I MEEN IT FIRST HIT ME LIKE A BOMB—

IT WAS THE BUCKETHEADS “ THESE

SOUNDS FALL INTO MY MIND ” THE

RAW BASS—CRISP HIGHS AND A RY-

THEM –THAT WONT QUIT. THE PEO-

PLE WERE ON THE DANCE FLOOR LOS-

ING THEIR RELIGION—FREE TO MOVE

AS THEY PLEASE NO SCRIPTED DANCE

STEPS NO JUDGEMENT NO RIDICULE

JUST LET THE BEAT MOVE YOU—OR

JACK JACK JACK YOU BODY.

THIS IS HOUSE MUSIC A DIRIVITIVE OF

DISCO BUT IT ENCOMPASSES MUCH

MUCH MORE. HOUSE MUSIC LIKE HIP

– HOP HAS TRANSCEDED MANY GEN-

RES O MUSIC LIKE JAZZ, GOSPEL,

SOUL R&B , ELECTRONICA AND HIP

HOP –TO BECOME A UNDERGROUND

FORCE IN SOME AREAS AND A MAIN-

STREAM STANDARD IN OTHERS—

DON ’ T ACT LIKE YOU NEVER PLAYED

HOUSE!!!!!!!!

NEEDLE&GROOVE

2- Editor Comments

3.-Contents

7– Chicago House

14-Top 10 House Music D.J.’s

16—House Music Lifestyle

20—Lexy

22– REMIXEs

26– HOUSE MUSIC 1986-88 the good years

37– Silk-N-IT

Publisher—editor

D.J.Quest95

OWNED AND OPERATED BY JONATHAN (D.J.QUEST95)GROOMS AND FULL MOON PRODUC-

TIONS . COPYRIGHT PENDING. ALL ARTICLE HAVE PERMISSION RIGHTS AND OR COVER BY

FREE SPEECH—ALL ASSOCIATES OF THIS PUBLICATION EXERCISE THEIR FREEDOM OF SPEECH

AND RIGHT S OF EXPRESSION.

EDITOR—D.J.QUEST95

ADVISIOR-AAVIANNA

WRITERS– SILK-N-IT

MEKKA SUNSHINE

KENYATTA ALBENY

PHOTOGRAPHY– HERB BIAS

GRAPHIX— Q-GRPHIX

QUEEN LOLLIPOP

MUSIC EDITOR—YO MOMMA

FINAL PROOF— BARACK OBAMA

MODEL SELECTIONS— BILL CLINTON

Needle&Groove Magazine

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216-539-8307

needle&groove: is an urban entertainment magazine that is geared to introducing readers

and industry professionals to up and coming artist, D.J.'s and producers in the business.

We are based in the MIDWEST where from this location we are readily accessible every

market in the U.S. and abroad. In January 2009 needle&groove an online web publica-

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After being in business for one year and working with the ever popular INTRO maga-

zine which handles mainstream artist- I decided to look for ways to improve and grow

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With turn-page technology we are able to give our readers the same feel of turn the page

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our readers can click on a page and to enlarge the font for better readability. Readers are

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needle&groove is a marketing and network tool for artist, D.J.'s and producers. If you are looking to

network or working on your next album and need to find a producer that shares your vision? Shooting

a video and looking for models? Do you simply just want to put the word out that you have a new pro-

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send all questions and submissions to :

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Music Is The Key, JM Silk, 1985

House is as new as the microchip and as old

as the hills. It first came to widespread atten-

tion in the summer of 1986 when a rash of

records imported directly from Chicago began

to dominate the playlist of Europe's most in-

fluential DJs. Within a matter of months, with

virtually no support from the national radio

networks, Britain's club scene voted with its

feet, three house records forced their way into

the top ten. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk "Love

Can't Turn Around", Raze's "Jack The Groove",

and Steve "Silk" Hurley "Jack Your Body", gave

the club scene a new buzz-word, jacking, the

term used by Chicago dancers to describe the

frantic body pace of the House Sound. Whole

litany of Jack Attacks beseiged the music

scene. Bad Boy Bill's "Jack It All Night Long",

Femme Fion's "Jack The House", Chip E's

"Time To Jack", and Julian "Jumpin" Perez

"Jack Me Till I Scream".

House music takes its name from an old Chi-

cago night club called The Warehouse, where

the resident DJ, Frankie Knuckles, mixed old

disco classics, new Eurobeat pop and synthe-

sised beats into a frantic high-energy amalga-

mation of recycled soul. Frankie is more than a

DJ, he's an architect of sound, who has taken

the art of mixing to new heights.

Regulars at the Warehouse remember it as the

most atmospheric place in Chicago, the pio-

neering nerve-center of a thriving dance music

scene where old Philly classics by Harold

Melvin, Billy Paul and The O'Jays were mixed

with upfront disco hits like Martin Circus' "Disco

Circus" and imported European pop music by

synthesiser groups like Kraftwerk and Telex.

One of the club's regular faces was a mysteri-

ous young black teenager who styled himself

on the eccentric funk star George Clinton. Call-

ing himself Professor Funk, he would dress to

shock, and stay at the Warehouse through the

night, until the very last record was back in

Frankie's box. Professor Funk is now a re-

cording artist. He appears on stage dressed in

the full regalaia of an old world English King

singing weird acidic house records like "Work

your Body" and "Visions". The Professor be-

lieves that the excitement of house music can

be traced back to the creativity of The Ware-

house.

The Professor's memories carry a hidden truth.

The decadent beat of Chicago House, a relent-

less sound designed to take dancers to a new

high, it has its origins in the gospel and its fu-

ture in spaced out simulation(techno).

In the mid 1970's, when disco was still an un-

derground phenomeon, sin and salvation were

willfully mixed together to create a sound which

somehow managed to be decadent and devout.

New York based disco labels, like Prelude, West

End, Salsoul, and TK Disco, literally pioneered a

form of orgasmic gospel, which merged the

sweeping strings of Philadelphia dance music

with the tortured vocals of soul singers like

Loleatta Holloway. Her most famous releases,

"Love Sensation" and "Hit and Run" became

working models for modern house records. Af-

ter an eventful career which began in Atlanta

and the southren gospel belt, Loleatta joined

Salsoul Records during the height of the metro-

politan disco boom, before returning to her

hometown of Chicago.

According to Frankie Knuckles, house is not a

break with the black music of the past, but an

extreme re-invention of the dance music of yes-

terday. He sees House music with a very clear

tradition, a kind of two-way love affair with the

city of New York and the sound of disco. If he

were to list his favorite records, they would be a

reader's guide to disco, including Colonel

Abrams "Trapped", Sharon Redd's "Can You

Handle It", Fat Lerry's "Act Like You Know", Posi-

tive Force "You Got The Funk" Jimmy Bo Horn

"Spank", D-Train "You're The One". But most of

all he relishes the sound where the church and

the dancefloor are thrown together with a will-

ful disregard for religious propriety.

