The Playground

The Playground was an influential underground dance club in Chicago's South Loop that was a bridge between disco and the birth of house music. It was important due to its role in shaping the early house sound of Jesse Saunders and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. This led to the release of the first house record, and the first wave of house music producers in 1984 and 1985.

Key Facts

The Playground is one of the most important clubs in the history of house music. It was opened in 1982 by Jesse Saunders. The Playground was located in a large industrial building with a blacked-out interior and bleacher seating. It had a capacity of about 1,500 people, which was unusually big for its time. It opened in the evening and stayed open until 8 or 9 AM. The club was also known for its massive seven-foot subwoofers. The bass was so powerful that turntables had to be suspended from the ceiling by chains to keep records from skipping.

The People

Jesse Saunders was the primary driving force behind The Playground club in Chicago. He started the club with his friend Vince Lawrence, and he was the main resident DJ until it closed. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk was also resident at the club for a while in the early days, and Frankie Knuckles deejayed there on the opening night.

Jesse Saunders served as the resident DJ on Friday and Saturday nights. He played an eclectic mix of disco, new wave, synth-pop and underground dance music, which helped shape the early sound of house music.

The Playground attracted a young, diverse crowd because it did not have a strict 21+ age requirement, unlike The Warehouse which was strictly 21+. The club was a safe space regardless of sexual orientation or age. This inclusivity has been a hallmark of house music in all of its iterations, and helped make it a training ground for younger DJs and producers. DJ Pierre has confirmed that he was influenced by the sound of The Playground, and The Playground's drum tracks were a big influence on the acid wave of Chicago producers.

Influential D.J. Support

The Playgrounds's influence was strengthened by a small group of legendary DJs who played there or held residencies. As well as Jesse Saunders, there were other notable DJs who supported the club. These are some of the big names.

Farley "Jackmaster" Funk

Farley "Jackmaster" Funk began his residency when the club opened. He was a member of the Hot Mix 5, who were the biggest DJs on the scene at the time. He collaborated with Jesse Saunders on "Love Can't Turn Around", which was the first house track to chart in the UK.

Frankie Knuckles

Frankie Knuckles performed as a guest DJ on the club's opening night in 1982. His presence gave the venue legitimacy within the emerging house music scene.

Ron Hardy

While not a resident, Ron Hardy was the main supporter of Chicago producers, especially as the sound of The Playground caught on with younger producers. Ron Hardy supported Saunders by playing early tracks like "On & On" and "Funk You Up" at other venues. He also supported the new minimalist sound that evolved from The Playground with producers like Tyree, DJ Pierre, Mike Dunn and Farley.

The Sound Of The Playground

The sound of the Playground was functional Minimalism. To keep the crowd dancing, Jesse Saunders used a Roland TR-808 drum machine to create live, extended jams and mixes. The Playground acted as a laboratory for Jesse Saunders to experiment with the Roland TR-808 drum machine and develop his new minimalist sound.

It's impossible to overstate how important the sound of The Playground was to early house music. The early drum track minimalism was born out of necessity, due to technical constraints and budget. The 808 drum tracks developed at The Playground were the basis of the first wave of house music. The early experimentation with an 808 led to the 1984 release of On & On. We can get an idea of how The Playground sounded from the other tracks on the same EP.

5A By Jesse Saunders

This distinctive minimalist sound helped to define the sound of first wave house producers, and the later acid house movement. There's an obvious progression from this to the early tracks of Farley "Jackmaster" Funk and Chip E. There's also a clear influence on the next generation as well, such as DJ Pierre, Mike Dunn, Tyree, Armando, Bam Bam. From there the influence spread to other cities and countries, influencing artists like Richie Hawtin, Joey Beltram, 808 State, Tony Thorpe and Cabaret Voltaire.

Farley Jackmaster Funk's 1985/86 minimalist EPs are a bridge between the first generation and the second wave producers who introduced acid to Chicago. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's early tracks contained "proto-acid" elements based on repetitive and hypnotic synth lines, rather than the use of a 303. The "drum jam" philosophy was also used by later artists, like A Guy Called Gerald in his late 80s live shows, or Richie Hawtin in his 90s DJ sets.

Pierre At The Playground

In the early 1980s, DJ Pierre frequented The Playground club in Chicago with his friend Herb J to study innovative DJ mixes. The club was a youth-oriented "entry point" to the house music scene, where Pierre and other producers could learn the basics of house music before moving on to more intense experimentation at The Music Box, where he discovered and was discovered by Ron Hardy.

Witnessing Jesse Saunders and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk using TR-808 drum machines at The Playground likely inspired Pierre’s future experimentation with the TB-303. Pierre heard drum machines treated as the "lead vocalist" at The Playground, and he approached the TB-303 as a source of rhythmic texture rather than trying to mimic a bass guitar.

Was The Playground The Birthplace Of Minimalism

In my opinion, yes. Yes it was. In my view, The Playground is the lost home of acid and techno. It was a laboratory for minimalism long before the term was codified. The club shifted the use of drum machines from being a crutch for beatmatching to a standalone aesthetic statement focusing on pure rhythm and bass. Unlike the "soulful" narrative of house music, The Playground focused on a "functional," mechanical, and industrial sound.

There are direct stylistic similarities between early tracks at The Playground (e.g. On And On Tracs) and 1990s minimalism, and there's a clear path of influences via the generations of Chicago producers. The innovations of Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) and Joey Beltram would not have happened without influences from The Playground.

