history of house

The whole dance music world seems to come out in a bizarre display of idolatry whenever Daft Punk are mentioned. The French duo, consisting of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, were together from 1993 until February last year. And for reason unknown, the dance music press seems to eulogise them. It appears that doing their job of trying to find a new album destined to be tomorrow's classic is…

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If you go back far enough into the history of house music, you'll eventually come across a time when the BBC were quite hesitant to get involved with the scene. In the UK, house music saw its first exposures to British audiences on pirate radio - I believe the first show to play it in Britain was The Jackin' Zone, hosted by Jazzy M from London in 1985. The BBC's…

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Danny Tenaglia was, for many years, one of the more hardworking DJs in the house music world. Like many of his era, he was a fan of doing sets that were around 412 hours long, and his output in the studio was just as prolific too. And for a while in the 1990s, he was also one of the names on speed dial at record labels looking for remixes of…

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Back on Friday, this blog published an article about a birthday party for Frankie Knuckles taking place in the city of Chicago today. As a footnote to the article, I commented on the release of “I Want The Love Of My Own”, a Knuckles song recently unearthed from the archives. It was originally due to emerge in October 2021, but three months later remains unavailable. DJ International have sadly not…

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House music is a curious old beast when it comes to its roots, isn’t it? We all know - well, except if you’re David Guetta - that house music mostly originates from the cities of Chicago, Detroit and New York in the USA. Yet all three cities have their issues when it comes to celebrating their heritage and keeping the culture alive. To be fair, this isn’t entirely the fault…

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Think of the name Kym Sims. I know who she is, but even if you don’t, you’ll almost certainly know “Too Blind To See It”, a song which she released all the way back in 1991. But she’s no one-hit wonder and had a number of other hits including “Take My Advice” in 1992, “We Gotta Love” from 1996 and her most recent hit “Turn It Up”. Well, if you’ve…

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If there's one thing which will always get my interest at Amateur’s House, it's history. Because whilst people may disagree over stories currently in the news, they tend to disagree even more when interpreting historical events. Wonderful for a mischief maker like me! Time was that I used to receive a large amount of Woolworths vouchers for Christmas. The majority of these were subsequently used for buying music - this,…

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This time last year, Christmas and New Year celebrations were somewhat more muted than now. Lockdown restrictions across many countries prevented most regular events at this time of year from going ahead. And although things are slightly different this year, we're not exactly back to the heady days of the 1990s. The big name DJs of the late 90s were a seriously greedy bunch - and nothing exemplified this more…

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It might be hard for some people to believe, but Grant Nelson wasn’t always making house and garage. He started out his career in the early 90s making breakbeat and hardcore under the Wishdokta alias. But he increasingly grew bored of the sound and started dabbling with house music from around 1993. Things went well at Nice ’N’ Ripe for the first few years, but bigger things were to come.…

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Regular readers of this blog might have noticed by now that one thing I like almost as much as analysing current events is combing through historical ones. And one thing which changes through time is the way that certain records are viewed. Allow me to present an example. In 1991, Frankie Knuckles released a track called "The Whistle Song". These days, the song is seen as a classic, as an…

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