I meant to write this blog last week, when I was all pumped with excitement for Pay As You Go Cartel’s reformation at Rinse’s 14th Birthday last Friday at The End. In the end, PAYG weren’t all that much cop - Wiley didn’t show up (shocker) and it all felt like it had fizzled out by the end, but y’know, never saw them the first time round so *raises glass*

Anyway, it’s sparked off a bit of a trawl through the state of garage pre-grime, a little of which is still kicking about on YouTube. Let’s investigate what’s going on - still - in my brain!

Pay As U Go Cartel’s ‘Champagne Dance’ - not quite the stone cold classic that ‘Know We‘ was, but still pretty much as fine a piece of post-So Solid gangsta garage as you’ll find. Inexplicably, the video features girls boxing. Doesn’t Wiley look young?

More Fire Crew’s ‘Oi!’ *The* proto grime track. Everyone involved in the making of this record is given an artistic free pass for ever more. I bought this on CD single and felt sort of proud when it cracked the Top 10. The album flopped, but it did feature a pre-’I Luv U’ appearance by a young Dizzee Rascal (which you can hear here). Doesn’t Lethal Bizzle look young?

Heartless Crew. Couldn’t find a video for this. I had a good CD compilation by this lot. I don’t really know what happened to them, although Ringo says they had a 1XTRA show which they never turned up to.

First heard this on white label with the barest of biographical press bumph with it, assumed its creator to be some skinny, young Michael Jackson lookalike and instantly adored it. You laff, but it cropped up on So Solid Crew’s 2CD mix CD of ‘the underground’, Fuck It. That I still really quite like this song now proves the power of context cannot ruin everything.