The History of Electronica
This is quite long but to anyone that even cares about electronic music (that would include Trance people  ) it is an absolute MUST read...enjoy! 
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Part One
The History Of Electronica, Part I
A hundred years ago, the musical experience was pretty straight forward. You sat and listened to someone sing or play an instrument. There was no amplification, no sound reinforcement, no manipulationof sound. Back in the early days of rock, life was almost simple. All you really needed was one electrical outlet–someplace to plug in the amp for your electric guitar and another for your electric bass...if you had a singer, chances are the guy could just use an open input on one of the amps. You could make the music louder or softer–and, if you wanted, you could fuzz things up a bit–but that was about as electronic as music got.
Today, though, life is much different. Electronic music is everywhere. Keyboards, samplers, computers, software–things that didn’t even exist 30 years ago are now shaping almost everything we hear. And I mean everything: on the radio, on TV, on record–and even in live performance. Music made with electronics–music made by machines and with the assistance of machines–is so pervasive that we don’t even notice it anymore.
In the mid 1950’s, people in Germany and France, Columbia University in New York City built a giant machine with the help of RCA. Not only could this “synthesizer” imitate most traditional instruments, it was also capable of producing an almost infinite variety of artificial sounds, hence its name: the Olson-Bear sound synthesizer.
By the beginning of the 1960s, only a handful of people were lucky enough to experiment with the new musical synthesizers, these machines were not available to your garden-variety musician. January 24, 1970, has gone down in history as an important date in music...that’s the day Dr. Bob Moog introduced this mini-moog. It was a small, portable, all-in-one keyboard synthesizer, and it could do virtually everything the giant machines of the 1950s could do. Most of all, it was reasonably price. it sold for about $2,000–expensive, but still far, far, cheaper than anything else up until that point. Within a year, several other companies were producing portable synths. Roger Waters used a suitcase-shaped keyboard-less device from an english company called “putney”...this thing was the basis for a lot of the electronic sounds we hear on pink floyd’s dark site of the moon. Pete Townsend of the who bought one from a company called “arp” and used it on the who’s next album. By the end of 1973, companies all over the world were manufacturing their own portable keyboard synthesizers...not only was their the mini-moog, but the “arp odyssey” and a couple of keyboards built by a guy named Tom Oberheim...there were keyboards from korg and roland and yamaha...
Meanwhile, German musicians–musicians from a country that had, by now, a twenty-year tradition of studying electronic music–were fascinated by the ever-expanding possibilities of the new synthesizer. There were groups like Can, Tangerine Dream, and Kraftwerk ...
In 1974, Kraftwerk released a totally electronic album entitled Autobahn...the title track ran some 23 minutes, basically capturing the essence of a drive down a German superhighway...to everyone’s surprise, an edited version of that composition became a world-wide top 40 hit.
The influence of Kraftwerk cannot be underestimated. The release of Autobahn marked the beginning of a huge, planet-wide explosion of interest in the synthesizer...suddenly, the synth wasn’t just for classical musicians, avant-garde composers and regular rock’n’rollers who wanted to use electronic sounds as flourishes and flavour for their standard guitar-bass-and-drums songs.
By mid 1978, interest in synthesizer music was growing exponentially. Even David Bowie got into the act with a synthetic-sounding album called Low. But you wanna know what really kicked things into high gear? Punk .
By the latter half of the 1970s, the cost of a basic analogue synthesizer had dropped significantly...this price dropped, combined with an increase in power and versatility, coincided with the end of the punk explosion. The anger of punk had burned out by 1978–but the central tenet remained: the rule that said “anyone should be able to make music, regardless of that person’s formal training...what mattered, above all, was attitude”. The cheap keyboard synthesizer was like a gift from heaven. You now didn’t need to know anything about music to write a song. A few twists and turns of a few knobs and suddenly, you were making sounds that no one had ever heard before...and once you found those sounds, you could just program the machine to play them over and over and over again, with perfect precision and zero mistakes. Find a few more dollars for a cheap multi-track tape recorder and you could literally make a record in your bedroom.
This is exactly what Daniel Miller did...throughout the 70s, he played guitar in a procession of bands that went nowhere. He wasn’t very good, either. Instead of wrapping his fingers around chords, he preferred to whack the strings of his guitar with a piece of wood or a pipe. When he wasn’t playing in a band, he was working as a DJ at a resort in Switzerland. That’s where he first heard Kraftwerk, the cold, sounds of Bowie's low album and the electronic disco of Giorgio Moroder. When he got home, he put together a couple of songs, including a weird, cold electronic description of an auto accident inspired by a book called crash by J.G. Ballard. It was called “Warm Leatherette”.
