Talk:Acid house

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[edit] Genesis P'Orridge?

The following was deleted by 67.180.61.179:

When Genesis P-Orridge visited Chicago in the late 1980s, he checked out acid house music, thinking at first that "acid" referred to LSD. He brought the sounds back to England and began developing with his band Psychic TV a more psychedelic sounding acid house music, including samples from 1960s exploitation films, from Timothy Leary, etc

The deleter claims that GPO had nothing to do with acid house history. The above is consistent with what I understood about it, and Psychic TV's early acid house albums seem to be recognized as the beginning of the genre. Am I wrong about this? Can we substantiate its origins elsewhere? If this is correct, I think the paragraph should be put back in. --csloat 06:36, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GPO did have nothing to do with the origination of acid house, is not a part of that genres history, and his music that he describes as acid house is extremely unlike acid house. Psychic TV always was essentially Genesis working with whatever musician friend he had at the time. Here is an interview with his main collaberator of that era, Fred Gianelli, the composer of almost all the "acid house" psychic tv albums:

http://fopi.net/inter/fred.htm

Go down to the question which says "Did Genesis P-Orridge really invent acid house"? That alone doesn't prove that he didn't do it, I just showed it to see why the misconception is widespread. The real proof is just to listen to the many older acid house albums and artist which predate PTV's "acid house" records. Look at artists like DJ Pierre who went under the name Phuture and 808 State, all in england, all earlier. Also look at cybotron and Juan Atkins. — 15:46, 3 October 2004 (MDT) 68.175.52.134

interesting stuff. I think the entry should say at least that GPO claimed to have invented the genre and did put out records that many consider to be -- and in fact were marketed as -- acid house. That's what I was listening to in the late 80s (in Chicago) and it didn't occur to me or anyone else I knew at the time to question that it was acid house, especially when he had samples on the records of people saying "This is Acid House" and so on.... (and we were well aware of Juan Atkins too at the time). I mean, it seems pretty nitpicky to claim that is not "really" acid house at that point. But I'm well aware of stories Genesis' ego and don't doubt that what this guy says in the interview is true. Even so, I think it's an exaggeration to say he had nothing to do with the genre; and as I recall he really didn't claim to have invented it in the interviews I read (this is back in the 80s; I haven't paid much attention to GPO since then, so he may have made more grandiose claims since), but he did claim to be instrumental in popularizing it in England. Which does actually make sense; and what was going on in Chicago and Detroit was in the end influenced by its popularity in Europe. So I think there should be some mention of GPO here, even with a link to the Gianelli interview. — 03:18, 4 October 2004 (MDT) csloat

"I think the entry should say at least that GPO claimed to have invented the genre and did put out records that many consider to be -- and in fact were marketed as -- acid house."

Noting that GPO claimed to have invented the genre might be a good idea. Its also true that many consider his releases to have been "acid house". However every single person I've ever heard who has believed that was a psychic tv fan who really listened to no other acid house, and most had a false idea of the genre defintion as having to do with sampling instead of the 303 ressonance effect. No serious acid house fan would consider the GPO records to be acid house, even though they were marketed that way. You mention Juan Atkins but even that is somewhat of a mistake insofar as that he is considered "techno" or "detroit techno". The ultamite reality though is that these sub genres are like drug rumours, they are constantly bandied about without regard to a consistant definition (don't get me started on goa trance vs. psytrance.

"Even so, I think it's an exaggeration to say he had nothing to do with the genre" - He obviously had something to do with SOME genre of music, but he certainly didn't invent acid house. In the history of acid house he is certainly not notable insofar as invention or influencing other real acid house artists. He is notable for many other things like inventing industrial music. He might by some stretch be responsible for popularizing acid house in britain, insofar as he claimed what he made was acid house and caused fans to explore real acid house. Nevertheless, a major force in acid house existing in england at about the same time 808 State. — 01:25, 19 October 2004 (MDT) 67.180.61.179

In the GPO interview in the film Better Living Through Circuitry, no such claim of inventing acid house is made. Rather, he says he was in a record store where they had acid house records from Chicago, and he became enamored of the sound and had an epiphany about the tempo being crucial to inducing a higher state of consciousness, and immediately sought to incorporate that aspect, and other hallmarks of the sound, into his own music. I don't know if this conflicts with other claims. — mjb 14:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Drug connections, and which drugs?

