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The history of house music is one topic that can be as simple
as it is complicated. It is of high importance to understand
the roads that this genre has traveled as well as the movers
and shakers who champion this cause. We would like to bring
to your attention an outstanding article on this topic by
authored by Phil Cheeseman. This article is rock solid and
it is a document that will be forever a point of reference.
One quote we would like share from this article is by Robert
Owens, which sums up how we at Noize LA feel about the past,
present and future of house music: "It's not just boom,
boom, boom. They're telling me something here. Something
I can dance to and learn from. I can see house music becoming
universal one day. It'll just take time for people to receive
it." This document is an amazing story about many of
the beginning pioneers from the Chicago and New York and
the UK regions. Hopefully as time goes by we can bring to
you more articles like this deeply detailing the house music
history of individual places such as New Jersey, Washington
DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Miami, France,
Italy, Toronto, Montreal, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. House
music has touched so many folks from around the world so
if there are any copies of flyers please scan them and email
us. Any knowledge you wish to share on the history of your
scene, please let us know care of this website. This amazing
article is just the tip of the iceberg. As the ol? saying
goes ?each one teach one?.The History Of House Music
article written by Phil Cheeseman
House Music - It's been fifteen years or so since the first
identifiably house tracks were put on to vinyl, ten years
which have changed the technology behind the electronic
music revolution beyond recognition but left the basic structure
of house intact. It's seven years since it was being said
house couldn't last, that it was just hi-NRG, a fast blast
that would wither as quickly as it had started. But then
the music reinvented itself, and then again and again until
it gradually dawned on people that house wasn't just another
phase of club culture, it was club culture, the continuing
future of dance music. The reason? It's simple. People like
to dance to house.
The house music roots to 1985
Like it or not, house msusic was first and foremost a direct
descendant of disco Disco had already been going for ten
years when the first electronic drum tracks began to appear
out of Chicago, and in that time it had already suffered
the slings and arrows of merciless commercial music exploitation,
dilution and racial and sexual prejudice which culminated
in the 'disco sucks' campaign. In one bizarrely extreme
incident, people attending a baseball game in Chicago's
Comiskey Park were invited to bring all their unwanted disco
records and after the game they were tossed onto a massive
bonfire.
Disco eventually collapsed under a heaving weight of crass
disco versions of pop records and an ever-increasing volume
of records that were simply no good. But the underground
scene had already stepped off and was beginning to develop
a new music style that was deeper, rawer and more designed
to make people dance. Disco had already produced the first
records to be aimed specifically at DJs with extended 12"
versions that included long percussion breaks for mixing
purposes and the early eighties proved a vital turning point.
Sinnamon's 'Thanks To You', D-Train's 'You're The One For
Me' and The Peech Boys' 'Don't Make Me Wait', a record that's
been continually sampled over the last decade, took things
in a different direction with their sparse, synthesized
sounds that introduced dub effects and drop-outs that had
never been heard before.
European music
But it wasn't just American music laying the groundwork
for house. European music, spanning English electronic pop
like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell and the earlier, more disco
based sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Klein & MBO and a thousand
Italian productions were immensely popular in urban areas
like New York and Chicago. One of the reasons for their
popularity was two clubs that had simultaneously broken
the barriers of race and sexual preference, two clubs that
were to pass on into dance music legend - Chicago's Warehouse
and New York's Paradise Garage. Up until then, and after,
the norm was for Black, Hispanic, White, straight and gay
to segregate themselves, but with the Warehouse, opened
in 1977 and presided over by Frankie Knuckles and the Garage
where Larry Levan spun, the emphasis was on the music. (Ironically,
Levan was first choice for the Warehouse, but he didn't
want to leave New York). And the music was as varied as
the clienteles - r'n'b based Black dance music and disco
peppered with things as diverse as The Clash's 'Magnificent
Seven'. For most people, these were the places that acted
as breeding grounds for the music that eventually came to
be known after the clubs - house and garage.
Right from the start there was a difference in approach
between New York and Chicago. "All of the records coming
out of New York had been either mid or down tempo, and the
kids in Chicago wouldn't do that all night long, they needed
more energy" commented Frankie Knuckles after his move
to Chicago. The Windy City was seduced to a far greater
extent by the European sound and when the records started
to come, it showed. Whereas garage in New York evolved more
smoothly from First Choice and the labels Salsoul, West
End and Prelude, there was no such evolution in Chicago.
Opinions still differ as to what the first house record
was, but it was certainly made by Jessie Saunders and it
was on the Mitchball label - probably Z Factor's 'Fantasy',
but there was also another Z Factor tune which went by the
name of 'I Like To Do It In Fast Cars'. 'Fantasy' sounds
extremely dated now but ten years ago it was like a sound
from another planet, with echoes of Kraftwerk's heavily
synthesized string sounds, a Eurobeat bassline and a simple,
insistent drum machine pattern. Suffice to say, the record
remained obscure outside the close-knit urban Chicago scene.
Chicago music scene.
"Those records didn't really motivate people"
says Adonis, one of the early producers on the Chicago scene.
"The first was Jamie Principle's 'Waiting On Your Angel'.
See, before there were records there were cassettes, and
that was the hottest thing in Chicago. It was so hot Jessie
Saunders went in and recorded that track word for word,
note for note, and put it out on Larry Sherman's label Precision.
