1.4 - The idea.
I'm sitting the luxury apartment, overlooking Yokohama harbour, which Yuji Fuji has shared with Fox, since they moved here, from Brighton, three years ago.
"Yokohama's perfect, for us" enthuses Fox. As well has being Yuji's home town, it's perfectly positioned between Tokyo, and the beaches. Not to mention the fact that there wasn't really a distinctive Yokohama nightlife, before we arrived, despite its long history as an international port town."
"What does being a port have to do with having a good music scene?" I ask.
"It might seem strange, to suggest that a port city, with international connections, is inevitably connected with a vibrant nightlife, and music scene", Yuji continues. "But the number of times such a thing happens is uncanny - Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol - all ports. Brighton, also by the sea. In America, New York (New Wave), San Francisco (psychedelia), and Seattle (Grunge), on the coasts, and in the Great Lake cities, Chicago (Blues and House) and Detroit (Motown, and Techno)."
It's obvious that these guys know music history. But can they use that knowledge, to make a party rock? I'm about to find out. Yuji puts a DVD into his player, and shows me a 2 hour homemade film, of last Year's Rock4four Kamakura beach parties, overlaid, by one of Fox's mixes, which he said he did for the Ocean Day Alldayer, at Enoshima beach last year.
There are, it has to be said, alot of people, who seem to be enjoying themselves, in this film, from Fox, Yuji, and their fellow DJs, and VJs, to the Bar staff, to the heavenly, bikini clad babes, down from the big cities, and the young guys, of all nationalities, who watch them, admiringly. Loafer dudes, surfer dudes, surf rockers, Japanese Garage rockers, ravers, wavers, U.S. Navers, not yet shavers. All are having fun.
"The trick is, to get the perfectly balanced dancefloor", says Yuji, observing events on the DVD. "And to do that, you have to play to the girls - it doesn't have to be girly, but it does have to make you wanna move. Once the girls are on the floor, the boys'll follow. In Britain, the great DJ's, Danny Rampling, Graeme Park, the Big Beat Boutique crew - they all seemed to know that!"
But how do you do it, with Rock music, if the kids just wanna dance? Fox's mix starts with the Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", but the instrumental sections are looped and extended, and there's a clear, thumping beat underlaying it. The beat, it becomes apparent, is spliced from INXS "Not enough time", which is the next track up. The early tempo is restrained 4/4 - not full on, but increasingly dancey. Numb, by U2, Loaded, by Primal Scream, WFL by the Happy Mondays....
Hang on! the Primal Scream and Mondays' tracks are Rock??? I ask Yuji and Fox, incredulously. They were remixed by Weatherall and Oakenfold - legendary dance DJs and producers. Right?
"Right" Yuji responds. "But definitely these bands have always had one foot in the indie rock camp. If you went to a full on underground dance night, you were never gonna hear these tracks. You'd hear house, techno and trance. These tracks are are dancey rock tracks, for a rock crowd. You might hear them at Temperance, but not Renaissance.
"When I was in Manchester" Yuji continues, "there were lots of DJ's who weren't scared to drop Rock tracks... Dave Haslam's Temperance Club, at the Hacienda, and Justin Robertson, upstairs, at Jolly Roger. Really inspirational - got me thinking. But not even they would play Rock all night. You couldn't, because often the beat isn't clear enough, it's invariably a bugger to mix, and it's too focussed on the vocals. But the stuff the Big Beat crews did to rock, and other tracks, cutting and splicing, add to that the advances in mash up software, and suddenly you're looking at a whole new set of possibilities. These possibilities helped us decide to put on our first rock dance night, at my "Rock bar", on the harbor front here, in Yokohama, at the beginning of last year".
Was it a success?
"In a sense, yeah." Fox chips in. "But the crowds weren't big, and we had to pad the sets out with pre existing dancey remixes, alot of stuff, by the Strokes, and the U2 perfecto mixes. But the longer the night went on, the more the word spread. And because this ensured that the nights could continue, it gave me time to make some tracks I couldn't previously play more dance floor friendly, and DJ friendly, by looping the instrumental parts, and sticking clear, mixable beat patterns on each end. By the time we did the first beach party, at the beginning of July, musically, and commercially, it was really starting to come together.
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Featured tracks:
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots:
U2 - Numb:
Primal Scream - Loaded
(Link pending)
Happy Mondays - WFL
The Strokes - Reptilia:
U2 - Lady With The Spinning Head (remix):
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