During recent times I’ve been intrigued to hear about the growing schism on the House scene here in the UK, brought about by the introduction, primarily by young black dancers, of ‘foot shuffling’ (aka ‘cutting shapes’), an increasingly popular style of dancing that has been met with much hostility in certain quarters, and, somewhat bizarrely, resulted in shufflers being banned from some clubs for dancing in this way. The accusation is that not only do they take up too much dancefloor space, but there’s a general ‘moodiness’ with regards to their attitude. Although it no longer seems to be online, there was even an ‘Anti Foot Shuffling Campaign’ page on Facebook, with some of the posts suggesting underlying issues of racism. As one person commented, “It’s not that all these people on here hate shufflers, they just don’t like fact that black people are into House music now.” Although this comment may be well intentioned, it’s also somewhat misguided given there are, and always have been, plenty of black people in the UK who are big into House – it’s just that their presence is usually to be found away from the mainstream, in more specialist avenues like the Deep and Soulful House scenes. Furthermore, some of the older black crowd are also resistant to this new wave of shuffling, so to present it as a purely black / white issue would be wrong.
That said, what’s clear from this whole kerfuffle is that there are a significant amount of mainly white enthusiasts on the scene today who seem to segregate House as somehow belonging to them, whilst suggesting the black crowd should stick to ‘their own music’, the likes of Grime, Hip Hop, R&B and other more ‘urban’ genres. This is all despite the fact that House, as anyone with even a basic awareness of its origins would tell you, was born within Chicago’s black clubbing community back in the mid-’80s.
The 25th anniversary of the Acid House ‘Second Summer Of Love’ is upon us (the original ‘Summer Of Love’, of course, being way back in psychedelic ’67, emanating from the Hippie movement of San Francisco). It’s remarkable that House music has been the main staple of British dancefloors for a colossal quarter of a century, the original ‘ravers’ now middle-aged. Yet despite its importance to this country’s popular culture, its true roots have never been fully acknowledged. In fact, if you told many of those on the House scene today that it was mainly black kids in the UK who first embraced the music, they’d no doubt look at you incredulously, for everybody knows that Ibiza ’87 was year zero, as this is how the story has, and continues to be told – the true origins in the relatively grim cities of the North and Midlands buried deep beneath the sun-drenched romance of the White Isle.
What’s even more remarkable is that the original style of dancing to House music in this country, before the hands in the air approach of the Rave era, was uncannily similar to shuffling, as illustrated by this now historic video, recorded at the Moss Side Community Centre in Manchester on September 27th 1986:
When it was originally uploaded, the title chosen for this clip, ‘Mastermind Roadshow in Moss Side’, was somewhat misleading. Although Mastermind, the influential London DJ collective who were responsible for mixing most of the seminal ‘Street Sounds Electro’ compilations, did indeed appear that night, the DJ playing in this clip is none other than Mike Shaft, the legendary Soul & Funk specialist who graced the Manchester airwaves, his mid-Atlantic microphone style unmistakeable. Most importantly it includes a routine from Foot Patrol who adapted the Jazz-Fusion style of dancing to early House – in this respect they may well be described as prototype foot shufflers.
I was initially made aware of this clip via the Deep House and Techno producer Tony Lionni. It was amazing to see this room jam-packed with black kids, some of whom I knew personally, getting down to House music before, as many commentators would have you believe, the genre had made any real impact here – Ibiza ’87 still almost a year away. It was a real anthropological find, and a longer version of the footage can be viewed here on the Soul Control website: http://www.soulcontrol.tv/video2.html
This is something I’d been mocked for in certain circles for stating as fact, so to see my words validated via these momentous moving images was so much more than I could have hoped for – the proof being very much in the pudding, so to speak. A couple of years earlier I was frantically searching, without success, for a photograph to visually back up my attestation that it was the black crowd in Manchester who were responsible for bringing dance music to the fore at The Haçienda during the mid-’80s, when it had previously been regarded as an alternative / indie stronghold. People rarely took snapshots in clubs back then, but The Guardian, who were interested in running the piece (to be written by Marc Rowlands), insisted on photographic evidence before it was commissioned. The best I could come up with was Ian Tilton’s classic shot of Manchester dance troupe Foot Patrol performing at The Haçienda, but it was an image of regular clubbers they wanted, and, frustratingly, as this couldn’t be provided the article was shelved.
Foot Patrol can lay claim to being the original House music foot shufflers (although some people nowadays look across the world to cite Australia and ‘The Melbourne Shuffle’ as the starting point in the late ’80s), their style is traceable back to the Jazz-Funk scene of the late ’70s / early ’80s, and the ‘fusion crews’ that challenged each other (it was from these crews that many of the UK’s archetypal breakdancers emerged, having already developed the athleticism to attempt the dynamic moves demanded). Hewan Clarke, a Jazz aficionado, would become the original Haçienda DJ before returning to the black scene, where he helped facilitate the House movement in embryo (along with, most notably, the hugely influential Colin Curtis – who’d previously been a pivotal DJ on both the Northern Soul and Jazz-Funk scenes – as well as Piccadilly Radio Dance music presenter, Stu Allan, who was responsible for championing House music on the North-West airwaves, greatly widening its popularity in the process). Hewan recalls how it all evolved;
“Samson and his crew (Foot Patrol as they’d come to be known) would travel all over the country. They’d go to Birmingham. They’d go to clubs in Nottingham, Leeds, Derby, all the happening places. They’d be picking up a lot of styles from clubs and bringing them back to Manchester. These guys were very innovative in terms of the way they were moving on the floor, because the way you move on the floor depicts the type of music that’s played to keep you moving like that. So, this new music was coming out. We knew you couldn’t dance to it the old way we used to dance to Jazz, Funk and Soul and stuff, and it was people like Samson that brought this new dance in and it really hit a vein amongst a young group of dancers at the time and people like myself. We looked at them, saw the way they were dancing and that was how the whole House thing developed.”
But why was it the North and the Midlands at the vanguard when it came to the emergence of House (also then known as Garage, in reference to the type of music you might hear at NYC’s famous Paradise Garage) in the UK?
Firstly I should explain what was meant by ‘the black scene’, as it was referred to back then. As the name suggests, this is where you’d find black kids dancing to the most cutting-edge music of the time, alongside the more adventurous white kids, who unified with their black brethren during what was still an overtly racist time, to transcend this divisive era via a love of music. The passion of this scene can’t be understated, with many people, amidst Thatcher’s Britain, on the dole with little prospect of work, yet thinking nothing of travelling 50, even 100 miles, to hear what they considered the most upfront music available – the majority of it fresh in on import from the US. They’d make sure that they were at the top club nights and All-Dayers, literally by hook or by crook – it was that fundamental to their existence.
What should be taken into account is that there was a definite North / South divide pre-Rave, with very little crossover between the DJs – Southern DJs rarely played up North and vice-versa. This led to differences in emphasis, and, during the mid-’80s, things had moved in contrasting directions. In London the Rare Groove scene held sway, and the illegal warehouse parties of this period would lay the foundations for the Rave events that followed later in the decade – Rare Groove set the environment. This was, once again, black led, with DJ Norman Jay at the heart of things. It was very much a London movement, which, as huge as it was in the capitol, never really gained a foothold in the main black music strongholds of the North and Midlands at the time – Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Leeds and, of course, Manchester. There was much interconnectivity between these cities, and this had its origins in the All-Dayer scene, dating back to the Jazz-Funk era. So, whilst London chimed to Rare Groove and Boogie, the North and Midlands continued the more Electro geared direction that had defined the early ’80s, with House (before it was referred to as such) initially regarded as a rhythmically straighter take on Electro, out of Chicago rather than New York. This was the arena in which the early Trax and DJ International releases first found favour on this side of the Atlantic – supplemented by the Hip Hop and Street Soul flavours of the time on the specialist scene.
This is not to say that there weren’t DJs in London championing House at this point. Jazzy M is often cited as one of the UK pioneers, alongside names like Noel & Maurice Watson, Colin Faver, Eddie Richards and Mark Moore (the latter 3 responsible for exposing House to an influential mixed gay audience, unconnected to the Hi-NRG scene, some of whom, coincidently, were taking Ecstasy pre-Ibiza). Hosting ‘The Jacking Zone’ on London Pirate station LWR, as well as running the record shop, Vinyl Zone, Jazzy M was evangelical in his support of House, but initially found it a hard slog to get the music he loved taken seriously down South. He remembered;
“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.”
The Manchester clubs that sparked things off were The Playpen, The Gallery, Legend and Berlin, with Colin Curtis, Hewan Clarke and Stu Allan at the forefront of things. Allan also wielded huge power via his weekly radio show, which was broadcast to a vast amount of people throughout the region every Sunday (Piccadilly being one of the UK’s most popular local radio stations). Laurent Garnier, not yet a DJ, but in the North-West of England working as a chef at the time, recalls the trouble he had obtaining a copy of Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk’s ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ (a record that would subsequently make the UK Top 10, the first House hit), when it first came in on import in ’86;
“I was living half an hour from Manchester, and there was a shop called Spin Inn. You had to call them to make sure they’d save the records for you, because they’d only have five copies of each and it wasn’t sure if you could get them. With ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’, it took me months to finally get a copy. And of course to hear the songs this DJ, Stu Allan, was on the radio in Manchester and I was listening to his show and taping the show.”
