Feature

B&S 1000: MARK WEBSTER: THE ACID TEST REVISITED

Because it becomes unavoidable when you’ve been around the block a few times - and trust me kids, you can run, but you can’t hide. And then running also becomes difficult - I have a few well-worn phrases in my repetoire to which I turn that cover many a situation and occasion.

One is ‘I STILL haven’t had enough free drink ‘ (that might work well as an epitath, too, as it goes), another goes ‘all I expect from going to watch West Ham is that my seat is there’ and a genuine hardy annual remains ‘I got into this whole soul music thing because of the trousers’.

Now this is one that I’ve carted out in various TV and magazine interviews, as well as in the wee small hours in various chalets or caravans on certain holiday camp sites in specific parts of Southport and Great Yarmouth over many a long year. And to those of you who have been privvy to that particular diatribe, yep, here I go again!

I became a part of the the world of Blues & Soul over twenty years ago when I pitched up at HQ in London, W2 and asked if they had a job. Simple as that. Well, not that simple, because they didn’t, but they did eventually, selling small ads for their sister paper Black Music, which then evolved into me becoming part of the B&S editorial team. But what got me up those stairs in the first place were those trousers.

Essentially, what I mean by this is that when I actually got the nerve to pitch up uninvited at Praed Towers, I was a friend and devotee of dancehall legend Pete Tong - purveyor, in those days, of the finest jazz funk and soul and a Blues & Soul employee. And back when Pete was still playing the music out, it was to a crowd that was, and had been for a few years, at the sharp end of (what would be called ‘street’) fashion. Basically, if you didn’t do punk or flares, you were into the ‘scene’ that was to become known as ‘soul boy’ and, trust me, because you’ve been there/are there yourself, you know that being part of something innovative, separate, special is a great place to be.

Which brings me and my trousers to the Acid Test. Way back when the big noise in dance music was coming out of Ibiza in the hypnotic, edgy, radical shape of Acid House, I got the arseache. It annoyed me that people outside of the world of B&S and its associated scene were thinking that this is where it’s AT! Now where ‘it’ and ‘at’ were, is now neither here nor there,
but at the time I wanted to remind everybody that our world had plenty of its own hypnotic and edgy and radical music and music-makers and that to follow the latest fad would be to deny yourself the best noises on the planet. So I wrote a piece eulogising a range of artists from the Mizell brothers of Blue Note fame to Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad, and essentially thumped my chest rather self-importantly.

Now I should point out at this stage that while I was strutting my funky, left-field stuff, the magazine was quite rightly bringing the noise about the Michael Jacksons, Anita Bakers and Jam & Lewis’ of this world - more familiar names, more familiar music and essential parts of the contemporary black music world - but I was all about ensuring that our music’s cutting edge remained razor sharp’; something I carried over into my jazz columns for the mag.

Not that I was some kind of voice in the wilderness here. As a journalist, if you’re cute, you tend to be more the assembler of disparate ideas rather than some self-appointed guru boshing out sermons from the mount - that way, you’ve got a fair chance of your ideas finding an audience - and while I was in print proclaiming, there was a genuine pioneer and advocate of the music, Chris Bangs, exclaiming from behind a DJ console (and I paraphrase) ‘f**k acid house - this is acid jazz!’.

Of course, what Chris’s little moment of verbal dexterity did was to give a whole swathe of what had gone before and a burgeoning world that came after a hook, a handle from which to hang a sound, a look, a feeling. And it really helped me to come to terms with the fact that great music should be seen as timeless and it came alive through (and these are the edited highlights) Jonathan Moore's (of Cold Cut fame) warehouse parties, Soul ll
Soul, Nicky Holloway's The Special Branch, the Brand New Heavies/Jamiroquai/ Mother Earth axis, The Young Disciples bringing together James Brown’s Funky People and Galliano sharing the billing with veteran jazzer Charles Earland at the Brighton Jazz Bops.

And in continuing to apply the acid test? Well, for instance, a genuine holy trinity - the Jazz Rooms in Brighton, the Jazz Cafe in Camden, the B-Bar at the Southport Weekenders.

Or there's buying the music on labels like Acid Jazz itself, and other like-minded companies such as Talkin' Loud , B.B.E. and Defected over here, Giant Step in New York, Ubiquity/Luv ‘n’ Haight out of San Francisco, Funk Weapons from Canada, Irma out of Italy. Its also about hip hop innovators like A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, Common and Mos Def and neo-soulsters such as Maxwell, Eryka Badu, Jill Scott, Omar, 4 Hero and Donnie. And it’s about house heads such as Masters At Work, Kevin Hedge/Blaze, DJ Spen, Bugz In the Attic , Dimitri and about the champions of the cause on radio and in clubs; Gilles Peterson, Norman Jay, Dr. Bob Jones, Jazzie B, Snowboy, Russ Dewsbury et al.

So, as I mentioned, you see what I’ve done here, don’t you? I’ve left loads out. I’ve missed out great musicians, producers, labels, clubs and DJ’s that you could name in a split second, and you know what else, that’s a good thing. Because that just goes to show that this whole world of ‘acid’ that I became so attached to 20 years ago and I still see as standing the test of time, is not necessarily the elitist, specialist world it would seem.

Blues & Soul’s place in the scheme of things as a champion of black music for 1,000 issues is fundamentally established and uncomprimisingly deserved. There is no doubt that without the magazine operating as a shop window, there are artists and records that may never have been heard of, or would
never have got made. And of course, a lot of these artists will be on the front cover, get record of the week, sit at number one on the charts, fill up giant stadia, win an Oscar and get interviewed by Jonathan Ross. But not all of them. Some of them will record on a shoestring, be released by a ‘mom ‘n’ pop’ label, and perhaps only get heard in a grimey basement club or the wee small hours across the airwaves.

And you know what that means? They’ve passed the test. I’ll get me trousers.
Words Mark Webster