The Age of Love: "The Age of Love (Watch Out for Stella Club Mix)" (1990) fromClassic Acid (Moonshine)
Michael Mayer: [Hi-hat kicks in.] Ah, I know it. It's old. Yeah, that's a fucking classic; it used to be so big here in Cologne. You'd drop it at a party, and people would freak out. It was one of the biggest anthems for the Cologne gay scene. The first years of techno here—'91, '92, '93—the gay community was much heavier involved into the club and techno here in Cologne. When I hear this, I always remember the times when clubs like Space Club were on and all the cute gay guys with their slim dresses [laughs].
Last week I was going on about Gabriel Ananda and Dominik Eulberg's influences and how they identified strongly with the eye-q sound of Sven Vath. After doing a bit of rooting around in my collection in pursuit of something that would show a direct connection I realized that I had it a bit off. The eye-q sound was harder and faster than their more recent interpretations of trance, but ole Jam & Spoon were right on the money. If you were going out in those heady days of the early 90s you no doubt heard this tune.
Listen to the sounds used, particularly in the intro. Crystalline sounds that jump out of the speakers with a metronomic pulse around 120-125bpm. If you stripped out some of the pads and the vocal chorus I would be totally unsuprised to hear this on the dancefloor today.
What is really cool about today's dance scene is the way that the ghettos of genere's from previous years have been breaking down. Dance started off very eglatarian in the fact that there were only so many tunes, so you had to play a number of styles in order to get through the night. The 90s saw genere's get so compartmentalized that there was actual animosity between scenes and little music from one genere got played in the clubs or rave's of another. Today if you flip through mixmag its hard to say what belongs in the house section or the techno section and nights spring up that play everything from dubstep to disco in the span of a night.
Anyway, enjoy the music and have a great weekend.
The Age of Love: "The Age of Love (Watch Out for Stella Club Mix)
4 comments:
Great tune and indeed a classic.
If anybody has a Happy Hardcore version from around 94/95, or even if they just know the name of it, please let me know. It was on one of my favourite rave cassettes back when I was at school.
In my humble opinion, this is the first TRUE trance track, ever...it is a classic, it still engages me & it will probably "work" on underground dancefloors for many, many years to come.
Jam & Spoon's track "Follow Me" - a 12" b-side from "back in the day" must be heard, if you like The Age of Love. I swear I saw Charlie May & Sasha almost come to tears when I heard them play Follow Me MANY years ago in an Orlando rave night. Find it - if you can.
Jam & Spoon hold a special place for me, that is when I started making the shift from dancer to dj. There were tons of tunes that I loved on the dancefloor before them but they are the reason I started paying attention to names and tracking 12"'s.
When Mark Spoon died it brought back a lot of memories.
The Age Of Love originally was released in 1990. However, the Jam & Spoon remix, which is the version "everyone" knows, was only released in 1992.
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