At The Haçienda, Mike Pickering (then partnered by Martin Prendergast), was on a roll, his Nude night on a Friday really gaining momentum, with major representation from Manchester’s black strongholds of Hulme and Moss Side, the audience “fifty percent black, fifty percent white”, and attracting some serious dancers in the process. Graham Massey, later of 808 State, recalled; “Friday nights were a lot more black, yet much more to my taste in the jazzy area…people that took dancing seriously in that jazz dancing kind of way”. Pickering was soon to become a central figure in the House music story – as he tells it, “a young kid from Moss Side” handed him his first House record, ‘No Way Back’ by Adonis (1986), and when he played it “the club went crazy”. Adonis, along with Latin Jazz and Salsa musician, Tito Puente, provided the inspiration for ‘Carino’ by T-Coy (1987), the first UK House track to make a national impact, courtesy of Pickering and Simon Topping (previously members of Factory Records band Quando Quango) in collaboration with the late keyboardist, Richie Close (the track crucially supported by Stu Allan on his radio show, and later Coldcut on Kiss FM in London). Foot Patrol (also 2 other local crews, the She Devils and Fusion Beats) were featured in the promo video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juEdkJz7tX0
For more about the fabled Manchester venue in the years leading up to the Rave explosion, check out Tim Lawrence’s ‘Discotheque Haçienda’ sleeve notes:
http://timlawrence.info/discotheque-hacienda-gut-2006/
Elsewhere, DJ’s like Graeme Park at The Garage in Nottingham and Winston & Parrot at Jive Turkey in Sheffield were starting to have a big influence in those cities (they would also combine for a series of memorable ‘The Steamer’ nights at Sheffield’s Leadmill). Park would eventually come across to The Haçienda in 1988, hooking up with Mike Pickering to form one of the most celebrated DJ partnerships of all;
“obviously I knew Mike cos we were doing a very similar thing. I went to The Haçienda and couldn’t believe what I saw because obviously it was three times as big as what I was doing in Nottingham and a real kinda mix, a lot of black faces there”.
Completing the trinity of Haçienda House specialists was Jon DaSilva, and everything was now in place for the venue to become the most important club for the furtherance of House music, not only in the UK, but the world.
Later down the line, when the documentation of the House / Rave scene went into overdrive, with the Ibiza story overriding everything that had gone before, I couldn’t help but regard it as a whitewashing of black culture in this country. I was no longer directly involved with the club scene at this point, just watching events unfold from the sidelines, so my hope was that someone would come along to set the record straight – but it didn’t happen. Article after article, then book after book began to appear, but there was always this great glaring omission with regards to how things had originally flourished via the black scene. Although it often felt as though the sinister undertones of cultural racism were at play, I came to realise that the writers simply weren’t aware of what had happened because they were never a part of the black scene – most had only got into dance music with the advent of Acid House and Ecstasy, so had no personal knowledge of the black clubs that had led the way. Instead of making the proper connection to what had gone before, they generally took the easy, more romantic option, making Ibiza ’87 their starting point, and thus creating a mythology that persists to this day.
I could quote from a selection of books, documentaries and articles, showing how this misinformation has perpetuated down the years – and not just by those writing about dance culture, but consequently music documentarians working in a wider context. Only recently I was enjoying the highly informative ’33 Revolutions Per Minute’ (2010) by Dorian Lynskey, a book that outlines the history of the protest song. There’s a chapter about Rave culture, and the more political messages contained in the music, but it also endorses the myth I’ve been talking about, authoritatively stating that; ‘The DJs who brought House and Techno to Britain did so via the sun-kissed idyll of Ibiza’. When I come across this type of error, it makes me question what else in the book might be inaccurate, but in this case I can’t be too critical of the author – he’s only repeating what has been presented as fact so many times by people purported to be dance music experts. If the specialists can’t get it right, what hope for those who are dependent on the authenticity of these specialists.
Most people couldn’t care less about origins and lineage – they like the music, but don’t want to study it. However, there are always a significant minority whose love of music, or a particular genre of music, creates enough fascination in them to want to explore its roots and branches. Unfortunately there’s precious little in print that enables even students of dance culture access to the full picture, allowing them to make a balanced assessment of why things worked out the way they did.
By omitting the Black British contribution to our culture we hide the fullness of its riches, and know less about ourselves as a consequence (regardless of our personal ethnicity). It’s an inspirational story that needs to be known, in order to serve the future – culture is all about connections and fusions, previously separate aspects coming together to create a new expression, and this is exactly what happened in Britain with the black / white mix of ideas and identity that shaped (and continues to shape) the course of popular culture in this country.
Gerald Simpson (aka A Guy Called Gerald) provides the perfect analogy for what happened in Manchester. Most people would assume that he went to The Haçienda, heard this incredible House music for the first time, had an epiphany, and then went home and set to work on the era defining single ‘Voodoo Ray’ (which he wrote with Foot Machine in mind, visualising how they might dance to it). The reality, of course, is that Gerald and his contemporaries were those very kids from Hulme and Moss Side, who brought House music into The Haçienda in the first place. Gerald had already been on the black scene for many years, dancing to Jazz-Funk, then Electro, before starting out with the Scratch Beatmasters as a Hip Hop DJ (MC Tunes rapping). ‘Voodoo Ray’ isn’t an orthodox House track, but a culmination of his influences – The Haçienda providing the perfect setting in which to unleash this quintessential British dance track. Inadvertently bestowing Gerald with his name was Stu Allan – prior to ‘Voodoo Ray’, on playing a track he’d been given on tape by a local newcomer, he told his Piccadilly listeners that it was by a guy called Gerald from Hulme.
Whilst Ibiza and its Balearic spirit would mark a seismic shift for British dance culture, this had more to do with resultant emergence of the drug Ecstasy within British clubland than the House music of Chicago – House, as illustrated, having already become a key component of underground dance culture well before DJs Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker made that fateful trip to visit their friend and fellow DJ, Trevor Fung, in the summer of ’87 (Fung, who lived on the island at the time, has found himself increasingly marginalised within the story as the years pass, despite the fact that it was his pioneering spirit that brought the others out there in the first place). It’s a tale that, even from its inception, generated a life of its own, re-writing history as the past was largely eclipsed and, to paraphrase a popular track of the period, Everything, seemingly, began with an E. Graeme Park saw it as the South grabbing the spotlight, having originally been beaten to the punch where House was concerned;
“I mean me and Mike Pickering never went to Ibiza but we had a massive scene. That was just that London thing of ‘we invented everything’, y’know? I really do think that.”
Some people may rightfully point out that, if there was such a major black influence on what happened at The Haçienda, why are black people clearly in the minority in the photos and video footage of the club at the height of its fame? The answer is that when the whole thing blew up in 1988, and legions of E’d up white kids, most of whom previously had little affinity with dance music, staked their claim to its ‘discovery’, the blacks, who regarded this as their space, their precious dancing space, being invaded, gradually moved on (Konspiracy, with DJs like the Jam MC’s, Nick Grayson, Justin Robertson and Greg Fenton, subsequently becoming their club of choice before the police closed it down, with the black presence in the city centre clubs rapidly decreasing as a consequence). Mike Pickering believes the influx of ecstasy was a factor with the black audience, most of whom were purely herbal in their choice of highs;
“I think the drugs put them off, because they didn’t take them in those days”.
Colin Curtis echoed this opinion;
“most of the black guys, that I knew anyway, didn’t take that particular drug…they didn’t need to, they came to dance, it was about the dance, the chilling afterwards was a different party”.
However, Mike Pickering believed that the invasion of their dancefloor space was the defining aspect;
“I likened it to the Mexican wave coming across the club. Everyone was doing the same dance and there was no room. The black dancers didn’t dig that.”
It’s ironic to think that today’s foot shufflers are criticised for the very thing that made the black dancers desert The Haçienda in their droves – wanting to express themselves on the dancefloor, without being confined to hands in the air standing room only. The dance of the ravers wasn’t about footwork, but arm and hip movements, the feet pretty much rooted to the same spot, which was never going to satisfy the physicality of those who’d graduated from the school of Fusion, where the feet did the talking, and cutting shapes didn’t mean ‘big box little box’ type moves.
Laurent Garnier, who’d been summoned back to France in 1988 for his national service, expressed his surprise on finding, when he later returned to Manchester, that the black crowd had largely moved on from The Haçienda. With the audience now predominantly white, and House music playing all night long, Mike Pickering, even as The Haçienda was gaining universal acclaim, began to have reservations;
“I regretted the fact that once you’d come down off the E everything was pure House…I could tell even in 1989 that that wasn’t a good thing and that what we were doing before was much more precious, because we were playing a wider range of music. By 1989 we were slaves to the beat.”
Acid House and its drug associations resulted in a full scale media frenzy, not least in the pages of The Sun, which, whilst rallying against the evils of Ecstasy, only served to further popularise the movement with the younger generation. All of a sudden, people who’d previously had little affinity with dance music were popping pills and swamping the dancefloor. House was the soundtrack, and whilst it remained very much underground in its country of origin, it became something of a mainstream obsession in Britain – everyone, it seemed, wanted to join the dance.
House music, supplemented by MDMA, would, of course, go on to dominate the dance landscape in the UK throughout the coming decades, but for many people who were there at the start, something had been lost. Deep House would retain the connection to the black scene, but black people became but a small minority when it came to the overall House demographic in Britain, and indeed Europe, more likely to be found dancing to urban flavours in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa than raving in Ibiza.
What’s sad is that black and white generally separated following the Acid House explosion, whereas, throughout the ’80s, there was a real meeting of minds, and it was this very coming together that created the conditions for a club like The Haçienda to flourish in the first place – the black kids from areas like Hulme and Moss Side interacting with the students and Indie enthusiasts who’d made up the venue’s original audience, to place Manchester right at the centre of worldwide dance culture during that heady late 80’s into early 90’s period.
Despite the separation on the House side of things (or perhaps because of it) British black music would flourish in the post-Rave period. Taking the essence of Rave, but adding the breakbeats of Hip Hop, whilst underpinning this with the Bass culture of Jamaican heritage, they would create their own new directions, beginning with Hardcore, before morphing into Jungle, Drum & Bass, UK Garage and, as a new century dawned, onwards into Grime and beyond. No longer was black music in the UK regarded as simply a pale imitation of the real deal from the US and JA (which was a bit harsh on some of the wonderful pre-Rave British black / dance releases), but a hybrid style all of its own, influenced by America and Jamaica, but infused with a unique home grown sensibility.
With regards to the cutting of shapes, Tim Lawrence hit the nail on the head when he made the comparison between the two distinct ways of dancing to House, pre and post-Ecstasy. He pointed out that
“black social dance created space for individual expression within collective movement”, whereas the ravers “generated a wave of bliss in which the euphoria of the crowd all but drowned out the individual”.
