Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

Hey everyone, It’s C-Dub, your host, and This Is A Podcast About House Music.

In our last episode, we spent time in New York City, talking about how clubs expanded in the 1990s, how rooms grew larger, how DJs became more visible, and how nightlife began to intersect with spectacle in a very particular way.

Today, we’re staying with the same decade, but we’re shifting geography and energy. We’re going to Chicago, and we’re talking about what was happening in the clubs there.

Chicago in the early 1990s was a city learning how to live with its own invention. House music was no longer in its ignition phase, no longer burning with the urgency that defined the early 1980s. By this point, house had traveled widely and returned home carrying traces of other cities and other rooms, yet Chicago remained committed to listening inward, allowing the music to settle into neighborhoods, into bodies, and into memory.

The legacy of the Warehouse continued to shape the city’s internal logic long after its doors closed. The Warehouse had established a philosophy rather than a format, one that centered emotional release, collective experience, and patience. That philosophy deepened at the Music Box, where Ron Hardy reshaped intensity into ritual. Stories of records played at extreme volume, of tracks looping until time dissolved, circulated constantly in the 1990s. These stories were not treated as nostalgia. They functioned as instruction. Younger dancers learned how a room could be guided slowly into surrender, how repetition could become transcendence, how discomfort could transform into release when you shared it.

One dancer who had experienced the Music Box described carrying its lessons into every club she entered afterward. She said she could feel it immediately when a DJ trusted the room enough to let a record stay longer than expected. The moment always arrived in the body first, before the mind recognized it.

On the North Side, Medusa’s played a crucial role that is often underestimated. As an all-ages venue, it became a gateway for teenagers who encountered house music not through records or radio, but through their bodies. Many future DJs, promoters, and lifelong dancers remember taking the train into the city and stepping into Medusa’s unsure of how to move or where to stand. They watched older dancers carefully, absorbing timing and posture before ever stepping fully onto the floor.

Several people who were teenagers at Medusa’s remember the moment they realized no one was watching them. One woman recalled standing stiffly at first, copying movements she did not yet understand, and then suddenly noticing she had been dancing for twenty minutes without thinking about how she looked. A DJ who played there regularly said you could physically see people change over time. Their shoulders dropped. Their timing softened. They stopped trying to dance and started listening with their bodies. Medusa’s mattered because it taught a generation that house music was permission, not performance.

Beyond established clubs, Chicago’s underground remained active through loft parties and temporary spaces that filled the gaps between official venues. These nights were often invitation-based, shared quietly through flyers or word of mouth, hosted in warehouses, basements, or borrowed rooms. DJs played extended sets, sometimes all night, shaping soundtracks that evolved slowly. Dancers remember sitting on the floor to rest, sharing water, and drifting back into the music when their bodies were ready.

One promoter remembered a loft party where the power briefly went out around three in

Support the show

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

I’m ThatPodcastGirl, and This Is A Podcast About House Music. In the early 1990s, I was still a kid, moving from elementary school toward middle school, at that age where the world feels like it is quietly inflating around you. Stores seemed enormous. Television felt louder and more colorful. Fashion was shinier, bolder, and full of confidence. Everything about the decade suggested expansion, as if the culture itself had taken a deep breath and decided to grow outward.

What I didn’t know yet was that nightlife was expanding too, and that house music was changing shape in ways that would permanently alter how it was made, played, and felt. The shift wasn’t only emotional. It was physical. The rooms were getting larger, the sound systems more powerful, and DJs were suddenly being asked to solve a new problem while the night was already in motion. How do you preserve intimacy when the space itself keeps getting bigger?

In those early years of the decade, New York was still the laboratory where that question was being worked out in real time. Chicago had built the foundation of house music, but New York became the place where it was tested under pressure, where scale introduced new challenges and demanded new forms of care. Bigger rooms meant sound behaved differently, records behaved differently, and bodies behaved differently too. DJs had to learn how to manage all of that at once, often without knowing yet what the rules were.

