Introduction
This is a book about passion.
It might seem to you at first view that this is simply an anthology of essays about music. It goes wider than that. It is not simply a series of first-person accounts of cultural eras. Nor is it simply a collection of academic treatises about musical styles, events and festivals.
Whilst it may contain elements of all of the above, first and foremost this is a book about passion. Passion suffuses this book on all levels, inspiring it, underpinning it, driving it. And passion transcends genres and pigeon holes. Passion does not adhere to convention and rules. Passion is about excitement and energy and freedom. Passion is about that moment when everything just falls into place on some intimate level and for sometimes inexplicable reasons, no matter what the rest of the world is doing. Passion is what music, what Crossfade, what The Big Chill is all about.
It was a little under a year ago that we first started distilling the idea of Crossfade as it stands today. We were absorbed in bouncing ideas around, driven by a passion for music, a passion for literature, a passion for bringing people together, a passion for The Big Chill, and a passion for finding some way of capturing it all under one dust-jacket. Book ideas that had been mulled over before, some that had been talked about on and off within The Big Chill for several years, were colliding softly with fresh ideas and new perspectives. Both coming from slightly different angles, we batted our passions around. Documentary met fiction. Music met food met cider met holidays met art. One element after another was thrown into the air to see what other element it could connect with, what final mix we could create. By the end of our exploratory adventure, we had several ideas scrawled down in a dog-eared red notebook. One idea stood out as the most obvious and one thread tied it all together: the thread that connected all the elements we had been speaking about was passion. So, then, we would let passion dominate this debut book. We would give ten Big Chillers – artists, friends, professional writers, non-professional writers – the chance to share their passion for music.
After all, passion is at the very core of The Big Chill multimedia event and festival. Ten years on from it’s inaugural event at London’s Union Chapel – a Sunday afternoon and evening which in many ways may have turned the notion of clubbing on its head – The Big Chill is a thriving community where Big Chillers convene to share their passion for music, art, food, people, camping, the countryside… The list could go on and on. Much of this community meets annually at The Big Chill festival: a weekend at Eastnor Castle in the Malvern Hills. Further one-off events through the year, both in the UK and abroad – along with the notorious Big Chill website forum – keep the community fuelled and connected.
As with all great passionate affairs, there is a sense of mischief and adventure that goes hand in hand with the artistic and production professionalism of The Big Chill. Not only is the artistic programming and the event production expected year on year to be top notch, it is also expected to be bold, different, progressive. It has been described as evolutionary entertainment, and in that respect The Big Chill tries never to stand still and, instead, to sidestep pigeon holes. The Big Chill is never the same event or festival twice.
Which is where we come back to Crossfade. The Big Chill is continually looking for and experimenting with new and different forms of expression and creative enterprise. In its 10 year history, The Big Chill events and festivals have seen poetry working alongside circus performance, comedy working alongside visuals working alongside electronica, ice sculptures working alongside pyrotechnics working alongside acoustic folk singers. There is no set formula to The Big Chill. It is based year by year on the passions of its founders, the passions of its team, the passions of its community, and the combined passion of all of these elements for The Big Chill. The Big Chill is about letting those passions play in an arena together, creating a creative kaleidoscope of colour, vigour and love. And, in part as a celebration of The Big Chill’s tenth birthday, it was time to throw our passion for books into the mix.
This sense of kaleidoscopic motion and movement runs throughout Crossfade. It is almost ironic that we have chosen to theme the essays by genres of music, given The Big Chill’s historical rejection of pigeon holing. However, each essay, when delved into, will reveal just how semi-permeable our contributors’ notions of genres are. They are not hermetic, staunchly defined categories based on empirical evidence. No, the concept of genre in this book is fluid, metamorphic, inclusive. The absence of chronological sequencing of the essays is also a reflection of our attempt not to play into the hands of the straightforwardly generic.
In fact, originally, we had played with the idea of this anthology being called Musical Statues. This was intended as a comment on the way in which musical genres only stand still if you stare at them. The minute you look away, they creep up behind you, change and grow, update and renew. Nonetheless, we opted for Crossfade as the more fluid and accessible name, and one which clearly outlines the way in which each essay in this anthology – each genre, if you like – slides into every other. There is no beginning and no end, only the still point of the turning world. And even that never stays still for long.
