“Dream On Dreamer” by THE BRAND NEW HEAVIES
Acid Jazz was a scene and a sound, with an occasional beautiful song.
You've made your peace with the need to be free
As genres go, Acid Jazz isn’t much of either. The name has very little to do with the sound, which is neither psychedelic nor all that jazzy, but everything to do with the scene. Acid House was the UK’s dominant dance scene in the late ‘80s, bubbling up from London and Manchester clubs and raves and into the pop charts. In the vacuum created by the overheated scene’s upward rise into the mainstream, there emerged a soulful new club sound that harkened back to a groovier era. Acid House’s Four-on-the-floor beats were foresworn for drum kits, funky bass, horns, and live vocals. Somewhere around 1987, Former BBC radio host and influential club DJ Gilles Peterson called it Acid Jazz, the name he not coincidentally also gave a new record label he’d partnered in, and thus a genre was born.
Acid Jazz Records released The Brand New Heavies’ self-titled debut album in 1990. By this time, Peterson1 had left to form his own label, Talkin’ Loud. (Scenes tend to drape themselves in their influences, and both names were inspired by James Brown: The band derived their name from a single proclaiming Brown as “The Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk”; the label references Peterson’s club night at the time, Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Something, itself a riff on Brown’s song “Talkin’ Loud and Saying Nothing.”) The album was well received in the UK, and the band signed to Chrysalis Records, with U.S. distribution by L.A.-based hip-hop label Delicious Vinyl, which had parlayed its Tone Loc and Young MC money into a raft of signings. One such signing, N'Dea Davenport, soon joined the Heavies, and the U.S. version of The Brand New Heavies was issued with her electrifying lead vocals.
“Dream On Dreamer” comes from The Brand New Heavies’ third2 album, Brother Sister. By now, the group that started out as an instrumental jazz combo called Brothers International had a woman in equal standing, and it shows. The band plays to her, letting her lithe voice carry the melody. Swapping strobe lights for the glow of a cocktail table candle lamp is one thing; it’s quite another to reach people where they are. That’s what Davenport does. She tucks emotion in each pocket of her phrasings, making lyrics that could be affirmations printed on a coffee mug feel real.
Dream on dreamer life gets in your way
If the life you live is a spinning top of pain then you can
Dream on dreamer life gets in your way
If you live to learn you'll be lucky one day
From the opening drum roll, Jan Kincade’s deft snare gives the song its easygoing swing; bassist Andrew Levy locks in the groove. (That rhythm section was the group’s foundation for 30 years; Levy and guitarist Simon Bartholomew are the only two members still at it.) Davenport rides that wave through the verses. Her phrasings are delightfully slinky, enabling a tone that is almost like she’s chatting across a café table. Acid Jazz could exist on groove alone — the scene is rooted in clubs where DJs were spinning dusty Rare Groove tracks, dropping beats into the Blue Note catalog, or slipping Two-Step Soul between Lover’s Rock Reggae3. “Dream On Dreamer” works that way, too, but as Davenport bathes the exultant chorus in sunshine, the song grabs you by the head, the heart, and your hips. It’s just beautiful.
Vibrant Acid Jazz scenes grew in New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, each reflective of their city’s terroir but all prizing warm sounds and an effable sense of cool. Part of the allure of Acid Jazz was this suspension of disbelief that created a nightlife idyll — international, inclusive, sophisticated, urbane. It was cool you could buy on CD. Genre etymology ties Acid Jazz to Acid House, but the latter’s transgressive vibe of anarchic illegal warehouse parties operated as a similar kind of fantasy. Scenes, when they’re really going, are a liminal space, a time between what was and what’s next, with a dope soundtrack.
30 Song Playlist
The Brand New Heavies and brief foray into Acid Jazz.
Share the Love
Did you groove to this with someone back in the day? I bet they’d like to hear from you. Which is an indirect way of asking you to share this post.
Thank You
You read all the way to the end? Thank you. Really. It amazes me. Please keep the comments coming. That’s been a lot of fun.
Does this make Peterson seem like an opportunist? I hope not. Restlessness can be admirable, and Peterson has done a lot to popularize African and South American music as well forge a new intersection between club music and jazz.
Their second album, Heavy Rhyme Experience: Vol. 1, was a hip-hop collaboration with Gang Starr, Pharcyde, and more with no female vocals at all. There was a whole paragraph on the influence of hp-hop on the BNH, but it ultimately just got in the way.
I’m generally against capitalizing genres, but I also used to be against Oxford commas. I’m not sure what’s inconsistency and what’s evolution at this point, but for this one, the dueling Acids and the flurry of club subgenres needed some title case help.