At Sound Factory, the DJ booth was still rooted in vinyl culture. Two turntables and a rotary mixer formed the core of the setup, with no screens to rely on and no safety nets to catch mistakes. The booth itself was modest in size, but the room it fed was not, and that imbalance forced DJs to think beyond simple selection.

DJs like Junior Vasquez became known not for excess, but for restraint. Dancers from that era consistently describe a similar sensation when they talk about those nights. Junior did not rush toward release. Instead, he held it back, letting bass emerge slowly and transitions unfold so gradually that a new record could enter the mix without being consciously noticed. What people felt instead was a subtle shift in temperature, a change in emotional pressure that accumulated over time.

From the DJ’s perspective, this approach required intense technical discipline. Gain had to be managed so the system didn’t exhaust itself too early. Frequencies needed shaping so dancers could last for hours without burning out. The room had to be allowed to breathe, rather than being overwhelmed. One longtime regular later said it felt like the DJ was teaching the sound system how to behave, which was not metaphor so much as a description of real, hands-on craft.

As the decade moved forward, the problem of scale became impossible to ignore. Rooms grew taller and wider, and sound began to travel differently as a result. Bass took longer to land. High frequencies scattered. Reverb lingered in the air. Mistakes no longer disappeared into the crowd but echoed back through the space, demanding attention. DJs could no longer rely on instinct alone. They had to evolve.

When Twilo opened, it marked a clear turning point in how house music was experienced. Twilo was not just larger than what came before. It was an acoustic environment that required constant adjustment and awareness. The DJ booth itself reflected this shift, with improved monitoring, greater isolation, and more precise mixers that turned the act of DJing into something closer to operating a control room than standing at the edge of a dance floor.

DJs such as Danny Tenaglia became legendary for marathon sets that could stretch ten or even twelve hours, but that endurance was

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

I’m C Dub, and This Is a Podcast About House Music.

In the last episode, we talked about how house music entered Europe and how DJs learned to play entire nights through sequencing and patience. That story explained the method. This episode is about what happened when that method met bodies at scale, MDMA, and spaces that were never designed to hold what followed.

The turning point in the United Kingdom is often dated to the summer of 1988. That summer is now remembered as the Second Summer of Love. The phrase became shorthand, but the changes were concrete. Clubs like Shoom in Southwark and Spectrum at Heaven in London were already introducing Chicago and New York house records to UK audiences. What changed was the intensity and the composition of the crowd.

At Shoom, Danny Rampling created a deliberately dark, enclosed environment where the emphasis was on sound, not spectacle. The room was small. The nights were long. The music was house, acid house, and imported records that many people had never heard before. MDMA was present, and its effects were unmistakable. Aggression dropped. Physical closeness increased. People danced for hours without fatigue. The atmosphere shifted from performance to participation.

Spectrum at Heaven expanded this model into a larger, more visible venue. Paul Oakenfold’s nights brought house and acid house into a club that already had mainstream recognition. The crowd was mixed. Fashion codes loosened. Music that had been marginal began to feel central. The idea that a night could be built gradually, rather than peaking quickly, started to spread.

Outside London, similar shifts were happening. At the Hacienda in Manchester, house and acid house records became part of a broader ecosystem that already included post-punk, indie, and experimental dance music. The Eclipse in Coventry opened as one of the first clubs in the UK dedicated almost entirely to house music. These were not underground spaces in the romantic sense. They were commercial venues responding to a real demand.

That demand soon exceeded what clubs could contain. Capacity limits, licensing laws, and closing times created pressure. Promoters began using warehouses, aircraft hangars, and open land. Information about these events circulated through flyers, answerphone messages, and word of mouth. Locations were sometimes released only hours before the event.

One of the defining features of this phase was the rise of the M25 orbital raves. Events took place in fields and industrial sites around the motorway encircling London. Thousands of people traveled at night, often without knowing exactly where they were going until the last moment. The journey became part of the experience.

MDMA played a central role in shaping these gatherings. Its effects altered how people related to one another and to the music. The repetitive structures of house and acid house worked in tandem with the drug’s capacity to sustain focus and empathy. Dance floors became spaces where differences of class, race, gender expression, and sexuality were temporarily flattened. This did not erase social reality, but it created moments of shared alignment that were rare elsewhere.