IIRC, in the book Ecstasy: Dance Trance and Transformation, one of the Phuture members a knowledgable figure reveals that the rumors that acid house was about sample-biting or that it originally had nothing to do with LSD are entirely false -- the acid in acid house was always about acid, period. If anyone has access to this literature, please update this article accordingly. — mjb 14:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The connection between acid house and ecstasy are well-documented and indisputable. There are no such connections specifically to LSD, however. LSD was mostly a baby-boomer drug associated with 1960s psychedelia and acid rock; its use declined since the 1970s, due to difficulties in obtaining the precursors and the rising popularity of alternative drugs, and MDMA/ecstasy was the in drug when acid house came about. The word acid was most probably added by a lazy journalist unaware of current trends in recreational drug use. This has been mentioned in a number of books on the history of dance music, including Sheryl Garratt's "Adventures in Wonderland". Acb 13:54, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You mean, it was coined for a drug use, even if the type of drug was wrong? --201.19.190.191 16:51, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Most probably, yes.

In the UK LSD was a very popular drug (more so than Ecstacy in the 87-88 period) I was there so I know, Smiley's, Purple Om's, and various other pictures were used on the tabs (small squares of paper impregnated with LSD) and on flyers etc.

But true Acid House as defined by the likes of Phuture, Armando et al does not rely on sampling other records (there goes the "Acid burn" theory) and the term refers to the liquid, spiky resonant sound produced by the TB-303, which does make a lot of sense if you think about it. A lot of UK acts jumped on the bandwagon with sampling and "cut up" music (as it is correctly known) was bandied by know nothing journalists as Acid House. Early examples of authentic UK Acid House are "Stakker" and their track "Humanoid" and "This ain't Chicago" with their track "Ride the Rhythm" there were a few others too, but most of the UK stuff was just "cut up" and seldom contained any 303 at all. Like most genre's of music though the term was bastardised and Acid House became the name for any moderately paced dance track between 1988-1989.

Another popular (and equally false) myth is that Section 25 created the first Acid House track, but anyone familiar with that track would agree it IS NOT Acid House.

Another way to think about it: if LSD was the acid-house drug of choice, acid house would sound a lot less repetitive and a lot more spaced out. Acb 23:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. - mjb 02:47, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, I finally found the source I was thinking of. This appeared in Ecstasy: Dance, Trance & Transformation by Nicholas Saunders with Rick Doblin (1996), but it actually predates that. It was apparently published in an essay on Saunders's ecstasy.org site (which I host!) for a time, but it originally appeared in a 1991 essay published in the Libertarian newsletter Political Notes (ISSN 02677059), issue 55 (ISBN 1856370399). The author is Paul Staines, and the article is Acid House Parties Against the Lifestyle Police and the Safety Nazis:

The origin of the term Acid House is the subject of some debate. It was claimed in the debate in the House of Commons, as well as endless articles in the music press, that contrary to popular belief Acid House Parties did not derive their name from the colloquial term for the hallucinogenic drug LSD. The term acid, it was claimed, comes from the streets of Chicago, where it is a slang word meaning to steal, and acid music takes its name from the fact that an acid music track will include samples of music stolen from other recordings and then mixed in to form an end product. Since this particular musical style grew out of the Chicago House sound it was christened Acid House. That at least is what it says in Hansard and you can't get much more official than that can you? I know this to be completely untrue because I made up this explanation at a press conference held to launch the Freedom to Party Campaign at the Conservative Party conference in October 1989. I was attempting to desperately play down the drug aspect in a forlorn attempt to discourage anti-party legislation, reasoning that the British public might accept massive noisy parties, but thousands of teenagers on drugs were definitely not acceptable. (This, incidentally, is the most successful lie I have ever told. Japanese music journalists have solemnly repeated it to me in the course of interviews and from MTV to ITN it has been broadcast as a fact. Only once was I caught out, when at a seminar held at the DMC World Disc Jockey Mixing Championships, a DJ from Chicago stood up and told the 1,000 or so people in the hall that I was talkin' a complete load of fuckin' bullshit - which I was. This proves that if you tell a lie often enough people will believe it - except when they know it's complete bullshit. Despite my best efforts the Safety Nazis simply changed their reasons for wanting to ban the parties. They wanted them banned not because they were party pooping killjoys, worried about drugs, but because they were concerned about the physical safety of party-goers at unlicensed venues! The Safety Nazis outwitted my best lie by changing their tactics. The parties got their name from the widespread use of the drug LSD (acid) at the parties in the early days. The whole scene revolved around drugs, anybody who knows anything about it will tell you this, unless you are a journalist or a policeman.