Religion weaves its way through the house

sound in ways that would confound the disbe-

lievers. Most Chicago DJ's admit a debt to the

underground 1970's underground club scene

in New York and particulary the original disco-

mixer Walter Gibbons, a white DJ who popular-

ised the basic techniques of disco-mixing, then

graduated to Salsoul Records where he turned

otherwise unremarkable dance records into

monumental sculptures of sound.

It was Gibbons who paved the way for the disc-

jockey's historical shift from the twin-decks to

the production studio. But ironically, at the

height of his cult popularity, he drifted away

from the decadent heat of disco to become a

"Born Again Christian", having created a space

which was ultimately filled by subsequent DJ

Producers like Jellybean Benitez, Shep Petti-

bone, Larry Levan, Arthur Baker, Francois Ker-

vorkian, The Latin Rascals, and Farley

"Jackmaster" Funk.

Most people believed that Walter Gibbons was

a fading legend in the early history of disco,

then in 1984 he resurfaced, and had a new

and immediate impact on the development of

Chicago House Sound. Gibbons released an in-

dependent 12" record called "Set It Off" which

started to create a stir at Paradise Garage, the

black gay club in New York, where Larry LeVan

presided over the wheels of steel. Within weeks

a "Set It Off" craze spread through the club

scene, including new versions by C.Sharp, Mas-

querade, and answer versions like Import Num-

ber 1's "Set It Off(Party Rock)". The original re-

cord had been "mixed with love by Walter Gib-

bons" and was released on the Jus Born label,

a tongue in cheek reference to Walter's christi-

anity. Gibbons had set the tone again, the "Set

It Off" sound was primitive House, haunting, re-

petitive beats ideal for mixing and extending. It

immediately became an underground club an-

them, finding a natural home in Chicago, where

a whole generation of DJ's including Farley and

Frankie Knuckles, rocked the clubs and regu-

larly played on local radion stations.

For major house stars like Frankie Knuckles,

the disco consul is a pulpit and the DJ is a high

priest. The dancers are a fanatical congreation

who will dance until dawn, and in some cases

demand that the music goes on in an unbroken

surge for over 18 hours. Mixing is a religion.

Old records like First Choice's "Let No Man Put

Asunder" and Candido's "Jingo" , Shirley Lites

"Heat You Up(Melt You Down)", Eurobeat dance

records by Depeche Mode, The Human League,

BEF, Telex, and New Order, the speeches of

Martin Luther King, and the sound effects of

speeding express trains were all used when

Frankie Knuckles controlled the decks. And the

high priest of house had many desciples. On

the southside of Chicago, a young teenager

called Tyree Cooper, was intrigued by Frankie's

use of the speeches of Martin Luther King. He

raided his mother's record collection and dis-

covered a record by local preacher, The Rev.

over frantic dance music, became an estab-

lished part of the Chicago DJ's art.

It didn't end their. Tyree Cooper joined DJ In-

ternational Records, ultimately releasing "I

Fear The Night", and back home at his

mother's church, the choir were beginning to

excited about one of their featured vocalists.

A gigantic college trained vocalist, Darryl

Pandy was boasting about his new record. He

had left the choir a few weeks before to sing

lead vocals on Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's

"Love Can't Turn Around", which against all

odds was racing to the number 1 spot on Brit-

ish charts. House had its roots in gospel and

its future mapped out.

The international success of House came

against all known odds. New York and Los An-

geles were firmly established as the music

capitals of the USA and there was virtually no

room for small regional records to make a na-

tional impact. According to Keith Nunnally of

JM Silk, Chicago turned their limitations into

an advantage, turning the poverty of re-

sources into a richness of musical experi-

ment.

Despite technical drawbacks, a whole wave of

new independent dance labels sprung up in

Chicago. The declaration of independence

was led by Rocky Jones DJ International label,

a relatively small company which grew out of

a DJ Record distribution pool spreading from

a small warehouse near Chicago's Cabrini

Green housing project, to become one of the

trans-national dance scene's most influential

labels.

At the 1986 New Music seminar in New York,

DJ International roster of artists stole the

show, as every major label made frantic bids

to buy a piece of the house action. Within a

matter of a few days, records by the diminu-

tive House DJ Chip E, the sophisticated gospel

singer Shawn Christopher and the outrageous

Daryl Pandy were sold round the world.

At the height of the bidding, JM Silk signed to

RCA records for an undisclosed fortune. The

commercial evidence of tracks like "Music Is The

Key" and "Shadows of Your Love" proved that

House music had the energy and excellence to

move from being a regional cult to a modern in-

ternational success. Within a matter of months

every music paper in the world was praying at

the feet of Chicago House.

Although the first wave of interest focused on the

DJ International label and particulary the unlikely

duo of Farley, a legendary Chicago DJ, and his

opera trained vocalist Daryl Pandy, it soon be-

came apparent that their hit "Love Can't Turn

Around" was only the peak of mid-Western ice-

berg. Chicago was alive with musicians. Local ra-

dio stations like WGCI and WBMX rocked to the

music of the "Hot Mix 5", a group of DJ's who

mixed whole nights of dance music without utter-

ing a word and clubs like The Power Plant stayed

open all-night carrying the torch once held by The

Warehouse.

Locked in local competition with DJ International

were a hundred other labels. The most impor-

tant was Trax on North Clark Street, a label

which ultimately went on to release some of

house music's recognised classics. Marshall

Jefferson gave Trax two of its most important

records, the hectic 120 BPM "Move Your

Body" and the follow up "Ride The Rhythm".

His reputation was rivalled by Adonis, who re-

leased "No Way Back". The second biggest

selling record Trax has ever issued, a record

which reportedly sold over 120,000 copies, a

staggering number for an independent record-

which received very little air play.

Behind the visible success story of DJ Interna-

tional, Underground, Trax, were countless

smaller labels like Jes Say, Chicago Connecti-

non, Bright Star, Dance Mania, Sunset, House

Records, Hot Mix 5, State Street, and Sound

Pak. And behind the stars like Farley and

Frankie Knuckles are numerous other musi-

cians, like Full House, Ricky Dillard, Fingers

Inc. and Farm Boy.