It was so influential that four or five records came out
that took its sounds." Within a year though, others
were fast joining. Saunders, who by then had come out with
his Jes-Say label, with Farley Keith (or Farley 'Jackmaster'
Funk) getting in on the act.
Frankie Knuckles, who had already done some remixes for
Salsoul was also beginning to work on his own productions.
By 1985 it was clear that something big was beginning to
stir. Ron Hardy, who was to become the backbone of the Chicago
club scene by consistently breaking the new records, began
playing at The Music Box around the same time as Frankie
Knuckles left The Warehouse, and other DJs like Farley and
the Hot Mix 5 who threw down the mix shows on the radio
station WBMX were making names for themselves. But making
a record wasn't the priority for most of the DJs at the
time - they were making music specifically to play at the
clubs and the parties that were beginning to spring up in
the city. Larry Heard and Robert Owens, later to be known
as Fingers Inc, and Steve Hurley were all experimenting
with basic rhythm tracks long before they made the jump
to vinyl.
"I started dabbling in making my own music." says
Hurley. "Just making tracks to play as a DJ, not really
thinking as far as producing - more to do with just having
something to play that nobody else had. And one of these
tracks, 'Music Is The Key', got such a good response that
I decided to borrow some money and go in with another guy,
who happened to be Rocky Jones, and put the record out."
That momentous occasion was the beginning of DJ International
Records, one of the two labels that was to give all the
aspiring producers in the city a chance to get their music
on to vinyl. The other, Larry Sherman's Trax Records was
already up and running, though to begin with Sherman was
attempting to break into a more commercial market with Precision.
'Music Is The Key' (the first house record to include a
rap, incidentally) took house on a step by incorporating
more musical elements and a vocal, and by the time Chip
E's 'Like This', also on DJ International, appeared house
had discovered real vocals and the sampled stutter technique
that's such an integral part of dub remixes today. "It
took a little while for the sound to develop" remembers
London DJ Jazzy M, who worked in a record shop at the time
and was one of the very first to get house on the radio
in Britain with his immensely popular Jackin' Zone show
on London pirate station LWR. "When 'Like This' and
Adonis' 'No Way Back' came out, that's when it picked up.
At first it was just drum machine programs and they were
called trax, like there was Chip E Trax and Kenny Jason
Trax and that's what house was, with maybe a few dodgy samples.
I can remember talking to Colin Faver, who was one of the
first DJs here to get into it, about 'Like This' and we
were both really excited by it."
Meanwhile, things were gathering pace over in New York though
the development was a lot slower. Mixers like Larry Levan,
Tony Humphries, Timmy Regisford and Boyd Jarvis, who came
straight after Shep Pettibone and Jellybean Benitez were
making ground as remixers, and fired by the raw club sound
of Colonel Abrams, the deep, soulful club sound that became
known as garage was taking shape with early releases on
the Supertonics, Easy Street and Ace Beat labels. Paul Scott
was one of the first with 'Off The Wall' in 1985 but before
that there was Serious Intention's deep dub classic 'You
Don't Know' and even before that was World Premiere's 'Share
The Night'.
HOUSE MUSIC - 1986
While Frankie Knuckles had laid the groundwork for house
at the Warehouse, it was to be another DJ from the gay scene
that was really to create the environment for the house
explosion - Ron Hardy. Where Knuckles' sound was still very
much based in disco, Hardy was the DJ that went for the
rawest, wildest rhythm tracks he could find and he made
The Music Box the inspirational temple for pretty much every
DJ and producer that was to come out of the Chicago scene.
He was also the DJ to whom the producers took their very
latest tracks so they could test the reaction on the dance
floor. Larry Heard was one of those people.
"People would bring their tracks on tape and the DJ
would play spin them in. It was part of the ritual, you'd
take the tape and see the crowd reaction. I never got the
chance to take my own stuff because Robert (Owens) would
always get there first."
"The Music Box was underground " remembers Adonis.
"You could go there in the middle of the winter and
it'd be as hot as hell, people would be walking around with
their shirts off. Ron Hardy had so much power people would
be praising his name while he was playing, and I've got
the tapes to prove it!
"The difference between Frankie and Ronnie was that
people weren't making records when Frankie was playing,
though all the guys who would become the next DJs were there
checking him out. It was The Music Box that really inspired
people. I went there one night and the next day I was in
the studio making 'No Way Back' " In 1985 the records
were few and far between. By 1986 the trickle had turned
to a flood and it seemed like everybody in Chicago was making
house music. The early players were joined by a rush of
new talent which included the first real vocal talents of
house - Liz Torres, Keith Nunally who worked with Steve
Hurley, and Robert Owens who joined up with Larry Heard
to form Fingers Inc, though the duo had already worked with
Harri Dennis on The It's 'Donnie' -and key producers like
Adonis, Mr Lee, K Alexi and a guy who was developing a deep,
melodic sound that relied on big strings and pounding piano
- Marshall Jefferson.
Marshall worked with a number of people like Harri Dennis
and Vince Lawrence for projects like Jungle Wonz and Virgo,
who made the stunning 'RU Hot Enough'. But it was 'Move
Your Body' that became THE house record of 1986, so big
that both Trax and DJ International found a way to release
it, and it was no idle boast when the track was subtitled
'The House Music Anthem', because that's exactly what it
was.
