Luckily I live less than a mile from the beach, so a favorite exercise activity is to cycle along the broadwalk as the Pacific Ocean glistens to my side. Typically I take my JBL bluetooth speaker and blast out some tunes for the journey. What’s on the playlist? Recently I’ve been listening to some acid house classics which works well in the warm and sunny environment of Southern California, whilst the music unearths numerous powerful personal memories from the late 1980s through the 1990s. As I listed to Joe Smooth’s ‘Promised Land’ – a classic vocal Chicago house anthem that always got the crowd singing along – the lyrics define the togetherness and sensibility of the acid house movement:

‘Brothers, Sisters

One Day we will be free.

From Fighting, Violence, People Crying in the Streets.

Were the angels from above

Falling down and spread their wings like doves.

As we walk, hand and hand,

Sisters, brothers

We’ll make it to the promised lands’

On the dance floor we are all in this together. No matter what race or where you are from, we are unified. Love is the message. In these increasingly difficult and divided times I nostalgically hark back to these times when we really did believe in the central messages of songs like this. Of course, with the help of various chemical stimulants, love really was in the air, even so far as hugging strangers and having a feeling of total connectedness with everyone on the dance floor. If you are reading this and you never experienced it, I can understand how it might sound like hippy nonsense, a bit of a joke perhaps, maybe even something to be ridiculed. But the things we experienced were real – the impact of the acid house movement changed British society for the better, it opened up the race and class divide as well as being responsible for the decline of football hooliganism. 

Next up, Spotify blasts out A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’ – I can never tire of hearing this song, it still sounds to me like a siren from the future. Along with Derrick May’s ‘Strings of Life’, it’s the Sistine Chapel of acid house. It renders well from my small speaker but really needs to be heard on a phat rig – 40K turbo sound and a wall of bass bins – to give justice to the all enveloping bass line and clean synth lines. Although I never actually went there, it reminds me of Manchester’s Hacienda, perhaps ground zero for acid house in the North. I know, how can you be reminded of somewhere you never went to? There’s a famous clip of clubbers in the Hacienda swaying from side to side to this song, their baggy clothes and floppy hair silhouetted by the smoke and dry ice – perhaps it’s this that makes me feel like I was there. It’s an iconic clip that epitomises the feeling and energy of the movement. Although I never visited this temple in the north, I certainly had similar experiences in London at Sin at the Astoria, the Fitness Centre, Rage at Heaven and the M25 rave Energy, all seminal nights. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VFhxpMnfHB0

Next, the drums of Neil Howard’s ‘The Gathering’ segue into the mix – another Chicago classic. It’s a genius of production – clever 808 drum programming with heavy kicks and sharp crispy high hats all put together in the classic build and release dynamic of long percussive sections leading to hands in the air synth wash breakdowns. Dark and light. I’d say this cut is slightly under the radar but for those that were there, the opening bars will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, the amazing way music, with lazer sharp accuracy, can hone in on a memory or feeling. It also reminds me of how lucky I was to have come of age in a time before mobile phones with cameras became a thing. Look at any clip from the late 80s and early 90s – everyone is oblivious, absolutely lost in the moment and connected by the music and the shared experience, which at times veered into the religious. Not like today, everyone overwhelmed by narcissism and image obsession, filming everything for the social media validation of strangers rather than being in the moment and connecting with other humans present in the room in real time.

It also reminds me of those end of the night moments. The last song had played but no one wanted to go home. No one wanted the night to end. I’ve seen crowds hang around for hours after the night officially ended, perhaps dancing around the bongo player (always a fixture back in the day) banging out some rhythms. Imploring, begging, the DJ for ‘one more tune’. The lights come on and the whole room grinning like a collective Cheshire Cat. I remember one memorable night at The Zap in Brighton where the DJ – I can’t remember who it was, he wasn’t a big name – had absolutely rinsed it and the lights came on after his last tune with the whole crowd applauding and cheering ecstatically for half an hour, all so thankful for the journey they had been taken on. We want this moment and feeling to last for ever. We didn’t want the night to ever end. Unfortunately it had to – we got older, the music changed, the quality of the drugs declined and sadly, as 2020 hit – the pandemic meant we couldn’t congregate like this at all.