House music has spread throughout the

world. It has spread to Detroit where Trans-

mat Records released Derrick May's Rhythim

Is Rhythim record at the Metroplex Studio lay-

ing down post-Kraftwerk tracks like "Nude

Photo" and "Strings". It has spread to New

York, where the respected club producer Ar-

thur Baker has been given a new lease on life,

recording unapologetic dance records like

Criminal Elements "Put The Needle To The Re-

cord" and Jack E. Makossa. It has spread to

London where a gang of renegade funk boys

called M/A/R/R/S took the British charts by

storm, climbing to Number 1 with the brillant

collage record "Pump Up The Volume". It has

spread into the very heart of pop music, en-

couraging Phil Fearon, Kissing The Pink, Beat-

masters and Mel and Kim to turn the beat

around. And it has infilitrated into already dy-

namic cultures like the Latin and Hispanic

dance scene creating new possibilites for

Kenny "Jammin'" Jason, Ralphi Rosario, Mario

Diaz, Julian "Jumpin" Perez, Mario Reyes and

Two Puerto Ricans, A Blackman, and A Domini-

can. Chicago house has become everyones

House. House music is a universal language.

Given the undoubted international popularity of

the Chicago sound, it would have been easy for

the producers of House music to rest on their

laurels and continually reproduce more of the

same. For a while the city stuck firmly to its

identifiable beat - hardcore on the one - but the

experimentation which gave birth to House in-

evitably wanted to change it.

By 1987 a new style of House music began to

escape from Chicago's recording studios. It was

a "deep", highly sophisticated sound, which

evoked strange, almost drug-induced images.

The second generation House sound probably

began with the international success of

Phutures's "Acid Tracks" a hugely influential re-

cord, which captured the extreme spirit of the

House scene's most ardent adherents, the

hardcore dancer in Chicago, who variously ex-

perimented with LSD, acid psychedelia and

new designer drugs like Ectasy.

Frankie Knuckles has been careful not to sen-

sationalise the influence of drugs. "Today there

is more psychedlic sound. Acid is probably the

most prevelant drug on the scene, but House is

no druggier than any other scene".

None of House music's prominent performers

have advocated drug abuse nor set out to glo-

rify chemical stimulation, but an increasing

number of Chicago records have controversially

referred to acid tracking, the estranged synthe-

siser sound you can hear on several house re-

leases.These Acid Tracks have taken house mu-

sic into a new phuturism, a modern uptempo

psychedelia that London club DJ's call Trance

Dance. The roots of Trance Dance are not to be

found in the more established traditions of 60's

psychedelic rock but ironically in 1970's

Europe, through highly synthesised records like

Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" and

"Numbers".

The trance-dance sound is only beginning to

establish on the Chicago Scene but it has al-

ready been adopted in British Clubs and will un-

doubtedly shape the new future of house.

But beneath the abstract surface of acid-track

house records is the same compulsive dance

command. Frankie Knuckles is sure of that.

"When people hear house rhythms they go

freak out. It's an instant dance reaction. If you

can't dance to House you're already dead" -

Stuart Cosgrove for The History of House Sound

of Chicago 12 record set on BCM records, Ger-

many, Out of Print Inevitably, it was the restless

London club scene and the illegal pirate radio

stations of urban Britain that seized on the real

potential of house. The relatively cheap and do-

it-yourself ethics which governed house produc-

tion meant that young DJ's with inexpensive

equipment could make records that were

fresher and faster than the more institutional-

ized major labels. A series of sampled and sto-

len sounds, released on small scale British in-

dependent labels took the pop charts by

storm, suprising the record industry and dem-

onstrating that the house sound had a com-

mercial appeal beyond even the wild imagina-

tion of the London club scene. In the spring of

1988 a small group of London based DJ's

traded their turntables for the recording stu-

dios. Tim Simenon, working under the club

pseudonym Bomb The Bass and Mark Moore

using the band name S-Express had unex-

pected pop hits with sampled house rhythms.

"Beat Dis" and "The Theme From S-Express"

were charateristic of the sound that creative

theft and sampling could achieve. DJ's with

huge record collections and a catalogue knowl-

edge of breaks, beats, bits and pieces could

string together an entirely new record con-

cocted out of barely rememberal records. The

masters of the London sampling scene were

two unlikely DJ's, Jonathan Moore and Matt

Black, who played under the name DJ Coldcut

and devastated London's pirate airwaves with

imaginative record choices, crazy mixes and a

wilful disregard for what made musical sense.

When Coldcut's remix of Eric B and Ra-Kim rap

hit "I Know You Got Soul" took the ungrateful

New Yorkers to Number 1 in the pop charts in

Europe it became obvious that sampling and the

spirit of "Pump Up The Volume" was here to stay.

The Coldcut rap mix was closely followed by the

more house orientated "Doctorin The House"

which featured Yazz and The Plastic People, than

a cover version of Otis Clay's "The Only Way Is

Up", an obscure soul sound which was big on

Britain's esoteric northern soul scene. By a

strange twist of history, and old Chicago soul

singer from the 60's had his career momentarily

revitalised by the fallout of the modern Chicago

house sound.By the summer of 1988, the British

charts and teh over zealous tabloid press were

over-run with acid. The music had clearly

touched a raw pop nerve as one by one under-

ground acid-house records stormed into the pop

press. But their unexpected commercial success

was pursued by controversy and daily press re-

ports that the acid-house scene was a danger-

ous focus for drug abuse. Each new day brought

increased public panic about the abuse of the

synthetically compounded Ecstasy drug and by

October 1988, acid house and its casual catch

phrases "get on one matey", "can you feel it", and

"we call it acieeeeed" were in everyday conversa-

tion. The controversy reached its head in the au-

tumn of press overkill when "We Call It Acieed" by

D. Mob reached number 1 on the British pop

charts. Radio stations were reluctant to play the

record, BBC's phone in program, "daytime" had a

nationwide debate on the acceptability of the

song, and in a fit of moral outrage, the Burton's

clothes chain withdrew smiley tee-shirts from

their stores and refused to participate in the acid

epidemic.Behind the hype and the press hostility

the music continued its journey of unparalled

progress. If acid house had troubled the main-

stream press it had also advanced the creativity

of music introducing the remarkable and prodi-

gious talent of Brooklyn's Todd Terry to the fore-

front of the underground dance music

scene.Todd Terry is a child of house. His whole

life spent buried in club culture and experiment-

ing with the extremes of hi-tech music.

Torq Conectiv Vinyl/CD Pack -

DJ Performance/Production System with Control Vinyl and CD

The Top 10 – DJMag’s Top 100 DJs (2008)

Steady at the Top Last year’s top dogs, trance superstars Armin van Buuren and Tiësto are still holding down the top two spots on DJMag’s poll. Last year was a big one for Armin, but no one could have pre-dicted that he would top the craziness that was 2007.

This year, the crowds at his concerts have only gotten bigger, and the same can be said for the audience of A State Of Trance. This radio show draws 27 million listeners, and its compilations have yet to disappoint.

Likewise for Tiësto, huge gigs were the norm for 2008, although it shouldn’t be anything new for this seasoned DJ – his all-nighter at London’s famous O2 arena was received by 20,000 strong. And the endorsements, the reason for many people’s love-hate relationship with him, just kept rolling in. Reebok, Armani Exchange, and Coca-Cola shelled out big bucks for Tiësto’s work, whether it’s artistic design (his line of Reeboks) or just Tiësto doing what he does best: making music.