Marshall Jefferson was to become the undisputed king of
house, going on to make a string of brilliant records with
Hercules and On The House and developing the quintessential
deep house sound first with vocalist Curtis McClean and
then with Ce Ce Rogers and Ten City. "I can remember
clearing a floor with that record" laughs Jazzy M.
"Though they'd started playing it in Manchester, most
of London was still caught up in that rare groove and hip
hop thing.
A lot of people were saying to me 'why are you playing this
hi- NRG' and it was hard work but people were starting to
get into it." 'Move Your Body' was undoubtedly the
record that really kicked off house in the UK, first played
repeatedly by the established pirate radio stations in London,
which at the time played right across the Black music spectrum,
and then by club DJs like Mike Pickering, Colin Faver, Eddie
Richards, Mark Moore and Noel and Maurice Watson, the latter
two playing at the first club in London to really support
house - Delirium.
Radio was the key to the explosion in Chicago. Farley Jackmaster
Funk had secured a spot on the adventurous WBMX station,
playing after midnight every day, and it wasn't long before
he brought in the Hot Mix 5 which included Mickey Oliver,
Ralphie Rosario, Mario Diaz and Julian Perez, and Steve
Hurley, giving people who couldn't go to the parties the
chance to hear the music. Then there was Lil Louis, who
was throwing his own parties. By this time, house was moving
out of the gay scene and on to wider acceptance, though
in Chicago at least it was to remain very much a Black thing.
Though a number of Hispanics were on the house scene, the
number of White DJs and producers could be counted on one
hand.
The labels were still mostly limited to the terrible twins
that were to dominate Chicago house for the next two years
Trax and DJ International. Between them they had nearly
all the local talent sewn up and by popular consent they
were just as dodgy as each other, with rumors and stories
of rip-offs and generally dubious activity endlessly circulating.
Everybody it seemed, was stealing from everybody else.
One that remains largely untold involved Frankie Knuckles.
"This was the story at the time" recalls Adonis.
"Supposedly Frankie sold Jamie Principle's unreleased
tapes to DJ International AND Trax at the same time. Then
Jamie came out with a record called 'Knucklehead' dissing
Frankie. After that Frankie went back to New York."
When Rocky Jones at DJ International became convinced by
a larger- than-life character named Lewis Pitzele who was
helping put a lot of the deals together at the time that
Europe was the place to focus on, house poured into Britain
with London Records putting the first compilation of early
DJ International material out. As the press bandwagon rolled
into action the 86 Chicago House Party featuring Adonis,
Marshall Jefferson, Fingers Inc and Kevin Irving toured
the UK's clubs.
The History Of House Music -
......Continued (Page 2 )
Adonis: "Trax was meant to be a bullshit label for
all the dirty, raggedy records Larry Sherman didn't give
a shit about. You know, labels were always trying to do
radio stuff, but Trax became popular after 'No Way Back'
and 'Move Your Body' and all those tracks." It was
DJ International and London who notched up the first house
hits, first with Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk's 'Love Can't
Turn Around', a cover of the old Isaac Hayes song with camp
wailer Daryl Pandy on vocals which reached Number 10 in
September 1986, and then a record that spent months gestating
in the clubs before it was finally catapulted to Number
One in January 1987 - Jim Silk's 'Jack Your Body'. The Americans
were gob smacked. Their underground club music was going
mainstream four thousand miles from its home. But it was
no surprise that Steve Hurley was behind the track, which
hit the top despite only having three words - the title.
Even then he was the one with the commercial touch.
It wasn't a terribly original record - the bassline was
from First Choice's 'Let No Man Put Asunder', but it summed
up the mood of jack fever. All of a sudden the word 'Jack',
which originally described the form of dancing people did
to house, was everywhere 'Jack The Box', 'Jack The House',
'Jack To The Sound' 'J-J-J-J-JJack-Jack-Jack-Jack'. It was
the stutter sample on the 'J' that took the word into legend.
Vaughan Mason's Raze, who'd quietly been doing stuff out
of Washington DC burst into the clubs and then followed
Jim Silk into the charts with 'Jack The Groove'. And garage?
New York simply couldn't match the energy flowing out of
Chicago but there was little doubt that the music was developing
simultaneously. The Jersey garage sound, boosted by Tony
Humphries (who'd also been on the radio since 1981) at Newark's
Zanzibar Club, was beginning to take shape with Blaze but
the New York club sound was defined at the time by Dhar
Braxton's 'Jump Back' and Hanson & Davis' 'Hungry For
Your Love' which borrowed heavily from the Latin freestyle
sound but echoed the energy of house. And over in Brooklyn,
producers like Tommy Musto working for the Underworld/Apexton
label were developing a different style again, one that
like Chicago seemed to take its roots as much from Eurobeat
as from Black music, though the mood and tempo was strictly
New York.
HOUSE MUSIC - 1987
While Chicago stole the thunder in 1986, other cities not
only in the United States but across the world had either
been absorbing house or working on their own thing, biding
their time. One record from New York served a warning shot
that the city was gearing up for some serious action - 'Do
It Properly' by 2 Puerto Ricans, A Blackman and A Dominican.
