My 1980S Clubbing Story

This article is a timeline of my clubbing experiences in the 1980s. I was 13 years old in 1981, but I'd had my growth spurt and I was already over six feet tall. Goth, New Romantic and alternative music were popular during the first half of the 1980s. With those extreme fashions of the time, it was quite easy to make myself look older and get into clubs.

I'm from the North of England, and I mainly went to clubs in the North. I went to London and Berlin a few times, but they were backwaters from a perspective of the Northern England in the 1980s.

The School Disco Years (1981 - 1983)

My first experience of going out was going to a school disco. I went to school discos from 1981 to 1983. It was the new romantic era, and the tracks that were played at my school disco were new wave and new romantic tracks. Kids at my school used to do the robot dance when Kraftwerk came on.

The Sound Of The Crowd By The Human League

The Model By Kraftwerk

This is the sound that Electroclash recreated in the early 2000s, with tracks like Ready 2 Wear and Silver Screen (Shower Screen) by Felix Da Housecat.

Concerts (From 1982 Onwards)

I started going to concerts when I was still at school. The first concert I went to was Depeche Mode in 1982. I was 14 years old and my parents insisted on my older sister going with me. In 1983 I went to see David Bowie and I had a chaperone for that as well because the concert was in Milton Keynes (and I'm from the North).

I also saw New Order and Linton Kwesi Johnson in 1983. Later in the 1980s I saw Queen, Burning Spear, African Head Charge, Darryl Pandy, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald and Richie Rich. There are some lesser known bands as well that I can't remember the name of.

Blue Monday By New Order

Alternative And Goth Clubs (From 1983 Onwards)

I started going to alternative and goth clubs when I was 15. I went to The Limit, The Mainline, Spiders, The Hacienda and The Banshee. These are some tracks I remember being popular in alternative and goth clubs.

Dead Eyes Opened By Severed Heads

Yashar By Cabaret Voltaire

Alternative clubs did sometimes play house music from 1984 onwards. The type of house music that they played varied, depending on the club. The more underground alternative clubs would play stripped back and darker house music.

Pump N The Bass By Farley Funkin Keith

The Hacienda was very commercial, and it didn't play house music in 1984 or 1985 when house was breaking through. The Hacienda only started playing house music quite late (compared to everyone else) around 1988. The Hacienda would play commercial house music towards the end of an alternative set. The record I remember being played the most in The Hacienda during 1988 was Helyom Halib.

Helyom Halib By Cappella

It might seem strange that the Hacienda was playing such poppy house music, but John Peel also played commercial house tracks a lot, and that was the sort of thing that an older person who liked alternative music would know. Their track selection mirrors the taste of an older clubber in the 1980s, and it's likely they were catering to their audience. The Hacienda was one of the few clubs that wasn't just for young people. The Hacienda switched to a younger crowd who liked house music after the success of Hot in 1988, which was on a Wednesday.

I went to the Hacienda quite a lot during both its alternative phase and its house era. It's surprising to me that people talk about it as a pioneer. Everyone at my school liked house music years before the Hacienda played any house records. House was a massive craze across the UK for young people in the 1980s. It wasn't just that the Hacienda were behind the cool kids. They were behind all the kids. We saw them as very late to the party, and when they eventually played house music it was generally quite conservative piano house.

Towny Clubs (From 1984 Onwards)

When I was 16 I started going to towny clubs. These were the main clubs to break house music in the North of England in 1985. Mr Smiths in Warrington was probably the best known club of this type, but every town and city had several of them. Towny clubs were big and had multiple rooms. The main room in a towny club played pop music. They would play whatever pop you could dance to. It could sometimes be the worst type of cheese. House would never be played in the main room. The sort of track they would prefer to play in a main room in 1985 would be something like Rhythm Of The Night by DeBarge. Main rooms had the odd track that wasn't cheese. Sometimes they would play dance adjacent music like Chant No. 1 by Spandau Ballet, Beat Box by Art Of Noise, White Horse by Laid Back, or Cccan't You See by Vicious Pink.

Cccan't You See (French Extended Mix) By Vicious Pink

Young people wanted music that was more underground than the main room. These large clubs had two or three rooms though, and the second room would be a house room. In 1984 there weren't many house records, but a lot of house tracks came out in 1985, and by 1985 people started to know the difference between house music and other types of dance music. The Electro and Streetsounds albums had been coming out for years by 1985, and dance music was already very popular in the UK. The first house tracks were appearing on Streetsounds in 1985, and there were a lot of import house tracks available for DJs to buy. House was also being written about in Record Mirror, and DJs knew what it was even if punters didn't.

It was room two in the mainstream clubs that broke house music in the North of England in 1985. By 1986 house music was really popular and it became a national craze. Mainstream radio didn't play house music. Pirate radio was only in cities. Niche record shops were places to buy music, not discover music, and they weren't in all the towns either. Towny clubs were the only places that were playing house music early, and also had the national reach to rival mainstream radio.