So there you go. Now, having cited that, I will concede that as far as I know, as the acid house scene evolved into the rave scene in the UK, it became primarily about Ecstasy use above all others. Incidentally, I've seen the sample-biting and Genesis P. Orridge stories repeated in works published as recently as 2002! I will work on putting all of the conflicting info into the article. — mjb 17:09, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Another interesting factoid: The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (Knowles, Elizabeth [ed], Elliott, Elizabeth [ed]. Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0198631529.), a publication that is meant to complement but not extend the Oxford English Dictionary, has been promulgating the bogus stories as well:

acid house

noun (Music) (Youth Culture)

A style of popular music with a fast beat, a spare, mesmeric, synthesized sound, few (if any) vocals, and a distinctive gurgling bass; in the UK, a youth cult surrounding this music and associated in the public mind with smiley badges, drug-taking, and extremely large parties known as acid house parties. Sometimes abbreviated to acid (also written acieeed or aciiied, especially when used as a kind of interjection).

Etymology: The word acid here is probably taken from the record Acid Trax by Phuture (in Chicago slang, acid burning is a term for stealing and this type of music relies heavily on sampling, or stealing from other tracks); a popular theory that it is a reference to the drug LSD is denied by its followers (but compare acid rock, a sixties psychedelic rock craze, which certainly was). House is an abbreviated form of Warehouse: see house.

Whee! — mjb 05:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Garratt and/or other texts claim that the "'acid (burn)' means 'to lift samples'" claim was a myth made up to divert attention from the drug factor.
Also, AFAIK, Ecstasy was widely available since the early 1980s, and was used in the scene before acid house became popular. (By Tony Wilson's account in his novelisation of 24 Hour Party People, the Happy Mondays had access to substantial supplies of the stuff in the mid-80s, before the Second Summer of Love.) So I'd be skeptical of any claims that Ecstasy was not a significant part of the acid house scene during the 1980s. Acb 08:35, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I doubt Paul Staines' story, because I was in Chicago in the late 1980s and had heard well before October 1989 the claim that acid had something to do with sampling. It still could be bullshit but there is a reference to that explanation in a Simon Frith article in May 1989 so at the very least Paul had his dates wrong. But he is a blowhard (as is Mr. P'Orridge) so I'm not sure if we'll ever get the real story out of one of them, lol... It seems likely that someone actually did use the term acid in this way though it probably was not nearly as widespread slang as the story makes it seem. But I don't buy the Paul Staines story. The other issue raised here about whether acid or ecstasy was more basic to the scene -- both were pretty common, at least in 87-89 in the US; LSD did not disappear after the 1970s as another poster made it seem. Ecstasy was available but not quite as well known until the mid-late 1980s when it became a key staple of the club scene.--csloat 11:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, as of today I have incorporated most of the references discussed above into the article, and have rewritten the etymology section to be more thorough and to more carefully present the competing claims as being mostly unverified. I also gave the etymology section a heading, which triggered the generation of a table of contents. The quoted material in the references section could stand to be worked into the body of the article, but it must remain clear that absolutely none of it is definitive, and some of it is actually just demonstrating how earlier, unverified claims are being reported as fact in what little literature has been published on acid house. Another option might be to move the quotations to Wikisource. I'm not sure what Wikisource is really for, though. Can we put fair-use citations there, or must everything there be a complete, original work? — mjb 07:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I've reformatted and expanded the references today. Regarding fair-use quotations, they should be fine as-is. I am taking my cue from the references in the Intelligent Design article. — mjb 12:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Order

I removed New Order from the list of notable acid house artists. The example given, Technique, was mainly a rock album. Of its three housey tracks, "Fine Time", "Round & Round", and "Dream Attack", only "Fine Time" exhibits acid house influences. It's rather generous to say that that one track is squarely acid house, and it's quite a stretch to say the band is an acid house group. I've kept up with them fairly well, and can't think of any examples of later releases, aside from commissioned remixes by other artists, that are acid anything. — mjb 00:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phuture

Because the author did not cite sources, and because "Cocaine" was not the B-side of any release of "Acid Tracks", and because there isn't any evidence to support the allegation that "Cocaine", which has very almost no lyrical content, is anti-drug, I removed this dubious statement:

Phuture, creators of the first Chicago Acid House single (Acid Tracks), claim that the title was not intended to celebrate LSD, and they point to the B-side on "Acid Tracks" was "Cocaine", a very anti-drug song.

