It began at around 6pm in Basel, Switzerland. Chemist Albert Hofmann described being interrupted at work by “unusual sensations”. Accompanied by his lab assistant, Hofmann left for home.
“At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with a intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours.”
The next day Hofmann looked for explanations, concluding that the substance he was synthesising was more potent than he thought and that it must have been absorbed through his fingers. The substance, deriving from the colourless, odourless salt from ergotamine – itself a derivative of a fungus found naturally on rye seeds – was being produced to experiment in new ways to reduce blood pressure.
What Hofmann did next is history. Ingesting 0.25mg, he rides his bike home.
“Was I dying?” Hofmann later questioned, no, he wasn’t. The chemist had just taken the first acid trip. He had synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide; LSD; acid.
Forty years later in New York, the ‘80s are alive with the sound of disco. Predominantly black at first, the four on the floor beat of disco is soon enjoyed by people across the country. However something special happened when it reached Chicago. Some argue that there was already a move away from disco (as it became tainted by imitators), others that advances in electronic production techniques sparked a change. Either way the simple, reverberating beat of disco evolved into something new: house.
The name is thought to have been taken from Chicago’s foremost house club, The Warehouse. With the addition of drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals and synthesised basslines, the new genre shared many characteristics with disco, but it was more electronic and minimalistic; the repetitive rhythm of house became more important than the song itself.
The Chicago house scene exploded. The ever-increasing use of synthesisers made for a more electronic, ‘squelchy’ sounding sub-genre: acid house. In 1987 Shoom, a new club situated in a former South London Fitness Centre opened its doors to a unsuspecting, audience.
“We thought there was a fire,” laughs DJ Terry Farley. “Lashings and lashings of smoke coming out. It was obviously dry ice or strawberry-flavoured smoke or whatever they did down there. But at the time, I just thought, “Oh my God, what the fuck is going on?’”
Shoom went on to change the way we experience music. Socially desperate times provoked rebellion and hatred towards the state, Shoom looked to provide a happy relief from ‘real’ life. Ever wondered where that grinning yellow face comes from? It’s here, “The Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Shoom Club”.
Shoom DJ Danny Rampling describes the feeling of the club. “It wasn’t a dark, moody club, it was a celebration of life. Britain at the time was pretty bleak, the economic landscape was dire, it was very divided, Shoom was about a happy state of hedonism.”
Perhaps worth noting, those happy smiling faces, adopted as acid house’s unofficial logo, rather closely resembled pills…
Diligent attention to state policy was not top of the agenda for most 20-somethings during the late ‘80s, despite the divisive state of politics at the time. Instead free flowing drugs – acid and ecstasy – fuelled a house party that is arguably still going.
How can we blame the youth of yesterday for rebellion when the fast track to police attention was listening to a series of repetitive records with the intention of dancing? That’s right, Maggie was not a fan of dancing. With acid house banned from radio, television and retail outlets, the press seized a chance to ridicule the hedonistic ways of rave, suggesting that acid house parties practiced in occultism and unprotected sex – a scare tactic, just as HIV was becoming known to the Western world.
Photographer Gavin Watson recalls that the state was kept out of mind until it was unavoidable. “Politics became superfluous during rave. All of the bullshit that Thatcher was coming out with started to fall on deaf ears, because we were so wrapped up in the culture that we just didn’t have time to care about politics.”
But keeping it out of mind was not so easy. “Because a few people had the power to assemble thousands of young people with a phonecall, the government thought there was a political angle to it,” says DJ Andrew Weatherall. “There wasn’t.”
The lack of availability of legal club venues made it worse for the ravers; setting up in abandoned warehouses, they were literally waiting for the police to come and shut them down.
“Rave was more about unity,” explained Watson. “Because it was kind of this big, inclusive faceless mass and, unlike other scenes, there weren’t really any faces for society to grab on to and scapegoat, which was frustrating for the government and media at the time.”
“I also feel like the social pressures that got people seeking a release from rave did a lot of good things. It helped to make the racial divide less of a divide and to break down the sexual taboos of gay and straight. It brought everyone together.”
Although you’d be hard-pressed to find a house night in York with songs resembling the spiralling rhythms of Donna Summer et al, there is a definite trace from modern house back to its disco routes. Undoubtedly, the current evolution of house is trailing off, with people making the move back to disco, but it’s less the derivation in type of house, it’s more the sentiment behind the music that will last.
Joe Goddard puts it rather nicely, “I really don’t want to sound too cheesy but I believe that house can be a kind of secular spiritual experience when it’s done right. I like music that attempts to create that kind of mood rather than singers who essentially complain about their own problems.”
And 70 years and one month after Hofmann’s discovery, the idea of an experience of escapism if still appealing, though perhaps through music rather than drugs.
“It was a really transformational time,” says Farley. “People were telling me, ‘I’ve just made a record’ and you’d go ‘but you’re a postman. What do you mean you’ve made a record?’”
“The legacy of Shoom would be the fact that there was eventually a club in Swindon playing house music for kids who’ve never heard of Shoom, dressing like Shoomers.”
And that club in Swindon is free to play what it wants to pretty much anyone. Twenty years on, in an era of the iTunes playlist, it seems ridiculous to think we wouldn’t be allowed to play house or rock or any once conflicting genres of music in the same place. Shoom, and the rise of house, broke down those barriers once and for all.
“When politicians act like they’re morally outraged and ask questions in parliament, they get kudos by being seen to be ‘upholders of morals’. But the people that are breaking the morals, the youth cult, they also get kudos, because young people like to shock. Shock sells records and sells tickets to acid house parties,” explains Weatherall. “Youth culture is very symbiotic; the man and youth cult are two sides of the same coin, really.”
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