Helikopter By Plastikman

The W.B.M.X. Link

The Playground was the laboratory for first generation Chicago house producers (Jesse Saunders and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk), but the second generation didn't all go to the Playground. Pierre went to The Playground but the Chicago producers who took up the mantle of minimalist house didn't all go to The Playground. There must be another link between the first generation of minimalist house and the second generation. The lab escape happened at The Playground, but WBMX was the vehicle for transmission.

Mike Dunn and Tyree Cooper absorbed the "Playground style" via WBMX radio. They recorded tapes of the "Hot Mix 5", which included Playground resident Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, and learned how to use drum machines to make minimalist beats.

This created the Englewood connection, in the South Side/Englewood neighborhood, where Mike Dunn was playing for youth too young or poor to visit downtown clubs like The Music Box. Mike Dunn was not a fixture at The Playground (the downtown club), but he followed a parallel path using the same drum machine philosophy. Jesse Saunders is the "Originator" because of his vinyl releases, but Dunn's "The M Rules" is one of the most techno-like early house records due to its cold, repetitive, percussion-focused structure. Although officially released in 1989, it is believed to have been produced in the mid-80s and played by Ron Hardy on tape for years before its release.

Second generation artists took this style and passed it onto the ghetto house generation after them, via Armando's Muzique records. Decades later, Berlin adopted the sound of The Playground as their signature.

A Blueprint For The Superclub

The Playground was a massive, single-room venue located on the second floor of an industrial building in Chicago's South Loop, with a size comparable to a football field. It had a centralised DJ Booth that was positioned in the dead center of the long wall rather than in a corner or on a stage, placing the DJ at the heart of the action. The open design fostered a high-intensity, communal experience.

The sound system of The Playground was very loud, with emphasis on bass. To prevent needles from jumping due to vibrations from seven-foot subwoofers, the entire DJ booth (including turntables and flight cases) was suspended from the ceiling by chains.

The club had bleacher-style seating along the walls so guests could rest without leaving the dance floor area. This resembles the school halls of the teen scene, but the club also has another strong resemblance to the superclub.

The First Superclub?

The superclub concept dominated the club scene in the 1990s with clubs like Gatecrasher, God's Kitchen and Manumission. The Playground appears to be a "prehistoric blueprint" for the superclub that predates the superclub concept by about two decades, and predates the first European superclubs by about a decade.

The most obvious similarity is the size of the club and the layout of the club. A massive single room was the format used by large clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s. There are a few reasons why this format works for superclubs. Having a single large room maximises income and minimizes booking fees. Economics is not the only reason though. Having a large single room puts the DJ at the centre of the event to fully embrace the cult of the DJ. By centering and elevating the booth, The Playground turned the DJ into a visual spectacle and icon, similar to the "DJ as God" staging at Gatecrasher.

There's also a resemblance between the crowd at The Playground, and the people attending superclubs in the 1990s. The Playground had a youth focus, and prioritised teenagers and college students over an older more sophisticated crowd (at least according to Frankie Knuckles), thereby creating a tribal identity for youth. This is similar to the dayglo identity of the Crasher Kids in the late 1990s.

Another similarity is the physicality of sound. Superclubs carry a physical force of sound, due to the size of the PA systems. The massive subwoofers of The Playground may have influenced the jacking bass sound of early house. Jacking bass was the defining sound of the first wave of house that broke the North of England. The style of jacking bass arguably peaked with No Way Back by Adonis.

Another similarity to the template of the superclub is due to the business savvy mind of Jesse Saunders. Saunders was able to understand the technical assemblage needed to take house into the big league. The club was treated as a brand through the use of logos on merchandise and flyers, anticipating the global franchising of later superclubs (e.g. Ministry of Sound). He promoted to the existing teen scene market, using tried and tested marketing techniques from the same scene, and brought in big names to help with the hype.

The Playground anticipated the same synergies that were exploited by superclubs: size, format, sound system, branding and the cult of the DJ.

One of the key differences to 90s superclubs was the production value and the finish. While they shared a format, the aesthetics of The Playground differed. Gatecrasher was polished with high budgets, neon, and lasers. The Playground was industrial chic, characterized by a gritty warehouse feel.

The Playground Vs. The Warehouse

The Warehouse is considered a place of worship in the history of house music, a "Cathedral" of House that is spiritual, soulful and uplifting. The playground was an industrial space, the "Factory" of house music that was industrial, mechanical and repetitive.

Frankie Knuckles viewed the practice of playing drum machines all night as "unsophisticated". This exact "lack of sophistication" was actually the birth of house music, because that's what made house different from disco and garage. The club's massive seven-foot subwoofers may have forced DJs to play minimalist tracks, as complex melodies would have sounded like "mud" at such high volumes.

Why Is The Playground Not Famous?

The origin of house music is often narrated using The Warehouse origin myth. This creates a "Disco Bias". Journalists have preferred this narrative of The Warehouse because its soulful, disco lineage was seen as classier. Another reason is that the Playground was a working class teen club (under-21) and journalists were not interested in a room of teenagers dancing to an 808.

There was also a lack of stewardship because Jesse Saunders moved to Los Angeles in the mid 80s, and there was no one left to maintain and promote the venue's legacy.

The End Of An Era

After Saunders left in 1984, the venue was renamed to The Candy Store and closed about a year later.