I was probably about 12 when I heard my first house records; Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk’s ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ with Darryl Pandy’s, ‘No Way Back’ by Adonis, and Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s ‘Jack Your Body’. I was unaware of the music’s black, gay roots (or of my own burgeoning sexuality) — but it transported me from my middle-class, semi-detached existence in 1980s Devon to the heart of the Chicago underground. And I wasn’t the only one listening; from the Pet Shop Boys to The Blow Monkeys, to Smash Hits stalwarts like ABC and The Style Council, British bands queued up to co-opt the emerging new sound. Producers Stock Aitken Waterman lifted house’s bombast and euphoric pianos wholesale, for a string of mainstream chart successes. Record label Telstar (then home to re-issues by middle-of-the-roaders like ABBA, Barbara Dickson and Bonnie Tyler) began to curate the new abundance of dance music on its best-selling Deep Heat compilations. Youth TV pioneer Janet Street-Porter brought hip-hop and techno to prime time, thanks to BBC2’s Dance Energy show. And by then, house music had begun to rule my life; every Monday night, I’d breathlessly rush to my local Woolworths, to pore over the week’s new releases.

The new sound soon became news. Lifestyle magazines like i-D, Sky and The Face tracked the explosion of acid house and rave culture, whilst the nation’s tabloids ran alarmist headlines concentrating on the narcotics which underscored the scene, and the shady entrepreneurs who were busily cashing in. Dance’s affinity with drugs was nothing new, of course. Amphetamines had fuelled Northern Soul’s all night shindigs, and disco’s final downfall was cocaine.

(This original article continues in our Issue Six)

As we edge into the 21st century, modern Britain — like some myopic dinosaur — seems mired in a tar pit of nostalgia, unable to break free. Our TV schedules are dominated by long-running soaps, a superannuated version of Merchant Ivory’s upstairs/downstairs dramas, and a fifty-year-old serial about an alien traveling through time in a Sixties police box. The yo-yoing economic mood (coupled with a government intent on restricting civil liberties) has meant that we’ve all sought ways to escape modern-day Real Life™, by looking back to the good old days instead. Our childhood memories have been commoditised, sanitised, and sold back to us in the form of biscuit adverts and faux-village fête baking contests. Each new season, fashions are reheated from decades gone by. Everywhere you look, people are chowing down on old-school comfort food, from gourmet hot dogs to French fries chipped from heritage potatoes. And whilst this was all going on, another strange thing had begun to happen. One by one, the lighting rigs in the UK’s nightclubs had started to switch off. Permanently.

It’s strange, because today’s nostalgic mood is nowhere more evident than in the world of dance music. Records, scenes and club nights are revived, remixed and rinsed out continuously, and compilations of ‘classics’ are released with avaricious regularity. The shadow of Leigh Bowery’s infamous Eighties night Taboo still looms large over avantgarde culture, three decades after it closed. In recent years, London has seen two exhibitions devoted to its influence on fashion, and vice versa — Club to Catwalk at the V&A, and the ICA’s Ibiza — Moments in Love. In general, dance music is more prevalent than ever. It permeates every moment of our waking lives, from the clothes we wear to the soundtrack in our supermarkets. So why, in the last decade, has the number of nightclubs in the UK dropped by half?