—mjb 01:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

Is this a joke? Does it have anything to do with the article? It should probably be removed. I'd do it myself, but better to consult with you people. Besides, I wouldn't actually know how to remove it.

I think a yellow smiley is ok as a pic for this article but at least with a short explanation that describes the symbol as synonymous with acid house in the late 1980s and early 1990s.-csloat 03:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The B Side of Acid Trax on Trax Records was "Your Only Friend", an anti-cocaine song (the lyrics are "I can make you cry for me, die for me, kill for me, steal for me, and in the end i'll be your only friend".

The term "acid house" was invented by Trax Records owener Larry Sherman after he heard "Your Only Friend", which reminded him of The Doors and his time in Vietnam taking acid...he coined the phrase Acid House to describe the record's psychedelic feel.

If the smiley is to stay, it needs an explanatory caption. Without one, it looks irrelevant. Seahen 17:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I got the caption to show up. Whoever put up the picture forgot to put thumb in the code. Caesar

[edit] Notable acid house artists

"superman" by Psychic TV was released in 1988 and not 1985. The date is clearly marked on the label of the record. I have therefore changed this and removed the "first" in the previous version.

I think it is also worth noting that The Shamen, when they formed in 1986, were an indie band with psychedelic influences, rather than acid house. Their first LP "Drop" is guitar based, etc.

John Eden 13:33, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

From 1986 through 1991 there were waves of what I would call "mechanized" house music coming out. Chicago and UK acid house were part of that, but so was Detroit techno (during that period, at least, even though it had started earlier), New Beat, Bleep, and various one-off clicky, buzzy, trancey, housey tracks by different artists in the UK and Europe. To categorize all of these as "acid house", even if they work well alongside acid house records in a DJ set, is IMHO an error and a disservice. Therefore, in the Notable artists section, I feel it's necessary to drop references to artists like Adamski, who was included on the basis of "Killer". I have every version of that track, and none of them are what I would call acid house. Mechanical, almost techno, yes… but not acid house, per se. I've gone ahead and removed him from the list.

Similarly, every artist that ever used a 303 or was influenced by acid house is not necessarily a notable acid house artist. I can think of Aphex Twin records that use 303s, but I'm having trouble thinking of any that I would lump in with "Acid Trax". In the future, I suggest people be careful to provide justification for artists they add to the list. We've already started down that road by mentioning specific tracks and releases. Thanks. —mjb 20:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I just removed Egebamyasi, Ceephax Acid Crew and Alabama 3 (who aren't acid house at all). Not anything against these particular acts in particular, but unless they're a household name like Phuture i just wouldn't call them notable.

[edit] Proper name capitalization?

Shouldn't House be capitalized in this case, since Acid House is a proper name? --Peaceduck

The more they're written about, the more music genres tend to drop their proper-name status. Because writers generally don't capitalize it anymore, I wouldn't capitalize house. I'm leaning toward not capitalizing acid house, either. The flash-in-the-pan style Balearic Beat is still capitalized, but house, acid house, techno, trance, hip hop, and others generally aren't. I'd be interested to hear from authors and editors of books and magazines on the subject. —mjb 20:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFX?

Why is Richard D. James not mentioned in here anywhere?

Vibert but no RDJ. Hmm... 80.47.116.222 18:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Maybe because he's not an acid house artist? What are some Aphex Twin acid house records? I can only think of one that's even close: his remix of Baby Ford's "Normal". Even that, though, is more of an over-the-top homage to acid and breaks, not really squarely in any genre. —mjb 19:56, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disgrace to LSD

Acid house music is a disgrace to the name of LSD —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.161.18.229 (talk) 08:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] origin of the term Acid House

I read on discogs, while creating the article for Tune In (Turn On The Acid House) that the album was the first time the term "acid house" was used, can someone that knows more about this confirm or deny? --AlexOvShaolin 00:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. Genesis himself has said that he heard the term used to refer to Chicago house music before he borrowed it. When did that record come out? csloat 01:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
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