These spaces also had an underbelly that was impossible to ignore. Safety was inconsistent. Medical support was uneven. Drug purity varied. Promoters were improvising at scale, often learning through trial and error. At the same time, these environments allowed people who were excluded from mainstream nightlife to occupy space without explanation. Queer dancers, black and brown communities, and working-class youth were not guests. They were the culture.

By the early 1990s, the scale of these events drew nation

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

This Is a Podcast About House Music

House Music’s European Turning Point: Ibiza and the UK, 1985–1990

I’m C Dub, and This Is a Podcast About House Music.

We’ve just crossed a thousand downloads, and I want to thank you for listening closely and carrying this with me.

Tonight’s episode explores a specific question:

How did house music enter Europe in the mid-1980s, before digital distribution, before file sharing, and before global club infrastructure existed?

By the mid-1980s, house music from Chicago and New York had already begun circulating in parts of Europe through physical distribution networks. Records pressed on labels such as Trax Records and DJ International in Chicago, and garage-oriented labels in New York, were imported by specialist record shops in the UK.

Shops in cities like London, Manchester, and Birmingham - including places that catered to DJs rather than the general public - acted as gateways. DJs acquired these records through imports, DJ pools, personal travel, and informal exchange. Pirate radio and specialist radio shows further amplified this circulation by playing records unavailable through mainstream channels.

House music entered Europe not as a standalone genre, but as part of a broader DJ culture that already blended disco, electro, rare groove, funk, hip hop, and pop. Early adopters did not treat house as separate. They folded it into existing listening practices that valued experimentation and long-form sets.

Ibiza played a distinct role in shaping how this music was used, rather than simply how it was heard.

In the mid-1980s, Ibiza functioned as an informal meeting point for international DJs working extended sets for mixed, non-specialist crowds. Unlike UK or US club environments that emphasized peak-time programming, Ibiza’s party culture often involved long, uninterrupted sessions that stretched from night into morning.

This environment encouraged DJs to prioritize continuity, pacing, and sequencing over constant intensity. Sets were structured to evolve gradually, accommodating changing light, energy levels, and audience composition.

At Amnesia, this approach became particularly visible. DJs played across a wide range of tempos and styles, allowing records to run longer and transitions to unfold slowly. House records appeared alongside disco, pop, ambient tracks, and non-dance selections.

What mattered was sequence - how one record prepared the listener for the next - rather than genre purity.

The DJ most closely associated with this approach was Alfredo Fiorito. Accounts from visiting DJs consistently describe Alfredo’s method as intuitive and patient. He focused on reading the room over long periods, trusting groove and repetition rather than dramatic shifts.

This style of programming later came to be described as Balearic, a term that reflected both geography and method.

One record frequently cited in relation to this sensibility is “Sueño Latino”, released in 1989. Built on the structure of Manuel Göttsching’s E2–E4, the track featured a long, steady bassline and minimal arrangement designed to sustain attention over time.

UK DJs later referenced records like this as evidence that house music could support extended transitions and emotional continuity, particularly during sunrise and early morning hours.

When DJs including Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway returned to the UK in the late 1980s, they brought back more than records. They carried a different understanding of pacing, duration, and crowd management.

This shift coincided with the introduction of MDMA into UK club culture, which further supported long-form dancing and co

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

Under the vision of Peter Gatien, New York began to experiment with scale. Limelight, housed inside a deconsecrated church, offered stained glass windows and marble floors that glowed under strobes. The Tunnel stretched long and narrow, a place where each room carried a different fantasy. Club USA sat on Times Square like a wild attraction, complete with a slide that carried dancers from the balcony down into the crowd. Palladium mixed ballroom glamor with club futurism.

These clubs treated nightlife as theater. They were built for spectacle and for the feeling that anything could happen inside their walls.

The soundtrack of the megaclub era needed a conductor: someone who could take a massive room, a restless crowd, and a long night, and shape it into a story. That conductor was about to arrive.