By 1986 the room-two DJs in towny clubs had a lot of house music in their record boxes. It was so popular with young people that it was difficult to get into the second room in a big club because the room was usually packed. Room two was packed out even when the rest of the club wasn't busy. The most noticeable thing about those rooms were the basslines, and the style of 1985/1986 was jacking bass.

Time To Jack By Chip E (1985)

7 Ways (Instrumental) By Hercules (1986)

I.M.N.X.T.C. By Denise Motto (1986)

Bring Down The Walls By Fingers Inc. (1986)

Beat It By Disco D (1986)

The main hit record of the summer of 1986 was House Nation. It didn't get in the charts that year, but it was played everywhere. I also remember it being a more stripped back version than the version that got in the charts a year later.

In the autumn of 1986 Love Can't Turn Around became the first house record in the UK charts, but how did everyone hear it? It wasn't broken by radio, because radio didn't play it. Most people weren't reading James Hamilton in Record Mirror to find out about house releases. Pirate radio didn't have the reach to break records nationally. The "cool" clubs where older people went weren't playing house music yet. There wasn't anywhere else that had the reach to break a house record nationally except the towny clubs. The house music craze of 1986 and 1987 was due to the towny clubs that had been playing house music since 1985.

Towny clubs started to fall behind in 1987. The house scene was splitting at this point. Acid house was really big in 1987 and there were nights that only played house music by this point. Some were playing "traditional" house, and some were playing nothing but acid. Warehouse raves were spreading to the North as well, but playing the Northern style of bass-driven house instead of the rare groove that was played in the South. This was only a year before the Lancashire raves started, and dancing in a field was soon to become the norm for young Northerners.

Towny clubs did catch a break from the Balearic craze in 1988, because that was quite a pop sound that was acceptable to clubs that wouldn't play acid house. That was enough to keep them going until the Italo wave, and then Euro house. Although the scene was getting much bigger, it was splitting and getting more diverse. After 1987, towny clubs were never a place where you might expect to hear new music.

House Parties (From 1985 Onwards)

Throwing a party is a rite of passage for teenagers. There were parties when I was at school, but when I was a student there were a lot more. I would make compilation tapes of house music and take them with me to parties to try to get them played at the party. This was quite competitive because other people would do this as well. You had to have the latest tracks from the last couple of months (at most). If you didn't have music that people hadn't heard before, then the tape would be swapped for someone else's tape.

Student Nights (From 1986 Onwards)

When I had a student union card I could go to student nights. I started going to student nights in 1986. These are quite formulaic and the same everywhere. They play a mix of old and new popular music. House music was getting played at student nights from 1987, especially Pump Up The Volume by MARRS.

Pump Up The Volume By M|A|R|R|S

House Nights And Club Music (From 1987 Onwards)

Acid house was being pushed by Chicago labels in 1987, and club nights advertised as acid nights started around autumn 1987. The UK house releases were more commercial than imports, so at this time we mostly bought imports directly from Chicago, with Trax being the best known label. I remember one acid night in Hull in 1987, but I can't remember the name of it. The bigger house only nights tended to flop, but smaller clubs like Man Alive in Manchester could play very niche music and still fill the club.

Acid Tracks By Phuture

Where's Your Child By Bam Bam

151 By Armando

Rabbit Trax I By James "Jack Rabbit" Martin

The US acid was genuine acid music, but the UK acid house was often a pop crossover with more instruments than a 303. UK acid house didn't start coming out until 1988 (mostly) but there were some pre-release tracks circulating in late 1987. Stakker Humanoid was the first UK acid track that I remember getting in the charts, and that didn't chart until 1988.

There were a few fashions associated with acid house. Wearing the acid smiley was seen as a bit of a cliche, but wearing all white was common. Flares, Kickers, lots of beads and white gloves are all rave fashions that started with acid house fashion. Fashions could change multiple times in a single year in the 1980s, with both clothes and music.

Raves And Warehouse Parties (From 1988 Onwards)

In the North of England, we mainly danced in clubs. We had house parties, free festivals and beach parties (on the East coast), but we didn't have warehouse parties or raves. The concept of raves and warehouse parties didn't come from the North. We got that idea from London.

Warehouse parties were written about in the music press for a long time before they took off in the North. I remember reading about them in the mid eighties, and warehouse parties had been happening in London since the early 1980s. This predated the imported US dance culture, so warehouse parties didn't start with house music. When raves eventually happened, they were a combination of the UK warehouse parties with the new house music from Chicago.

I read about Mutoid Waste parties in the mid 80s and I was really inspired by what they were doing. When I was an art student we had sculpture parties with our own artwork. The Dogs Of Heaven in Hulme also started having annual bonfire events with massive auto-destructive sculptures. These were wooden sculptures built to be burned on bonfire night. This was another annual tradition that was added to Hulme's annual summer punks picnic.

When raves caught on in the North, they caught on in a big way. The Blackburn raves of 1989 are some of the biggest and best known raves of the 1980s, with up to 10,000 people at the biggest event.