Whilst I understand the appeal of the communal experience, and the sense of belonging that can go with it, I don’t think that this should be at the expense of individual expression, especially now, at a time when, to vast swathes of clubbers, community has been reduced to bobbing up and down on the spot, facing the same way as everyone else (towards the DJ), with a fist pumping high, or worse still, a mobile phone raised aloft. Speaking for myself, there’s nothing I like to see more than a dancefloor where people are facing each other, not me, whilst grooving away to the tunes I play as they give it up and get down, immersing themselves in the moment by losing themselves in the music.
Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Thanks to NM-L & GK.
Second Summer Of Love Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Summer_of_Love
Great article Greg!
I remember well when I first heard house music at the Hacienda’s Nude night – those first early Chicago records mixed in with the likes of “All in All”, “Somebody Else’s Guy”, “Bassline” and even “Backfield in Motion” when it was Mike Pickering and Martin Prendergast DJ-ing up there above the dancefloor. I think it was “little” Martin more than anyone who first introduced house music to the Hacienda but as is often the case, he’s been written out of the “official” history of this scene.
I remember watching the Jazz Defektors or Foot Patrol (not sure who) dancing to the first house records on the Hacienda dancefloor at this time and trying (badly) to imitate/emulate what they were doing as this was all new to me! They did, as you say, dance in a completely different way to what came later – a fast-paced fusion sort of style which was mighty impressive to watch. I remember thinking when I first watched black kids dancing to house – “how can they dance to this music, you have to dance really fast “(!!!) – this sounds ridiculous now when the tempo couldn’t have been above 120bpm on those early Chicago jack trax but compared to what I was used to dancing to (and we did dance in those days, not just wave our hands in the air and gurn – even if we weren’t always that good at it!) at that time, it DID sound pretty uptempo and fast – I was too young to have been clubbing when disco and boogie were big so this was the fastest modern bang-up-to-date dance music I’d ever heard.
It was definitely considered the latest, most exciting black music at that time to me and others like me in Manchester, and the mix of the crowd reflected that – even a year or so later when I was watching the likes of Kym Mazelle and Ten City performing live at the Hac, the crowd was still a proper racial mix, drug taking wasn’t really that wide-spread at all (not obviously at least) and the dancing was still very much “pre-big-fish-little-fish”.
In Orwell’s “1984”, Winston Smith worked for the Ministry of Truth and was responsible for historical revisionism, concording the past to the Party’s ever-changing official version of the past – I’ve always thought that a large proportion of the history of black music (and in particular, the house/club scene) in the UK seems to have been dealt with in a less official but similar way by the “It all started in Eye-Beefa on Oakey’s Birthday in ’87 didn’t it” gang (yawn).
I omitted to mention that the VERY first time I heard house music wasn’t at the Hacienda but was at one of the smaller clubs in Manchester (forget which one) a few weeks before I started to hear it at the Hacienda – it was there that I first saw black clubbers dancing to it and was amazed at the flurry of footwork required to dance to this 120bpm “super-fast” new music!
Interesting article not only about music and grooving but about how even modern history is twisted from what most people believe! And I love the last paragraph about leaving your bloody phone in your pocket on the dance-floor! When does anyone sit back and enjoy that shaky, poor sounding 2 min footage? Get in the groove and enjoy the moment!
(via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DJGregWilson)
Excellent piece Greg, good to see Birmingham and the Midlands included. I had this conversation with you a few years ago at The Garden in Petrecane one morning. The Midlands often gets overlooked with Manchester, London, Ibiza 87. But as you know parties at The Irish Center, Powerhouse etc all playing House from 85. With djs like Constructive Trio, IMD, Shiftwork etc leading the way.
(via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DJGregWilson)
[…] Greg Wilson has got a great article putting the story straight on the Saul on the road to Damascus conversion of the DJ royalty myth about house music here. […]
Hi Greg,
Great article, lots of contentious, thought provoking areas.
When I was doing my early DJ’ing, with alot of breakdancers, this was 1984/5; there were a few tracks which started to influence direction, one of which was JM Silk’s Music is the Key.
I really didn’t go for it at first, but everyone who was into dancing wanted more of the same style. This was 1985. When I Dj’ed at an all-nighter at Bradford West Indian Centre, one of the rooms were dropping these style of tracks. So, Oakenfold et al, are way off the mark.
Its only by knowing how long someone like you have been in the game, that I totally believe what you state and talk about.
Interestingly enough, watched a film the other night called Rewind Forever: History of UK Garage. The fact that you mention above about “that London thing” is a dominant theme in this film. Whilst UK Garage is a predominantly southern sound, to say they are totally responsible for 2 step dance, really, c’mon!
Maybe they forgot all about that Northern Soul!/Disco thing? All they did was speed it up!
House music for me began with the JM Silk track, but in terms of club culture the tipping point may have been Ibiza, but that is only because certain individuals saw financial gains to be made when juxtaposed with certain chemicals.
Its Dj’s like you Greg, with Hewan, Searling, Curtis, Haigh, Allen, who know the real truth.
When it comes to expression, I don’t like using the phrase “black” as we are all human, but musically, everything which has a soul and groove, always has a black beginning.
But, as with all inequalities on this planet, it is then exploited by white folks.
As a footnote, this exploitation even goes way back to the guy who invented stereo recording, Alan Blumlein in the 1930’s, who mysteriously died soon after before he could exploit the patents; so, this type of thing has always and always will go on.
Greg
Interesting factual article .
Whoever wherever we were we played a part in shaping the biggest youth culture movement since punk .
The idealism behind the scene that we helped shape was the message of UNITY nothing to do with cultural racism .The scene in London at least brought all walks of life together as one.
Opportunities new friendships flourished and changed the landscape of the British music industry and youth culture.
We know that House was being played on pirate stations Northern clubs and minly London gay clubs .
The clubs we created on return from Ibiza brought a new idealism to clubland revolutionary new music brought people together, music from Detroit Chicago NY with its roots in gospel soul Disco.
Music with a message of hope unity Love we all created the promised land together North South Black white gay straight indifferent .Class system was no longer an issue on our scene .
We have lived through a very unique time and are blessed with our rich heritage of music culture as a result of combined passion and love for music .
The rave scene wouldn’t of happened without clubs like Shoom Hacienda Pyramid Delirium Future Trip .
The festival scene we enjoy today is the Rave scenes legacy Festivals pre Acid House were the preserve of Rock bands Generally .
I wish you had come to the original Shoom Greg you would have loved the vibe we were creating at the time that spirit continues in the present .
Look forward to our first DJ billing together at Shoom Friday Aug 23rd West Exit Hastings .
Really good article!
Thanks for the heads up Greg. A great read as always. When House music hit Manchester it was seen as an Avant gard thing closer to what was happening in the Indie clubs than the black music clubs us kids were going to. Footpatrol back then where some of the biggest club Legends and were incredible dancers and fashion trend setters. Including the music we listened to and danced to the clothes we wore to dance to house music was copied later by the raver acid heards i.e- Dungarees, bandanas , bum bags, tastle ski hats…
During this period I was good friends with a member of Fusion Beats brother from Old Trafford who were seen as a sort of junior footpatrol. Fortunately Mike Pickering gave us kids props by including Footpatrol and 2 of Fusion beats members in his Tcoy video Carino and this exemplified how we were dancing to house music in the youthclub dances and Nightclubs in Manchester.
Good to see a non Shoom/ Rampling version of House….twas all about Sheff/Manc/Nottt
PS Sheff was always Chicago….thanks to Messers Hazel & Parrott
Terrific article Greg. Feels like you got something ‘off your chest’ with that video alongside to help scratch the itch. Well done for taking the time to document it all and pass it on..cheers
Cliff
Great article yet again Greg. It was the same down south too though. Club’s run by the likes Jay Strongman, Philip Salon and Ben & Andy Boilerhouse had been interspersing house music with electro, Hip Hop, funk & Go-Go from around 1985 and their were always breakdance crews & jazz dancers at these venues as well as the ID/The Face reading fashion kids.
The Tim Lawrence quote ref dancing pre & post Ecstasy becoming mainstream is spot on too. Ecstasy had been doing the rounds pre 87 but not widely so. My first encounter with Ecstasy was at a Trouble Funk gig at The Town & Country Club in London. I’ve always thought the chanting of ‘Loveboat’ at Go-Go gigs and the shamanistic dancing brought on by the incessant percussive rhythms in Go-Go were a precursor to the explosion that would happen the following year with Acid House. It was certainly the first time that I experienced, as Tim Lawrence puts it, “a wave of bliss in which the euphoria of the crowd all but drowned out the individual”.
Thanks for telling this story so eloquently Greg, and for providing the right perspective! This was very much the way I discovered House music and is still very much the inspiration behind the records I make and play… Big up ALL the dancers! Respect!
Love what you have written but I resent many issues..
You say the past gets forgotten and people only look to what they read but i read your article and i feel the same about your words..you talk about the north being the first and i disagree Why ? because i was making that shit your DJs were playing i was having tunes out in the states that your guys were importing
see the problem with going back is you and others always seem to stop at the DJ like he is the inventor of the scene ..he might control a crowd and influence them but he is just a collection of records a jukebox move forward from him and you can list clubs also move forward and you can list a town or as you claim it all started in Ibiza…what is missing in all this?
The producer of the music is where it starts thats where you look if you want to state how something starts , granted Gerald was one of them but look deeper man your still on the surface of commercial (the hits) ..Myself and Dave lee were churning out stuff under many names right near the intro of the music being imported.
we worked together at a record store getting the imports from America before they hit the shops they influenced us and we made the music that inspired generations (like your DJ’s)
We were living in essex, I myself had night in most of the top clubs from east London to southend rammed on the worst nights with underground electro/house and my scratching skills , Yes it was a black scene and it was massive but we were pushing the music down here in an un commercial way that gets missed when you try to define whats going on..but look who was writing the music .. my name was not on a lot but it seems fans do find ways to peel the layers..
i resent the whole hacienda thing as for the northerners I’m sure it was where God lived but we had those also we had our movement and we also created the music everyone played (even up north) that defined that generation it was never a commercially promoted list of the most popular DJ’s or clubs as that’s the same as using Ibiza at the ‘white wash’ of the the truth…
I own and run Strictly Underground records ..its all in the name started in 87 but before then it was white labels and releasing music on transmat and nu groove because people in the uk did not buy the music we were making unless it was an import..
the true unsung heroes are the record makers not the DJ’s when you are a creator you look at DJ’s very differently as they are NOT the start but merely the vehicle to carry the music ..as a punter they are the start that alone will make using them to trace history totally incorrect..