Junior Vasquez had been in the city for years before he became a name people whispered with reverence. He started as a studio assistant, then remixer, and eventually found his way into the booth at Bassline. His early sets were raw, emotional, and tightly shaped. You could hear the influence of disco, but he pushed the music harder, darker, and more cinematic.

Everything changed when the Sound Factory opened on West 27th Street.

The Factory became Junior’s canvas. His marathon Saturday night sets often lasted until noon the next day. Dancers would talk about arriving in the dark and walking out into bright sunlight with mascara running and sweat drying on their skin. Junior had an uncanny ability to build tension for long stretches. He kept dancers suspended in anticipation and then broke the room open with a kick or a vocal line that felt like release.

He treated the booth like a laboratory. Rumor had it he would isolate frequencies and push EQ curves in ways that made the body feel the shift before the ear fully understood it. Regulars began calling themselves “Junior’s Children.” They followed him with devotion because he created a space where pain and joy could move through the body without explanation or judgment.

During the AIDS crisis, the dance floor became a place where people carried grief quietly inside them. Junior built sets that allowed that grief to surface without language. This wasn’t therapy in the clinical sense. It was community surviving the only way it knew how.

New York was a magnet for models, musicians, and artists. The supermodel era was thriving. Designers were pushing boundaries. And celebrities wandered into Junior’s booth because they wanted to feel the way the Factory felt.

Madonna appeared frequently, and their artistic relationship became its own legend. Junior remixed tracks for her, and she fueled his visibility. Their bond was complicated but electric. When he created the track “If Madonna Calls,” it sparked tension, humor, and myth. It became one of those New York stories people still repeat because it captures the wild intimacy of that era when fame and nightlife were always bumping into each other.

Designers also drew from the energy of his nights. Runways picked up the rhythm of house. Magazine spreads reflected the neon glow of the clubs. The line between fashion and nightlife blurred to the point where it felt like they were breathing the same air.

While Junior held the energy of the night, another revolution was happening during the day inside recording studios. Record labels were beginning to understand something dancers had known for years. A remix could change everything.

Producers and DJs like David Morales, Masters At Work, Frankie Knuckles, Satoshi Tomiie, François K, Hex Hector, and Armand Van Helden turned remixes into cultural events. Major artists began requesting club versions of the

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

Hey everyone, I’m C. Dub. And this is a podcast about house music.

When we last left Detroit, house and techno were twins raised in the same neighborhood—one born of gospel and groove, the other of machines and math. But the story didn’t end in those warehouses. It kept growing, shaped by the people who carried both sounds in their bones.

Kevin Saunderson was one of them.

He was born in Brooklyn in 1964, but his family moved to Belleville, Michigan when he was still a kid. The move dropped him right between farmland and factory smoke. Detroit was close enough to feel, but far enough to dream about. At home, his older brother’s records spun Parliament, Stevie Wonder, and Ohio Players. Late at night, the radio turned futuristic—Kraftwerk, Prince, The Electrifying Mojo. Those frequencies collided in his mind. Funk met circuitry. Soul met sequence. That’s where the blueprint started.

At Belleville High, he met two kids who heard music the same way: Juan Atkins and Derrick May. They weren’t the popular ones. They were the ones talking about drum machines no one had seen and records no one else understood. They built a friendship out of sound. Juan was the philosopher. Derrick was the provocateur. Kevin was the engineer—the one who could take an idea and make it move.

By 1987, he founded KMS Records—his initials on the door, his fingerprints on the city’s next chapter. It was one of the first Black-owned electronic labels to release straight from Detroit to the world. The label became a launchpad for his own projects and for producers who were inventing Detroit techno in real time.

Then came Inner City, his collaboration with vocalist Paris Grey. Their sound wasn’t borrowed from Chicago or Europe. It was Detroit optimism with a house heartbeat.

In 1988, “Big Fun” hit the UK Top 10. “Good Life” followed and crossed continents. These weren’t crossover tracks; they were cross-pollinations—soulful, synthetic, and deeply human. Inner City didn’t just make radio hits; they made history.