'Do It Properly' was essentially a bootleg of Adonis' 'No
Way Back' with loads of samples and a great electronic keyboard
riff squeezed in to it and the first in a long, long line
of New York sample house tracks. Its producers were one
Robert Clivilles and David Cole, helped by another guy called
David Morales. After that some kid in Brooklyn called Todd
Terry made a couple of sample tracks with a freestyle groove
for Fourth Floor Records by an act he called Masters At
Work.
But the sound that was really taking shape in New York and
New Jersey was a deep style of club music based on a heritage
that had its roots firmly in r'n'b. Though there were some
superb deep, emotive instrumentats like Jump St. Man's 'B-Cause',
the emphasis was on songs, which came with Arnold Jarvis'
'Take Some Time', Touch's 'Without You', Exit's 'Let's Work
It Out' and a record on Movln, a new label run from a record
store in New Jersey's East Orange - Park Ave's 'Don't Turn
Your Love'. Ironically, as the first garage hits began to
appear, The Paradise Garage - Larry Levan had already left
- closed, but the vibe carried on with Blaze, who recorded
'If You Should Need A Friend' and Jomanda, both of whom
teamed up with new New York label Quark.
Echoing the need for vocals in house music, deep house began
to take hold in Chicago. Following Marshall Jefferson's
lush productions, the record that defined deep house was
the Nightwriters' 'Let The Music Use You', mixed by Frankie
Knuckles and sung by Ricky Dillard, a record that a year
later was to become one of the anthems of the UK's Summer
Of Love. And it didn't end there. Kym Mazelle launched her
career with 'Taste My Love' and 'I'm A Lover', while Ralphie
Rosario unleashed the monstrous 'You Used To Hold Me' featuring
the wailing tonsils of Xavier Gold. Then there was Ragtyme's
'I Can't Stay Away', sung by a guy who sounded a little
like a new Smokey Robinson - Byron Stingily. Soon after,
Ragtyme, who also made an extremely silly innuendo track
called 'Mr Fixit Man', mutated into Ten Clty. But Chicago's
excursion into songs wasn't only characterised by uplifting
wailers. There was another side, led by the weird, melanchoty
songs of Fingers Inc and beginning to show itself in other
minimalist productions like MK II's 'Don't Stop The Muslc'
and 2 House People's 'Move My Body'. By 1987, though house
was no longer a tale of two cities. The virus was taklng
hold elsewhere as clubbers, DJs and producers worldwide
became exited by the new music.
It was obvious that Britain, which had already seen a massive
boom in club culture in the mid-eighties as the increasingly
racially integrated urban areas turned to Black music in
favour of the indigeonous indie rock music, would eventually
get in on the act. Though acts like Huddersfield's Hotline,
The Beatmasters from London and a handful of others who
included DJs Ian B and Eddie Richards had been trying to
figure things out, the first British house track to really
make any noise came from a partnership that included a DJ
from Manchester's Hacienda, one of the very first clubs
in Britain to devote whole nights to house music - Mike
Pickering. With its funk bassline and Latin piano riffs,
T-Coy's 'Carino' busted out all over, particularly in London
at previously rap and funk clubs like Raw.
But with the open nature of the UK pop charts compared to
Billboard which was an impossibly tough nut to crack for
small labels marketing new music, it was inevitable that
the sound would be commercialised. 'Pump Up The Volume'
by M/A/R/R/S was a rather lightweight record based on a
house beat with a number of clever (at the time) samples
but it worked like crazy on the dancefloor and it wasn't
long before club support propelled it into the charts, where
it held Number 1 for an incredible three weeks. Also in
the top ten at the same time was another record that had
broken out of Chicago - the House Master Boyz' 'House Nation'.
The marketability of house - or pophouse - in the UK became
gruesomely apparent with the advent of the 'Jack Mix' series,
a number of hideous stars-on-45 style megamixes of all the
house hits.
Things were progressing in a much more underground fashion
back in the States. A few guys in particular who'd been
noticed hanging out in Chicago and checking the scene came
from a city just a couple of hundred miles away Detroit.
One of them, Juan Atkins, had been making records since
the early eighties under the moniker Cybotron which specialised
in spacey electro-funk fired by the Euro rhythms of Kraftwerk.
But progress had been slow and electro had already fused
with rap. By 1985 Atkins' sound was beginning to change
with records like Model 500's 'No UFO's', which bore more
than a passing resemblance to the new sounds emanating from
their neighbouring city.
Two other guys who had been to school with Atkins, and who
shared his passion for European music were also beginning
to experiment with making tracks and heartened by what they
heard coming out of Chicago, set to work Their first tracks,
X-Ray's 'Let's Go', produced by Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson's
'Triangle Of Love' by Kreem weren't classics by any stretch
of the imagination but it didn't tahe them long to hit full
power. Kevin came out with 'Force Field' and 'Just Want
Another Chance', and Juan pressed on with Model 500's 'Sound
Of Stereo' but it was Derrick who really hit the button
with Rhythim Is Rhythm's 'Nude Photo', 'Kaos' and 'The Dance',
all of which were immediate hits on the Chicago scene, and
the latter a record that was to be thieved and sampled again
and again for years to come. The Belleville Three, as they
became known after the college they attended, made an amusing
trio with Kevin as the regular guy, Derrick as the fast-talking
nutter and Juan as the laid-back smokehead, but there was
more to techno than that.