I’m not in the scene for fame never have been , I’m in it for the music all its underground styles, changes and twists to be a producer like this you have to keep yourself strictly underground as defining an artist is to glue them down and make them unable to move..but i do know whats been happening since dot!
when it comes to house music I am not only as an Artist but also a promoter of the many ‘Illegal raves’ held in fields or the many Pirate radio stations i owned and ran promoting the scene in the south..yes this was rave era thats when i was really running things but i come during and pre that era with my music and club nights.. if you want to be really real about the house music scene you have to start with the underground artists who were making the sounds not the DJ’s or the Clubs and you will find the Artists were not in one place they were passionate music geeks from all over the uk hooked on this new electronic sounding hip hop music and they were passionate enough to try and make the music themselves and with it THEY Started the uk revolution of house….. do that digging and then you will have the roots!
Can’t emphasise strongly enough how 100% dead on this piece is. One of the great untold stories of Manchester clubland.
My epiphany came at a Legend all-nighter in 1986, roughly around the time of this clip, where all the DJs apart from Colin Curtis and (oddly enough) Mike Shaft had switched from the usual soul, r&b and hip-hop in favour of house, and the place was livelier than I’d ever seen it. The floor was packed all night with late-teens/early-twenties black kids, lads and lasses alike, jamming HARD to stuff like Jack The Groove by Raze, Liz Torres’ Cant Get Enough, Can You Feel It? by Mr. Fingers (the first time I ever heard it), even things like Harlequin Fours’ Set It Off and the Levan dub of Jeffrey Osborne’s Plane Love. I just stood at the side most of the time – I hadn’t quite got to grips with house at that point and didn’t really know quite what was going on, although I knew *something* was going on…
And Greg is right about the drugs, too; they drove the black crowds out of the scene. I was a regular at all the Manchester clubs he mentions around this time, and the demographic make-up of pretty much all of them, the Hacienda included, went from around 70/30, 75/25 black/white to all-white within a matter of weeks after ecstasy hit Manchester in a big way.
Anyway, superb piece. Cap doffed.
Great to read peoples’ memories of the time – I love all the little anecdotes, that’s what puts the meat on the bone for me. Reading what Adrian has to say is always a pleasure, also Tony for his Manchester perspective.
Jock, you’re right, the Midlands is generally overlooked, but anyone who was on the scene back in the early-mid 80’s would have nothing but respect for Birmingham. There were some serious dancers from Brum – Bulldog’s name is still spoken of in hallowed terms by those who were there. Then, of course, there were The Powerhouse All-Dayers – they were big events, with crews in attendance from not only throughout the North and Midlands, but also London, given the city’s central location. It was also a really impressive state of the art venue when it opened (Ralph Randell, who sometimes posts on here, was resident DJ there for a time, and I played at either the first or second All-Dayer held there, in ’83).
Good to see Bradford get a shout from Mykul. Bradford and Huddersfield were raw – some serious crews in those places. They helped sew everything together, as did, further down country, Nottingham and Derby, although Nottingham, due to Rock City and Graeme Park’s club, The Garage, punched above its weight.
People turn these things into a North Vs South debate, which is a futile exercise. Both have their own unique yet intertwined history as they wind around each other like a couple of snakes, each influencing the other without either wanting to admit it. Someone from the South would, of course, feel more affinity to what has happened there, and vice-versa. We have different perspectives on the same events – but that’s only natural, and one shouldn’t invalidate the other. What’s important is that our stories be fully told so people can hear both sides of the stereo, so to speak (then, of course, there’s that vital 3rd force, neither North nor South, but tucked away in the then more remote West Country of Bristol, where they were quietly going about their business cooking up their own alchemy).
Hi Danny, it’s great to get your contribution. You were obviously in the eye of the hurricane, and what you guys brought out of Ibiza with you changed everything, triggering a series of events that would take club / DJ culture to heights we never could have envisaged back in the mid-80’s. The Ibiza trip was the catalyst for so much, but, as I said in the piece, lazy journalism perpetuated the myth that House music was brought back too, when, as you state yourself, it was already here – without the situation being as it was, things could never have worked out the way they did. With House building in popularity on the underground scene, everything was already primed, but you lit the blue touch paper and the reverberations from the resulting explosion can still be felt today. I know that you and the other Ibiza trip DJ’s (especially Nicky and Trevor) linked back to the Jazz-Funk / Soul scene – it’s all connected, just that the media decided that Ibiza was year zero and, as a consequence, a whole pre-Ibiza history was largely negated. So, as I know you appreciate, it’s an important drum for me to keep banging.
It’s the same with The Hacienda – because the club struggled to properly assert itself in its early years, most writers would have had you believe that nothing of value happened before ’88, when, in reality, Nude night, for starters, was already thriving a few years before this. There’s never been any real acknowledgement of how the black kids led the way in giving the club credibility as a dance venue, and bringing House into the venue in the first place (despite Mike Pickering saying all along that it was a kid from Moss Side who handed him the first House track he played). It wasn’t until Tim Lawrence wrote the sleeve notes for the ‘Discotheque Hacienda’ LP a few years back that the lineage back to the black scene was properly explored. What happened at The Hacienda in its late 80’s pomp isn’t depreciated because people realise it didn’t happen in a vacuum, but is enhanced by knowledge of the roads that led there, and all the riches they contain. As we know, nothing happens without building on what happened before.
Unfortunately I never made it along to Shoom, but some friends did, and, like you say, I’m aware it was very much an inclusive scene, which celebrated diversity. It must have been a truly magical time for you, I experienced what it was like at The Hacienda at the peak of things and, as I’ve previously stated, what especially struck me was the unity – I’d spent years and years working and being in clubs and discotheques, but had never felt that total togetherness in a club environment before. It took your breath away. I’m really looking forward to playing the anniversary in Hastings, thanks for having me – although I wasn’t a DJ during the Shoom era, it gives me the opportunity to include some of the tracks I would have played if I had been. It’ll be the 2nd time we’ve featured on the same bill – I co-curated the Warehouse area at the Vintage Festival in 2010, which I’m sure you’ll fondly remember. I loved this footage from when you were playing – certainly evoked memories of those Rave on days for many in attendance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNVz7jkUiBw
Looking forward to finally getting to meet you next month.
greg
Greg, do you remember the name of the young black kid who used to DJ house music upstairs at the PSV? Patrick something, I think, might have been Patrick Boothe. He only looked about 18 but he was a fucking monster on the decks. He was on the scene same time as Owen MD, Leaky Fresh and all them, but where they’d play things like Mantronix and whatever, this lad was strictly house music. I think he did a few mixes for Stu Allan’s show around this time as well. Great DJ, but he seemed to have completely disappeared by the time of Madchester and all that caper. I can never find anyone who remembers him, much less his name.
Good article Greg,
and an excellent reminder about how we rewrite history, looking at commentaries now it would be easy to think that we were all playing one style of music one day and then someone flipped a switch and it was all house the next.
Paul
What Danny Rampling and the press often gloss over is that in London there was already gay/mixed clubs playing house by 1986. Specifically I’m thinking of places like Busby’s Monday night called “Jungle” with Colin Faver djing and Steve Swindells doing the promotions. Hmm, and come to think of it, Breeze, the door person from Jungle ended up working the door at Shoom, and Colin Faver guest djed there as well—funny that.
Without creating a North/South divide in any way I remember the first House records to arrive to the UK and the record shops from London sending up the House records to Spin Inn records on Cross street Manchester as no one was buying them down there so some of us kids bought them instead around 87.
The House scene in Manchester began in the neighbourhoods of Moss side Hulme and Old Trafford where I used to hang out. We then took what was happening in those communities to the City centre nightclubs.
Tony because you say ( and i laugh) “no one was buying them down there” and that’s a fact i’m sure..(NOT) most of the importers (that i knew) were in London so would had to ship to your shops that might be closer to the truth.
Its clear that i’m the only southerner here at least one that was creating this new form of dance music back then for DJ’s to buy and play..
Really this article is about reminiscing more than facts and thats cool go rem-inis but don’t do it as if you guys all invented the house music scene up north its just NOT the case as i said the talent was the music makers not the customers which a DJ is also.. the pioneers were all over the uk they did not all live in manchester or your town they were scattered and few ..
where you bought your records did not make you the beginning of the scene you are all just customers in your bubble and that bubble existed all over the uk you just don’t realise that because- to you the world was your bubble its when you found house music..i was making it! my sights were never in manchester i though that was a band wagon club for middle class white people who though they invented house music.. ..i was doing illegal raves in fields..
To know the true beginning you have to look at who was making the underground music not the commercial pop(ular) tracks and then you will see the urban roots and there wont be one place or one town it will be a hand full of producers churning out loads of tracks under many different names and they live all over the uk.
The comments sound more like reminiscing on a regular wednesday school disco or local night club rather than where it all began..that’s cool also but its nothing like facts or defining the beginning of house.. underground records were selling in the south by the way as were all the things you can claim were going on up north lol..
Fascinating read Greg. All the comments above are really interesting too. At 36 I’ve now lived half my life on Merseyside and half in Manchester, so (as you know) I’m interested about the history of such underground scenes. The Black Music on Merseyside project that we did with Les Spaine at The Tate Liverpool was a real eye opener for me, and I’m so grateful that I now know that part of local muso-geographical history. Likewise, the Electrospective (Manchester pre-rave), and the Electrofunkroots documentation that I’ve been part of has been essential learning too.