I preferred smaller events. In Hulme there were a lot of squat parties. A squat party is where someone would break into a property that was empty, and then convert it into a party flat for the purpose of holding a party. In Wales they had raves in fields. My favourite event to visit was the rave in a cave near Oswestry. This was held in a multi-room cave that had been expanded in the middle ages.

Raving reached its peak in 1992. By then they were literally everywhere. For example, in Hulme there would be a parties on Birley Fields, in car parks, in the garages, in party flats, and all on the same weekend.

It was too good to last. After 1992 raving was attacked from all sides. Violent criminals would hijack parties and charge entrance fees. Muggers would wait to rob people leaving the raves. The government was cracking down as well. After the famous Castlemorton rave of 1992, the UK government passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which criminalised raves.

Mutoid Waste and Spiral Tribe went abroad and became part of the foundations of the Teknival scene in Europe. I have mixed feelings about the raves of the 1980s and early 1990s. It's sad that the UK government eventually crushed youth culture. However many of the warehouse parties were not safe. My view is that large events are inherently unsafe, and this includes the licensed legal festivals. I think it would be much safer to allow more events that don't go above 5000 capacity, but the current licensing system encourages larger events because they're the ones that make money.

Rave wasn't a music genre (although some people see it that way) and a variety of music was played at free parties and raves. The music that was played was the music of the day, for example hardcore, piano, acid techno and prog.

Deejaying And Producing (1988 Onwards)

I'd been collecting records and making house music party tapes since 1986. By 1988 I was obsessed with ideas of how to make parties better. One of my friends from college deejayed and told me it was easy to learn, so I bought a pair of vinyl record decks and a mixer in 1988. I tried to learn DJing, but I had no idea what I was doing. I'd bought a pair of record decks without pitch controls because I didn't know what beat matching was. Although I could cut between tracks, I couldn't beat match because there was no pitch control on the decks.

Somehow I realised I needed a pitch control on the decks, and I swapped one of the decks I'd bought with one that my Dad had with a pitch control. That allowed me to practice beatmatching. By 1989 I'd learned to beat match. I then bought a second-hand Soundlab belt-drive deck, which was the cheapest DJ deck you could get at the time. This was enough for me to take my decks to parties and DJ at parties. I started pitching to people for gigs at parties and clubs in 1989.

By 1989 acid music was really old. Traditional house was still popular but it was a really commercial sound. I didn't have any special access to a new sound but I knew the lessons of Northern Soul and Chicago House. I knew you could make a new sound by selecting things and putting them together in a different way to make something new. At the time I was trying to make something new by selecting anything that sounded different from the previous few years. This is the music I was playing in 1989.

Things Just Don't Make Sense By Longsy D

Let It Roll By Doug Lazy

And The Beat Goes On By D.M.S.

Funky Acid Makossa By Frankie Bones

Funky Zulu By The Moody Boys

I pitched to the Sound Garden in 1989 to start a house night there because their Saturday night wasn't doing well. Unfortunately 808 State had pitched for the same night at the same time. I didn't get the night, but I wasn't disappointed because they were the biggest name in Manchester dance music at the time. Not only that, but they had a new sound. 808 State started playing hardcore in 1989 and they followed this with Cubik in 1990, their first hardcore release. These were the biggest tracks that 808 state were playing in 1989.

Acid Rock By Rhythm Device

What Time Is Love By The KLF

I managed for a couple of years with one hi-fi deck that happened to have a pitch control, and one cheap Soundlab DJ deck that had a faulty start button. I was mostly deejaying at rave/warehouse parties that were common at the time. These could be in a variety of locations: fields, car parks, garages, warehouses or squatted properties. I also deejayed at a lot of house parties and ran a few club nights. The best known of these was The Kitchen in Hulme. My favourite of my DJ gigs was a residency that I had at a different squat party in John Nash Crescent in Hulme . In 1991 I turned this into Manchester's first acid techno night, where I played the early acid-techno on labels like Djax-Up, Stealth, Muzique, Plus 8 and UR.

Slight Interrupt By Ismistik

Trancient By Food For Woofers

The M Rules By The M.D. Connection

Quadrasonic By Underground Resistance

One downside of sending demos out is that people will copy your sound. When I started sending DJ demos out in 1989, I found there were coincidentally a lot of club nights opening that were copying my sound, by the same people I'd sent demos to! This was common practice in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the biggest names in UK dance music were basically crooks who stole from the creativity of the UK scene.

In 1992 I decided I wanted to make dance music as well as deejaying, and I bought myself an Atari with Cubase, a drum machine, a synth and a tone module. I did have a little bit of musical education from about ten years earlier at school but that had never motivated me to make music. I had guitar lessons and music lessons at school but found them quite boring. My friends and I tried to make synth music at school as well (using a DR-55, VL-1 and Bontempi organ) but we never achieved much. It was the dance music of the 80s that eventually motivated me to start making music, when music lessons had the opposite effect.

Looking back, there are a lot of things that contributed to the explosion of UK dance music in the 1980s: the club infrastructure of the North, the DIY attitude of post-punk, the legacy of synth bands. These are just some of the influences on UK dance music from those early days.