Between the two Dutch DJs, they probably won enough awards this past year to stuff a trophy case – they have both been recognized (repeatedly) for their immense success both in their homeland of Holland, and of course, on the global stage. Is it any surprise that Armin and Tijs have taken over DJMag too?

Going Up Number three DJ Paul van Dyk has had a fine year himself – his studio album, In Between, is a dance masterpiece, and has the sales records to prove it. He is one of the few DJs who are loved by North American clubbers (almost) as much as European fans, with one of his shows in New York being forced to move to a larger venue to fit all of the rabid fans. Further along the trance-heavy top 10 DJs, Above & Beyond’s star just keeps getting brighter. Their first show of 2008 drew a million in Rio, and the trio further invaded Asia and Ibiza with their unique sound, which is getting more notice, along with their rapidly growing Anjunabeats label.

The top house DJ (again), David Guetta jumps up five spots to sit pretty at number five. His Brazil gig this year topped even Above & Beyond’s, with two million in the crowd, and if you look at what he’s accomplished this year, that five-spot jump in the rankings should make total sense. DJMag did some number-crunching, and here are the results. Two million albums, three million singles. Billboard Top 10 for all four singles off of Pop Life. Massive shows at the Unighted Party, Love Parade, Bahia Carnival, Queensday, Techno Parade, and Global Gather-ing, and 180 club gigs this year (don’t even try counting how many people he’s played for). Maybe David Guetta should be higher on the list?

Rounding up the DJs who have moved on up on the list this year are Ferry Corsten and Markus Schulz. Oh look, more trance. Ferry has had a big year with productions; his latest single, ―Radio Crash,‖ has received much love from trance DJs like Armin and Judge Jules, and he’s also recruited some promising protégés for his label, Flashover. On the other hand, Markus Schulz has been keeping busy with jet-hopping between Europe and North America. He’s been big in Ibiza, like so many in the Top 10, and also has a residency at London’s Ministry of Sound. Wonder how many Airmiles he’s racked up?

I first went to a gay bar during the summer of

1972. I began frequenting them regularly in the

winter of 1973; generally I would travel with a group of friends from Ames to what we knew as

"the bars" (or more often "the bar") in Des

Moines. There were two gay bars in Des Moines

at that time, the P.S. and the Blue Goose. The P.S. was the bar we usually visited, as it had a

younger crowd, a pool table, and a dance floor.

There was a jukebox that people fed money

into to dance to its 45 rpm records. Most of the music featured sounds we didn't hear on Iowa

AM/FM radio of the day, soul music, not mostly

the kind that crossed over to white audiences.

It all had a regular good dance beat, which was of course why people liked it.

Many weekend evenings (Friday and Saturday,

for bars in Iowa were closed on Sunday) right before the drinking establishments across the

state of Iowa closed at 2 AM, the staff at the

P.S. would announce an "after hours" party,

giving the patrons an address and suggesting

they bring beer or whatever to the soirée; lots

of people who had been at the bar then flocked to those parties where dancing and

socializing continued into the wee hours of the

morning, essentially extending the bar into a

private setting.

The very first song I ever attempted to dance

to anywhere was at the P.S. and was "Love Train" by the O'Jays; I had never gone to

dances in high school and was an absolute

disaster on the dance floor. However, being a

fairly quick learner I got better and adapted quickly. At first when I went to gay bars I had

found the music a bit irritating, but as I heard

it more and more and began dancing, it soon

became the only music I cared to listen to

even during my non dancing hours, for I had really begun to love it. We generally called the

music we heard at the P.S. "bar music." It

was often hard to find albums or records of

this style of music at first, and even

throughout the 70s trips to Minneapolis or Chi-

cago might nab a record before it was popular or at least available in Iowa.

One night probably late in 1974 or very early in 1975, the jukebox was turned off for a time at

"the bar" and music began to play into the

sound system from what we assumed were re-

cords elsewhere in the bar. The song was "Honey Bee" by Gloria Gaynor, a favorite, a

song we knew from the juke box; but as it

ended her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye"

blended into it and after that "I'll Be There." This was accomplished seamlessly and I re-

member a discussion several of us had in the

Trophy Room in the Memorial Union a few days

later about this musical mix. David Windom

was wondering how they had constructed the instrumental middle parts of the songs and

blended them so well (for we assumed this was

just something the P.S. had constructed); I

said they just must have used tape recorders and spliced the music together.It wasn't spliced

though;

it was straight off an MGM album by Ms.

Gaynor, and the whole side of the LP was

mixed by a man named Tom Moulton. He

mixed many many many of the dance and disco albums of the 1970s, and essentially de-

fined worldwide dance music from this period

on. Across the country disc jockeys, D.J.'s,

people placed off away from a dance bar hav-

ing a turntable or two, now were beginning to play records, music off albums, and they were

learning to mix songs together and create song

sets that created an air of excitement on the

dance floor for the patrons of dance bars.

Dancing was getting to be more fun all the

time. Within a year there was a new title for "bar music" - Disco. Instead of calling them

dance bars, the concept was evolving into the

name "disco" (in the 1960s there were disco-

thèques; it's a derivative of that word). By late 1975 or 1976 discos were standard fixtures of

much of gay life.

In the Des Moines scene a small neighborhood

bar, the Menagerie, opened on the north edge

of town, and by about 1975 a new downtown

dance bar/disco, the M2 (Menagerie 2), had

opened complete with improved sound system,

larger dance floor, and an increasingly larger

number of patrons.

The music was getting better all the time, and

somehow, imperceptibly, the music we heard in gay bars seemed to be becoming "our music."

Black people played it in their clubs as well, for

it sprang forth from both of our communities.

Perhaps in urban areas it was also a straight white phenomenon - there are those who

nowadays maintain this - but in the Midwest,

near as I could tell, it was not the music of

straight white people.

By 1976 disco music was hot on the charts,

and at first even without much air play. It sig-nified a shift in what music people were buy-

ing; previously radio stations controlled what

people heard and this controlled what music

they bought, but now, suddenly, disco songs

were selling more and more records of the mu-sic people heard when they went out dancing.

Disco music was never meant to be listened to while staying at home stoned alone (or with

friends) pondering the deeper meanings of the

life; it never pretended to have insight into the

meaning of life. It was unadulterated fun. Fleetwood Mac and other 70s straight groups

and their own formulaic genres of the day pro-

vided ample albums of music for people to pon-

der carefully if they wished. Disco music was for dancing, disco was for having a good time,

and gay people, who had been prevented from

dancing together in virtually all the bars across

the

There were, of course, many gay people who

did not go dancing, who did probably not even

care for the music. I think they missed out on a fine experience during those liberating times.

