The world is just a network of micro-scenes. It’s not new. It’s still happening and the internet only makes it… weirder. Not better and not worse, just weirder, because you can jump nodes in ways that you couldn’t before.

But, the lessons from how stuff crossed-over and short-circuited out still apply.

Imagine London, 1986. That’s post-punk, mid-new wave, warehouse party drugs and pirate radio whilst Thatcher went Thatchering era London.

An ex-computer programmer / Oxford-educated biochemist named Matt Black has been hanging out with his ex-art teacher and casual silversmith friend Jonathan More. They’re deejaying on pirate radio together and experimenting with audio collages, heavily influenced by what hip hop is doing stateside.

They’re doing their thing when in 1987, Eric B. & Rakim release “Paid in Full” and they get inspired. You know it, but if you need a refresh:

There’s a group of samples in here, but the core drums and vibe come from “Ashley’s Roachclip” by The Soul Searchers, with some added bass and other sounds via “Don’t Look Any Further” by Dennis Edwards, and “Change the Beat (Female Version)” by Beside. h/t Who Sampled.

I’m pointing out the initial collage aspects of the song because besides the mastery-level vocals, the music was the sound of permission that “you can do this.” And few things were as liberated, let alone liberating, as pirate radio for granting permission without any expectation of rules, let alone enforcement.

Scenes only know their internal tastes. There are no real external rules.

Matt Black and Jonathan More, going by the name Coldcut on legendary pirate radio station Kiss FM (which is funny because that always makes me think of hoagies, which is my own ADHD collage, and maybe at least one of you laughs at, but maybe not, so back to the story), hear the song and freak out. Presumably. I don’t know for sure, but I do know they immediately decided they needed to do their own collage of this collage.

Coldcut released “Paid in Full (Seven Minutes of Madness - the Coldcut Remix)” in 1987, it went late 80s viral, and ended up on the soundtrack for a movie named Colors.

The Coldcut collage took the original song and added (h/t Who Sampled again) an insanely cool vocal from “Im Nin’ Alu” by Israeli artist Ofra Haza, along with an absolute mess of other craziness from their crates.

We’ll get to the remix, but first you really do have to hear this Ofra Haza track. It’s only got 18 million views on YouTube. Oh, you never heard it either? Just remember what I said about micro-scenes and press play on this:

Now, let this all sink in.

Just for a minute.

Or two. I had to process it like this too. It probably sat in my brain for a few months, candidly.

Kinda pro but also kinda hobbyist DJs in London, distributing their music via pirate radio, take a relatively underground US rap group, mix it with an Israeli dance-pop artist, add in a ton of other record-collector obscure pop, funk, and reggae, and in a 7-minute long exploration of their nerdery, produce a still timeless remix that sets up their music careers for the next several decades.

Because of course they’re still going.

Creativity feels dead to too many people right now. Or, at least, creativity feels exhausted. You can punch a quick prompt into your AI chatbot of choice and instant creativity seems to pop out with a glowing praise for you.

My brain keeps reverting back to the famous "God is dead." -Nietzsche, 1883 vs. "Nietzsche is dead." -God, 1900 meme. Rumors of creativity's death are greatly exaggerated. If it's a permanent feature of humanity, it's going to outlive anyone who declares it otherwise.

Creativity is about curiosity. Creativity is about connection making. Creativity is about your curiosity making the connections you see, sharing them, and seeing what happens.

Scenes, sub-genres, micro-scenes, et. al - they’re about how people make meaning and belonging. They are not startups. They are self-contained and definitionally on some form of cultural island. This is a feature and not a bug. This is the internal taste rejecting any external rule thesis, in practice.

Your interest exists in some little, probably uncool corner, and that’s all the seed you need. Just plant and water. Let it go and let it grow.

If you need more inspiration, look at moments like Coldcut, or Eric B. & Rakim, or try to unpack my obsession with this stuff, where I keep trying to explain how compression and scale distort meaning so you have no choice but to keep looping yourself back into the full-hearted sub-scenes as a totally emersed human to find your joy there.

You do it once. You do it twice. You repeat it again and again. You hop scenes. You hop genres. And most importantly of all, you catalogue and reflect, with the intent to share.

It’s never been easier to jump around. Getting paid in full might be elusive. But there’s no reason not to try.

You have taste. That’s enough to work with.

Ps. Speaking of taste, all this talk and I am REALLY craving an Italian hoagie…