The Roots to 1985
Like it or not,
house 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
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 crash 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 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.
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.
"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'.
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. 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. Trax took a little
longer. 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 D.C. 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.
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 instrumentals 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 Movin', 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 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, melancholy songs of Fingers Inc. and beginning to
show itself in
other minimalist productions like MK II's 'Don't Stop The Music' 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 take
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
Clinton 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.
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 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
at Leicester 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, Confusion 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
Electribe 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 availability
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 broked 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 the 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 protgs 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, Breakin' 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 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 protg
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."
—Article from DJ
Magazine (date unknown)
Please go to undergroundhouse.com.
This is where i got this article, and in which i believe is the most accurate
i have seen.
JoeSlim FunkShop Records