In Ames there were a smattering of dance bars, but without exception they played

straight rock and roll, mostly terrible dance

music. Unexpectedly, circa winter of 1975 or

so, a fairly small bar opened out on the west edge of town with a small dance floor and a

sound system playing a lot of disco music. One

of the owners (or at least employees, although

I believe she was part owner) of the establish-ment was a woman from Puerto Rico, and I be-

lieve the other male owner was as well.

Since it was more conveniently located, not

such a long trip as the 30 miles to Des Moines,

groups of gay people from Ames went there

several different nights to "liberate" the joint

and dance. The first night we were warmly wel-comed when we began dancing to the music (it

was our second nature by then). The bar

played mostly disco hits that had made radio

play by this time, the top 40 hits of KC & the Sunshine Band, Donna Summer's "Love to Love

You Baby," etc., not the full range of music

available in gay bars, but it was still infinitely

better than the other dance joints in town and so very easy a place to get ItAfter a few more

evenings, including once, I think, on a weekend

when there were actually a number of straight

people in the bar dancing as well (it was a little

scary, actually, but no outright hostility hap-pened), we were suddenly rebuked. One eve-

ning we went to the bar and were told we were

not particularly welcome. We tried to pay no

attention to this, but the music shifted to some easy listening rock and roll and it was totally

undanceable; they had control of the entertain-

ment after all.

The woman working at the bar came over to us

and said she "was from San Juan and it was a

city and they had gay people and she knew gay people and it was fine for her, and for the

owner too, but Ames wasn't so liberal," or

some similar hogwash. Apparently a few of the

other straight patrons who were there had

been unhappy with a "gay crowd" being visible anywhere in Ames. We just quit going back and

soon the place closed. Good riddance for bad

karma.

By 1976 disco music was grand. Many of the

artists singing it were gay, black, and women

(and assorted combos of these classifica-tions), at times these artists represented per-

haps 80% of the songs that were popular;

rock and roll proper had never allowed much

or any music from these parties into its main-

stream. Of course some black singers and groups (James Brown; Earth, Wind, and Fire,

etc.) had been deemed OK and given the

blessing of the mainstream with white audi-

ences, but women artists were really a real rarity even into the 1970s, and at this point

there were no gay mainstream singers who

were out. In fact gay disco groups or artists

remained essentially closeted until the days of Sylvester. Even the Village People, whom we

first called "our own," who sang about the

dangers of sex in the bushes of Fire Island

(NY), leather boys on Folsom Street in San Francisco, staying at notorious YMCAs, and on

and on, throughout the 70s tried to deny or

avoid answering any questions about their

pretty obvious sexual orientation, a course of

action which royally pissed off a lot of gay people whom they'd quite nicely exploited for

support in their earliest days.

Smelling the lure of large profits, the re-

cording industry began to devise ways of

bringing disco music to the masses. This was

inevitable as the sound had become more and more popular. What the recording industry

didn't care about was the fact that a lot of the

masses weren't necessarily really all that in-

terested in dancing, and many of the white straight males, in particular, did not like the

sound of black people's music, women sing-

ers, and music rumored to have gay over-

tones.

This didn't stop the entertainment industry. In

1977 the movie "Saturday Night Fever" was

released. It was about a group of straight, homophobic, racist, Italian-American twenty-

somethings in New York who went dancing

nightly wearing odd looking clothes and

probably too much after shave lotion (they looked nothing much like people I saw or

knew in gay discos). The movie was a suc-

cess, and because of the endless music of the

and because of the endless music of the Bee

Gees now heard whenever you turned on the

radio, a backlash began against disco music began.

This backlash happened and disco retreated to the closets, but it certainly did not spell the end

of disco music, as many people would have you

believe. Disco never did end - it morphed.

The backlash reached its pinnacle in Chicago in

1979 on July 12 when the "White" Sox and ra-

dio station 98FM, WLUP, "The Loop" had a "Disco Demoliton Night." The "White" Sox were

playing a double header against the Detroit Ti-

gers and anyone bringing a disco record to the

game for burning (very Fahrenheit 451) was allowed in Comiskey Park for 98 cents.

The second game of the double header didn't

ever happen. A melee ensued between the games with pent up hatred spewing forth and

mostly young white males rioting on the field.

Did they just hate the music, or did they hate

what else it represented? People debate this still, but no other rock music has ever created

quite such a reaction in a group of people.

There were probably a lot of underlying closets

running throughout the crowd putting on this spectacle.

"Disco Demolition Night" in 1979

The bottom photo is of Steve Dahl, organizer of the "demolition" and Garry Meier.

Known Music-Diva House Remixes

Madonna

Aretha

Janet

Mariah

Whitney

J-lo

Donna Summer

Rosie Gaines

Alicia Keys

Jill Scott

New – Club remix – (house) Artist

1.Timberlake

2. Britney

3. Christina

4. Dream ( the solo artist )

5. Beyonce

6. 50 cent

7. Timbaland

8. Missy

9. Rhianna

10. Flo Rida

11. Lil Wayne

12. Nelly Furtado

13. Kid Cudi

14. Keri Hilson

HOUSE MUSIC - 1986

While Frankie Knuckles had laid the ground-

work for house at the Warehouse, it was to be

another DJ from the gay scene that was really

to create the environment for the house ex-

plosion - Ron Hardy. Where Knuckles' sound

was still very much based in disco, Hardy was

the DJ that went for the rawest, wildest

rhythm tracks he could find and he made The

Music Box the inspirational temple for pretty

much every DJ and producer that was to

come out of the Chicago scene. He was also

the DJ to whom the producers took their very

latest tracks so they could test the reaction

on the dance floor. Larry Heard was one of

those people.

"People would bring their tracks on tape and

the DJ would play spin them in. It was part of

the ritual, you'd take the tape and see the

crowd reaction. I never got the chance to

take my own stuff because Robert (Owens)

would always get there first."

"The Music Box was underground " remem-

bers Adonis. "You could go there in the mid-

dle of the winter and it'd be as hot as hell,

people

would be

walking

around

with their

shirts off.

Ron Hardy

had so

much

power peo-

ple would

be praising

his name

while he

was playing, and I've got the tapes to prove

it!

"The difference between Frankie and Ronnie

was that people weren't making records when

Frankie was playing, though all the guys who

would become the next DJs were there check-

ing him out. It was The Music Box that really

inspired people. I went there one night and

the next day I was in the studio making 'No

Way Back' " In 1985 the records were few

and far between. By 1986 the trickle had

turned to a flood and it seemed like every-

body in Chicago was making house music.