Two other producers who helped forge the different sound
were Eddie Fowlkes and Blake Baxter. It was faster, more
frantic, even more influenced by European electrobeat and
severed the continium with disco and Philadelphia, taking
only the space funk basslines of George Ctinton from Black
music. They called it techno. But Chicago was also beginning
to head off into another direction, the most frenetic form
of house yet. It was started by two crazy tracks that Ron
Hardy had been pumping at the Music Box and it was going
to be perhaps the most important stage of house so far.
It was acid.
HOUSE MUSIC - 1988
In truth, acid house had already started long before 1988.
Amongst the scores of Chicagoans who were buying equipment
and trying to learn how to make tracks was one DJ Pierre,
who'd started out playing Italian imports at roller discos
in the Chicago suburbs, and who had joined Lil Louis for
his notorious parties.
"Phuture was me and two other guys, Spanky and Herbert
J." remembers Pierre. "We had this Roland 303,
which was a bassline machine, and we were trying to figure
out how to use it. When we switched it on, that acid sound
was already in it and we liked the sound of it so we decided
to add some drums and make a track with it. We gave it to
Ron Hardy who started playing it straight away. In fact,
the first time he played it, he played it four times in
one night! The first time people were like, 'what the fuck
is this?' but by the the fourth they loved it. Then I started
to hear that Ron was playing some new thing they were calling
'Ron Hardy's Acid Trax', and everybody thought it was something
he'd made himself. Eventually we found out that it was our
track so we called it 'Acid Trax'. I think we may have made
it as early as 1985, but Ron was playing it for a long time
before it came out."
Explanations for the name of 'acid' have been long and varied,
but the most popular, and the one endorsed by a number of
people who were there at the time was that they used to
put acid in the water at the Music Box. Pierre though, stresses
that Phuture was always anti- drugs, and cites a track about
a cocaine nightmare, 'Your Only Friend' that was on the
same EP as 'Acid Trax'. 'Acid Trax' came out in 1986 but
made little impact outside Chicago, as was the case with
another acid track, Sleazy D's 'I've Lost Control', which
slapped a deranged laugh and some geezer repeating the title
over the 303 squelching. 'I've Lost Control' was made by
Adonis and Marshall Jefferson and was certainly the first
acid track to make it to vinyl, though which was created
first will possibly never be known for sure. It wasn't until
well into 1987 that the acid sound began to infiltrate Britain,
fuelled by another track that was getting a lot club play,
and which fitted into the sound Bam Bam's 'Give It To Me',
and a diversion of the regular acid track which put vocals
into the equation, developed by Pierre's Phantasy Club with
'Fantasy Girl'.
The house scene in Britain had faltered following the commercialisation
of the poppier end of the spectrum, but towards the end
of 1987 the underground was taking off with new LP compilation
series like 'Jack Trax' and the opening in London of seminal
clubs like Shoom and Spectrum and the move of Delirium to
Heaven where the main dancefloor became exclusively house.
Delirium's Deep House Convention atLeicester Square's Empire
in February 1988 which featured a number of seminal Chicago
artists like Kym Mazelle, Fingers Inc, Xavier Gold. Marshall
Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles was a depressing event because
of the poor turnout. But the people who did go were to be
become the prime movers of London's house explosion. The
next week a warehouse party called Hedonism was rammed and
the soundtrack was acid. Acid house UK style had begun.
As acid tracks like Armando's '151' and 'Land Of Confusion',
Bam Bam's 'Where's Your Child' and Adonis' 'The Poke' began
to flow out out of Chicago, the scene grew at a rate of
knots with Rip, Love, Future, Contusion and Trip opening
in London, and the legendary Nude in Manchester. DJs suddenly
discovered they had a year's worth of classic house which
hitherto they'd been unable to play. When WBMX in Chicago
closed down, signalling the end of radio play for the music
in the city, it was clear that the emphasis had switched
to the UK. Acid house became the biggest youth cult in Britain
since punk rock a decade before as British house records
like Bang The Party's 'Release Your Body', Jullan Jonah's
'Jealousy & Lies' (later used as the backbone of Electrlbe
101's 'Talking With Myself'), Baby Ford's 'Oochy Koochy',
A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray, and Richie Rich's 'Salsa
House' became huge club hits, before the chart UK house
records emerged with S'Express' 'Theme From S'Express',
D-Mob's 'We Call It Acid', which popularised the ridiculous
but funny club chant of 'Aciiieeeeed!' and Jolly Roger's
'Acid Man'. Opinions differ as to the effect on the scene
of the relatively new drug ecstasy, but there was little
doubt that the sudden rise in availabilny of the drug was
directly related to the growth of the club scene. Before
the tabloids discovered what was going on with their inevitably
lurid headlines about 'Acid House Parties' and drug barons,
it was easy to see people openly imbibing the drug in any
club.
Like Chicago radio was to prove crucial to spreading house
in Britain. But this wasn't any kind of legitimate radio.
Save for a few token shows, you couldn't hear Black music
or dance music on legal radio, and eventually the demand
turned into supply in the form of numerous pirate stations,
mostly in and around London but also in a few other big
cities. Most of them were on and off the air in months or
even weeks, but the more organised stations managed to keep
going, supplying hungry listeners with the music they wanted
to hear - reggae, soul, jazz, hip hop - and house. Steve
Jackson's House That Jack Built on Kiss and Jazzy M's 'Jacking
Zone' on LWR pumped out the new music week in, week out.