Meanwhile, another new indie label called “Beggar’s Banquet” had unleashed their own robot. His name was Gary Numan–and he took the electronic innovations of Kraftwerk, David Bowie and Giorgio Moroder and combined them with both the sparse songwriting of punk and a sense of theatrics. In 1979, he had a massive world-wide hit with “Cars”.
Thanks to Gary Numan, Kaftwerk, David Bowie, and Donna Summer, the public was well-acquainted with the new synthesizer sounds by the end of the 1970s...but to most people, the synth meant harsh, futuristic and robotic sounds. A new, gentler, more fluid sound was being pioneered by Brian Eno.
His full name is Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste De La Sale Eno . After attending art school, he joined the very first incarnation of the famous British art-glam outfit Roxy Music. He didn’t so much play an instrument–his role was to electronically treat all the other instruments and vocals. By 1973, he had gone solo and began to work on the outer fringes of rock and roll using strange electronic devices.
Later, while recovering from a car accident, Eno began to think of ways that music could be used to create an environment–an atmosphere–much like someone uses lighting or paint to change the atmosphere of a room or other open space
Eno's invention became known as “ambient music,” a style hat has affected everything from trance and techno to new age and the stuff you hear in elevators.
Part Two
The History Of Electronica, Part II
Twenty years ago, this is what people thought of when you mentioned the term "electronic music"...a bunch of synthetic, sci-fi sounding bleeps and bloops...cold, harsh music without a trace of emotion or soul. Today, a typical musician has more electronics and more computing power at his or her fingertips than the apollo astronauts had when they went to the moon. But how did we get from those cold bleeps to the infinitely more complicated recordings of the early 21st century?
This is the second installment of our history on electronic music-specifically the branch of electronic music that affected the world of new rock and alternative music. On part one, we traced the long, complicated birth of the portable synthesizer. We don't call them "synthesizers" much anymore, do we? They're just "keyboards"...but some twenty years ago, "synth music" was all the rage, especially after the original punk explosion died out. If punk had been a liberating force for rock and roll-a force that said "anyone should be able to make music, regardless of that person's formal training or ability or class"-the portable synthesizer levelled the playing field even more.
The affordable synth was a godsend for anyone who didn't have the time or inclination to take formal music lessons...now, if you wanted to make music, all you had to do was learn a few rudimentary programming skills and voila! You were suddenly a musician. Even if you didn't know the first thing about music, the synth gave you the tools to write a song, and not only that: a little fiddling could result in sounds that were totally new to the human ear. As a final bonus, a synth often made it easier to play and sing at the same time.
Take the case of Depeche Mode. They were originally a guitar band, but when bank teller Martin Gore saved up some cash for his first keyboard, everything changed. Martin Gore's first keyboard was a moog prodigy, which first went on the market in 1979. It was "monophonic," meaning that you could only play one note at a time. No chords.
But he and Vince Clarke didn't care. They were amazed by all the sounds it could make, just by messing with the controls. They loved it. It was so easy to play, and when you got bored trying to write a song, you could just goof around by making new sounds-sounds which eventually became music.
"The synthesizer was a very punk instrument, an instant do-it-yourself kind of tool...you don't have to be a great musician to be allowed to play and to get a message out...and that's what punk is all about...we certainly didn't know anything about music when we first started" - Martin Gore, Depeche Mode.
By mid-1981, synthesizer music was being heard all over Britain. Naturally, the inclination was to take things to extremes almost immediately. Not only did Depeche Mode dispense with guitars, they also gave up on having a drummer. So who kept the beat? A machine, of course.
OMD made their live debut at a club in Liverpool called "Eric's". There was Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys, a couple of synthesizers and a reel-to-reel tape machine called "winston". The rhythm tracks were recorded on winston and then played back onstage. That's because the drum machines at the time were notoriously unreliable and were prone to crashing in the middle of a performance, and that's why many of the early techno-pop bands-including Depeche Mode -were seen with a reel-to-reel machine onstage.
