Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

For my Anonymous Friend from Yesterday i.e. a D-Beat History Lesson

Ok so yesterday I made a post called The Methusela Jam about the first "proper d-beat" song I could get my hands on ("You Tear Me Up" by the Buzzcocks). Now, of course there's gonna be people who gotta chime in on this with comments like:

"Uh. D-Beat means "Discharge beat" bro."

I understand where you're coming from on this one buddy but allow me to defend myself. First of all the "D-Beat" or Discharge beat/down-beat/disbeat is a really basic drum beat (Lazy man's explanation of D-Beat has a decent blurb about/sample of it) and you can hear it all over Motörhead and NWOBHM jams. What I'm saying though is that Discharge, while totally responsible for changing it from just another drumbeat in to a genre, definitely had some concrete influences.

Example:
Here's the Buzzcocks song:


Now compare to Discharge's "Realities of War" which is probably the most iconic "D-beat" song I can think of.


Which can also be heard here in Anti-Cimex's "Victims of a Bomb Raid" in a little faster form which later became more the standard for the genre.

And which you can still totally hear the influence on in modern d-beat.