JACKED.
Welcome to 5 Mag #196.
Friends, family, brothers, sisters: we are back with a new issue of 5 Mag.
Winter is often a slow time in the music industry, but we have a bunch of stories we've been wanting to tell for a long time (one we've been working on for two and a half years) and we're thrilled to finally share them with you.
The word on the front of the magazine is JACKED. We don't need to tell you it has a few different meanings in this scene, but this time "jacked" means hot, as in stolen. Stealing music is nothing new, but with the rise of superstar DJ culture we have a whole crop of young thieves more interested in fame than vibe, adulation than expression.
Our friend Demuir, house music producer from Toronto, was reviewing tracks for Beatport when he came across one that sounded familiar. It was an unreleased track he made featuring Honey Dijon, and which he'd posted to his Instagram stories. From there someone had ripped it, sold it to a label and called it — wait for it — "Fucked Up."
Demuir nuked this fake producer from outer space, but not before racing against the clock to ensure the stolen track never saw the light of day. He kept his cool and followed a basic strategy and he shares his game plan with us and by extension you and every other music producer whose found their work plagiarized and, well, jacked.
Medusa's was a legendary Chicago club, and Dave Medusa was one of the most important promoters in house music history. And the endtimes may be upon us as for the first time in more than 40 years, there is no Medusa's nightclub, no Medusa's club night and none on the near horizon. We talk to Miguel Ortuno, Dave's right hand man and successor, on the closure of the last incarnation of the club and how COVID did what no other force including racism and Chicago's toxic politics could do: close down Medusa's.
We talked to Chicago House and Hot Mix 5 legend Ralphi Rosario about "FK Always" and the making of The Shamanic's Frankie Knuckles tribute track, featuring Eric Kupper, DJ Lady D and the voice of FK himself.
And this story is very close to our hearts. There is right now in the City of London a taxi driver who in a past career as a youth worker made one of the rarest and most coveted UK Garage and Speed Garage cult classics — a white label record called either "London Vibes" or "Fungus Mungus Vol 1." For most of the last 20 years, we didn't know who made it, or even its proper name. When a few people found him and approached him, he had no idea of the record's cult following, the huge prices it gets on Discogs and worried someone might still be after him for uncleared samples. Two years ago he contacted us, and we agreed to wait on this until the reissue dropped. It did. His name is Orion, he made London Vibes, and this is his story.
There is a lot more in this issue, and instead of reading this you could be reading that. But here's more from this issue:
Your AirPods Are Tiny Bombs. Big bombs come in small packages. Your AirPods will last longer on this planet than your bones, if they doesn't explode first. 5 Mag looks at the subject of e-waste and the role music plays in the proliferation of disposable, unfixable electronics.
Sonicly. After PledgeMusic's demise, a new platform emerges, designed specifically for musicians. Will it be any different than the last?
Music Reviews. New music and reissues from Roberta (Worldship Music), Andrés (Moods & Grooves), Reggie Dokes (Release Sustain), Rich Daddies (Best Effort), Fouk (Shall Not Fade), Garrett David (The Pool House), Delano Smith (Mixmode), Afterlife (Subatomic), Dusky (Running Back), A Guy Called Gerald (Moozikeh Analog Room), Strand (RWYS Records), Scape One, CMD (Fixed Rhythms) and Davide Tonini (Detroit Underground).
In Rotation. More tunes from The Sweet Fantastic (F*CLR), Tr-One (Short Attention), Shara (Patina Skye), Seaquence (Athens of the North), Ron S (UKR), DJ Aakmael (Slothboogie), Ian Pooley (Rekids), Orchid / Age (Eldia), Ron Trent (Yellow Jackets), Amp Fiddler & Waajeed, DJ Minx (Planet E) and Blazers (Skint).
Thank you so much for your support, we really appreciate being able to share these stories with you.