SPIRAL SCRATCH(ING)

The late, great Tony Wilson had a theory that, once every decade or so, a revolution in music comes along - something that starts at a grass roots level before infiltrating the mainstream. The mid-fifties bought Rock'n'Roll, the sixties Psychedelia, the seventies Punk.. And in the mid-eighties, Dance music. Starting out in the abandoned warehouses of Chicago, House music took the influences of Soul and Disco, using samplers, sequencers, drum machines and synthezisers to create repetitive, hypnotic, mostly instrumental tracks that quickly caught on in the clubs of other US cities, before crossing the Atlantic. And it wasn't long before the songs started entering the charts. The first house music hit was Farley "Jackmaster" Funk - "Love Can't Turn Around", a top ten hit in September 1986. But the first i remember hearing was Steve "Silk" Hurleys' "Jack Your Body", which despite little airplay and no promotion whatsoever from Hurley himself, made its way to Number 1 in January 1987. It was like something from another universe: this stuttering, electronic rhythm with no chorus, verses or anything resembling a "normal" song structure, just the title repeated over and over. There wasn't even a normal music video to play on Top Of The Pops - instead a montage of black and white clips from old films was stitched together. I've no doubt that the producers at Radio 1 and TOTP thought it to be rubbish - the likes of Dave Lee Travis were still on R1 back then, before the youth-targeted purge), and it was definitely something that your parents would hate. So of course it caught on with the youth of the nation. Later that year another house track - a homegrown one this time - made entirely out of samples of other records interspersed with "scratching" sounds (note to teenage self: do not try this on your home stereo) made it to the top spot, causing outrage from more traditional minded musicians and record industry types including Pete Waterman, This was "Pump Up The Volume" by M/A/R/R/S,  a coming together of two experimental bands on the 4AD label and a couple of DJs. It sounds odd now to say it caused some uproar, but the idea of stealing and sampling other artists work was relatively new back then. "Beat Dis", by Bomb The Bass, was another huge hit built entirely out of samples. More followed - "Theme From S-Express" was another Number 1 in spring '88. Acts like Coldcut, Yazz, The Beatmasters, and Krush continued the house music assault on the charts. Within a year or two, another sub-genre emerged, and one that proved to be very popular with young clubbers: Acid House. Driven by the squelching sounds of the TB-303 synth-sequencer, it soundtracked illegal raves in fields, warehouses and after-hours clubs up and down the country, filled with people intent on dancing for hours, usually out of their heads on LSD or Ecstacy. I would read about it in the papers, and the "smiley face" icon would become a regular sight. However, being only 13, my parents were hardly going to let me go off into the middle of nowhere! Besides which, i wasn't much of a dancer. So this new sound became just another addition to my expanding singles collection.