Kevin didn’t stop there. Under other names—E-Dancer, Reese, Tronik House—he kept pushing deeper underground. In 1988 he released “Just Want Another Chance,” a track whose bassline became immortal. That detuned low-end, now known as the Reese bass, shaped drum & bass, jungle, dubstep, and half the darker corners of modern electronic music. His fingerprints are in genres that didn’t even exist when he pressed that record.

As house and techno grew into global industries, Kevin stayed rooted. He kept the independent grind alive, touring, mentoring, and producing from his KMS studio. He welcomed young Detroit artists like MK and Carl Craig, offering gear, advice, and patience. He wasn’t a gatekeeper. He was a gardener.

His legacy runs in the family now. His sons, Dantiez and DaMarii, are producers and DJs, carrying the Saunderson name into new decades. Every year at Movement Festival on Detroit’s riverfront, Kevin still headlines. He’s treated like royalty there, but he plays like a worker—head down, hands on, eyes on the crowd.

He’s received official recognition for it too. In 2016, the City of Detroit awarded him a Spirit of Detroit Resolution Award for his contributions to electronic music. He’s also been honored internationally for advancing Detroit’s global presence in arts and culture. For a kid who started making beats in his bedroom, that’s a full-circle moment.

Kevin’s story is full of side roads too. He’s collaborated with artists you might not expect—from British rappers to European producers like KiNK on the 2017 track “Idyllic,” a playful, retro-futurist piece that felt like a wink to his eighties self. His remixes of pop and hip-hop acts in the lat

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

Welcome back, beautiful souls… it’s that podcast girl, C-Dub. I wanted to give a quick shout out to our listeners tuning in from the UK tonight, thanks for your support from across the world.

Tonight—especially since the episodes on New York, New Jersey, and Detroit House Music are leading our search charts—we’re leaning deep into the roots, starting with New York City. We’re not just touching the pulse of ’90s NYC house. We’re breathing the air from those rooms.

Red Zone wasn’t just a club—it was a confession. David Morales famously called it the place where he “made a statement for the new age,” and he wasn’t exaggerating. He described that era as mixing the “dark side”—minimal vocals or no vocals—not just music, but revolution in 4/4. He said, “Red Zone was the turning point on the map for music changing.” People remember it as the spot that flipped disco into club soul through sheer grit, vinyl dig, and rebellious rhythm.

Red Zone was theater in flesh; the naked, the naughty, and the unapologetic moved inside it. The club embraced extreme self-expression—think raw nudity, sex, spontaneous hookups, and sometimes eruptions of violence. It was a place where curtains, fog, and a pulsing beat blurred lines between pleasure and performance. The edge was always one step away from confrontation, because survival in that crowd meant daring to be seen.

This was the home turf of the Club Kids—Michael Alig, James St. James, Screamin Rachael, Lady Buddy, Dan Dan the Naked Man, Goldie Loxxx—and the rest of that flamboyant crew who tore the norm apart with feathers, glitter. Their wild identities flashed, flirted, and fought in the space. They were Red Zone.

Imagine this: curtains hiding backrooms where sex happened behind velvet folds. Fog machines creating halos you couldn’t see—but felt in your bones. Fights that erupted out of passion or possession, fueled by too much adrenaline, and too little filter. Sex, chaos, and liberation weren’t just tolerated—they were invitation-only. Red Zone allowed things to come unhinged, and unhinged they became.

Then came NASA nights at The Shelter—NASA stands for Nocturnal Audio Sensory Awakening. Moby called it “utopian,” and Chloë Sevigny said it “transcended raves.” Imagine a Tribeca loft drenched in light and smoke, with acid, trance, and jungle tracks all whirled through that booth by Scotto and DB.

And then there was Sound Factory. It was hallowed ground—Junior Vasquez said people told him they were “going to church on Sunday morning… but they meant Factory.” He co-founded that room with Richard Grant and Christine Visca in 1989. Right in the heat of New York house’s golden era, Junior Vasquez dropped a track that became infamous—not just for its sound, but for how it ended a whole era.

