Week 7 Seminar on Youth Culture as part of MAC101 Introduction to Media Studies.

1. Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture
ACID HOUSE
and
MORAL PANICS

3. Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture
January - Steve 'Silk' Hurley has the first House number 1 with "Jack your Body“. The Times
newspaper reports the first ecstasy seizures in London. The drug, it says "Is used as a sexual
stimulant“
Early summer - Trevor Fung & Ian St Paul open a small bar in San Antonio called the Project (named after a
club in London Paul was partially running). It acts as a focal point for young British youth's out for a good
time on the island. Taking ecstasy and going to open air clubs like Amnesia where DJ's like Alfredo were
playing some of the early house imports.
September - Trevor and Ian invite their friend Paul Oakenfold to Ibiza for his birthday. Paul brings with
him Johnny Walker, Nicky Holloway and Danny Rampling. Trevor and Ian close the project bar and they
spend the rest of the summer back and forth between Amnesia and Cafe Del Mar.
Autumn - The newly converted Ibiza crew return to London and immediately they feel something has
changed. "How can they forget what has happened in Ibiza over the summer". Paul starts to open the
original Project club 'after hours'. At 2am when the club officially finished they would let the Ibiza crew in
and party until 6am. This lasts only a few weeks until the Police raid it.
November - Danny Rampling and Jenni open Klub Sch-oom (soon shortened to Shoom) at a fitness centre
near Southwark bridge, just south of the Thames in London. Two weeks later Paul Oakenfold holds the
first Future in the backroom of the Heaven, a huge club on London's Charing Cross.
The first acid house records were produced in Chicago, Illinois. Phuture, a group founded by Nathan "DJ Pierre" Jones, Earl
"Spanky" Smith Jr., and Herbert "Herb J" Jackson, is credited with having been the first to use the TB-303 in the house music
context (the instrument appeared as early as 1983 in disco via Alexander Robotnick).The group's 12-minute "Acid Tracks" was
recorded to tape and was played by DJ Ron Hardy at the Music Box, where Hardy was resident DJ. Hardy once played it four times
over the course of an evening until the crowd responded favourably.
Chicago's house music scene was suffering from a massive crack down of parties and events by the police. Sales of house records
were dwindling and by 1988, the genre was selling less than a tenth as many records as at the height of the style's popularity.
However, house and especially acid house was beginning to experience a massive surge in popularity in Britain.

4. January - Shoom adopts the a Smiley face logo from the for its flyers. The smiley face becomes the symbol
of acid house.
February - First Illegal warehouse parties held by Hedonism
March - Shoom moves to the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road, but there are still more people dancing and
partying outside than inside! So it then moves to a small club called Busby's. Joe Smooth's "Promised Land"
sums up the feeling surrounding Shoom at this time, as people take ecstasy, dance, smile & hug each other.
Concepts unheard of in such a stiff British culture. At a time when football violence was escalating, rival fans
dance together in an ecstasy induced euphoria thinking the world is going to change. - "...like angels from
above, come down and spread their wings like doves...“
March - Paul Stone & Lu Vukovic start RiP. They provide a harder edged party. Located in a labyrinth like
warehouse complex on Clink Street, near London Bridge, home centuries ago to Britain's first prison. RiP
sees Mr C (Later of the Shamen - who played their first experimental acid set at RiP) and Eddie Richards &
Kid Bachelor play a harder more underground house ("as opposed to the pop songs at Shoom" - Mr C) to a
very diverse crowd, from gangsters to people in shell suits. In Manchester the Hacienda's Hot & Nude nights
kick start acid house in the North.
Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture

5. Media attention
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, news media and tabloids devoted an increasing amount of coverage to the
hedonistic acid house/rave scene, focusing on its association with psychedelic drugs and club drugs. The sensationalist
nature of the coverage may have contributed to the banning of acid house during its heyday from radio, television, and
retail outlets in the United Kingdom. The moral panic of the press began in 1988, when the UK tabloid The Sun, which
only weeks earlier had promoted Acid House as "cool and groovy" while running an offer on Acid Smiley Face T-Shirts,
abruptly turned on the scene. On October 19, the tabloid ran with the headline "Evils of Ecstasy," linking the Acid
House scene with the new and relatively unknown drug. The resultant panic incited by the tabloids eventually led to a
crackdown on clubs and venues that played Acid House and had a profound negative impact on the scene.
Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture

6. Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture

7. Powers in relation to raves
63.Powers to remove persons attending or preparing for a rave
(1)This section applies to a gathering on land in the open air of 100 or more
persons (whether or not trespassers) at which amplified music is played during the
night (with or without intermissions) and is such as, by reason of its loudness and
duration and the time at which it is played, is likely to cause serious distress to the
inhabitants of the locality; and for this purpose—
(a)such a gathering continues during intermissions in the music and, where the
gathering extends over several days, throughout the period during which
amplified music is played at night (with or without intermissions); and
(b)“music” includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the
emission of a succession of repetitive beats.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1994/ukpga_19940033_en_8
Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture

8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgjog28R9_0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bsdUExawFg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFs2JSEqx8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyKDJeH3a74&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1AA4vK57dU
Week 7- Subcultures / youth culture