"When LWR was what you call the boom, it was on half
a million listeners." says Jazzy M. And we knew that
because the surveys were actually being published in newspapers
The Jacking Zone was getting 40-50 letters a week and I
was broke because all my wages went on new tunes. Once that
plane had landed with the imports, I was getting the new
records on the show the same night. It was unbelievable."
1988 wasn't just acid it was the year that house first really
began to diversify. For a start, there was the 'Balearic'
business, an eclectic style of DJing which at the time encompassed
dance mixes of pop artists like Mandy Smith and quasi-industrial
music like Nitzer Ebb's 'Join In The Chant' Championed by
Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway, Paul Oakenfold and Johnny
Walker who'd all been to Ibiza, Balearic was an integral
part of the club scene at the time, but after the gushing
media overkill it all became a little farcical as people
attempted to make Balearic records There was, of course
no such thing
Then there were the anthems. A year's worth of inspirational
Chicago deep house, which went back to the Nightwriters
and took in Joe Smooth's 'Promised Land' and Sterling Void's
'It's Alright' along the way became some of the biggest
club records of the year, while Marshall Jefferson took
the music to new highs with Ten City's 'Devotion' and Ce
Ce Rogers 'Someday'. Marshall was on a roll in 88, picking
up remixes and linking up with Kym Mazelle for 'Useless'
It was the deep house that spawned the first two house LP's,
which naturally came out in Britain first - Fingers Inc's
benchmark 'Another Side' and Liz Torres With Master C &
J's excellent 'Can't Get Enough'.
Ten City were an important stage in the development of house.
With self-conviction unusually high for the time, they snubbed
the Chicago labels which by that time were losing their
artists more quickly than they could sign them, and headed
for Atlantic records in New York where Merlin Bobb promptly
snapped them up. Where nearly all the house that had gone
before them was strictly producer created, Ten City were
an act, and they could be marketed as such. Plus, they returned
some of the soul vision to house, a tradition that went
all the way back to the Philly sound it was no coincidence
that 'Devotion' was one of the first records from Chicago
to really do well on the East Coast, which always had much
stronger r'n'b roots in its club music. After another huge
club hit with 'Right Back To You', they broached the UK
top Ten in January 1989 with 'That's The Way Love Is' Even
Detroit was discovering songs.
Though the new techno sound was by now at full tilt with
Rhythm Is Rhythm's anthem 'Strings 0f Life' Model 500's
'Off To Battle' and Reese & Santonio's 'Rock To The
Beat', it was Inner City's 'Big Fun' a techno song with
vocals by Chicagoan Paris Grey that was to propel Kevin
Saunderson into the big time. Originally a track recorded
for Virgin's groundbreaking 'Techno! The New Dance Sound
Of Detroit' LP, 'Big Fun' was just too commercial to hold
back, and Saunderson suddenly found himself in a virtually
full-time pop duo making videos, follow-up singles and EPs
like any other pop act.
Chicago however was still finding new things to do with
house, though the next trend wasn't to be anything like
as significant. There had already been raps put down to
house tracks as early as 1985 with 'Music Is The Key' and
more recently with M-Doc's 'It's Percussion', The Beatmasters'
'Rok Da House' and New York's KC Flight with 'Let's Get
Jazzy'. But it was Tyree Cooper (who'd already had a big
club record with 'Acid Over') and rapper Kool Rock Steady
who defined the hip-house style with 'Turn Up The Bass',
a galloping track which somehow combined Kool's rap with
the classic Chicago piano sound and Tyree's trademark 909
roll. It wasn't long before Fast Eddie, also at DJ International,
expanded it with 'Yo Yo Get Funky'.
But the biggest new producer of 1988 was someone who didn't
come from Chicago at all. Or Detroit. New York was beginning
to flex its muscles, the city that had always regarded itself
the world's capital for dance music wanted some of the limelight
back. But it wasn't an established figure in the New York
or New Jersey dance scene that broke through, it was a kid
from Brooklyn who was showing an incredible alacrity for
the new form of sampling that had been co- developing with
house - Todd Terry.
First it was those Masters At Work tracks, but after that
Todd hit house in a big way with 'Bango' (at which Kevin
Saunderson was highly miffed, because it heavily sampled
one of his records), 'Just Wanna Dance', Swan Lake's 'In
The Name Of Love', Black Riot's 'A Day In The Life' and
'Warlock' and the one that was almost certainly the biggest
club record of the year - Royal House's 'Can You Party!'.
Though in New York Todd's sample tracks were firmly categorized
with the Latin freestyle house sound that the Hispanics
were developing, in the UK Todd became the toast of the
house scene. In a by now familiar scenario, 'Can You Party'
hit the Top 20 in October on a wave of club support, closely
followed by another track on the new Big Beat label out
of New York, Kraze's 'The Party'.
As it became more and more apparent that Chicago was grinding
to a halt, New York was getting it together, with more labels
like Cutting (who'd already released Nitro Deluxe's classic
'Let's Get Brutal' in 1987) and Warlock turning to house
and new labels starting up. One of these was to prove more
important than all the rest - Nu Groove.