Another electronics-heavy group called "The Human League" also made some serious waves in the early 80s. The band was created, appropriately, by two computer operators from Sheffield, England. AThe Human League was 100% electronic. They had the synthesizers, the reel-to-reel machine and, when they were feeling brave, a drum machine onstage. Today, this isn't a big deal at all...but back in 1979, admitting you were an all-electronic band was dangerous. Audiences could be very hostile...they didn't want to see a bunch of people dancing around while machines did all the work. They wanted to see real rock and roll! Real people making real music on real instruments! This is how The Human League got kicked off a 1979 tour with the Talking Heads . The audiences hated their all-machine act that much.
But The Human League was to have the last laugh...on July 3, 1982, they became the first british techno-pop band to score a number one hit in north america.
By the beginning of 1983, it looked like synthesizers were going to take over the world... Soft Cell, Blancmange, The Eurythmics, Duran, Duran, Visage, a Flock of Seagulls, Yazoo, The Thompson Twins, Tears For Fears, Heaven 17, Thomas Dolby.
The techno-pop revolution reached its crescendo in 1983 and 1984. The price of keyboards kept coming down, thanks to high demand by musicians and fierce competition amongst manufacturers. Not only were keyboards getting cheaper and cheaper, they were also becoming both more powerful and easier to use.
And not only were new synthesizer bands being formed every day, established groups who hadn't been interested in keyboards were now incorporating the new technology into their sound. There was The Police, The Cure-and New Order .
Following the death of singer Ian Curtis in may 1980, the surviving members of Joy Division re-grouped as New Order...and new order had evolved into a band really intrigued with the possibilities of keyboards, drum machines and sequencers. In 1983, New Order released a technological milestone. This song had a tremendous impact on the entire world of music. And it all started because the band was lazy.
Whenever they played live, New Order hated doing encores, so one day, they decided that they'd just turn on Stephen Morris' drum machine and let it run while they walked offstage. The idea was to get backstage and start drinking as soon as possible. But a drum machine on its own can be kind of borning. So they decided to get a sequencer to trigger a simple keyboard program. Suddenly, New Order had the foundations of a new song-a song played entirely by machines. According to inside sources, New Order decided to take this idea into the studio one day. Unfortunately, everyone was tripping on LSD and no one was in great shape. They managed to get all the basic tracks down-but they were so wasted that once they were done, the studio engineers sent them away so they could finish mixing the track in peace.
When the song was done, it was released only as a 12-inch single. A few radio stations played it, but the dance clubs went crazy for it. It wasn't rock...it wasn't disco...it wasn't techno-pop...it was something completely different. New Order's "Blue Monday" became the best-selling 12-inch single in the history of planet earth. It was a song that neatly bridged the gap between rock and dance music-and its influence was staggering. Remember: in 1983, the after effects of disco were still among us...dancing was not cool among the rock and punk and alternative crowd. But after "Blue Monday" some people began to re-evaluate that stance.
Part Three
The History Of Electronica, Part III
What if you could take any sound from anywhere and make it into music? If you could find a way to capture any sound in the universe, mould it, shape it, distort it-pervert it-in any way you could imagine, shouldn't you be able to ascend to a new level of musical god? The answer was apparently "yes".Experiments on storing sound digitally for playback through a musical instrument began in the early 70s. In 1980, an Australian company called "Fairlight Instruments" introduced the first version of the "fairlight computer musical instrument"...this was the first keyboard-based digital sampler.
It could digitally record any acoustic sound and display as a visual image on a computer monitor. You could alter its wave-form by a light-pen. Once you were happy with the new creation, you could play it back using a standard-sized 88-note keyboard and store it on an eight-inch floppy disc.
Virtually everything we heard on Frankie Goes To Hollywood's debut album, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, was composed on the Fairlight keyboard computer installed at an english recording studio called "the manor". Everything from the rhythm track to the guitars were manipulated samples. For example, the snare drum sound was lifted outright from a Led Zeppelin album.
About the only thing that didn't come out of the Fairlight was singer Holly Johnson. He nailed the vocal on "Relax" the very first time through. It was about four in the morning-and for the record, he was completely stoned on hash as he was singing.
Once Fairlight showed everyone the possibilities of digital sampling and manipulation, other companies jumped on the bandwagon. A company called "New England Digital" introduced a Fairlight-like machine called "The Synclavier" in 1984. It was a golden age for electronic-based music...the sounds kept getting fresher-and the music kept getting more sophisticated.
While there was no doubt that the fairlight, the Synclavier and the Emu were cool, they were also very expensive. This kept digital sampling away from the average musician. However, sampling continued to evolve in another direction. In part two of this series, we discussed "found sound," the idea of taking real world sounds and using them in music. Canada's Skinny Puppy was especially innovative, using bits of dialogue from obscure films to enhance their industrial sound.
