On the 21st of September, Junior Boys Own will be dropping A Boy’s Own Odyssey: Acid House Scrapes and Capers – a compilation featuring the greatest musical moments from a label not short of big names to drop. The Chem’s, Underworld, X-Press 2 – they’re all here – as is a special commemorative collection of the seminal Boy’s Own fanzines that catalogued much of what took place during that trailblazing time...
As an re-introduction to exactly who they are and what they did, the guys behind www.djhistory.com - Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster - have interviewed some of the key players in the Boys Own movement, and here, as a decidedly teasing little taster is a section of that interview...
Terry Farley: It was a weird time in London clubs. We all got the hump that we’d go along to these things and they’d let four of us in but not all of us. We couldn’t go straight from football, we had to go home and get changed. It did piss us off. It seemed like the whole club scene was run by a St. Martin’s School clique. Ollie who ran the door at the Beat Route was Welsh, Chris Sullivan was Welsh, Steve Marney from Demob was Welsh! I didn’t mind the clothes they were wearing in these places, but it was the inconvenience of being told what to do in your city, by people who were… Welsh. I knew as much as they did, I knew loads about records, but I could only come in if I got changed. We hated that scenario.
Steve Hall: Graham Ball used to describe us as the footsoldiers. “We used to love all you lot, we’d never have got anywhere without the footsoldiers.” We were the guys who queued up outside Le Beat Route. Sometimes you wouldn’t be allowed in and sometimes you were. Then things like Dirtbox started and that became more our type of thing than trying to get in with Robert Elms.
Terry: When house music came along it was slightly ignored by London, not because people didn’t like it, but because the whole rare groove scene was so good at the time. The reason it took up north first was because they didn’t have such a strong scene as we had down here. There were some brilliant clubs in London, Discotheque and The Wag were really good. London didn’t need house music. It was bang in the middle of the early rap thing, when people were mixing rare groove with Eric B and the Beastie Boys.
Then the drug thing came back from Ibiza and that was what tipped the balance. Paul Oakenfold brought Alfredo over to a party at the Project Club in Streatham in ’87, which got raided by the police. Everyone went there and they all bought an E and everyone did it at the same time. Very experimental!
London was terribly snobby. House music definitely broke down all kinds of barriers. Shoom was very sexually mixed: gays, straights, all sorts of gay palaver going on which some of the kids in there, who were football hooligans, would never have seen. Michael Clark and a Scottish guy called Sandy, who worked for Vivienne Westwood, they had these little urchin kids from south London who would follow them round like flies. It was like they were mesmerised by these Beautiful Creatures.
Cymon Eckle: Shoom was a magnet for all the hedonists in London. It just pulled you in. We’d started going in February ’88, myself and Andrew. We found out about it late January. It just turned into these frenetic conversations on a Monday, Terry talking for about two hours on the phone about this club: “Fuckin’ ’ell, I’ve just had the club experience of my life.” Which was a report of them going to Shoom. Next week it was Paul McKee, same thing, two hour conversation. So we were into Shoom and away.
Terry: Danny was all-important – because of the dance. The whole acid house dance is Danny Rampling. Waving his record while he’s playing. Until then DJs used to just put records on. They didn’t do anything. During the rare groove time you wouldn’t acknowledge the crowd. They wouldn’t even smile at the crowd. The crowd wouldn’t smile at the DJ. There was no connection. Suddenly Danny’s standing there and he’s waving his record around, shouting and people shouting at him and hugging. And it was like, ‘Fucking hell!” That was his dance. Then it became the Shoom dance, then the Shoom dance became the Spectrum dance, then the whole of the fuckin’ country..!
