Hi,;xNLx;;xNLx;My name's dj wuggs and I was what was known as a raver in Glasgow in the late 1980's and early 1990's. I then turned my hand to a bit of dj'ing when I thought there was better music out there than I could hear in the clubs. My friends and I organised a few illegal raves and a few club nights in Glasgow under the short lived "europort" banner.;xNLx;;xNLx;All in all we didn't conquer the world but we did our little bit in the story of the Glasgow club scene.;xNLx;;xNLx;I've been out of music for many years and my vinyl collection's been gathering dust in the garage. But recently I discovered that youtube had a fantastic archive of tunes from that period. This inspired me to start [my YouTube Channel](http://www.youtube.com/user/djwuggs?feature=mhee) ...more for my own listening benefit than anything else, and it really got me to thinking about the fantastic music that was out there at that time.;xNLx;;xNLx;I've had a look about online, and there really isn't that much out there documenting those days. At the time we were just mucking about and having a good time, but later the scene grew into something truly world class. Hence perhaps the need for [my blog](http://djwuggs.wordpress.com) - an archaeological study of the Glasgow techno scene . My aim over the next few weeks and months is to record what I did, when I did it and what I was listening to at the time!;xNLx;;xNLx;Hope you enjoy...
Deep house, acid and techno from 1988 to 1992. This blog is a tribute to Glasgow clubs The Warehouse (DJ Paul), UFO at Tin Pan Alley (DJ’s Adrian, Lars and Boydie) and Europort (my own club).
Click below for a History of House from 1985 to 1989
On 9 August 1986 the NME announced that the next big thing was Chicago House! NME was required reading in those days, and each new issue on a Saturday morning was hotly anticipated. I read it for the hip hop coverage, but also because I was a big Smiths fan at the time. When the NME spoke, especially with a front page splash on Farley Jackmaster Funk and Daryll Pandy, everyone took notice. They kept going on about a tune called “Love Can’t Turn Around” – I couldn’t wait to hear it.
Classic house from 1986,Label-Trax Records,catalog#: TX112,format 12" vinyl US 1986 Produced and written by Adonis
Classic House trax from 1986
Acid Traxx from 1986
The original 1987 version of the house classic by Jamie Principle and Frankie Knuckles
The tune that kicked Detroit into the Rave Age...
Glasgow in the mid 1980’s was a different world. It’s sometimes hard to remember but large parts of the city resembled a post-industrial wasteland. I grew up playing in abandoned steelworks and derelict sawmills. The place was just beginning a massive refurbishment programme of the old tenements, and half the city was still thick and black with 200 years of industrial pollution. Communism was alive and well in Eastern Europe and most people here still believed in the socialist ideal. Miner’s strikes, football hooliganism, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and near civil war in Northern Ireland gave the 80’s an end of the world feel. Forget champagne yuppies, porsches and Krystle Carrington – Glasgow was a city on the edge.
Scary stuff from acid master Chris Westbrook.
“Changing the subject completely, how did you get into the scene and who inspired you to do what you do know? I got into the dance scene after going to the now infamous club in Glasgow called the ‘Warehouse’ at around 1986/87, this is the place that converted me from hip hop to dance music, practically over night, and I ended up going there religiously every weekend as a raver! It was just such an amazing club and when I went there i always dreamed about djing there, I then went and blagged my case to the promoter, gave them a demo and eventually i managed to get a spot playing there one night, and from that one slot, I managed to secure myself a residency, and was resident there for almost 3 years until moving to my next one at Club Hacienda in Glasgow and then onto Euphoria at Heaven in Glasgow too and it was during this time from the warehouse onwards that it all just blew up for me.
Aceeeeeid!!!!!
Come 1989 and the native Belgian New Beat style had absorbed the lessons from house and techno and morphed into a really progressive heavy house style. We didn’t really have a name for it at the time and coined the term “Heavy Belgian Techno”.
“Clubbing in Glasgow in its recognisable modern form began to happen in the mid-’80s, but took some years to find the egalitarian, non-elitist, genre-melding character that defines the city’s better nights today. The Sub Club, still the first port of call in any serious consideration of the Glasgow scene, celebrates its 25th birthday this year, but was a very different place in its early years, as Alan Miller outlines: “The Sub Club was very yuppie-ish in the 1980s,” he says. “It was still a cool place, but it was very styley—it was somewhere you went if you had money. Most students and irregularly employed or unemployed people couldn’t afford to go, or would have to save up to have a night out there.” The city’s other clubs and club nights around that time were rigidly defined, Miller recalls: “indie nights were separate, goth nights were separate, and so on, and dance music could only really be found at the Sub Club.” As time went on a smattering of other clubs opened up—46 West, Tin Pan Alley, Radio City, the Cotton Club, all of them now long-defunct—”but people went there more because it was something to do, rather than to hear specific DJs or specific music.”
Dunlop Street in Glasgow was just off the waterfront on Clyde Street, and was home to the The Mardi Gras and Warehouse nightclubs. The Mardis Gras was the first night club to have a elevated dance floor in the U.K. I’ll be blogging later on the Mardis Gras, given it was the venue of our first under-18′s night in Glasgow city centre, and the fact that the dance floor actually moved from ground to basement level – very confusing in the middle of a rave.