1989
By now the UK and its trend-hungry music press had become
the local point of the dance music world. After acid had
slumped into fatuousness with the adopted logo of acid,
the smiley, appearing on t- shirts racked up in every high
street and the mainstream press (including the 'qualities')
scuttling after every whiff of a half-arsed drug story,
they discovered new beat from Belgium. The trouble was that
save for one or two genuinely good records like A Split
Second's 'Flesh', nearly everyone outside Belgium hated
new beat, a sort of sluggish cross between acid, techno
and heavy industrial Euro music and the media hype dissolved
into a number of red faces. Then they discovered garage.
'Garage' as a term had already long been in use on the house
scene to differentiate the smooth, soulful songs flowing
from New York and New Jersey from the more energetic, uplifting
deep house out of Chicago. But the hype on this supposedly
new music did allow a lot of very good acts a chance of
exposure that otherwise they wouldn't have had. The Americans
were confused. To most New Yorkers and Jerseyites, garage
was what was played at the Paradise' Garage, which had closed
two years earlier. What they were making was club music
or dance music, and house was all that track stuff from
Chicago. But they were happy that someone somewhere was
getting off on their sound. Tony Humphries, who'd been on
New York's Kiss FM since 1981 and at the Zanzibar in New
Jersey since 1982, was to become instrumental in exposing
the Jersey sound. Though he was one of more open-minded
DJ's In the New York area, his was the style that married
real r'n'b based dance to house.
"I really saw house start with the Virgo 1 record,
which had that 'Love Is The Message' skip beat, and I was
using that and a lot of other Chicago stuff as filler between
the vocals, so if I was to play Jean Carne I would use the
Virgo drum track before it. Vocals was always very much
my thing, and I would say the people from Chicago we really
respected in Jersey were Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles
and JM Silk. A lot of it was really Philly elements, it
was like Philly living on forever, and that was our flavor.
"I became known for breaking new stuff, and to stay
ahead of everyone I had to come up with more and more demos.
I wanted to help all the people around me in Jersey, so
around 88-89 I did a huge showcase with all the acts at
Zanzibar first on my birthday and then at the New Music
Seminar. Suddenly everyone was talking about the Jersey
sound."
Blaze were the forerunners of the new soul vision, followed
by their protégés Phase II, who struck big
with the optimism anthem 'Reachin', and Hippie Torrales'
Turntable Orchestra with 'You're Gonna Miss Me'. Then there
were the girls - Vicky Martin with 'Not Gonna Do It' and
of course, Adeva, behind whom was the talented Smack Productions
team. ' In And Out 0f My Life' had already been released
by Easy Street a year before, but when Cooltempo signed
the Jersey wailer up on the basis of her cover of Aretha
Franklin's 'Respect', mainstream success was more than on
the cards - it was a dead cert. 'Respect' entered the Top
40 in January and hung around for two months, by which time
Chanelle's 'One Man' and then her own collaboration with
Paul Simpson, 'Musical Freedom' had followed the example.
It didn't end there. Jomanda, who shared the billing with
Tony Humphries at a massive event stage in Brixton's Academy
were next with 'Make My Body Rock', and though they were
to become successful in the States, their sound never crossed
over in the UK.
New York was stepping up the pace in grand fashion and there
was a lot more going on than just the Jersey sound. Following
Todd Terry's success, the New York sample track was breaking
out like wildfire, particularly with Frankie Bones, Tommy
Musto and Lenny Dee at Fourth Floor, Breakln' Bones and
Nu Groove records. Nu Groove, built on the foundation of
the Burrell twins who'd escaped from an abortive r'n'b career
with Virgin Records, was fast becoming the hippest house
label. Nu Groove had started the year before with records
like Bas Noir's 'My Love Is Magic' and Aphrodisiac's 'Your
Love' and by 1989 they were on a roll. Nu Groove never had
a sound - with producers as disparate as the Burrells, Bobby
Konders and Frankie Bones that wasn't conceivable - and
they never really had one big record, but the concept of
the label went from strength to strength.
Among their producers was Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez, yet to
hook up with Little Louie Vega, who was moving into house
with his Freestyle Orchestra project. Nu Groove's first
competitor was to come in the form of Strictly Rhythm, who
opened up in 1989, though their first breakthrough wasn't
to come until the following year. Two other New York producers
who were also beginning to make a lot of noise were Clivilles
and Cole with Seduction's 'Seduction' and their excellent
deep, dubby mix of Sandee's 'Notice Me'. Their break into
the mainstream came with a mix of Natalie Cole's 'Pink Cadillac'.
Another guy who was also beginning to make a name for himself
as a house remixer was David Morales.
But one of the biggest records on the burgeoning UK rave
scene was a record that made very little impact in its native
New York - the 2 In A Room LP on Cutting Records, a follow-up
to 2 In A Room's 'Somebody In The House Say Yeah' that included
a clutch of firing sample tracks from Todd Terry, Louie
Vega, George Morel and a few other producers known only
on the Latin freestyle scene in New York.
By Summer 89 the acid house scene had grown into the rave
scene which was becoming so big that promoters came up with
the idea of putting on huge events in the countryside outside
London - events that could not only hold thousands of people
but which could go on all night. Although the scene was
later to degenerate with an increasingly narrow musical
policy, ludicrously numerous DJ line-ups and suffer from
gangster style promoters who saw how much money could be
made, at the time it was incredibly broad. Alongside the
regular house movers, records like Corporation Of One's
'Real Life', Karlya's 'Let Me Love You For Tonight' and
808 State's 'Pacific' became the open air anthems.
Several of those anthems came from a label that had started
up in Canada the year before. Toronto's Big Shot Records
was the brainchild of producers Andrew Komis and Nick Fiorucci,
and they were startled when Amy Jackson's 'Let It Loose',
Index's 'Give Me A Sign', Jillian Mendez's 'Get Up' and
Dionne's 'Come Get My Lovin' became huge club records in
the UK.
