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artist.....: VA
album......: Dance Mania Ghetto Madness
year.......: 2015
label......: Strut
STRUT120CD
source.....: CDDA
moodswing..: House
releasesize: 104.81 MB
tracks.....: 15
length.....: 70:07
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 206kbps
scenealized: 03.18.2015
Dance Mania's appeal is often summed up
in terms of its raunch. That part's
crucial'the sleazy shout-alongs, the
implied physicality of its focus on
rhythm above all else, the moment when
enough repetition elevates music about
dancing and fucking from hedonistic to
transcendental 'but there's more to the
scrappy, prolific house label than the
dirty stuff. Over more than a decade
and almost 300 records, Dance Mania
staked its claim as ghetto house's
Motown, holding its own as the brash,
DIY counterpart to more
internationally-established,
crossover-primed Chicago peers like
Traxx and DJ International. Sure, the
stuff that hewed a bit closer to
house's disco roots got the European
licensing deals, but Dance Mania's
deep, familial roster got the
overcrowded projects of Chicago's south
and west sides, the ones Parris
Mitchell immortalized on 1995's "Ghetto
Shout Out", where guys like DJ Deeon
and Jammin Gerald were DJing Kraftwerk,
gangsta rap, Ron Hardy, and their own
bedroom recordings. The music was raw,
explicit, often escapist, and made do
with the resources available, and as
such, its apparent simplicity was often
deceptive. In as much as anything can
be about shaking asses, Dance Mania
made music about shaking asses. But as
the buttcheek-thinkpiece industrial
complex should suggest, for better or
worse, it's never really just about
shaking asses.
Last year's Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania
Records 1986-1997, released via Strut,
marked the first official compilatory
survey of the label, and it arrived on
the heels of Parris Mitchell and owner
Ray Barney's 2013 announcement of Dance
Mania's re-launch. (It shuttered
gracefully in 2001; the label's
commitment to musical risk-taking had
always relied on the financial success
of its primary role as a record
distribution hub, a foundation that
crumbled in the late '90s as the
independent retailers it serviced began
to disappear.) That compilation focused
on the label's most essential tracks,
documenting straightforward but
formative early work like Hercules'
1986 "7 Ways", the label's second-ever
pressing, as it grew leaner, rawer, and
lewder by way of flirtation with acid,
hip-hop, and techno. These are records
that never crossed over into the
mainstream in any significant sense
(beyond the errant Daft Punk shout-out)
but often sell for thousands of dollars
on Discogs today, thanks to a recent
surge in popularity among primarily
European collectors. It's a familiar
paradox for Rust Belt dance music
innovators looking to keep their legacy
alive: if financial viability is at all
a priority, artists risk a loss of
crucial context as they invest in
outside markets.
Contrary to the pulp extremism of its
title, Ghetto Madness, Strut's second
Dance Mania tribute, homes in on
subtler, deeper-digging gems in the
label's sprawling catalog. Where
Hardcore Traxx gave special attention
to ghetto house's formative years,
Ghetto Madness sticks primarily to
Dance Mania's mid-'90s heyday, by which
point the label had found its niche and
dug deep, its dogged prolificacy
speeding up to match the steadily
increasing BPMs. The tracks are
brittle, matter-of-fact, mostly
percussive, and often devoted to giddy
mythologizing of the city's myriad
pleasures. But Ghetto Madness also
makes a case for the deeply meditative
nature of these tracks at their best,
and proves the bawdy shout-outs that
have become ghetto house's calling card
are hardly representative of the genre
as a whole. Tracks like DJ Rush rarity
"The Reactor" and DJ Deeon's "1112" are
entirely non-vocal, closer to
straight-up techno than any of the
label's earlier jacking anthems or
hip-house workouts. Compared to the
hyper, in-your-face instructionals of
some of Tyree Cooper's late-'80s
singles, soul-sampling album highlight
"Nuthin' Wrong", originally released in
1995, feels strikingly restrained.
There's subtlety here. And along with
horny entreaties for girls to shake
their shit, there's real community
outreach, too: DJ Milton's "House-O-
Matics" celebrates the Chicago dance
crew of the same name, effectively an
after-school program as much as it was
a performance team.
From a strictly commercial standpoint,
Europe's new generation of Dance Mania
fanatics with disposable income would
be reason enough for Strut's second DM
reissue in two years. But in the
context of house musics renewed
relevance on the global pop charts, the
commitment to Dance Mania homage takes
on a special poignance. At a glance,
house's most visible torchbearers in
2015 are, for the most part,
precocious, white British boys often
not yet old enough to legally get into
the American clubs they sell out. With
the commercial success of festival-
primed EDM acts and the increasing
reliance on overseas touring for
house's pioneers, some have wondered if
house still matters in its hometown of
Chicago. But doubting the movement's
persistent relevance in its hometown
ignores a fundamental truth: House
never left Chicago, it simply changed
forms. Steadily evolving over its three
decades of existence, house has
appeared as disco re-routed through
MIDI, motivational hip-house, warp-
speed juke, and abstracted footwork.
The legacy of Dance Mania's insouciant,
trail-blazing ghetto house is preserved
in the city's flourishing juke and
footwork communities as much as it
lives on through the label's second
life; Ghetto Madness is just a
reminder.
psst, more info at strut-records.com
01 Jammin Gerald - Pump That Shit Up 04:10
02 Dj Deeon - The Freaks 03:41
03 Dj Deeon - 1112 07:05
04 Steve Poindexter - Computer Madness 04:16
05 Darien - Hit It 04:20
06 Dj Rush - The Reactor 04:18
07 Wax Master Maurice - Bounce That Booty 03:53
08 Tyree - Nuthin Wrong 05:58
09 Jammin Gerald - Pump On The Floor 03:32
10 Paul Johnson - Give Me Ecstasy 06:15
11 Parris Mitchell - Ghetto Booty 05:34
12 Dj Milton - House-O-Matics 04:53
13 Dj Funk - Computer Sex 04:07
14 Dj Funk - Bitches 02:42
15 Houz' Mon - The Groove 05:23