But here is a big commercial breakthrough. All the music was new-but for some added spice, Mick Jones dubbed in some dialogue from a 1970 film called Performance, which starred Mick Jagger. People found this technique to be very exciting, and, as a result, "e=mc 2" became the first worldwide rock hit to feature this style of sampling.
Sure, it was cool to sample bits of movie dialogue for your songs, and it was reasonably easy, too. What did you need? A VCR and a cassette deck? But what if you wanted to be a little more selective and a little more creative when it came to appropriating bits of sound? What you needed was a reasonably-priced sampler, a piece of electronic hardware designed to sample sounds and then store them electronically.
Well, necessity is the mother of invention, right? And in 1985, a company called Ensoniq introduced a keyboard synthesizer that came with a built-in sampler. It could hold anywhere from five to forty seconds of material, depending on the memory installed. Not only was it cheap-about $2,000-but it allowed the user to load new samples while playing. That made it a powerful machine to use on stage.
At the same time Ensoniq was demonstrating its new creation, a Japanese company called Akai introduced a machine designated the s612. This was a rack-mounted sampler, it had a whopping 128 kilobytes of memory, meaning it could hold just 8 seconds of sound at the lowest sampling rate. You could dump your samples to special 2.8 inch floppy discs, but these things could hold just one sample per side. By today's standard, this is primitive stuff-but in 1985, this was science fiction.
From 1985, Paul Hardcastle with "19," a mini-documentary on Vietnam posing as a 3 ½ minute pop song. "19" was a number one hit all over the world-and for most people, this was their first real introduction to the possibilities of sampling. The worldwide success of the song also pushed more manufacturers into developing better samplers. For example, in 1986, Akai introduced the s-900 followed by their s-1000, the machine that became the industry standard.
Meanwhile, another cool thing had been developed. A bunch of companies had come together to create something called "midi"-the music instrument digital interface. This was an amazing breakthrough. Using a box called a "midi controller," a music could hook all his gear together, and with a little patience and practice and programming, he or she could create-and play-unimaginably complex arrangements completely solo.
There was also another technological shift. Up until the middle 80s, most musicians used analogue synthesizers-that is, the sounds they generated were by old-fashioned analogue circuits, but in 1987, keyboards went digital with the introduction of the Roland d50, because sounds could be altered digitally-and because it could "talk" to other digital devices using "Midi," this keyboard was a huge success. In fact, it's still a favourite of many working musicians.
Then came another song to shake everything up. With the help of a couple of London DJ's (including a guy who would later become the manager of Bush), five producers and musicians created a musical collage using material from several rap groups, an Israeli singer named Ofra Haza, James Brown and the Iranian revolutionary army chorus.
The song was issued under a name made up of the initials of the five main guys behind the project: Martyn, Alex, Rudy, Ivo Watts-Russel and Steven. This was M/A/R/R/S.
As we moved into the late 80s, we had all of what today we'd consider the basics: digital keyboards, digital samplers, digital sequencers, computers and specialized music software. Even more important was by 1986, the price of this technology had come down to the point were a middle-class teenager could afford to go out and buy some of this gear.
Because we're doing a serious study of the history of electronica, we have to mention the Macintosh computer from apple. The first MAC was introduced in January 1984 during the Superbowl with the famous "big brother" TV spot.
Because it was so easy to use, the mac was immediate hit with accountants, desktop publishers-and musicians. Thanks to a software program called "protools" created by a company called "Digidesign," more and more electronic-friendly musicians started making the MAC a standard part of their equipment setup both in the studio and onstage...and the more it was used in music, the more the mac-and software companies-catered to the needs and desires of musicians. Pretty soon, a musician had a thousand times more computing power to make music than the astronauts had when they went to the moon.
Before the early 1980s, most people believed that there was no artistic reason to simulate in electronics what could be done by a real musical instrument...for example, if you needed a guitar sound, you found a guitar. But as musicians embraced technology even further, a new set of rules and aesthetics began to emerge.
One big supporter of the Macintosh and technology in general was a kid from Pennsylvania named Trent Reznor. Trent was raised on techno-pop, everything from the Human League to Depeche Mode. Machines were his thing, he even worked as a keyboard salesman in a music store for a while. It was his job to demonstrate the capabilities of the newest gear to all the customers.