I was at Manchester International Festival Square last night (prior to attending Despacio with James Murphy & Soulwax – where everyone was dancing in different directions & nobody was really facing the DJ) So, last night I was talking with a mate who I see regularly at Manc nights, he grew up listening to The Ruthless Rap Assassins… We were discussing Jon Robb’s book The North Will Rise Again, particularly how the 70s and 80s clubbing communities of Manchester referred to Manchester as ‘The Village’… Such a tight network of passionate, creative individuals – where the degrees of separation are far more acute than in London. Everyone knows everyone in South Manchester especially Chorlton. I imagine this was more so in Hulme and Moss Side back in the day. Whereas London was/is made up of many pockets?
Regarding your article, especially the comments above, I keep thinking back to this article that I transcribed and researched for you on EFR: http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/cleveland-anderson/ …I’ve got to say this was one of the most interesting articles I’ve read on the pre-rave scenes – with a stronger focus on the South. It’s another well placed person’s perspective on both the Northern and Southern scenes. For me it painted a picture of London that I was oblivious to. I just think it deserves a mention here too.
I can’t believe no one hear has mentioned Alfredo, it wasn’t house music that was imported (‘Love can’t tun around” was a UK top 10 hit in1986) it was the style, feeling, and pharmacology of his parties at Amnesia that was so revolutionary to UK clubland.
The music that Alfredo and then the London DJ’s were playing at the time wasn’t even exclusively house, it was eclectic, it contained surprises, ‘Cure – Lullaby’, ‘It’s Immaterial – Driving away from home’, ‘Chris Rea – Josephine’, ‘Woodentops- Why Why Why’, ‘Enzo- Avitabile Blackout’…etc brilliant mood/tempo changing tracks the type of which would be banished from virtually every dancefloor for over a decade by the monoculture that house would become.
Hi Mark,
I’ve tried to be as factual as possible in the piece – most of the information included is verifiable.
I’m interested to know what tracks you did in the pre-Ibiza period – could you list a few of the early ones.
greg
Brilliant article always good to be taught something new
interesting how similar it is to another dance amongst blacks and whites, then back again, that went mainstream: the charleston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRveIIe4uAs
I moved to London from the North at the end of 1988 so have got a pretty clear view of both sides. In fact, I used to commute back up north to go clubbing at weekends initially. It’s worth pointing out that the real turning point for house in London seemed to be (and is certainly credited to be) ‘The Trip’ at the Astoria. Performing on the very first night of the Trip.. Mike Pickering, Simon Topping, and Richie Close = T-Coy. From Manchester. I’m fairly certain Mike DJ’d too but can’t remember anything after a certain point.
“the real turning point for house in London”
Jack Your Body was a #1 UK chart hit in Jan 1987. Pretty much everyone I knew in London bought a copy of “The House Sound of Chicago” when it was released in 1986. There were tons of clubs, including the gay clubs I was going to at the time, that were playing house because it was dance music, new, and good. My then work colleague George (straight black North Londoner, if that’s helpful to know), brought a copy of Raze – Jack the Groove to play at the Islington Council rent accounts dept xmas party in 1986. I don’t know what was happening in the rest of the UK at the time but it seems reasonable to guess that there people all over the place who picked up on house as soon as they heard it from the same reasons. The idea that there was one way the music “really hit the UK” is just daft and just as much a sort of creation myth as the idea that it all came from Ibiza in 87. It makes it like a competition: I’ll raise you X number of black gay men dancing to house at Stallions in London for your X number of straight black men and women dancing to house on the Moss Side in Manchester…silly. Appreciate the history that’s being recounted here but there is no one set of “roots” or one “vanguard” or one way it “really” happened.
Hi Greg, an interesting take and perspective as always on my rainy city’s House Music history ! The wisest people out there understand that when writing about history that the ‘truth’ is rarely written without an agenda, ignorance or a false second person premise etc. Thankfully some who us who lived through almost every moment of that golden period, during the late 80s in our great city, are still alive to tell their truth or version of history. I feel especially driven to write my story and explain from my own personal experience – being an artist who still promotes this unique mix of authentic street black dance music and the black dance culture related to it. My COMMUNITY party, held a few weeks ago in London ( and for last five years in Manchester, with guest djs like yourself, Joe Claussell & Black Coffee ) was made up of many black ‘House Dancers’, predominantly from the new school ( very New York House Dance influenced ) and a few veteran Jazz dancers from the notorious Berlin club in the mids 80s viz Blu UK Jazzdance aka Colin Johnson. I have continued to push this movement of House Dance culture that many trips to The Shelter in 90s New York, first opened my eyes to. Witnessing their dance styles and knowing the UK jazz dance only cemented my desire to marry them both together on the UK dancefloor for my Community party.
I can remember the days when I used to go Spin Inn Records and the buzz word was House Music and it was Mike Shaft ( through his sunday show ‘ Taking Care Of Business’ ) that got us inner city Mancs hooked on this new black music. I’m proud to say that Manchester has always had an innovative and progressive underground black music culture and history has rarely taken real notice of it’s importance in the global context of dance music. Be it the breakdance/electro roots culture, the jazz dance & House Music etc Manchester was always breaking new ground. I think that being the second city ( with Birmingham too ), brought that artistic hunger ( a la Chicago, Detroit etc ) that the big capital cities rarely possess – they seemingly being the centre of the universe in their collective existence. I can remember going to Legends, The Gallery and Konspiracy all through Spin Inn Records and the new force in House Music then being DJ Stu Allan. He represented the Black Music side of House Music better than anyone else as his show ‘ Souled Out’ on Piccadilly Key103 was broken up into three parts, a soul music, hip hop and House show. He also had, in my opinion, the best taste of any of the early House djs at the time, post Mike Shaft. The difference lay in the fact that Spinn Inn represented an authentic underground black music culture pre House Music that Acid House and the Hacienda never had. Eastern Bloc records ( primarily an alternative/indie/punk initially ) then helped take the music scene to another wider level.
I recall going to the Hac pre 88, with DJs MP2 at Nude and it was before the Acid House revolution had started. Samson and Godfrey were there shuffling away, doing their routines, wearing those infamous spats but the vast warehouse club was not even close to being half full. ‘Dancing Danny’ and ( later Trafford ) had also taken their spot on the other side of the dancefloor nearer to the pvc walkthough divides, that enclosed the cafe and entrance to the club. The awe inspiring but cold Hacienda lacked any intimacy and would only really work, in my opinion, when you had at least five hundred plus revellers in the vast ‘factory like’ space. The colder atmosphere of the Hac compared to clubs like Legends etc, which were more typical black music clubs, was pretty stark. This racial divide/manifestation in how blacks and whites like to party, still exists. Generally black parties like the plush/boudoir vibe and white House kids like the run down and bohemian leaning environment. Deejaying in the city for over twenty years and being fortunate to be able to sit in both camps, musically speaking, has given me a unique perspective on the subtle racial divide in House Music.
Personally it was always interesting observing the boom at the Hacienda when Acid House took hold of thousands of white indie/punk kids but I also understood why they got into it. LSD and ectasy were their entry points – it was a night to get ‘out of it’ and for the majority of underground black scene it all got too much or even dare I say ‘ugly’ for them. The smoothness and silk of On The House’s ‘Pleaure Control’ had vanished and the dark, relentless, machine of Phuture’s ‘Acid Trax, ‘Slam’ and ‘Spank Spank’ had demolished all tenderness in dance music. For me it was odd considering the black music scene had first championed Detroit’s Model 500, Rythim is Rythim and Reese And Santonio’s abstract, lysergic and space age dance music long before journalists had started using the word ‘Techno’ and for many of those heads to reject this new black abstract and ‘punk’ black dance music was puzzling to me as I was nuts about it this new sound. But it happened and most of the black scene disappeared back into Street Soul sound via Deluxe, Soul II Soul, Blue Zone & Gold In The Shade etc. For me it was a tragedy as this black Mancunia had so much to give to the rest of House Music society.
Another sad fact for me is that. of all the djs who have played House Music or that have been involved in the original House Music since 86 in Manchester, I don’t know of any who still try to keep that black music / House Music culture alive. Commercialism, career chasing and countless other reasons have practically destroyed this highly unique/artistic scene and for us that try maintain it, the emergence of the South African scene, has been a breath of fresh air. I’ve never personally aimed to keep it black as I want every race, creed and colour at the party, but I do understand the important in having ‘real’ dancers at the party to create that unique ‘shuffling/House Dance’ atmosphere. The video featuring Foot Patrol in Moss Side, which I posted on my fb page many years ago, is pretty much the sentiment that the Community strives to keep alive. Many of our devotees still live in Moss Side, Hulme and inner city Manchester. We’ve still had to battle prejudice, finger pointing ‘gang affiliations/stereotypes’ and the cliched but subtle racism in order to keep the Community party alive, especially as the audience is still over forty percent black. And to join with London and see the three hundred plus heads at Rhythm Factory, in July with the 4TOTHEFLOOR crew, was indeed an optimistic new energy to keep us driven to our shared music culture.
To celebrate 25 years since this unique movement crossed over, to the world, I shall put together a mix of my fave 12’s from the 88 period and try not to keep it to just Acid House as there are many great records from our summer love that steered clear of the japanese 303 too. http://www.mixcloud.com/IrfanRainy/
Irfan Rainy. 🙂
Excellent feature. I am a massive fan of the jazz fusion scene, and when there were no jazz nights we would drop those same moves at house nights
This all sounds very familiar to me as someone who started DJing in 1965 at lunchtime school discos. Going to Nottingham clubs or the Twisted Wheel and finding the new tunes and new dances; going to London, my home town, and dancing in Soho clubs and learning to rock steady from the black girls at Battersea town hall. In the 1960’s the boys in the soul clubs were shuffling and doing spins, back flips and leg-ups. Us girls were line dancing like the Ikettes on stage. To those who came along in the 70’s, it was like we never existed! We looked at the Wigan Casino dancers and thought ‘Oh dear!’
I had a bit of a renaissance (no pun intended) in the 80’s and 90’s – going to Cream, Voodoo, Sankeys, Que Club, Hacienda, Kinetic, Garlands, Body&SOUL (NYC), various Ibiza clubs etc. Started DJing again and started another new record collection.
