House music which had previously derived from disco grew famous in the gay club circuit in cities like Chicago & New York, mainly pioneered by Frankie Knuckles (Chicago) & Larry Levan (NYC). The music had come a long way from the late 70's and dj's who performed live remixes had started focusing on producing "house music." At the same time a sound known as "acid" was created by DJ Pierre of Phuture. The acid sound was made by tweaking a Roland TB-303 Bassline Machine, a device made to provide basslines for practicing guitarists.

In 1987 American house music began reaching European music charts. "Acid house" was also a term being used in England to encompass any form of house music that sounded "crazy." People also thought the drug reference sounded cool. Incidentally the drug of the acid house movement was not LSD, but MDMA (Ecstacy). During this same year a group of three dj's who were scraping by spent the summer in Ibiza. During their time on the island they they had taken their first Ecstacy trips and experienced the open-air disco known as Amnesia. These three dj's were Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway.

In 1988 each of these three dj's had opened their own club nights in London. One of the most notable was Paul Oakenfold's Monday night Spectrum party which pulled crowds of over two thousand people. At Nicky Holloway's "The Trip" had crowds of rivaled football players, whose violence was at an all-time high, dancing together in an Ecstacy induced euphoria. Clubbers during this time were living as if they had been transplanted back to the sixties, talking about peace and changing the world.

In 1988 the word "raving" was also finally coined and the acid-house culture had reached it's peak. The media began documenting the events while police worked in full-force to prevent raves from happening.

In 1989 the first fully licensed event took place on the London/Essex border hosted by a crew called Raindance. The yellow smiley face seen on Have A Nice Day signs became the logo for Danny Rampling's clubnight "Shoom" and simultaneously became the trademark for the acid-house revolution.

By 1990, while the music was continuing to be produced, acid-house was deemed as being "dead." The media had stopped their coverage and promoters began to set up an urban house scene in clubs like London's luxurious Ministry of Sound, bringing a second wave of ravers to the arena.

While I was not remotely close to DJ'ing during this time I've always had a passion for the songs that I chose to compile into this mini-mix, which was created a shortwhile before graduating college. This year marks the timeline for the 10 years that I have been dj'ing so I will be taking a step back and posting mixes each week of pure oldskool techno & house music.

Oval Emotion - Go Go (Deep Destruction Remix)
Drum & Bass - I Love You
Black Riot - A Day In The Life
Royal House - Can U Party (Todd Terry B-Boy Remix)
2 In A Room - Take Me Away
Underground Resistance - Jupiter Jazz
Simon Sed - Criminal