When he got a job in a Cleveland recording studio, he was allowed to fool around in the studio after hours. The result was the first Nine Inch Nails album-a powerful all-electronic collection of songs called Pretty Hate Machine.
Nine Inch Nails 1989 album "Head Like A Hole" featured a lot of the gear we've been talking about : an Akai s-1000 sampler, a Macintosh Quadra, an emu keyboard, assorted moogs and arp keyboards, and a roland tr-808 drum machine. But when Trent was working on the Downward Spiral album, he needed a drum beat, and rather than make one up himself, he took this bit from the opening bars of a 1977 Iggy Pop song called "nightclubbing".
Some musicians were so fond of the roland tr-808 drum machine, they actually named their bands in its honour. The best example is Martin Price, the owner of a record store in Manchester called "Eastern Bloc". Together with a local musician and producer, they began experimenting with keyboards, sequencers and drum machines. In 1988, they decided to turn pro, and since they used a roland tr-808 at the foundations of just about everything they did, they called themselves "808 state".
Part Four
The History Of Electronica, Part IV
What if you could take any sound from anywhere and make it into music? A "dj" is a "disc jockey"-someone who makes his (or her) living playing recorded music...and there are two types of djs. There's the "radio kind", and then there's the "club kind". In terms of our history of Electronica, we're most concerned about the djs who are rooted in a certain segment of "dance club culture.
Sixty years ago, the idea of paying for the privilege of hearing someone play records in a dark room was considered to be pretty stupid. I mean, you turn out the lights at home, put on the radio and drink for free. But to actually go somewhere and pay money for the privilege? There was one person who thought this was a smashing good idea. His name was Jmmy Savile, an englishman who started playing records at men's clubs in the UK sometime in 1943. He had a home-made sound system and a stack of 78 rpm records, and much to everyone's surprise, Jimmy's little enterprise became quite popular.
Here in North America in the 1950s and 60s, we saw something that became known as "the sock hop"-a school dance often hosted by a dj from the local radio station. He'd show up, give away some prizes and play some records on a makeshift mixer.
In the UK in the 1960s, the idea of going to a club to listen to pre-recorded music was a much bigger deal, mainly because British radio was so tightly controlled by the government. If you wanted to hear the coolest new records, you couldn't depend on the BBC. You had to go out to the lyceum to hear Sammy Samwell spin the latest. The swingin' London club scene took off in the 60s. All night dance parties became the norm, and this trend soon spread to other parts of the country.
The idea also caught on in New York in about 1965 where dj Terry Noel presided over a hot club called "Arthur", and as far as anyone can tell, terry was the first dj to mix records into long, continuous sets of music. Arthur was so successful that it spawned imitators across the continent.
While disco was happening in the clubs, rap hip-hop was being born on the streets of New York. Quick-handed DJs grabbed beats off records while MCs rapped their own rhymes over top. MCs and DJs competed against each other to see who had the phattest beats and dopest rhymes. This is the culture that gave us Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash . Today, we'd call this "turntablism"-chopping records into sounds that are then manipulated into something totally new. Some djs became so good that in their hands, turntables and a mixers were genuine musical instruments that were used to create brand new music out of a series of spare parts. It was inevitable that these manual techniques of chopping up sounds for recycling into new compositions ended up being used in the studio, especially after the introduction of the sampler.
See, hip-hop lives in the world of sound, not just in the world of music, and because those sounds can come from anywhere, the sonic possibilities of hip-hop were much different-and often much broader than rock music. In this sense, hip-hop is very much like those early avant-garde electronic composers. Playing notes wasn't as important as finding ways to play sounds.
In 1982, a New York MC named Afrika Bambaataa released "planet rock". This one song became the source of everything from house and electro and garage and miami bass. And it also had a huge effect on the future of what became known as "hip-hop.
So why all this talk about rap and hip-hop and house and garage music? I thought we were talking about the Electronica that we hear in today's new rock. We are...but nothing operates in a vacuum anymore. Dance music, rap and hip-hop are all part of the history of today's Electronica. The turntable techniques, the remix, the sampler and the dance floor-they're all pieces of the puzzle and part of the attitude.
No discussion about today's Electronica would be complete without acknowledging what happened in Detroit back in the 1980s. This is what became known as "techno" was born. Generally speaking, techno is percussion-based electronic dance music, stripped down to the point where basslines and drum beats rule.Techno's roots lie in all the bands and musicians and engineers we've talked about so far. Everyone from the earliest synthesizer pioneers and avant-garde electronic composers to Kraftwerk and Gary Numan and the English techno-pop scene to Afrika Bambaataa to all those quick-handed DJs.
