Acid Thunder By Fast Eddie (1988)

Fast Eddie (Edwin Smith) was the king of house music producers during the acid house era in the UK, although there were many contenders. Acid Thunder was Fast Eddie's breakthrough track in the UK. This was one of his earlier hits during the peak of the acid house craze in 1988.

Acid Thunder (Fast Thunder) By Fast Eddie

Acid Thunder wasn't Fast Eddie's first house record, but it was the first track in his own name that broke through in the UK, and it was played heavily by DJs. Fast Eddie had a string of club hits after Acid Thunder. He seemed virtuoso at the time, due to producing several top class house records in a row.

Hip House (Nightmare Mix) By Fast Eddie (1988)

Hip House was unusual for an acid track because the 303 riff actually makes sense as a bassline and an acid riff. Most acid records used the 303 purely for acid squelch. The call/response structure of the 303 pattern makes the first half of the 303 riff a bass, and the second half of the riff acid.

Yo Yo Get Funky By Fast Eddie

Yo Yo Get Funky was another big hit in the UK. Do This My Way by Kid 'N' Play had recently been a hit in the UK, mainly due to the sample of Cross The Track (We Better Go Back) by Maceo & The Macks. Cross The Track was getting played a lot as well in indie dance clubs, student nights and rare groove parties. Yo Yo Get Funky had the same (already popular) sample, and was released just at the right time for the peak of hip-house. It also had a sample heavy sound that was common in UK house.

I find the bassline of Yo Yo Get Funky interesting and quirky, because it sounds like an FM synth, but the pattern is like an acid pattern. Although Fast Eddie changes his sound on this record to lean into hip-house, his bass programming still has something of an acid house aesthetic.

I Can Dance By Fast Eddie

"I Can Dance" is my favourite track from Fast Eddie because it's a track that captures 1987 and 1988 in the UK. This was released as a B Side due to it being a remix of Can U Dance by Kenny "Jammin" Jason, a track that Fast Eddie had previously made with Kenny "Jammin" Jason.

Fast Eddie released two great albums at his peak in the late 1980s, but like many early Chicago house artists, his career was badly managed. Even though he was very successful, he should have had more hits and been better known. The strategy of releasing two albums without more 12" singles didn't make sense. DJ International was playing the old game of radio instead of playing the new game of getting played in clubs. This was probably an attempt to become a major label, but the end result was to mishandle house artists in the same way that major labels did at the time. There was no point in focussing on radio play when radio wasn't playing house music. Radio friendly mixes were also not club friendly. Labels needed to pick a lane, either radio or club, and the correct choice for house artists was the club.

Radio stations want vocal music because it makes ads sound less jarring, but there's no natural incentive towards pop songs in a club. The thing that works in clubs is what gets people dancing, and pop creates frictions that are a problem for that. DJ International tried to follow the Motown "hit factory" model, and leaned into R&B styled house music. There were influential figures in the UK who also wanted to push house in the direction of radio because that was the conventional wisdom. Southern England was late in adopting house music due to their bias for the old rare groove scene. Rocky Jones probably had confirmation bias from hearing the same arguments from major labels and UK industry insiders. The wisdom of the time was that radio was what mattered. It turns out they were wrong, and the market wasn't interested in radio friendly house music.

The incompetence of record labels was also a major factor in taking Chicago off the board at a time when dance music was exploding worldwide. The labels that broke Chicago artists worldwide also tied them in knots at the worst possible time. As a UK fan of Chicago house music at the time, I was very sad when I heard that many Chicago artists couldn't release music because of contracts they had signed. A label that was taking off when the big Chicago labels were dying was NuGroove. Although it was from New York, it was doubling down on the Chicago sound, instead of trying to move towards pop.