Now at 61, still dancing, still DJing and still collecting music. Just to illustrate that everything comes and goes and comes back again.
The DJ that Nathan Doohan was thinking of is probably Patrick Smoove. – and yes he was good, remember seeing him at Peckforton Castle in 1993.
Very well written and informative piece. To add to the opinions from London posters, I think people need to distinguish between ‘rare groove’ the music – old, forgotten funk breaks – and ‘rare groove parties’ where rare groove was played next to soul, hip hip and yes house. I was too young to go clubbing during the early introduction of house but remember friends playing the likes of Strafe’s ‘Set It Off’ in the school playground in 1984. Or going to the clothes mecca, Gladstones in Ealing Broadway, and though not being able to afford the clothes hearing Harlequin Four’s cover of ‘Set It Off’ in 1985. Legal radio shows such as Steve Walsh’s Sunday night show played tunes like The Incredible Mr Freeze’s ‘Back to the Scene of the Crime’ in 1986. So us Londoners weren’t all dancing to a cocktail of obscure James Brown and dismissing house. Agree with your central point of the re-writing of history though.
And I also agree with Mark’s point, it wasn’t all about the DJs or punters, it was about the music makers.
Excellent as always Greg.
The lad in the bright yellow jumper is one of my closest friends. If you would like his contact details for a follow up i’m sure he’d be into it.
Irfan speaks the truth as i was right there with him.
I don’t know why you bother posting on Faith as they hate on everyone.
I can smell a revisionist really quickly. Even with Discogs and Youtube they reveal themselves in the tracks they reference.
For those that were there…….. we know .
Kind regards,
Steve.
An interesting article.
Can I add fuel to the fire by suggesting that the first club in the UK to play House music was Bennett’s in Middlesbrough.
Also the first (self-styled) Electro club in the UK was at Tiffanys in Newcastle.
But it probably doesn’t matter.
Nice article, with stuff very worth bringing attention to. It’s very sad to see hostility to, would you believe it, a way of dancing, in relation to what was always known as the all-inclusive dance scene.
“You can’t dance like that”? Gosh. Nothing that could ever have been connected to the house and mid to late 80s new dance scenes. Light years of distance, and something unknowable. Light years of distance with reference to class and race and tradition associations also. Every influence was there – black traditions in the USA, white versions of them, Northern Soul, also – normal working people enjoying what they do in their passtimes, rather than those who want to create a social sect. Nowadays, some people get it all SO wrong. The rare groove scene has been said to have spawned house in as much degree as other scenes, such as the early Balearic Beat of Alfredo, and it’s important to realise the great diversity that came into bringing about house.
The scenes, the music, the attitude, everything about house and the new dance culture that came to Europe in the mid to late 80s (developing in the USA a few years before then, but also coming from lines of music here in Europe and elsewhere) was nothing to do with creating social scenes or lifestyles to be seen in. The spirit of joy and simple self appreciation was so alien to that, and had to be one that was about the best of you and the best of life.
It’s sad how house music has become cliquey in places. As Danny Rampling says in his comment, there were only positive attitudes behind this. But these weren’t faked or put on for the media. It’s easy to read all the stuff about Shoom or Spectrum or The Hac or certain raves or warehouse parties and so on and believe that they contained the chosen ones, who knew they were the chosen ones because they organised to make themselves the chosen ones to be known, seen and remembered as the chosen ones. It’s all bull. Forget the crap the media portray nowadays – particularly because there aren’t really such scenes so much with the same spirit any more and they have a great sense of inferiority, which also results negatively upon culture. Cultures which are generally characterised by stagnancy, such as most Western cultures (also pretentiousness and dumbing down nowadays) leap upon anything real with spirit and sense to box it up somehow, on the other hand ignoring it if possible.
The best positivity can be totally natural and totally normal, not something unattainable. I know it can be hard to see that anymore.
As an underage teenager, I was very happy to attend Shoom a few times (thanks Mr and the former Mrs Ramping, and so on, especially Mrs Rampling at the door). Matt M in his comment laments the focus on Shoom, others lament the focus on the Ibiza story. The truth is, both stories WERE true, and had a monumental effect on dance culture. That really is the truth. No, it’s nothing like the full picture. But at the same time, in areas of the UK, the difference between what was done by Rampling and Oakenfold etc. in clubs was huge compared to what had been and was still going on elsewhere, including London.
While we’ve heard the stories so many times and the media is very lazy. And also, of course, there were other clubs. The thing is, maybe the strange thing, that there was a great confluence between ’86 and ’88 that can never be put down to 2 or 3 separate happenings. The strange thing is, everyone, and numerous scenes and styles, were heading the way towards house anyway, however it happened.
Anyway, the confluence of various styles of various hereditary and various attitudes into house and mid to late 80s new dance music, is something that will always be kind of timeless and able to be replicated by any good music producer who really understands, at any time. A good music maker will always be a good music maker, in any century. The spirit – well, maybe you find it, maybe it finds you. Maybe you never give up, I don’t know. But it doesn’t take being faked, I think. You’ll respect it more if you know that. In any case, the spirit is about you, rather than getting anything right. Still, I love to hear the odd new classic of a dance track nowadays, knowing we were fortunate to be quite saturated with them between 1987 and 1992.
Nice writing, Greg, thanks and nice to read the comments too.
Fascinating literature and always great to read about the North West Scene.
I considered myself very lucky to live in the heart of the North West, near Wigan, so only had a short journey to Manchester, Liverpool or Blackpool to discover new underground clubs pushing boundaries with new music.
Growing up in between St Helens and Wigan, if you didnt play rugby league, pump iron, drink 10 pints then look for trouble in your local mainstream club, you were considered a little strange. Thank the Lord for acid house, so i could get away from all those beef cakes and mix an eclectic group of people with a common denominator; the love house music.
Hearing Voodoo Ray for the first time almost knocked me off my feet, not sure what club I was in but had the pleasure to spend some time with Gerald in his Ducie House Studio in Manchester, what a gent.
Talking of gents, Greg; love your words, love your music
Many Regards
Mark
This is a great read and makes some important points that need to be said. BUT I’m still very wary of the str8-washing going in on in all accounts the UK’s dance culture history. As commenters RJJNYC and Andrew J mentioned above, gay and mixed clubs were regularly playing house music in the mid-80s, yet they rarely (if ever) get mentioned in this much documented north/south lineage. I know a few pretty big DJs who would go to gay clubs in the mid80s as it was the only place they could regularly hear house (mixed with Hi-NRG and Italo) such as Edinburgh’s Fire Island, which actually hosted a live performance from Daryl Pandy in 1986. Another aspect rarely mentioned is that ecstacy was also popular among gay clubbers well before the ’88 watershed moment. So while I can appreciate that this article is re-dressing a balance in the “accepted” narrative of UK dance music history (and a very important one at that!), I feel there’s still more to be properly documented, and more scenes and people yet to get their dues.
The associated dance style done to house and how integral it was to the scene has been either ignored , misrepresented or marginalised for too long so good to read this piece.
Great article – thanks for sharing. I only started going out dancing (at Haç) in September 88 so missed out on this era. I was a big fan of the Mike Shaft and Stu Allen radio shows long before this though and it’s great to have such in depth histories of what was a very underground scene brought to light. Clearly people were buying and making “house” music (or an approximation of it) all over the UK. But there were regional diffrences subtle though they may be. I would like to hear more of Mark Ryders early tracks as well – I thought his earliest records were from 1988/89. But I know there were underground house records being made in London by the likes of Bang the Party as early as 1986 which puts them on a par with T-Coy for the “who made the first UK house record” award…..
But 27 years down the line surely we should all be just grateful that we were there at some point in house music’s zenith whether we are from New York, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Chicago. A lot of dance music coming out now tries very hard to sound as though it was made in 1986 on a borrowed synth in a basement. I think we are together in realising that what we have collectively experienced was truly special.
Hope to see more of dance music’s semi forgotten history brought to light soon. Thanks Greg and all the comment posters.
Firstly got too say thank god someone had a video camera at Moss Side precinct that night or this debate/discussion may have a totally different slant.
l have spoken too many people in regards to trying to visually document the true history of UK house and how certain DJs were willing to embrace yet another genre of black music like they had done before with Rap, Electro and remember Go-Go l still feel it is important to make sure the story gets documented as accurately as possible. Some of my points move through the time frame but hopefully you will understand their relevance in this discussion.
My name is Aniff Akinola pka Aniff Cousins l live in Manchester clubbed in Manchester and will most hopefully die in Manchester lve been and still am a producer artist and label owner and promoter since 1986 going to club in Manchester and other parts of the UK since 1979. My first band was Chapter And The Verse [ CATV ] as Chapter we discovered named, co-wrote and produced ‘Voodo Ray’ By A Guy Called Gerald original 4trk EP and his ‘Hot Lemonade’ album and John Peel Maida Vale sessions under the name ‘Rocky Ricky Rouge’ album.
Re A Guy Called Gerald
Stu Allan ‘Bus Diss / Souled Out Show’ [ whom is a personal friend ] was playing some tracks by Housemaster G on Piccadilly 261 l phoned Stu Allan up at the station rode down on my bike and got the cassette which had some acid tracks on [ not Voodo Ray ] l think l still have the cassette somewhere that was around 1987 l was A&R for a New Brighton new label called Rham records it was my idea to change Housemaster Gs name to A guy Called Gerald and Gerald went along with it because thats his easy going nature.Like when he played me some tracks of another project he was involved with a band called The Lounge Jays these tracks were Geralds drums n bassline as l have lots of demo tapes and on this track there was some jazzy sax that song became Pacific State by 808 State and as per usual Gerald hadn’t sorted credits out so he had to sue to get his writing credit I knew Greg Wilson for whom we CATV wrote and produced songs for Kiss Amc ‘A Bit Of U2’ also Mike Shaft, Colin Curtis, Chad Jackson, and Hewan Clarke whom are all close personal friends .