The early players were joined by a rush of

new talent which included the first real vocal

talents of house - Liz Torres, Keith Nunally

who worked with Steve Hurley, and Robert

Owens who joined up with Larry Heard to

form Fingers Inc, though the duo had already

worked with Harri Dennis on The It's 'Donnie'

-and key producers like Adonis, Mr Lee, K

Alexi and a guy who was developing a deep,

melodic sound that relied on big strings and

pounding piano - Marshall Jefferson.

Marshall worked with a number of people like

Harri Dennis and Vince Lawrence for projects

like Jungle Wonz and Virgo, who made the

stunning 'RU Hot Enough'. But it was 'Move

Your Body' that became THE house record of

1986, so big that both Trax and DJ Interna-

tional found a way to release it, and it was no

idle boast when the track was subtitled 'The

House Music Anthem', because that's exactly

what it was.

Marshall Jefferson was to become the undis-

puted king of house, going on to make a

string of brilliant records with Hercules and On The House and developing the quintessen-

tial deep house sound first with vocalist Curtis

McClean and then with Ce Ce Rogers and Ten

City. "I can remember clearing a floor with that

record" laughs Jazzy M. "Though they'd started

playing it in Manchester, most of London was still caught up in that rare groove and hip hop

thing.

A lot of people were saying to me 'why are you

playing this hi- NRG' and it was hard work but

people were starting to get into it." 'Move Your

Body' was undoubtedly the record that really

kicked off house in the UK, first played repeat-

edly by the established pirate radio stations in

London, which at the time played right across

the Black music spectrum, and then by club

DJs like Mike Pickering, Colin Faver, Eddie Rich-

ards, Mark Moore and Noel and Maurice Wat-

son, the latter two playing at the first club in

London to really support house - Delirium.

Radio was the key to the explosion in Chicago.

Farley Jackmaster Funk had secured a spot on

the adventurous WBMX station, playing after midnight every day, and it wasn't long before

he brought in the Hot Mix 5 which included

Mickey Oliver, Ralphie Rosario, Mario Diaz and

Julian Perez, and Steve Hurley, giving people

who couldn't go to the parties the chance to hear the music. Then there was Lil Louis, who

was throwing his own parties. By this time,

house was moving out of the gay scene and on

to wider acceptance, though in Chicago at least it was to remain very much a Black thing.

Though a number of Hispanics were on the

house scene, the number of White DJs and pro-

ducers could be counted on one hand.

The labels were still mostly limited to the terri-

ble twins that were to dominate Chicago house

for the next two years Trax and DJ Interna-

tional. Between them they had nearly all the

local talent sewn up and by popular consent

they were just as dodgy as each other, with ru-

mors and stories of rip-offs and generally dubi-

ous activity endlessly circulating. Everybody it

seemed, was stealing from everybody else.

was the place to focus on, house poured into

Britain with London Records putting the first

compilation of early DJ International material out. As the press bandwagon rolled into ac-

tion the 86 Chicago House Party featuring

Adonis, Marshall Jefferson, Fingers Inc and

Kevin Irving toured the UK's clubs. Trax took a little longer

HOUSE MUSIC - 1988

In truth, acid house had already started long

before 1988. Amongst the scores of Chica-

goans who were buying equipment and try-

ing to learn how to make tracks was one DJ

Pierre, who'd started out playing Italian im-

ports at roller discos in the Chicago suburbs,

and who had joined Lil Louis for his notorious

parties.

"Phuture was me and two other guys,

Spanky and Herbert J." remembers Pierre.

"We had this Roland 303, which was a

bassline machine, and we were trying to fig-

ure out how to use it. When we switched it

on, that acid sound was already in it and we

liked the sound of it so we decided to add

some drums and make a track with it. We

gave it to Ron Hardy who started playing it

straight away. In fact, the first time he

played it, he played it four times in one

night! The first time people were like, 'what

the fuck is this?' but by the the fourth they

loved it. Then I started to hear that Ron was

playing some new thing they were calling

'Ron Hardy's Acid Trax', and everybody

thought it was something he'd made himself.

Eventually we found out that it was our track

so we called it 'Acid Trax'. I think we may

have made it as early as 1985, but Ron was

playing it for a long time before it came out."

Explanations for the name of 'acid' have

been long and varied, but the most popular, and the one endorsed by a number of people

who were there at the time was that they

used to put acid in the water at the Music

Box. Pierre though, stresses that Phuture

was always anti- drugs, and cites a track about a cocaine nightmare, 'Your Only

Friend' that was on the same EP as 'Acid

Trax'. 'Acid Trax' came out in 1986 but made

little impact outside Chicago, as was the case with another acid track, Sleazy D's 'I've Lost

Control', which slapped a deranged laugh

and some geezer repeating the title over the

303 squelching. 'I've Lost Control' was made by Adonis and Marshall Jefferson and was

certainly the first acid track to make it to vi-

nyl, though which was created first will pos-

sibly never be known for sure. It wasn't until well into 1987 that the acid sound began to

infiltrate Britain, fuelled by another track that

was getting a lot club play, and which fitted

into the sound Bam Bam's 'Give It To Me',

and a diversion of the regular acid track which put vocals into the equation, devel-

oped by Pierre's Phantasy Club with 'Fantasy

Girl'.

The house scene in Britain had faltered fol-

lowing the commercialisation of the poppier end of the spectrum, but towards the end of

1987 the underground was taking off with

new LP compilation series like 'Jack Trax' and

the opening in London of seminal clubs like

Shoom and Spectrum and the move of Delir-ium to Heaven where the main dancefloor

became exclusively house. Delirium's Deep

House Convention at Leicester Square's Em-

pire in February 1988 which featured a num-

ber of seminal Chicago artists like Kym Mazelle, Fingers Inc, Xavier Gold. Marshall

Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles was a de-

pressing event because of the poor turnout.

But the people who did go were to be be-come the prime movers of London's house

explosion. The next week a warehouse party

called Hedonism was rammed and the

soundtrack was acid. Acid house UK style had begun.

As acid tracks like Armando's '151' and 'Land Of Confusion', Bam Bam's 'Where's Your

Child' and Adonis' 'The Poke' began to flow

out out of Chicago, the scene grew at a rate

of knots with Rip, Love, Future, Contusion and Trip opening in London, and the legen-

dary Nude in Manchester. DJs suddenly dis-

covered they had a year's worth of classic

house which hitherto they'd been unable to play. When WBMX in Chicago closed down,

signalling the end of radio play for the music

in the city, it was clear that the emphasis

had switched to the UK. Acid house became the biggest youth cult in Britain since punk

rock a decade before as British house records

like Bang The Party's 'Release Your Body',

Jullan Jonah's 'Jealousy

& Lies' (later used as the backbone of Elec-

trlbe 101's 'Talking

With Myself'), Baby

Ford's 'Oochy Koochy', A Guy Called Gerald's

Voodoo Ray, and Richie

Rich's 'Salsa House' be-

came huge club hits, before the chart UK

house records emerged

with S'Express' 'Theme

From S'Express', D-

Mob's 'We Call It Acid', which popularised the

ridiculous but funny

club chant of

'Aciiieeeeed!' and Jolly Roger's 'Acid Man'.

