I am very much a 1980s child. I was hoiked out a mere six weeks into the decade. It was a decade of musical aspiration and experimentation. We didn’t have much pop music in our house and so when kids at school would ask the morning after Top of The Pops “what’s your favourite song?” I wouldn’t have an answer but would sometimes take pot luck with Yazz. I remember vividly the first time I felt the rush from a record, that surge of activity which seems to come racing up into your brain and which you hope won’t stop but you know if it doesn’t it will blow the top of your head off. I had been picked up from school by a neighbour. She drove a dark silver Ford Escort. As she pushed the car hard out of the school gates and accelerated up the road under full throttle my puny body was pushed deep into the spongy back seat. At that moment the radio cracked into life. It was Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky. My dance/cheese music fate was sealed.
My best mate at school and I used to borrow each other’s Dance Hits 93 and Energy Rush Phase 4 CDs. Sometime around 1995 my brother invited me to go record shopping with him. He took me to all the niche record shops of Soho. I was honoured to be allowed to go, it seemed like a really grown-up thing to be doing. We went to sleazy break-beat dives and more upmarket purveyors of house music (one shop, Quaff, had unvarnished floorboards, the layout of an upmarket fashion boutique and the music wasn’t so loud which lent the place an air of unrivalled sophistication). There was a weird subculture in the shops, developed because the music was always too loud to allow verbal communication between the staff and the customers. There would be a DJ and customers could indicate that they wanted to buy a copy of the record that was playing or suggest a track they wanted to hear. It was totally uncool to buy anything apart from white labels, everything else was so last week. Once the record had been sold, a shop worker would make a note on the label to show what the record was, but in a script that only aficionados could interpret. One of the shops was up a narrow rickety staircase in a dirty run-down building off a nasty little concrete piazza across from Centre Point. I suppose it was called Silverfish for a reason.
It was in the trance and techno places that I felt that buzz. 1999 was the peak year of that sound. I went to Cream and Gatecrasher that year. The first time I stepped into the main room at Cream I felt like I truly belonged. The strobes, the glowsticks, the amazing clothes and of course, the music. A reader and I hogged a podium for hours on end. At Gatecrasher I was astounded by the effort everyone else had made with their costumes. It was like going dancing in the distant future. The music was mind blowing and I didn’t dare stop dancing in case I missed a Tune. When we got back to Piccadilly Gardens one of the guys asked me how I managed without drugs. The music. I engineered it so I was in Berlin for the Love Parade in summer 2000. Imagine something as big as Notting Hill Carnival but with everyone in a good mood.
Cheese doesn’t travel well in time and I haven’t listened to my Love Parade album for years. I dare not dig it out in case it is a load of crap (I chucked out the rather skinny souvenir t-shirt a long time ago). I haven’t heard a good bit of trance cheese in a long time. There isn’t anything around which comes close to having the intensity of the Gatecrasher Sound and even if there was I am far too old for it – I can’t imagine how sad a nineteen year-old me at Gatecrasher would consider a 30 year-old me bouncing around on the podium…
I dug out all my old house and techno tapes a few years ago – most of the did sound crap. As being that sad 30 year old, I let my housemates drag me to a rave for old times sake a few months ago, but one of their girlfriends decided to drag us to a gay bar for most of the night instead and rescued me from getting anywhere near the podium, although I did get a quick snog with her 19 year old mate, which kind of made it worth the trip down memory lane.
Good morning Blue,
I couldn’t resist playing the adagio for five seconds. It is not quite as unforgettable as the dental drill concerto with FDDB accompaniment (fingernails dragged down blackboard.)
::[smiles]:: My 1999 music experience was a bit different; our youngest arived that year. Less ATB, more EIEIO.
But I had the car to hide in. Did you know that the best accompaniment to ATB is a screaming straight six?
I remember your costume BE, those shiny trousers!
SL – excellent!
MTG – after your time was it?
Patently – I have never tried it, but I can well imagine it
RE – hahahahahaha I remember one particular shirt with I loved with all my heart, a kind of loosely woven polyester number with a out-of-focus pattern on it!
First time I heard high energy music like that was in a gay club in one of the big cities. The mainstream music business caught up eventually but my impression was always that it came from the gay scene and crossed over. That was the first time I saw people dance with poppers in their teeth too. And wearing nothing but a leather harness from the waist up.
Yes you are right P. When I was too young to be out clubbing people said that the best music was to be found at places like Trade and Heaven. Apparently the success of dance music was (oddly) to take the sex out of the club scene so people could concentrate on the music. In retrospect I think that was probably bollocks. There was never any leather at the clubs I went to – it was all dayglo polyester.
Too old and too tired by the time 1999 rolled around. Anyway the best music of the 90′s was 94-96 with the britpop/indy bands.
But I have that adagio on my spotify playlist. I managed one of the larger Oxford street flagship stores back then and used to play it at full volume through the 100+ speaker sound system when working late at night.
BQ too old and tired? Pshaw! If you’re too old then what am I – fossilised??
Blue eyes…trance etc, it seems I was right about your latter day hippiness. As head of security at Cream for part of its run I can only say that I never got anything from any of the 90′s music but being a thuggish rocker I don’t imagine it was aimed at me.