UK Garage

 

It was 20 years ago this month that I was having a conversation with somebody about the inevitable death of UK Garage. In some ways it was a strange conversation to be having, UK Garage was massive at that point and we'd have 3 chart topping UK Garage records before the end of the year. But if you look at what happened beyond 2001, we were pretty accurate with our prediction.

Back in the mid-90s, there were a lot of people who were into house and garage. If you were to ask them what the difference between house and garage was, many of them wouldn't know the answer. It was generally accepted that a given tune would fit the house and garage category. Back in the 80s when the 2 genres first came about, if it was from Chicago it was house and if it was from New York it was garage due to the names of the clubs to play those genres i.e. Warehouse in Chicago and Paradise Garage in New York.

Then at the beginning of 1997 an Armand Van Helden remix of "Professional Widow" by Tori Amos topped the charts and everyone was talking about speed garage. The ironic thing about speed garage was that it wasn't very fast. The term lasted until around mid-98, by which point big beat had become the big genre in the dance music world alongside house.

In the underground rave scene, the divide between happy hardcore and drum & bass had widened to the point where having both genres at the same rave wasn't making much sense. Instead you had events like Hysteria who would have drum & bass in the main arena and garage in the second room. 

Going into 1999, garage barely got a mention commercially. The term house and garage had been replaced by house and trance. In-fact on the Kiss Ibiza 99 compilation you have a house disc and a trance disc and "Straight From the Heart" by Doolally, a UK Garage tune appears on the house disc.

Meanwhile multi arena raves such as Slammin Vinyl and United Dance had UK Garage arenas with DJs such as Timmi Magic, Mikee B, Spoony, EZ, Jason Kaye, Mike 'Ruffcut' Lloyd and Pied Piper playing in them.

Commercially there was a garage number one in "Sweet Like Chocolate" which was more novelty record done in a garage style than a proper garage record in my book. Aside from this, a couple of hits from Da Click and a re-issue of "Straight From The Heart", there were no other garage records in the charts for most of the year. 

At the end of the year came "Re-Rewind" by Artful Dodger, "A Little Bit Of Luck" by DJ Luck & MC Neat and "Buddy X 99" by The Dreem Team. 

Suddenly UK Garage was massive. The Dreem Team aka Timmi Magic, Mikee B and Spoony had a show on Radio 1. The DJs who'd play at Slammin Vinyl were now on the TV. We had Posh Spice make her solo debut with a garage record. There was seemingly no underground anymore, what you'd hear in a Slammin Vinyl set was more or less the same as what you'd hear on the radio.

On a personal level I'd well and truly jumped on the bandwagon myself. I bought both the hardcore and garage tapepacks from Slammin Vinyl in September 2000. I listened to the garage tapes all the time but barely listened to the hardcore ones. I received the Artful Dodger album as a Christmas present that year.

At the beginning of 2001 there were 3 UK Garage hits which amongst other factors made me question the future of UK Garage. They were "Why" by Mis-Teeq, "Falling" by Boom! and "Boom Selection" by Genius Cru.

I like Mis-Teeq and have their debut album. But this was an R&B group using garage to launch themselves and it was almost inevitable there would come a point they would revert back to R&B, which they did. Boom! were a manufactured pop group and the record was abysmal, exactly the sort of thing to alienate those genuinely into garage. Genius Cru were a bunch of MCs and this record was indicative of the direction garage was going in.

Some of the garage DJs had been around for years long before UK Garage became a thing. Mikee B and Jason Kaye were part of early 90s rave act Top Buzz, Grant Nelson used to produce happy hardcore as Wishdokta, DJ Zinc was still a big name in drum & bass, Trick or Treat were happy hardcore DJs SY and Unknown. Furthermore, The Dreem Teams Radio 1 show wasn't just garage, 

All these factors combined led me to believe that garage maybe had another year. It became too big too quickly. At the same time, the garage arena wasn't a happy place to be. I think the last time I was in a garage room was at Slammin Vinyl in February 2001, the last time it featured the genre. It just felt like it could kick off any minute, it didn't but many garage events did attract violence.

Then we had the So Solid Crew, a group with something like 36 members and heavily associated with violence. The whole thing seemed a joke, MCs were nothing new to garage but tended to be one person MCing for a DJ not 20 MCs on a single record. 

The last proper Pure Garage compilation came out at the end of 2001. 2002 began with Daniel Bedingfield regaining the top spot with "Gotta Get Thru This" and So Solid Crew had their 3rd hit with "Haters". You could sense this was the beginning of the end though. After DJ Luck & MC Neat charted in May with "Irie" there was no garage in the Top 40 for the rest of the year.

Many of those big names in garage would continue to be successful in music. Dreem Team remained on Radio 1, some members of So Solid Crew had solo hits that weren't garage, Mis-Teeq went back to R&B.

There have been garage hits since then, even one this year. We also have the garage classical from Spoony. But the garage scene itself is long gone.