Without sounding pretentious hopefully l can convince you that l knew what a bit about what was going on during the early to mid 80s in the Manchester Club scene and Music creating side
l Have To Explain A Bit Of The Background Of Dj Culture Before You Can Put The Pieces Together As To Whom Did What
The fact is that House was getting played in virtually every Black Music Night in Manchester from 1985 because just like clubs nights of pre 1984 like Rafters, Berlins Romeo & Juliet’s Nottingham Palais Locarno, Leeds Central, Rum Runners, Smarties, Cloisters, Rufus, Blackpool Mecca, Clouds Cassinellis, and the 100 Club Oxford St . The DJs played across the board primarily US and UK Funk Electro Soul Hip Hop & Jazz all in the same room even at All Dayers in different rooms DJs would still have a cross section of music there wasn’t any specialization then as my Sheffield mate Dj Parrot would say ‘it was just about fooking good tunes man’.
Greg is on point with many of the points he raises in this article and Irfan has put some really valid comments too.
DJ Colin Curtis was doing the most numbers in the clubs and Mike Shaft had the most listened to radio show TCOB on Piccadilly 261 Radio [ now KEY 103 } and they were the main Manchester DJs as acknowledged by Harry, Mike and Kevin Edwards of SPIN INN records [ on Cross St ] they would reserve the latest 12’ Imports and Japanese Direct Cuts for Colin and Mike as Harry and Mike knew that they were their biggest customers spending thousands of pounds a month and if they didn’t get the choice of all the latest it would cause a shit storm, now anyone who works in a record shop knows these are the economic rules of survival for any independent dance record shop. Mike Shaft was playing house on his radio show along with funk n soul RnB and Jazz originally calling it Garage as too many that’s where it originated at Paradise Garage.
Colin Curtis used to play at many clubs in the North West and also Birmingham and Nottingham including Rock City in where a young man called Graham Park used to warm up for him. Foot Patrol were regular followers of Colin Curtis Samson, Zippah Tafari, { Mr Zip of ‘Where Me Keys’ ] Godfrey were all jazz dancers/steppers and we used to call them Pat Pat boys as that was the sound of there feet stomping on the dance floor a style of dance came from Birmingham which is where Samson was originally from but they were taking the Jazz style into the House thing because they liked their tracks fast ask Greg Wilson or Colin Curtis as they used to play a jazz fusion track by Roy Haynes called ‘Vistalite’ in Legends all hell used to break loose when that song came on . However it was at a club called the Playpen aka 42nd Street where Colin Curtis and Mike Shaft were getting a great response to House tracks like Chip E ‘Like This” Harlequins 4 Set It off were going down big and Im pretty certain Patrick ‘Playboy’ Booth used to warm up and he was dropping lots of house for his mates foot patrol as he used to play Sunday nights upstairs in the PSV / Russel Club in Hulme.
It had to be remembered that at that time it was difficult to fill a whole night with just house tracks as they werent enough good tracks out plus it was mainly guys who got down to the house in the early days and the Djs didnt want to alienate the girls.
check this quote from Colin Curtis article
http://www.southportweekender.co.uk/interviews/colin-curtis/
When do you think the next evolution happened in the music you were playing?
There’s always been these moments when I’ve realised something has changed. I was playing in Birmingham, Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson was on the bill playing the Washington sound, Go Go. Tim Westwood was on the bill. I got this record by the Harlequin 4′s (Set It Off) really, really early. Nobody had heard it or heard about it and I just thought I’d chance it. I stuck it on and the response was unreal. Everybody just went mental. That was it for me, I just knew. The very next week we had Pete Tong come up to the club, just as a punter and he said “It’s too heavy this, too black, way too heavy, it wouldn’t work in London”.
In truth the south was definitely playing house but it wasn’t being championed by the head honchos and you have to remember the scene in the south was very fragmented and still heavily rare groove and funk orientated. A conversation l recall really does kind of reflect this situation and attitude. We CATV in1986 did a demo house track called ‘Please Baby’ and Hewan Clarke played it in the Gallery club on a Saturday night off a Tascam 4 track it went down really well so l rang “Dancing Danny D” [ later did Fresh 4 , London Posse & Cathy Dennis ] whom was an A&R at Chrysalis Records [ to whom l used to sell bootleg Mantronix and Traxx T-shirts ] and Danny D told me and he wont mind me quoting him ‘House is not happening down here in London, its only going to last for another 6 months’ he went on to produce the track ‘We Call It Aceeed’ in 1988 under the name D MOB which was a worldwide hit. He now manages international super producers Stargate top bloke!
WHO PLAYED HOUSE FIRST IN THE HACIENDA
Now to the Hacienda in early 1981 the late Tony Wilson told my mate Hewan Clarke that he wanted him to Dj at his club when it opens Hewan took this as some idle chatter as both he and Tony Wilson were both big fans of the now deceased American Dj Frankie Crocker. Hewan used to Dj along with Colin Curtis at Club Berlins and the Gallery he would also drive Tonys Wilsons factory band ACR to gigs.
Tony Wilson true to his word opened the Hacienda on the 21st May 1982, Hewan Clarke played the first night and continued to do so for 4 nights a week for 4 years he played when Madonna did her first gig performing ‘Holiday’ and l was there now Hewan was playing House during his sets of indie ,hip hop and latin dance. He lays claim that New Orders ‘Blue Monday’ came about after he borrowed New Order his copy of Klein & MBO ‘Dirty Talk” that he had been playing during his nights that came out in 1982 Blue Monday came out in 1983. So to state for the record House was being played by Hewan Clarke in the Hacienda tracks like Chip E, like This Jack Your Body & Harlequins Four Adonis stuff like Kraftwerk and industrial stuff like Holland Tunnel Dive from 82 til 86 when he left.
So that’s way before Mike Pickering is credited with introducing it and that’s not a snipe at Mike as he doesn’t control Wikipedia what he did do was start to play House all night in what was described in an article as “the production line” but this was 87 pre ecstasy so you can imagine those night were when the black kids attendances started to go down. Now Irfan correctly stated that he would go to the Hacienda that it was less than half full and quote;
I recall going to the Hac pre 88, with DJs MP2 at Nude and it was before the Acid House revolution had started. Samson and Godfrey were there shuffling away, doing their routines, wearing those infamous spats but the vast warehouse club was not even close to being half full. ‘Dancing Danny’ and ( later Trafford ) had also taken their spot on the other side of the dancefloor nearer to the pvc walkthough divides, that enclosed the cafe and entrance to the club. The awe inspiring but cold Hacienda lacked any intimacy and would only really work, in my opinion, when you had at least five hundred plus revellers in the vast ‘factory like’ space. The colder atmosphere of the Hac compared to clubs like Legends etc, which were more typical black music clubs, was pretty stark.
l remember this period of Nude Nights as l actually played the final Nude Night in a A Guy Called Gerald,s band as the frontman. But many nights the only people on the floor would be Foot Patrol, Trafford Lovething and Dancing Danny it was because and Samson told me that Mike Pickering had kindly sorted them all out free Hacienda full passes and foot patrol were there for girls and house remember was pre ecstasy arriving at the Hacienda and thus the nights subjectively in comparison to the 90s explosion weren’t very good as the sound in the Hacienda was always terrible and the majority of the people in the club weren’t on drugs. When the ecstasy finally arrived that’s when the Black kids left. A lot of DJs gained credibility on the back of ecstasy and not on the true worth of their dj sets and to me that still remains today.
DJs v Producers Chicken or The Egg
In answer to the comments raised by Mark Ruff Ryder as to music being driven by producers or DJs it must be said that producers are always trying to create tracks that are not like the others but still able to be fit within a DJs playlist but it should be said that Djs back then had too make quality control decisions ie was that record worth £4/6 of my money will it get more clubbers on the floor. so Djs were deciding what they felt were the best tracks that we as producers created and they played to the clubbers or listeners and remember producers would rip or be ‘influenced’ by other productions look at Set It Off by Strafe or Harlequins 4 Set It off or Nu Shooz ‘I Cant Wait” which Mantronix admits to ripping off to create the hit ‘Got To have Your Love’ however l do agree with you the rave culture really did summon in the era of God Is A DJ mentality where the DJ was seen as more important than the music they played which is now why we have DJs like Tiesto and Avicci whom are brands getting fees of between $1m and $500.000 a gig the madness now is those Ds don’t even want to play other peoples records electing to play DO sets compiled entirely of their own productions, remixes or label/brand signings.
This brings me to what l feel this discussion hasn’t yet covered but is an undercurrent in the discussion
DJ Credibility
‘that the Black music nights on the whole didn’t need the drugs nor really the drink to party’
as Nathan Dohaan asserts
And Greg is right about the drugs, too; they drove the black crowds out of the scene. I was a regular at all the Manchester clubs he mentions around this time, and the demographic make-up of pretty much all of them, the Hacienda included, went from around 70/30, 75/25 black/white to all-white within a matter of weeks after ecstasy hit Manchester in a big way.
NB WHEN I USE THE TERM BLACK KIDS OR BLACK MUSIC NIGHT THE RACIAL MIX MAY BE 50/50–70/30 and l am aware that club nights not in major cities did exist where the mix didn’t reflect those ratios as I went to club nights in Peterborogh, Gloucester and Middlesborough and their would only be a few black people in the club yet the vibe was great.
The reason why black music nights were never on a Saturday or Friday in major cities except London during the mid to late 80s was because club owners knew the Black kids didn’t drink so it didn’t matter if the club was full and rocking, the fact was the bar takings were going to be down. Now l want too state that l have nothing against those whom wish to do drugs but it has to be said its an easy gig when everybody’s out of their face. Can l dare suggest this might be evidenced even today with the rise in popularity of EDM in the states with the new popularity of molly ecstasy, mdma and legal highs. Look how long the likes of DJs Sasha Andy Wetherall and Tonge and many others have been trying to break into middle America but along comes EDM and Molly and its all going of now with LA and Vegas vying to establish themselves as the “new dance capitals” with their own “super style” DJs however l sincerely believe that this isn’t by chance it was that the US authorities had to make a choice between the youth drug of choice seeing a rise in the use of diy Crystal Meth or carefully controlled money making raves with ecstasy guess which line the authorities chose. Hence why conglomerates are buying clubs and promotion companies in order to control and cash in on the EDM scene.
