"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 
protˇgˇs 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 Tomlle.  '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 protˇgˇ 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."

written by Phil Cheeseman for DJ magazine