But it took a small Detroit scene to take all those elements and put them together in a new and highly-influential way. In fact, this scene was so small, it can be traced to three friends: Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Derrick May. These guys were fascinated in equal parts by Kraftwerk, Gary Numan , the english techno-pop scene, motown, disco and dance music in general. Their mission became to make funky dance music using cheap synthesizers.
At first, this music was considered to be a branch of the house music scene that originated in Chicago, although there were some obvious differences. The first reference to this music being known as "techno" seems to be a cybotron track called "techno city" in 1984, and the first time anyone used the word "techno" in print to describe this music seems to have been in may1988 in a UK magazine called The Face.
Which brings to "Year Zero" in the whole history of Electronica: 1988. That's when Detroit techno, Chicago house and the dance scene of New York were all embraced by english music fans. It also helped that this was the summer a new drug called "ecstasy" really took off in the english clubs. This was the "summer of love". The beginnings of a new dance culture in the UK-rave culture. And over the next few years, this culture split into many different distinct scenes as England witnessed profound social changes among its youth The music mutated into trance, drums'n'bass, jungle, and its effects were felt in places like Manchester where the rave ideals were adopted by groups such as the Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, The Inspiral Carpets and the whole "Madchester" scene.
So while North Americans would soon enjoy being bummed out by grunge, kids in the UK were putting on their baggy pants, taking "e," grabbing their whistles and dancing their brains out. English rave culture is incredibly important to our history of Electronica because this is the scene that really gave birth to the notion of the DJ as a performer. He wasn't just the guy mixing records in the booth anymore, he was the guy making the music using whatever he had at his disposal, and he was the guy in the studio making permanent recordings. Those recordings were not only hot in the clubs and at the raves, but they were also being heard on the radio.
In the 90s, the DJ became a superstar, and there were two kinds of superstars. There was the guy who spun records at clubs and raves -- his reputation was built on quick hands, imaginative mixes and his overall ability to keep the party moving. These same DJs might also occasionally release collections of special remixes. But at the same time, these DJs were faceless, and they were deliberately cloaked in anonymity. They had names-but because of the nature of this brand of DJ culture, few people actually knew what they looked like. They were anti-stars. Then there's the DJ who moved from spinning records to making CDs of original material and became stars in the showbiz tradition. These are the guys we're concerned about.
Take The Prodigy, for example. They are a collective from Essex, England, led by Liam Howlett, a former breakdancer and DJ. In 1991, ThThe Prodigy released an original composition called "Charly," which became a huge hit in England. Rave music had crossed over from the clubs to the record charts. "Charly" was followed by a couple of powerful eps and a couple of albums, and then came the monster: "Fat of the Land", a record that debut at number 1 on the North American charts. English-style Electronica was now a worldwide mainstream thing.
Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are another two DJs who moved from spinning records to making them. While taking the same history course at Manchester university, they became caught up in the club scene at a time when a DJ style called "Balaeric" was hot. This style was a mix of everything from house music from America, disco from Italy, hip-hop and alternative dance music. If you've ever heard the names "Smon Tong" or "Paul Oakenfold ," these are guys who championed balaeric djing back then.
In 1991, they began djing together in a Manchester club called "Naked Under Leather". Their nights were soon very popular, which gave them the idea of re-creating their unique living mixing sound in a small studio. Early trials were successful. They started selling singles and eps. Soon Tom and Ed were being recruited to remix material for other people, and in april 1997, everything came together with an album called Dig Your Wwn Hole... by The Chemical Brothers.
Our last famous DJ-turned-performer is Norman Cook, who is better known as "Fatboy Slim". Norman used to be the bass player for a fine pop group called The Housemartins, but after they split in 1987, Norman got all caught up in the acid house and rave scene that was starting to build in the UK. Over the next few years, he created dance music under a variety of names. There was "Pizzaman", "Freakpower", "Beats International", and "Formidable Remixer".
Things really started to happen for him in 1996 when he released his first full-length album, which was called Better Living Through Chemistry...it contained a big hit called "Goin' Out Of My Head," which was based around a sample of The Who's "Can't Explain". Better living through chemistry caused such big ripples through the UK that everyone couldn't wait for the next album. And it was a monster...a multi-platinum record that made Norman Cook of Bromley, England, a very fast $25 million. It was called You've Come A Long Way, Baby.
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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."
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