Opinions differ as to the

effect on the scene of the relatively new drug ecstasy, but there was little

doubt that the sudden rise in availabilny of the drug was directly related to

the growth of the club scene. Before the tabloids discovered what was go-ing on with their inevitably lurid headlines about 'Acid House Parties' and

drug barons, it was easy to see people openly imbibing the drug in any

club.

Like Chicago radio was to prove crucial to spreading house in Britain. But

this wasn't any kind of legitimate radio. Save for a few token shows, you

couldn't hear Black music or dance music on legal radio, and eventually the

demand turned into supply in the form of numerous pirate stations, mostly

in and around London but also in a few other big cities. Most of them were

on and off the air in months or even weeks, but the more organised sta-

tions managed to keep going, supplying hungry listeners with the music

they wanted to hear - reggae, soul, jazz, hip hop - and house. Steve Jack-

son's House That Jack Built on Kiss and Jazzy M's 'Jacking Zone' on LWR

pumped out the new music week in, week out.

"When LWR was what you call the boom, it was on half a million listeners."

says Jazzy M. And we knew that because the surveys were actually being

published in newspapers The Jacking Zone was getting 40-50 letters a

week and I was broke because all my wages went on new tunes. Once that

plane had landed with the imports, I was getting the new records on the

show the same night. It was unbelievable."

1988 wasn't just acid it was the year that house first really began to diver-

sify. For a start, there was the 'Balearic' business, an eclectic style of DJing

which at the time encompassed dance mixes of pop artists like Mandy

Smith and quasi-industrial music like Nitzer Ebb's 'Join In The Chant'

Championed by Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway, Paul Oakenfold and

Johnny Walker who'd all been to Ibiza, Balearic was an integral part of the

club scene at the time, but after the gushing media overkill it all became a

little farcical as people attempted to make Balearic records There was, of

course no such thing

Then there were the anthems. A year's worth of inspirational Chicago deep

house, which went back to the Nightwriters and took in Joe Smooth's 'Promised Land' and Sterling Void's 'It's Alright' along the way became

some of the biggest club records of the year, while Marshall Jefferson took

the music to new highs with Ten City's 'Devotion' and Ce Ce Rogers

'Someday'. Marshall was on a roll in 88, picking up remixes and linking up with Kym Mazelle for 'Useless' It was the deep house that spawned the first

two house LP's, which naturally came out in Britain first - Fingers Inc's

benchmark 'Another Side' and Liz Torres With Master C & J's excellent

'Can't Get Enough'.

Ten City were an important stage in the development of house. With self-

conviction unusually high for the time, they snubbed the Chicago labels

which by that time were losing their artists more quickly than they could

sign them, and headed for Atlantic records in New York where Merlin Bobb

promptly snapped them up. Where nearly all the house that had gone be-

fore them was strictly producer created, Ten City were an act, and they

could be marketed as such. Plus, they returned some of the soul vision to

house, a tradition that went all the way back to the Philly sound it was no

coincidence that 'Devotion' was one of the first records from Chicago to

really do well on the East Coast, which always had much stronger r'n'b

roots in its club music. After another huge club hit with 'Right Back To You',

they broached the UK top Ten in January 1989 with 'That's The Way Love

Is' Even Detroit was discovering songs.

Though the new techno sound was by now at full tilt with Rhythm Is

Rhythm's anthem 'Strings 0f Life' Model 500's 'Off To Battle' and Reese &

Santonio's 'Rock To The Beat', it was Inner City's 'Big Fun' a techno song

with vocals by Chicagoan Paris Grey that was to propel Kevin Saunderson

into the big time. Originally a track recorded for Virgin's groundbreaking

'Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit' LP, 'Big Fun' was just too com-

mercial to hold back, and Saunderson suddenly found himself in a virtually

full-time pop duo making videos, follow-up singles and EPs like any other

pop act.

Chicago however was still finding new things to do with house, though the

next trend wasn't to be anything like as significant. There had already been

raps put down to house tracks as early as 1985 with 'Music Is The Key' and

more recently with M-Doc's 'It's Percussion', The Beatmasters' 'Rok Da

House' and New York's KC Flight with 'Let's Get Jazzy'. But it was Tyree

Cooper (who'd already had a big club record with 'Acid Over') and rapper

Kool Rock Steady who defined the hip-house style with 'Turn Up The Bass',

a galloping track which somehow combined Kool's rap with the classic Chi-

cago piano sound and Tyree's trademark 909 roll. It wasn't long before Fast

Eddie, also at DJ International, expanded it with 'Yo Yo Get Funky'.

But the biggest new producer of 1988 was someone who didn't come from

Chicago at all. Or Detroit. New York was beginning to flex its muscles, the

city that had always regarded itself the world's capital for dance music wanted some of the limelight back. But it wasn't an established figure in

the New York or New Jersey dance scene that broke through, it was a kid

from Brooklyn who was showing an incredible alacrity for the new form of

sampling that had been co- developing with house - Todd Terry.

First it was those Masters At Work tracks, but after that Todd hit house in a big way with 'Bango' (at which Kevin Saunderson was highly miffed, be-

cause it heavily sampled one of his records), 'Just Wanna Dance', Swan

Lake's 'In The Name Of Love', Black Riot's 'A Day In The Life' and 'Warlock'

and the one that was almost certainly the biggest club record of the year -

Royal House's 'Can You Party!'. Though in New York Todd's sample tracks were firmly categorized with the Latin freestyle house sound that the His-

panics were developing, in the UK Todd became the toast of the house

scene. In a by now familiar scenario, 'Can You Party' hit the Top 20 in Oc-

tober on a wave of club support, closely followed by another track on the new Big Beat label out of New York, Kraze's 'The Party'.

As it became more and more apparent that Chicago was grinding to a halt,

New York was getting it together, with more labels like Cutting (who'd al-

ready released Nitro Deluxe's classic 'Let's Get Brutal' in 1987) and Warlock

turning to house and new labels starting up. One of these was to prove

more important than all the rest - Nu Groove.