"I was dumbfounded about England. To me it was soccer
players and the Queen, but if it wasn't for the dance stores
in London and Record Mirror I'd probably be working in a
hardware store." Andrew Komis. Again, the scene was
largely fueled by radio. Though the original pirates had
come off the air in an attempt to gain licenses (Kiss eventually
managed it in 1990) and the penalties had been sharply increased,
a new generation of pirates were on the air - Sunrise, Center
force, Fantasy, Dance and countless others. Young, loud
and incredibly unprofessional, they pumped out an endless
diet of underground house music round the clock and shamelessly
promoted all the raves.
Another set of incredibly successful records came from a
country only marginally more likely than Canada. House records
from the Continent were becoming more and more common, though
most of them were sub-standard covers of US and UK records,
and when Italy's Cappella crashed the charts with 'Helyom
Halib' it was really only because it was based on a huge
club record from Chicago which had never managed to crossover
- LNR's 'Work It To The Bone'. Then came Starlight with
'Numero Uno' and Black Box with 'Ride On Time', both the
work of production team Groove Groove Melody. 'Ride On Time'
was a brilliant concept, taking the vocals from Loleatta
Holloway's 'Love Sensation' and putting them to a sizzling
piano anthem. There was no holding it back.
As the record flew up the charts on its way to becoming
the first house Number 1 since 'Jack Your Body', the floodgates
opened. Italo-house was a happy, uplifting lightweight sound
nurtured in the hedonistic clubs of the Adriatic resorts
Rimini and Riccioni, and it gatecrashed everything from
the large raves to the hippest clubs. Those that argued
that there was no substance behind it (a lot of the records
WERE extremely corny) were foiled when a more mature sound
emerged with Sueno Latino's 'Sueno Latino' and Soft House
Company's 'What You Need.' Despite their initial insistence
that 'Ride On Time' wasn't all sampled, Black Box managed
to record a very good album, though they promptly pulled
a similar stunt on Martha Wash, who wasn't at all amused.
The Italians would go on to become an integral part of house
music, with one of the most consistent labels, Irma, proving
acceptance in New York by opening up shop there.
Even in 1989, when house music had become the property of
the world, Chicago still had a few tricks up its sleeve.
Led by people like Steve Poindexter and Armando, the new
underground of the city was returning to its roots with
a new, minimalist style even rougher and rawer than the
original drum tracks, a sound that was to join acid and
techno in forming the roots of the hardcore scene. Another
producer who'd led the way with crazy tracks like 'War Games'
and 'Video Clash' was Lil Louis.
While his spinning partner DJ Pierre became entangled in
a fruitless contract with Jive Records (a fate that also
befell Liz Torres), who'd opened up in Chicago, Louis' time
came in 1989 with a track that slowed down to a complete
halt and had as a vocal only a senes a female love moans
- 'French Kiss'. 'French Kiss' was a huge club record and
eventually it climbed to Number 2 in the charts and landed
Louis an album deal with Epic in the States and ffrr in
the UK. Though the style had started three years earlier
with Jackmaster Dick's 'Sensuous Woman Goes Disco' and Raze's
'Break 4 Love' the previous year, 'French Kiss' began a
sex track phenomenon that was to last a long time.
Another group that broke out of Chicago was Da Posse, formed
by Hula, K Fingers, Martell and Maurice. Their early tracks
like 'In The Life' were mostly based on old Rhythm Is Rhythm
records, but 'Searchin Hard', a deep house song on Dance
Mania records led them to a deal with Dave Lee's Republic
Records, for whom they eventually recorded an excellent
album. Later they formed their own label, Clubhouse Records.
Two other house originals also teamed up in 1989 - Frankie
Knuckles and Robert Owens, who recorded 'Tears' with Japanese
keyboardist Satoshi Tomiie. 'Tears' was a great record but
mystifyingly, even in the year of house hits, it failed
to make the charts. Though Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May
and Juan Atkins had become very popular with the majors
as remixers, Detroit had become very quiet, and the only
club that supported techno, the Music Institute, had closed
down. But a resurgence was on the horizon with new producers
like Carl Craig and a young protégé of Saunderson
who had just made his first record for KMS - Marc Kinchen.
Despite the studied apathy of the American music business
and repeated attempts to replace house in Britain with just
about anything - Soul II Soul and their numerous imitators
proved more of a hiccup than anything else the 4/4 bass
kick entered the new decade stronger than ever, underground
dance scenes developing in new cities and new countries
with every month that passed. Even Spain underwent its own
acid house craze in 89, and threw up the talented Barcelona
producer Raul Orellana, who created a style all of his own
by merging flamenco with house. A comment made in 1988 by
Robert Owens on the UK TV documentary 'Club Culture' was
proving truer and truer.
"It's not just boom boom boom. They're telling me something
here. Something I can dance to and learn from. I can see
house music becoming universal one day. It'll just take
time for people to receive it."
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