The original 1988 12" single release launched The KLF's minimalist "Pure Trance" series of singles. The "Pure Trance" version is a synthesiser composition based around an acid house riff on three low-pitched notes and one minor chord (B minor). The subtle progression of the piece occurs through the modulation of the main loops, the dub-like dropping of particular loops, and a recurring high-pitched refrain on two notes (B bending to F#). An Oberheim OB-8 synthesiser provided the instrumentation. Two discs of different "Pure Trance" mixes, numbered KLF 004T (green writing on a black sleeve) and KLF 004R (yellow writing on a black sleeve, and a cover sticker), were given low-key releases on 24 November 1988 and 24 July 1989 respectively). The cumulative popularity of KLF 004T in continental European clubs prompted The KLF to release a compilation album of selected cover versions and sound-alikes, entitled The "What Time Is Love?" Story.[3] What Time Is Love?'s European acclaim also contributed towards The KLF's change of musical direction following their abortive film project, The White Room.[citation needed] As Drummond had predicted, the "Pure Trance" release received little attention from the music press. However, upon the release of The "What Time Is Love?" Story, Q Magazine hailed the track as "a whirling house stomper ... not so much of a tune but a good beat".
Classic Acid House from 1988.
Thinking back, I was lucky to grow up surrounded by great characters and people who had the vision to see beyond the mundaneness of day to day life.
Belgium? Yes Belgium! Belgium was arguably leading the world in hard house and techno in the late 80′s.
One of the all time great Acid Trax Released:1988
While Chicago and Belgium produced in your face, balls on the table tunes designed for dancing – the perfect rave music, places like Detroit and Holland have always been a little more circumspect, introverted and ultimately artful in their musical output.
HARDBEAT, the story so far …… Winter ’89, a new style of heavy dance music spreads rapidly across Europe. They call it Hardbeat. It sounds strange but everywhere it generates the same reaction, delirious dancefloors. The leading company promoting this music is “Complete Kaos Records”. Arguably there’s no other record label boss who stamped his own mark on his product as much as Maurice Engelen on “Complete Kaos Records”.
KLF, Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Jamms, The K Foundation. Call them what you will, but for me The KLF are one of the key musical innovators of the late 20th century.
Mental mental mental...
The lights come on. The lights go off. Blackout at the flick of God's switch! Nuff said.
Frankfurt's Torsten Fenslau at his greatest on the 1989 ZYX Records release.
I turned my shoulder instinctively to protect my face as a bottle flew towards me. Glancing off my upper arm the bottle smashed on the pavement beside me, amongst the fevered yells and cries of a riot.
A special mention in the history of late 80′s early 90′s Belgian music must be made of Frank de Wulf . One of my musical heroes – producing consistently high quality dance orientated techno.
There was a time that Rock and Roll was easy... now its ACID ROCK !!!
The Warehouse was mental. Absolutely mental. In fact it was mental, mental, mental !!! Slam can certainly claim to be where the summer of love kicked off in Glasgow. But at a critical juncture in the early rave scene the Sub Club stuck to the Balearic sound, house and garage, while places like the Warehouse and later Tin Pan Alley opened up to hard house, techno and Belgian New Beat.
Top rave tune from Madchester's finest
Here’s a blog from DJ Dribbler, as he reminisces about a pivotal night in Scotland’s clubbing history back in 1989 when we saw our first legally organised rave. I too was lucky enough to have a ticket for the Slam Schlitz Splashdown – in what turned out to be a legendary night featuring live performances from 808 State and Inner City and busloads of ravers from the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester.
Sheffield bleep and beeps comes to the fore
A rather good Bass and Bleeps mix from the wonderful JD Twitch.
Frankfurt moves from electronic body music to german techno
What happens when Belgian New Beat collides with Techno?? ... Yo Yo !!
New Beat is boring, Acid House is dead.... this is.... trance dance
Live the Dream....
It must have been early 1990 when the Slam DJ’s got a Saturday night slot at the legendary Hacienda. They organised two coaches to take down some support with them, so there was about 100 people there from the Glasgow scene. At the time we were rather disdainful of the Slam DJ’s and the SubClub mentality generally. At the time they had opted for a garage/house style and didn’t seem to be picking up on the Eurotechno movement. Of course later they became something of a techno institution, and we should be thankful, but at that particular moment the SubClub was still firmly up itself.
Monster Rave Tune
Top top Belgian rave tune from top top producer Frank DeWulf
JD Twitch aka Keith McIvor, has been growing steadily in reputation for a while now, mainly for his DJing skills, as one half of Optimo (Espacio), the now legendary Glasgow Sunday night party at the Sub Club he hosts with JG Wilkes, and also for his remixing/re-editing talents. But he is also quite handy with a pen and paper, as his epic history of 99 Records in this issue of Discopia proves. Though he is quite renowned on the Scottish scene, we thought it was about time his own story was told, for the benefit of our readers who may not have heard of him, his nights, or his music. Thankfully he had no qualms with an in depth interview. And even more thankfully for us, he can talk the legs off a donkey! Which in some people can be an annoying trait, but not here, when the patter is as top quality as this. An easy going guy with little pretensions, he readily admits that his first record he bought was either a Top of the Pops compilation, or worse still, Shawaddywaddy, but it wasn’t long before he stumbled on something that really grabbed his interest:
The Orb's ambient rave tune.
Here’s an interview with JD Twitch of Optimo and Pure fame. When I knew him he was plain old DJ Twitch and before that even plainer DJ Keith! I’ll be blogging about Pure myself as it really was a great club, and we had the pleasure of having Keith play at our europort raves.
Techno Rave at its best
Low Frequency Oscillation and the rise of WARP Records of Leeds.
Top techno from Dutch party capital Amsterdam
Hard House Hit
With thanks to Chris B for pointing me in the direction of these two Mix Tapes.
Belgian techno goes moody and sophisticated.
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