This unchivalrous behaviour will leave absolutely nobody surprised that one evening in the spring of 1995, I walked back from that payphone a single man.
Apart from prepping you for Sophie's reappearance later on, it feels that all that was necessary to explain as the background to the night I spent at a house party with Dave Angel.
Now, by '95, dance music was the most highly visible genre in town. By that I mean that the shared houses of Studentville (Portswood and Highfield, mainly) were decorated with front window posters for everything from house club Squeeze to drum'n'bass nights (I remember it used to seem like LTJ Bukem was playing all the time, though that might have been slightly later on). This doesn't really explain how the following events came to pass, though.
The whole episode has a hazy, dreamlike quality, perhaps in part due to my state of inebriation. It's not the sort of thing I can check online, and I've long since lost touch with my cohort in this, Gail Holliman. The two of us ended up getting invited to this house party - I can only imagine we'd have been at The Dungeon or Nexus, alternative clubs hardly frequented by techno heads, although I guess we could have just been drinking in The Hobbit. The house we found ourselves in was a massive place near the Common - I remember a large, open plan room taking up most of the ground floor, with some sort of neo-classical pillars and arches dotted around. And renowned deep techno DJ Dave Angel playing records.
Really, the only thing which convinces me that this wasn't just a peculiarly vivid and memorable dream is that I can remember walking home with Gail in the morning light, and that the occasion impressed me sufficiently at the time to buy Dave Angel's debut full-length, Tales Of The Unexpected (hmm, spooky), and discover that it was actually a bit too smooth for my tastes.
1995 was, conveniently enough for the theme of this chapter, the first year that Glastonbury got itself a Dance Tent, largely down to that breakthrough Orbital set of the year before. It was also the only time I've been to a festival with just one (non-romantically involved) companion, in this instance my friend and notable Queen fanatic Matt Ross. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the weekend, however, was the weather; this would be the only Glastonbury I ever attended which offered blazing sunshine throughout the weekend. When I got home and looked in the mirror for the first time in four or five days, I looked like a burns victim. Select magazine printed a shot of the crowd with a caption taken from a weather report advising people not to spend more than twenty minutes in the sun...
The weekend was divided between the (largely Britpop) bands Matt and I checked out together, and the times I wandered off to experience something my techno-phobic companion wouldn't like. Pyramid Stage appearances from Senser and Ozric Tentacles on the Friday proved that the crusty era was still in full swing in the Pilton area, although the former debuted new material which seemed markedly more metal, in a Sabbath-meets-Tool kind of way; those in favour of this new direction would soon split to form Lodestar, ending the period where Senser were likely to be main stage material. Later in the weekend, I'd see short singer Heitham nearly get knocked over in the crowd by someone turning around while wearing a huge rucksack and accidentally swinging it into the little guy. Poor Heitham.
Much of our time was spent in front of the NME stage. Supergrass were perfect for a sunny Summer's day; Skunk Anansie arrived late and only got to play a few songs (I think their debut album Paranoid &Sunburnt was named after their Glasto experience); Ash played a great set and I punched a cup of water in the air just as the drums of Kung Fu kicked in; Matt crowdsurfed to Sleeper and worried that his mum would see it on the telly, afraid that the last she'd ever see of her son was him disappearing below the surface of people's heads; Drugstore continued their bid to be my favourite band.
On a more techno-themed tip, albeit still in the crusty/dub margins, Dreadzone and Zion Train both put in great sets on the NME Stage (the former's Zion Youth seemed to be getting played all over the site all weekend), and on Friday evening Matt and I went our separate ways in the battle of the Liams; he went with Oasis on the Pyramid Stage, while I headed back to the NME Stage for an imperious headline set from The Prodigy (I still reckon I made the best choice there). I wandered into the Dance Tent, taken over for a whole day by the Massive Attack Sound System, but I think I chose a rather mellow moment, as they were playing Dawn Penn's You Don't Love Me (No No No) to a mere handful of people.
The best moments of the weekend all piled up on Saturday night's Pyramid Stage line-up. First was PJ Harvey, playing what might be her most famous ever set. This was the first time I'd seen her since she ditched the original three-piece line-up for an expanded well of contributors for the To Bring You My Love album. It was odd seeing her without a guitar, but most striking was the sheer flamboyance she revealed that night, prowling the stage in her notorious pink catsuit. It was hard to square with the shy girl I'd met in the street in Yeovil just three years earlier. It was also bloody brilliant.
Orbital's reward for their victory the previous year was a promotion to the pre-headliner set on the Pyramid Stage, a clear sign that dance music was now recognised as a crucial part of the festival's DNA. I managed to convince Matt to check it out, and I think he begrudgingly enjoyed himself, amused by the way the crowd cheered those moments I mentioned earlier, and by a guy near us who kept shouting "Cheers, Orbital". A great moment occurred when they played Satan and an image of John Major flashed up on their screens, with a massive X quickly scrawled across his face. In the real world, he'd just announced that he was standing down as leader of the Tory party (as it turned out, he just got re-elected in the subsequent leadership vote). Cheers, Orbital.