1989

By now the UK and its trend-hungry music press had become the local

point of the dance music world. After acid had slumped into fatuousness

with the adopted logo of acid, the smiley, appearing on t- shirts racked up

in every high street and the mainstream press (including the 'qualities')

scuttling after every whiff of a half-arsed drug story, they discovered new

beat from Belgium. The trouble was that save for one or two genuinely

good records like A Split Second's 'Flesh', nearly everyone outside Belgium

Saturday

Sunday

Phil Dirt and the Dozers

Robert Lockwood Jr. All Stars

Melissa (Cha~Cha) Figueroa

Dave Tolliver (The Blaq Pavarotti)

Men At LargeDavid and Jason Reunite

3SO

Melissa (Cha~Cha) Figueroa

Kidd Russell

Jason Champion

A-Motions

J-EyE

Carlos Jones and the P.L.U.S. Band

Dave Tolliver (The Blaq Pavarotti)

Rapmedian Cool TLC Wheels of Steel Weekend Co-Host The Wheels of Steel Weekend DJ Showcase

The Wheels of Steel Weekend works hard to expose all of the educa-

tional opportunities that exist both on a high school and post high school

level. Additionally, the WOSW also offers an outlet for schools looking to

recruit students on all levels as well as companies looking to hire people

within a fun atmosphere

hated new beat, a sort of sluggish cross between acid, techno and heavy

industrial Euro music and the media hype dissolved into a number of red

faces. Then they discovered garage.

'Garage' as a term had already long been in use on the house scene to dif-

ferentiate the smooth, soulful songs flowing from New York and New Jersey

from the more energetic, uplifting deep house out of Chicago. But the hype

on this supposedly new music did allow a lot of very good acts a chance of

exposure that otherwise they wouldn't have had. The Americans were con-

fused. To most New Yorkers and Jerseyites, garage was what was played at

the Paradise' Garage, which had closed two years earlier. What they were

making was club music or dance music, and house was all that track stuff

from Chicago. But they were happy that someone somewhere was getting

off on their sound. Tony Humphries, who'd been on New York's Kiss FM

since 1981 and at the Zanzibar in New Jersey since 1982, was to become

instrumental in exposing the Jersey sound. Though he was one of more

open-minded DJ's In the New York area, his was the style that married real

r'n'b based dance to house.

"I really saw house start with the Virgo 1 record, which had that 'Love Is

The Message' skip beat, and I was using that and a lot of other Chicago

stuff as filler between the vocals, so if I was to play Jean Carne I would use

the Virgo drum track before it. Vocals was always very much my thing, and

I would say the people from Chicago we really respected in Jersey were

Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles and JM Silk. A lot of it was really Philly

elements, it was like Philly living on forever, and that was our flavor. "I be-

came known for breaking new stuff, and to stay ahead of everyone I had to

come up with more and more demos. I wanted to help all the people

around me in Jersey, so around 88-89 I did a huge showcase with all the

acts at Zanzibar first on my birthday and then at the New Music Seminar.

Suddenly everyone was talking about the Jersey sound."

Blaze were the forerunners of the new soul vision, followed by their proté-

gés Phase II, who struck big with the optimism anthem 'Reachin', and Hip-

pie Torrales' Turntable Orchestra with 'You're Gonna Miss Me'. Then there

were the girls - Vicky Martin with 'Not Gonna Do It' and of course, Adeva,

behind whom was the talented Smack Productions team. ' In And Out 0f My

Life' had already been released by Easy Street a year before, but when

Cooltempo signed the Jersey wailer up on the basis of her cover of Aretha

Franklin's 'Respect', mainstream success was more than on the cards - it

was a dead cert. 'Respect' entered the Top 40 in January and hung around

for two months, by which time Chanelle's 'One Man' and then her own col-

laboration with Paul Simpson, 'Musical Freedom' had followed the example.

It didn't end there. Jomanda, who shared the billing with Tony Humphries

at a massive event stage in Brixton's Academy were next with 'Make My

Body Rock', and though they were to become successful in the States, their

sound never crossed over in the UK.

New York was stepping up the pace in grand fashion and there was a lot

more going on than just the Jersey sound. Following Todd Terry's success,

the New York sample track was breaking out like wildfire, particularly with Frankie Bones, Tommy Musto and Lenny Dee at Fourth Floor, Breakln'

Bones and Nu Groove records. Nu Groove, built on the foundation of the

Burrell twins who'd escaped from an abortive r'n'b career with Virgin Re-

cords, was fast becoming the hippest house label. Nu Groove had started the year before with records like Bas Noir's 'My Love Is Magic' and Aphrodi-

siac's 'Your Love' and by 1989 they were on a roll. Nu Groove never had a

sound - with producers as disparate as the Burrells, Bobby Konders and

Frankie Bones that wasn't conceivable - and they never really had one big record, but the concept of the label went from strength to strength.

Among their producers was Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez, yet to hook up with Lit-

tle Louie Vega, who was moving into house with his Freestyle Orchestra

project. Nu Groove's first competitor was to come in the form of Strictly

Rhythm, who opened up in 1989, though their first breakthrough wasn't to

come until the following year. Two other New York producers who were also

beginning to make a lot of noise were Clivilles and Cole with Seduction's

'Seduction' and their excellent deep, dubby mix of Sandee's 'Notice Me'.

Their break into the mainstream came with a mix of Natalie Cole's 'Pink

Cadillac'. Another guy who was also beginning to make a name for himself

as a house remixer was David Morales.

But one of the biggest records on the burgeoning UK rave scene was a re-

cord that made very little impact in its native New York - the 2 In A Room

References: Models—Love & Rock , LGBT, History of House .com

www.housemusic.com , wickopiedia , Bill , Club 54

Take a walk with T.O.U.C.H. Inc. (Talent Out-

reach for Underprivileged Career Hunters) on

the “Pull Up Your Pants and be a Man” Move-

ment. Just what does “Pull Up…” mean to

you? Or better yet what age are you when you

stop sagging your pants? What’s your reason to

broadcast to the world the color of your box-

ers? Are you just trying to fit in or is that your

style? To each his or hers own but damn now

that I’m 40 I’m seeing it in a different light. I

quit saggin years ago and it made a difference

on a business level, folks took me a lil more

serious plus I was in Corporate America. But I

was behind the scenes and I got tired of the Ra-

cial Profiling not to mention the kind of grown

women not girls I liked.

To know me you probably don’t look or think

of me as a Role Model but what is a Role

Model? I never claim to be a squeaky clean an-

gel but I do have morals and has helped that

taught the youth about Hip Hop and not Rap

ect.. But that’s where T.O.U.C.H. Inc. comes in

more than just another Mentoring Organization

as you might think? It’s “Opportunities for

Everyone” as a catalyst towards success as a

chance to get in where you fit in with your

skills of self taught success stories or if you

have a degree; it’s a vehicle of success.

With this country being in a deficit and Stimulus

money being granted why not take full advantage

and help educate our youth in various ways

needed. You may not be an office person but we

need a street team of Ladies and Gentleman to

help and did I mention we are in touch with Ce-

lebrities? It really does take a village to raise a

child and we can’t do it alone nor teach young la-

dies to be women. Join the team at

touchonline.org

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