Rinse FM Podcast: History Lesson (June 2015)

Not really a mix but a radio show, three hours long, from June 2015, with the drum & bass godfathers playing lots of oldies from all over the D&B historical map, and rambling delightedly over it all. Topics covered: Old school versus new (“You know when people say the tunes were better before? Well, they kind of were”); the genesis of Goldie’s still-storming “VIP Rider’s Ghost”; and Fabio’s ill-fated career as a dancehall chatter. It’s good-humored and blistering, a rare combination, thanks to a selection heavy on the mid-nineties heyday of the Metalheadz night at London’s Blue Note.

Worth attending to is the bit of dialogue around minute 53, when they explain that “tunes come out a lot faster nowadays,” but in the nineties, more of the tracks remained publicly unreleased, DJ-only exclusives, or dubplates. Historically, it tells us about just how plentiful the economy was at that point, as well as underlining an important point about that scene in that era: Most people encountered the music in DJ sets. Therefore, those exclusives had a captive and widespread audience, nearly as much as the released tunes. As Grooverider confesses close to the end, of a track he has just played from back then, “To this day, I still don’t know what that tune’s called.”