ACID HOUSE EXPERIENCE

ABOUT US

 

 

Acid House defines an entire generation of people that changed the very fabric of Great Britain and touched the lives of millions of people around the world. The A.H.E is dedicated to the ORIGINAL Acid House scene 1987-1992

 

 

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January - 1987 Steve 'Silk' Hurley has the first House number 1 with "Jack your Body" The Times newspaper reports the first ecstacy 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 ecstacy and going to open air clubs like Amnesia where DJ's like Alfredo were playing some of the early house imports.

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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 immediatly 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 untl 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.

1988

 

 

January - Shoom adopts the a Smilly face logo from the for its flyers. The smily face becomes the symbol of acid house.

February - First Illegal warehouse partys held by Hedonism View flyer

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 ecstacy, 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 ecstacy enduced 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 laberynth like warehouse complex on Clink Street, near London Bridge, home centuries ago to Britains first prison. RiP seees Mr C (Later of the Shamen - who played their first experimental acid set at RiP) and Eddie Richards & Kid Batchelor 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.The Hacienda

 

 

April - RiP (still at Clink) move to Fridays with their 'A-Transmision' nights and Sundays with 'Zoo'.

April 11th - Paul Oakenfold opens Spectrum in London. A brave move, in that it is to be held at Heaven, near Trafalgar Square (at the time one of the biggest club venues in London). To make matters worse it is held on Monday nights. Even so after 3 weeks they had 1200 people in every week with just as many locked out. Spectrum quickly gains a musical reputaion as anything goes. Paul Oakenfold even plunges the complete club into total darkness and played Tchaikovsky's 1824 Overture on one occasion. They also hold a few nights at Legends in Manchester and one party in a marque by the Thames.

June 4th - Nicky Holloway opens The Trip at London's Arstoria. This too is rammed every week. A full on street party erupts every night after it closes with people dancing in fountains and on cars. Passing drivers and Police are baffled by 100's of people chanting "Acieeeed!" View Flyer

 

 

June The Notorious Rave at the Cave Hosted by Dj's Ellis Dee & Chalk E White Trip City Ratpack,
The British public are introduced to 'smiley culture' and the corporate cash in began. Mass produced smiley & "Wheres the Acid House Party" T-shirts appear everywhere. There were even tabloid rumours that Ian Beale from the soap Eastenders would take LSD at a warehouse party and try to jump off a bridge.
The Sun newspaper initially cashes in with its own Smiley T-shirt but this is quickly abandonded, as the tide turns, with an anti-drugs one with a frowning smiley (frowny?) The BBC bans Jolly Roger's "Acid Man". Murray Beetson meets Craig Campell (fresh from an appearance from TV's Blind Date - hehe) while on holiday in Tenerife with Richard Clarke (DJ Clarkee). ESP promotions is born at the Roadmender, Northampton. A few packed nights called Bounce follow at Castaways (later renamed to Millwalkies).

 

 

August – Tony Colston-Hayter, disolusioned with the increasingly stricter door policy of Jenny Rampling at Shoom, holds his first partys at Wembly Studios under the name “Apocalypse Now” One the last night of Apocalypse Now he lets ITN news film the event. Interviews with the dj's are dropped in favour of 'shock' footage of 'spaced out kids'.

August 17th - The Sun publishes an investigation into the Heaven night club (then owned by Richard Branson) and home to Spectrum. Claiming "Junkies flaunt their craving by wearing T-shirts sold at the club bearing messages like 'can you feel it?' & drop acid not bombs'". They had taken the term Acid House and linked it with LSD rather than Ecstacy.
After The Sun's article on Heaven, Richard Branson tells Paul Oakenfold that he need only rename his club rather than shut it down. Spectrum closes but opens again within weeks renamed Land of Oz. At the end of the so called "Summer of Love" the ecstacy releated death of Janet Mayes at an illegal acid party sparks a Police crack down on warehouse partys. During one such raid at a party in Sevenoaks, 20 year old student Paul Hartnoll is beaten by uniformed officers. He recovers and goes on to form Orbital.

 

 

September 12th - Acid House is introduced to Liverpool as James Barton takes over The State ballroom to start Daisy. DJ's on the fisrt night are Andy Carroll & Mic Microdot. A young James Perkins starts a club nights in Cheltenham called Trance. Robert Darby and Leslie Thomas charged with "conspiring to manage premises where drugs were supplied" after organising a boat party on the Thames. They are sentenced to 10 and 6 years imprisonment.

October - Tony Colston-Hayter renames his organization to Sunrise after the bad publicity surrounding the last Apocalypse Now. The first event is stopped by Police.

 

 

October 1st - Grooverider & Fabio open Rage

 

 

November 5th - Sunrise sell 4000 tickets for their Guy Fawkes Edition party. As the event kicks off in a derelict gas works (where the film Full Metal Jacket was shot) riot Police raid it an shut down the music. At 5am the Police withdraw hopelesslly out numbered by people who climbed barbed wire fences and ran across dual carriageway's to get in. November 7th - The Daily Mail newspaper reports sunrises party as "evil night of Ecstacy"

December 10th - Genesis ('KP' & Wayne Anthony) do their first party in a warehouse near Aldgate, East London. December 24th - Genesis hold their second warehouse party. Held in an empty warehouse near Clapton Pond, Hackney. Genesis use thousands of old car tyres that littered the building to build a UV lit entrance tunnel and bar area. Combined with a christmas tree, parachutes, netting, inflatables & some new white canopees stolen from a nearby building site they are immediatly catapulted into the premier league of party organisers. The party attracts 900 people.

December 26th - Genesis return to the same warehouse (now with a written contract with the owner!). After initial problems with the electricity which see the first 300 or so people standing round in the dark, they are caught totally off guard as (mainly due to the reputation of the xmas eve party) 2000 people descend on the warehouse. The drink stocks were disapearing at such a rate that Wayne sent some people to a nearby 7-11 shop and bought every drink in the place at full price! Nice xmas bonus for the owner of that shop!

 

 

December 28th - Sunrise IV "Boxing Day in Heaven" December 30th - Sunrise V "Final Party", held at the Astoria. New Years Eve - Sunrise team up with Genesis for parties under the name Sunset at Leeside Road, Hackney, London. A venue already used by Genesis on Christmas Eve & Boxing Day. Tony Colsten-Hayter is confronted by a gang of thugs who demand a cut in the profits. This leaves him looking for party venues that do not fall within the 'terretories' of football gangs.

1989

 

 

January to April - Genesis / Sunset parties. "The Fight Goes On", "Against All Odds", "Hedonism" & "Strength to Strength". Inspired by what he had see at RiP, Joe Wieczorek starts holding illegal warehouse parties in various east end locations (Shacklewell Lane, Essex Road, Homerton & Ferry Lane to name a few). Labrynth is born. Around the same time, Andy Swallow and Tony Wilson having already run a succesfull after-hours club at Mile End, Hackney, starts Echos in a small club at the foot of Bow flyover, East London. Friday's are Tony Wilson's "Adrenaline" while Saturdays sees Andy Swallow's "Pasha". 

January 28th - RiP move to "The Dungeons" at Leabridge Road, Leytonstone. View Flyer

 

 

 

February 25th - Biology hold their first party in a film studio in Battersea. Labrynth hold a party in a dissused warehouse at Silverton Way, Canning Town. Labrynth move to a licenced venue, The Four Aces Club in Dalton.