MEMORY-034_
Roni Size / Reprazent – "Share The Fall (Grooverider's Jeep Style Mix)" - Talkin' Loud [TLXX 21]
A few months ago I had a rare back-to-back set of nights out, something I haven’t done in probably 20+ years. Went out on a Thursday night to hear Trace play at Elements, then hopped on the Amtrak Acela the next day to go down to Philadelphia to hang out with Evan Kiljoy, and go hear him play at Trace & PHI’s Technology night. I ran in to several old friends: Brian/BMA (also a label mate on Seminal Sounds), Andy Sine (one of my favorite DJs), Art Cuebik, Joe MC Dub2, and George/Concept (MC and also half of production duo iso•con, with our mutual friend Max/Isobaric, and recent collaborators of mine for my R4NS0M project). I also had recently seen a reel by Philth where he played "Share The Fall (Grooverider's Jeep Style Mix)", which triggered these memories.
Philadelphia has been a big part of my experiences with drum & bass and dance music. The first real deal, big warehouse-type rave I ever went to was a NYE party called Let’s Start Dancing (L.S.D.), which my friends and I did not make it to until about 4AM on January 1, 1996. Going to 611 Records was also a big event, and then when Josh Wink opened up his nightclub Fluid, I would often go up & back in the same night to go to Dieselboy’s Platinum night, usually once a month. Funny sidebar about the up & back trips, I was living in College Park for a good chunk of that time, and would time it so when I left Philadelphia I made it back to CP just in time to get fresh donuts from this Burmese restaurant / bakery on Route 1. They would open at 5AM, and the donuts were still warm.
Trace has also been a big part of my experiences with drum & bass, one of the DJs I’ve seen the most, and I’ve met him maybe twice, not much more said than “nice to meet you” or “I love your mixtapes and follow you to raves up and down the east coast”. By the summer of 1997, I had seen him play a few times locally, and with university out on summer break, several of my rave friends from school had returned to their out-of-state homes for a couple months. There was a massive rave announced just outside Philadelphia, a multi-room event that boasted a drum & bass room line-up with Trace, Ed Rush & Nico headlining, possibly Fierce playing too, and the regional DJs on it were a whose who of my favorites: Dieselboy, Slant, Karl K and MC Dub2. Several of us from school made plans to meet there, it was central to us, spread out between MD (me), PA (Brad), NY (Deb), and NJ (Todd).
I rode up with several friends from the DC/Baltimore area, and I remember how huge the line/queue was to get in, taking at least an hour to get in. I feel like there were people (flier promoters) that I ran in to once inside that said they just paid security $20 to skip the line, and heard rumors of others sneaking in through a loading dock. Once inside I split off from the roadtrip group and found my crew of school friends; we were basically the fringe group preferring drum & bass over all other music offerings. We made it to the room in time to catch the whole No U-Turn experience. What stuck out to me was hearing Trace opening with "Share The Fall (Grooverider's Jeep Style Mix)", that intro had a huge hook that played off the musicality of Roni Size / Reprazent, mixed with the grit & grime of what Grooverider was playing heavily at that time, very inline with the tech step sound that I was getting more & more into. And then hearing it again, and again. It must have been rewound 3 or 4 times, built up a lot of hype in the crowd. Ed Rush played as well, I think at this point we were starting to hear early collabs with Optical, who may have engineered Grooverider’s remix. Nico did not play a set, he was more of an augment on Trace and Ed Rush’s sets, using a small sampler to add FX throughout the sets.
YouTube:
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/release/25047-Roni-Size-Reprazent-Share-The-Fall