The written and spoken word has always been something that has been valued by The Big Chill. In its early years, On magazine was launched, a free monthly A4 black and white enthusiasts fanzine, which in many ways brought together the early musical stands which formed the nucleus of The Big Chill’s latest passions. In 1999, The Big Chill collaborated with The London Festival Of Literature to stage Words In Motion at Sadlers Wells. The event featured a new and previously untried symbiosis of modern art, - music, specially commissioned DJ/VJ/word mixes, dance performance, aerial gymnastics, spoken word and original lighting and environmental design, projections and graphics. And since becoming the first UK club event to go online in its inaugural year, The Big Chill’s website has for some time provided an outlet for a range of essays, reviews and think-tank pieces, as well as its infamous and vibrant community forum, which has been attracting over a thousand postings on most days.
So given that some roots of a passion for words were already in place, it seemed a natural evolution to delve into the world of publishing. Once we had the theory in place, it became a case of joining the dots with the actual production. First, we sought out on a publishing house. Serpent’s Tail who, fortuitously, had grabbed our attention with its fascinating and varied list, seemed immediately to make a perfect partner for our plans. Subsequently, we approached our wishlist of contributors and were delighted when each and every one of them came back with a resounding ‘yes’.
Our choice of contributors was, in fact, remarkably straightforward. We primarily wanted musicians, writers and / or journalists (in some cases, all three!) who were passionate about The Big Chill and about their chosen topic. We were lucky enough to have a selection of fascinating and diverse individuals writing in this book.
As a brief synopsis, Crossfade contains essays by the following contributors. Susanna Glaser, child prodigy and author of her famous violinist father’s biography, takes an autobiographical, vivid look at her topic, Bleep, placing it in the context of growing up in a classically trained musical family. Stripped Pine and Swedish Furniture: A Defence of Chill-Out by one-time International trampolining champion, Ally Fogg, approaches the notion of “dinner party music” in a humorous yet critically fortified manner, taking four albums and constructing a defence out of them. Pete Lawrence, chief Eskimo of Kingdom Chill, takes a contemporary look at the roots and evolution of Folk, debunking a few myths and hey nonny nonnies along the way. Writer and music journalist Tony Marcus tackles the slippery concept of Nostalgia, outlining its anchors, its purpose and its props. The ambitious topic of Jazz is dexterously handled by Mixmaster Morris, the maverick DJ and central figure in the rave scene of the 80s, mixing autobiography with the vast Jazz scene to vibrant effect. Hillegonda Rietveld, Senior Lecturer in Arts and Media at London’s South Bank University where she supervises postgraduate research towards PhDs on issues related to dance culture, takes us on a House journey from Chicago to Manchester’s notorious Hacienda Club. Eclectic Electric: A Post Punk Posting sees Alan James, the Head of Contemporary Music at Arts Council England, describing and interpreting the effects of the punk era. Stuart Borthwick, academic and co-author of 11 pop histories, infiltrates the tonsorially experimental Eighties – an era when he apparently himself sported an interesting barnet akin to a mullet in reverse. Brighton based Guy Morley, one half of Yam Yam (Big Chill Recordings), explores the impact of African music on British politics, providing a socio-economic musical panorama. And last but not least, the wholly idiosyncratic DJ Derek explains his passion for Reggae and how one white middle-aged accountant made his way into the heart of the British Jamaican music scene, sensitively ghost-written by Susanna Glaser.
So, ten contributors, ten areas of passion, ten idiomatic, personal and explorative essays. We are delighted to be able to bring you this literary perusal of The Big Chill and some of the characters that have made it such a fun journey over the first ten years. And we are looking forward to bringing you further Words in Motion in the future, both at our events and festivals and beyond. Most of all, we hope you have as much fun with Crossfade: A Big Chill Anthology as we have.
Pete and Vicki x
Words In Motion – by Pete Lawrence and Vicki Howard