The track “If Madonna Calls” (1996) loops a snippet from what sounded like Madonna’s voice on his answering machine:

“Hello Junior… This is Madonna… are you there? Call me in Miami.”

It continued with a cheeky retort — “If Madonna calls, tell her I’m not here.” The vocal loop was so bold that it became known as a “bitch track”—campy, savage, and hilarious in its defiance.

The story goes: Madonna allegedly bailed on appearing at his club night at The Tunnel, leaving him in the lurch. He turned that moment into house-music history—with total disregard for permission or precedent. Not surprisingly, Madonna never forgave the joke. Their friendship—and any chance of future collaboration—was done.

Yet the track exploded on dance floors. It did hit #2 on Billboard’s Dance Club chart and became a cult anthem for underground queer scenes and ballrooms. DJ queens would perform it, the sound of gossip and betrayal turne

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

This is a podcast about house music. I'm thatpodcastgirl, C-Dub—and I want to thank all of you for helping us hit over 200 downloads in just three and a half months, across 11 episodes. JohnJohn guess what? We did it!

This episode is called: The Record Store.

Picture this: It’s the early '90s. Somewhere between grit and gold chains. Between big dreams and dirty sneakers. And on both coasts—if you wanted to find a sound, you walked into a record store.

Let’s start with Chicago.

Gramaphone Records: it wasn’t big. Tucked into a narrow space on Clark Street, its walls were crowded with bins and bins of vinyl. The floor had the signature black and white checkered tile. It smelled like plastic and cardboard and gum stuck to a sneaker. Flyers were shoved under the glass of the counter. The lighting was harsh and honest. But it was church.

DJs walked in like they had a mission. They’d flip through crates with the reverence of a surgeon in the middle of a procedure. Customers would clear out of the way if someone serious walked in. Because the booth in the back? That was sacred ground.

Behind the glass, a selector would listen to your picks. The staff could tell if you knew what you were doing by the second record you previewed. “If you played the wrong thing too loud, they’d cut the sound. You’d feel it before you even noticed.”

Gramaphone didn’t sell records. It passed on secrets. There were codes in the track listings. White labels with no names. You’d find the record someone played at 3AM that melted your brain—and it wouldn’t be there next week. You either knew when to come, or you didn’t and missed out.

Frankie Knuckles was a regular. So was Derrick Carter. But even if you weren’t a name, you could be a witness. One customer remembered watching Derrick build an entire set in the store over two hours—testing tracks, building tension, then walking out without a word.

“Gramaphone was like a dojo,” one woman said. “You didn’t go there to buy. You went to train.”

Over in New York—it was different.

Downtown, you had places like Vinylmania, Dance Tracks, and Satellite. Tucked behind basements. No two stores were the same. Some were dark and sleek, others crowded and chaotic. But all of them had a pulse.

Dance Tracks, on East 3rd Street, had tall racks and endless stacks, plus a community board with handwritten ads—DJ needed. Roommate wanted. One wall had stickers from clubs that no longer existed. Another had a memorial photo of someone from the scene, framed with scribbled tributes.

This is where Joe Claussell got his start. Where François K would come through in his sunglasses. Where a new DJ might overhear a conversation that would change everything.

One regular recalled being handed a record and told, “Don’t play this unless you mean it.” Another described the joy of walking in hungover, digging through wax, and finding a beat so perfect it made you cry.

At Vinylmania, there were whispers. About a rare Japanese pressing. About a reel from a closing party. About a limited promo that came in through someone’s cousin in Detroit. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the mythology.

These stores weren’t commercial. They were coded. You had to dress the part, or dress in defiance of it. Some people came in gender-blurred—baggy pants, nail polish, stubble and gloss—because in those four walls, there was no wrong way to be. In fact, dressing ambiguously sometimes gave you more space. People didn’t know how to categorize you, so they left you alone.

One woman recalls she never got called out for being a woman in the DJ booth because she wore oversized hoodies and kept her voice low. “If I didn’t speak, they assu

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music” hosted by C-Dub