Now is this discussion partially about those Djs whom feel they have truly earnt their credibility not on the back of a drink or drug culture but on their musical merits and integrity in that they could fill a club on a midweek playing cutting edge new music to a club full of non pilled up punters and dance aficionado’s and it would be ‘Rockin Down The House’ which was too a dj like finding the Holy Grail.
Having had and listened to many DJ conversations where they have alluded to the nights that have been most enjoyable and satisfactory its where the punters have connected on a musical level and they as a Dj have taken the clubbers on a musical journey which to me is what its all about.
I was doing a 1 hour mix on Essex radios ‘John Leech’ show every week i used to do it on my Tascam 38 and leave it at Jiff Records (Essex) for him to pick up it would include all the hot tracks on import but also my scratching which was very new back then I was just a teenager but i would include tracks of my own a lot of which i did not release as i was very young and did not have all the pieces in place to release records. But before this time my tracks were doing the rounds on cassettes and were getting played by DJ’s in clubs and pirate radio all over London
..the E era has left me with on idea what day i am in so i can not give dates without seriously tracking back but musically i know exactly what was what going on as this has always been my life and when i say this i mean i have never had a job to pay my bills music has never been a hobby i was never a total punter…
Music has been all i have ever done and still do my first music making was on tape for DJs on the pirate stations i was working on. ‘set it off’ was just arriving on import i could only have been about 17 years old but at this time i was already running one major pirate station called TKO and involved with bits at LWR both stations were in the same building in Crystal palace and all the unknown DJs would pass through me soon to go on to great things. my tapes were left for all DJ and played by them in clubs and on their shows.
I was DJing at clubs around Dalston , Hackney back then, these were all high black populations areas and the music i was playing was cutting edge underground/electronic. i was different to most other DJs that were playing soul and the music i played stood out i think even then it was house music but it did not have a name as such, i would cut and scratch the track together live and mix soul track over house beats
i was very unique to be so involved at such a young age and my DJ ing skills was my rep that got me respect in a grown up world of mainly soul Djs.
i would have to look back and see when my first vinyl was made i don’t yet look back and re-minis as i’m still making records today and they are still selling to a new audience i have a throwaway attitude to my own music. i’m not ready to hang up my music making and just re-minis, i don’t promote my music nor do i track it (i have a very unique artist view on testing myself with what i do)
my comments on here were just to clarify that the music i have loved all my life was never about one town or club or scene and in London and Essex it was as vibrant as an underground as anywhere else. being a producer im always looking to see who is really behind the music i have always found there to be only a small number of key talented people that have no central GPS point, they are anywhere and just churn out music under many different names for the love of doing it.
I’m currently finishing a 6 album project for iTunes LP but will look on my back ups and see what i can find that has a more substantial date to my early stuff most people think i started at ‘masters of the universe’ as that was the first strictly underground release but i personally think that’s when i actually got serious and clued up i had years of pushing the underground before i got to 1987 and the birth of strictly.
P.S. this is the most info i have ever given out about myself and my music but my passion for it goes very deep and i do resent claims of invention or fact when i know there is so much more and you can always go deeper and deeper ..it’s the unknown people that make a scene then once in place the pop(ular) and commercial (djs or clubs) will then take the credit after the scene is already set in place.
i do NOT comment for recognition i just don’t like the way the north is claiming something i lived in from behind the scenes and which quite frankly i could equally claim started where i was.
With regards to Niall’s comments about the influences from the gay scene in London, I should have perhaps referred directly to this, whereas it’s there within some of the DJ’s I mention, Mark Moore, Colin Faver and Eddie Richards, who were playing House to a mixed gay audience (I’ll add something to clarify this). The first time I ever heard of Ecstasy was with reference to the mid-80’s gay scene in London, but this was totally independent of House music.
What I find particularly interesting with regards to this side of the story is the DJ who didn’t embrace House – Ian Levine. As resident at Heaven, Levine wielded massive influence, as the success of his Hi-NRG productions testify. His continued allegiance to the Hi-NRG cause stifled what should have been a natural progression for House. Instead it would take this trio of Faver, Richards and Moore to buck the Hi-NRG trend on their Pyramid night at Heaven (Mark Moore described House as having a toehold in the gay scene) before Paul Oakenfold’s famous Spectrum night would cement Heaven’s Acid House immortality.
A decade earlier it had been Levine, arguably the most important Northern Soul DJ of all, who’d buck the trend, playing contemporary Disco tracks alongside the retrospective Soul that defined the scene, and, in the process, causing a schism that would split it in two.
Some wonderful insights into how things worked in Manchester Aniff (also Irfan earlier in the thread)– thanks for sharing.
Patrick Booth was previously a member of Broken Glass – I completely lost track of him after I’d stopped managing them in ’84, but knew he’d started deejaying. Do you know what happened to him from there? I don’t think any of Broken Glass are still in touch with him, or at least there was nobody who knew his whereabouts when we held the reunion a few years back.
I’m pretty certain that there were underground clubs up and down the country that started playing house music in 86/87. But speaking from a London perspective it wasn’t just the gay/mixed nights that supported house early on. As Danny Rampling mentioned earlier, Nick Truelocks night Delirium (with Noel & Maurice Watson DJing) at the Astoria was one of the earliest times I encountered house music being supported within a wider selection of Hip Hop & Electro. It’s well documented via the DJ History interview with Noel that house music wasn’t accepted by the crowd at first (Delirium started in 85 and Noel & Maurice first introduced House early in 86) but by late 86 it was fundamentally a house night.
In much the same way as you describe in the North West Greg, it was at this point that I started to notice an exodus of ‘the dancers’ from those London clubs that were embracing house to things like the Soul II Soul night at the Africa Centre, Norman Jay’s Shake & Fingerpop parties and the sunday afternoon jazz sessions in Camden at places like Dingwalls. I think this is fundamentally down the spirit of inclusivity and ‘the collective’ that was beginning to sweep through clubs (obviously helped along by the pervasiveness of ecstasy) and this was very much the antithesis of the individual expression of the dance crews that used to populate nights such as Delirium, The Opera House, The Mud Club and The RAW.
@Greg Patrick Boothe, a young black Mancunian DJ – I first heard about, was at Legend with Stu Allan. Funnily enough we worked at the same clothes store in the 80s when I was a teenager too ! I see him from time to time and in fact he was doing the security for a private party I deejayed at a few months ago ! 🙂
In terms of “bringing black music to the fore at the Hacienda” it would be worth mentioning that when the management asked me to do Saturdays from July 1986 I suggested they employ Dean Johnson as well and the two of us do ‘Wide Night’ (as it became known) together. That was because Dean had a good, purist, connection to jazz, modern soul, reggae and some of the black crowd in the city; Aniff will know this. Samson used to come down, and Kermit and Anderson and Johnny Jay and the hip hop boys. It worked somehow. I’d play New Order and electro and God knows what. We had a good 18 months together and Saturdays were busy and we had a good mixed crowd playing all kinds of stuff (minor shout out here to On-U Sound which was a label that was influential on my ears). Once ecstasy took hold (Feb/March 1988), though, Dean was a gonna; the bpms and what he thought of as the lack of “soul” in the techno stuff didn’t appeal. He used to tell me “E” was a white man’s drug. He didn’t even like me playing Roxanne Shante. Good on him; he persisted with his Al Jarreau records but the crowd didn’t want to hear them and he got sacked. Jon Dasilva took over from him mid-1988 and partnered me on Saturdays for a year or so and he did the famous ‘Hot’ night as well. Dean going was about the same time Mike Pickering later recalls that ‘Nude Night’ was irrevocably moving from a black, Red Stripe, reefer kinda night to a rave night. Again, it was the drug influence I guess.
Have a 100 other things that might or might not be worth saying. But aside from mentioning this attempt with Dean to keep common ground between “black” music and “alternative” music in the Hacienda, and to big up On-U, I’ll leave you all in love and peace.
Apologies that my comment was unnecessarily prickly, would not in any way disagree with most of the points you’re making Greg and think these histories of what came before the later house explosion are really interesting and important (and the comments make for great reading too). What I was (over)reacting to was the suggestion that there’s just one story, or a way of ranking the importance of different scenes, which I think is very subjective and dubious (although it probably helped prompt all these comments!).
In terms of the gay scene you should know that it was not homogenous, even within the confines of London. There was a big scene that never set foot in Heaven on the nights Ian Levine played (the people that went there were often referred to as clones, a little disparagingly truth be told). The clubs where house was just played alongside the other dance music that was already being played included Pyramid, Jungle, Traffic on Sundays (downstairs mostly), Prince of Wales in Brixton (at least I think that was the name, was a pub/club). Stallions also apparently, maybe even more than other places, but I never went there myself – the black gay scene that had a home there is arguably even less well documented than the scene being described in this piece. Just as it sounds like electro was a precedent in Manchester, the dance music being played at these places was also a precedent, whether it was the more alternative electronic music at Pyramid (like DAF for example) or Paradise Garage-type US black music at Jungle. Traffic had more mainstream disco and HiNRG upstairs (Madonna, Taffy, Barbara Mason) and funk and house downstairs (although the downstairs wasn’t open every week). This scene was populated mostly by a mixed crowd of younger gay men and had no crossover with the Levine crowd or the Earls Court scene at all.
It was actually the post-Shoom rave era that initially caused a split in this crowd, with some people (including me) clinging to their doc martens, 501s, MA1s and alcohol for several years while others donned hi top trainers and ran off to dance with straight people in fields (a lot of us were very wary of a drug that might make someone want to do that). I distinctly remember a funny West Side Story style stand off between representatives of the two factions in the kitchen at a party in an East London highrise. Eventually of course the culture seeped in and although I don’t remember the dates when the clubs closed and opened Pyramid made way for a club called Fruit Machine on Wednesday nights at Heaven, which was very much all-house & ecstacy downstairs.