Pump Up The Volume

April 11, 2022 8:52 PM

Pump Up The Volume: A History Of House Music [2h26m] is a 2001 Channel 4 documentary in three parts, all here in one for viewing convenience! Starting out with disco and tracing forward, it's a nice (albeit perhaps too linear) history of a music style that has basically taken over the world.
posted by hippybear (9 comments total)

OOOOOO
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:02 PM on April 11, 2022

Shit, since I last watched this, it's had some audio edited out of it. The silent spots do end, so it's mostly watchable.
posted by hippybear at 9:25 PM on April 11, 2022

There's a more complete copy on archive.org.
posted by offog at 5:13 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'd be interested to see an updated version of this. Most of these type of things end about 2000, where there was a bit of a fallow period for a few years.

A lot to cover in terms of changes since then.
posted by treblekicker at 6:26 AM on April 12, 2022

I honestly haven't found one yet, and I've been watching quite a few of these sorts of things lately. I'd be interested in that, too.
posted by hippybear at 6:30 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yesss, will watch and enjoy this. And because it's one of my favorite sites on the internet and seems related and I love sharing it: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Electronic Music Ever. Tip. ZOOOOM INNNN. CLICK BAR.
posted by RobertFrost at 6:45 AM on April 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I'd love (for someone else) to work out a playlist of all of these sorts of things, like Synth Brittania, and even the more recent amateur youtube stuff like The History of Call on Me or the same guy's history of the Spice Girls.

I mean, I know Rick Beato and Produce Like A Pro both sort of have whole segments of their channels dedicated to it, but they're always a bit thin due to licensing or clearance issues. I'm a sucker for a good music documentary, though - I'd barely heard of the Sparks before the Edgar Wright film last year, but it was interesting enough even as a non-fan. Maybe as a genre-adjacent fan?
posted by Kyol at 7:02 AM on April 12, 2022

in the early to mid-'80s, I was in junior high school in Chicago on the south side (I was bussed there to a public magnet school). This school (where Michelle Obama had recently graduated from high school) was extremely diverse, including Black and Hispanic students from the neighborhood, as well as students like me (white) from the north side, but we had students of every ethnicity imaginable; Asian, South Asian, etc, etc)

I remember kids talking about "house" music and having cassette tapes of it. I also remember kids saying "Jack the House" and I had no idea what they were referring to. I thought a house was where a family lived, even an apartment might be referred to as a house! I used to hear these badly made recordings on kids' cheap cassette players, and was told this was all made by so-and-so. A lot of it sounded really low-Fi and bad. But some of it was more polished. I remember one kid had a smiley face T-shirt with the words "Acid House" on it... the faculty just let him wear it. I had no idea of the connotation.

We were a little too young to be at these House parties, but I imagine many of the older kids went, along with older brothers and sisters. It's wild to think that this music was being made then that would go on to be such a huge influence in pop culture and music overall, especially coming from this low-budget, DIY kind of background (No one was using computers for music back then that I knew).

Thanks for the links. Chicago was a much grubbier place back then, before the Nineties. But I grew up my whole life in the city and it's cool to see that in a minuscule way, I was in the middle of a musical revolution. Several years later, in 1990 when I first dropped acid, some of the music we listened to was Chicago House... and I finally "got" the concept... I was 18 or 19 and had never been to a club, ever (I was kind of a semi-shy art and theater kid). I'll watch the documentary later when I have time.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:09 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Watching it now--thanks! Dr. indexy (who I met at a dance club) appreciated the nod to British northern soul.
posted by indexy at 6:03 PM on April 12, 2022