We’ve got a special Chicago connection coming to town this month for mona. All house heads know that Chicago is the official birth place of house music, even if I believe it was also spawned simultaneously in New York and Detroit. But I think Chicago was probably the first place to actually make a whole scene based around House and of course the Warehouse club, where Frankie Knuckles made his name, gave the genre the shortened name it has today.

I was a teenager living in Manchester at the time the first House music records were being released on independent labels out of Chicago such as Trax, DJ international and Jack Trax. When house music began to filter out of Chicago one of the first places to embrace it was Manchester. Around 1986 I noticed a new scene quickly developing around this strangely binary yet extremely soulful and emotional from of music, with DJs, dance crews, radio shows and specialist club nights being held in places like the Playpen, the Gallery and then the Hacienda – which later became very famous for it’s role as the hub of the madchester scene right at the end of the 80s. I was too young to attend clubs at the time so the closest I got to experience the house feeling was Stu Allen’s radio show on Sunday nights on Piccadilly radio 261. I still have tapes from those shows at home. This was the first time I ever heard house – aside from top ten chart hits Steve Silk Hurley ‘Jack your body’ and Farley Jack Master Funk’s cover of Issac Haye’s ‘love can’t turn around’. Stu’s shows were actually 3 hours long and split into three equal parts : Souled Out (the latest 80s soul), Buss Diss (Hip Hop which was also an emerging scene, but slightly more developed) and then the house hour – House music always had an evident connection to Soul right from the start, regardless of what old school purists thought at the time – which featured the excellent ‘it’s time for house’ intro.

In the beginning I never used to listen to the house hour as it was late at night and my parents would always make sure I was fresh for school on Monday mornings. But decided to listen through one night and what I heard blew me away, a combination of futuristic deep synth sounds combined with fierce dance beats, a sensation of travelling through a whole new musical space. That was house, something so different from the other forms of dance music I’d heard at the time, something made with machines yet so rich in emotion. I can’t say I liked every single track I heard but it was definitely a completely new dimension and I’ve never looked back since. Needless to say I’m very much looking forward to this Chicago special at mona that will feature one of the original artists and djs from back in the day!

Just to take you back, here’s a bit of one of Stu Allen’s shows. This link is from a great site called Manchester Radio Music. It features one of Stu’s later shows judging from the music I guess it was done in 1989 or 1990 by which time Stu had moved on from Piccadilly to Key 103. I will  record one of my own personal tapes of Stu’s early house shows to put up here one day! Make sure you read more about Stu Allan in Greg Wilson’s excellent electro funk roots web site here

And below is amazing footage shot in Moss Side Manchester around 1986 showing the moves of Foot Patrol the best dance crew in town at the time. Check out the moves, styles, spats and whistles! I really hope the vibe in clubs today will move back to be centered around dancing like it was back in those days.