The biggest news, though, was Pulp stepping in as headliners after the Stone Roses were forced to cancel. Despite having been around for the best part of twenty years, and reaping critical acclaim with 1994's His'N'Hers, for many people it was only recent No.2 hit Common People which justified such a lofty placing for the Sheffield outsiders. In a sense, though, this freed them from having to play a Greatest Hits set - they'd only had three Top 40 singles at this point - and instead made them a rarity at any festival, a main stage headliner whose set is as much about the future as a celebration of the past. I remember the debut airing of Sorted For E's And Wizz (a rare example of an indie band influenced by the rave scene, albeit lyrically rather than musically) being a particular highlight, and a speech Jarvis gave about how, as we were in the middle of 1995, which was the middle year of the 90s, we were therefore right in the middle of the whole decade; even at the time I worked out that wasn't quite right, but it still made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Speaking of the back of my neck, it was currently helping to hold up a young lady who asked to sit on my shoulders so she could get a better view. I have never, ever done this on any other occasion, but the spirit of both festival and band made it feel like the right thing to do under the circumstances. Also, quite clearly, I was hoping to get laid, but after they'd finished she thanked me and disappeared into the night.
Most of my other memories from Glastonbury '95 involve downright silliness, like when Matt bought us hash cakes which were almost certainly pure, uncut Mr Kipling. He suggested afterwards that we'd have had more effect from lying down in the sun, then standing up quickly. One night, when faced with the usual barrage of kids shouting "Bollocks!" (does this still happen at festivals nowadays?), Matt vented his opinion of one of Sunday's Pyramid Stage performers by shouting "Simple Minds" instead. Speaking of night time shouting, we also yelled "HAAAAAYWOOOOIRE!", a cry beloved of fans of veteran Southampton anarcho punk mob Haywire (enunciated in a West Country accent, natch, and also to be heard between songs on a Napalm Death live bootleg from Salisbury), and were gratified that, from some distant corner of the field in which we were camped, someone yelled it back to us.
Spending the summer at home in Somerset, there was very little opportunity for further live excitement. Unlikely as it sounds, respite from this came from an invitation to visit Sophie, now back from the US, in the West Midlands. Informed by her experiences in New York, she was now well into the club scene and asked me and Lucy to go to Atomic Jam, a techno night in Birmingham. Looking at it now, I think we might have attended the first night of what went on to be a long-running Midlands institution. As far as I can remember, Richie Hawtin, Bandulu and my old mucker Dave Angel all played, but I spent most of my time in a side room playing the kind of hip hop-influenced stuff which never quite got a name (Amyl House? Thought not.), but would shortly mutate into Big Beat.
As an aside, Atomic Jam reminds me that I've forgotten a show which should have been in the last couple of blogs. At an undocumented date in late '94 or early '95, I went to see Huevos Rancheros at The Joiners. These guys played surf rock, as in Man... Or Astroman? or, in its most widely-known incarnation, Dick Dale's Misirlou, AKA the twangy guitar tune from Pulp Fiction. I was one of three people dancing that night, which was most certainly not the case at Atomic Jam. The reason my memory has been belatedly jogged is because I chose to wear my Huevos Rancheros shirt that night, with a cartoon chef on the front and the slogan "A Tasty Change From Potatoes!" on the back. Improbably, while I was taking a moment to chill on some stairs, a guy struck up a conversation with me about how much he liked Huevos Rancheros. I thought, initially, he might have been talking about the actual dish (fried eggs and chilli sauce on corn tortillas), but it turned out he'd seen them on the same tour as me.
There is a postscript to this tale; the shirt was so sweat-sodden when I returned home to Somerset the next day that my mum left it to soak with some cleaning products. Unfortunately, she then forgot about it for a few days, and when it eventually re-emerged, it looked like it had been subjected to a bad tie dye job. Maybe it was revenge for the fact that my first ever comedown made it quite difficult to eat the roast dinner she'd prepared for my return. Defiantly, I carried on wearing the shirt for years, though it hasn't survived the T-shirt culls which have happened the last couple of times I moved house.
Summer 1995 ended in a field outside Frome, the Somerset town which gave the world Jenson Button. I doubt the then-fifteen-year old future Formula One champion ventured down to the One World festival in 1995, unless he went through a mid-teen crusty phase. Frome (pronounced to rhyme with BOOM!) is in the heartland of the West Country crusty/free festival/traveller scene, and this festival had a classic mid-'90s line-up, including Zion Train, Revolutionary Dub Warriors and a double whammy of Ozric Tentacles and Eat Static. It was a lovely, sunny day, with perhaps more of a family atmosphere than your average festival of the time. There were the usual festival "characters" - one guy was dressed as an eight-foot Predator - and also a winning sense of amateurishness - a light breeze ensured that for much of the day, the smoke machine seemed to be directed towards the merch stand rather than the stage. Darkness fell for the last two sets, allowing full use of the Fruit Salad Lightshow for interwoven outfits the Ozrics and Eat Static. This area was their stomping ground, and the type of festival their natural habitat, so both bands killed it, but the latter stood out more for me, partly because I'd never seen them before but mostly because a bit of manic techno was just what was called for after a day of mellow music. For the first time, there was a little bit of an edge to proceedings, and not just because the guy next to me started shouting - enthusiastically, like it was a compliment - "Eat Static! Eat shit!"
Cheers, Orbital.
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