"The Evil Acid Baron Show released in 1988 was the first acid house video, created by Stakker, with music by Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk, Tyree, Baby Ford, Royal House and S’Express. The first video that I saw was actually the more accomplished Eurotechno, which came out the following year. Eurotechno blew me away when I first saw it at a house night in Cornwall and I went to Woolworths to buy a copy on VHS, which thankfully I still have. The pulsing, ever-changing graphics go perfectly with the futuristic acid soundtrack and is just as fresh as it was then.
Stakker were video artists Mark McClean and Colin Scott. After using other people’s music for their first video, they decided they wanted their follow-up to feature music they had commissioned themselves so that the music could more closely match the visuals. They teamed up with Brian Dougans and together produced the classic track, ‘Humanoid’ (released as ‘Stakker Humanoid’ on Morgan Khan’s label, Westside). Stakker and Dougans had already split by the time the record was released, and the Eurotechno soundtrack, which had been begun by Dougans with input from Garry Cobain, was completed by Scott and Simon Monday. (Cobain and Dougans went on to release projects under the names Smart Systems, Yage, Indo Tribe, Mental Cube and most famously, The Future Sound Of London.)
Here is the first part of The Evil Acid Baron Show. For this and the Eurotechno videos, McClean and Scott used a Fairlight CVI graphics machine, which was the video “sister” to the Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer made famous by the likes of Herbie Hancock and Art Of Noise.
Continuing the creative curatorial spirit of Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, this anthology presents the legacy of American acid house in three themed mixes curated and performed by CCC DJ Harry Bennett. Each mix contributes to the recognition of this musical subgenre, originating in late 1980s Chicago, as itself a rich strain of folk music.
“Acid Ballads” covers vocal acid tracks, which variously depict the trials of romantic love, feelings of erotic desire, communal ecstasy, and the phantasmorgia of urban nightlife. “Werk Songs” features the subgenre’s heaviest dance numbers, whose propulsive rhythms embody the jackhammer-style of “jackin” house. In “Slow Motion Acid,” signature acid tunes are spun in a chopped & screwed style which re-imagines classic Chicago house in the vein of the pitched-down rap music pioneered by DJ Screw in the 1990s.
The historical approach of the AAAH reflects the ambiguous etymology of the word “acid” in “acid house.” While the term initially referred to psychedelic sounds and the mind-altering substances traditionally consumed in nightclub environments, “acid” began to additionally invoke an “acid burn,” the act of stealing or sampling recordings endemic to dance music production. The anthology’s own acidic character can be found in its relation to history, which the anthology subjectively samples and re-presents in a psychedelic mix.
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 1: Acid Ballads
Victor Romeo ft. Leatrice Brown “Love Will Find A Way (Club)” (Dance Mania – 1988) The It “Donnie (Club Mix)” (D.J. International – 1986) Jeanette Thomas “Shake Your Body (House Shaker)” (Chicago Connection – 1987) Blake Baxter “When We Used To Play” (KMS – 1987) Fast Eddie “Acid Thunder (Tyree’s SuperCooper Mix)” (D.J. International – 1988) John Rocca “Move” (Criminal Records – 1985) Blake Baxter “Get Layed” (KMS – 1987) Tyree feat. Chic “I Fear The Night (Subterraranian Mix)” (Underground – 1986) Adonis “We’re Rocking Down the House (Down Break)” (Trax Records – 1986) The Party Boy “Twilight Zone (Bam Bam’s Corrosion Mix)” (Urban Acid – 1988) Bam Bam “Spend The Night” (Westbrook Records – 1988)
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 2: Werk Songs
LNR “Work It To The Bone” (House Jam – 1987) Blake Baxter “Body Work” (KMS 1987) Mike “Hitman” Wilson “Bango Acid” (Trax Records – 1988) Endless Pokers “The Poke (The After Poke Mix)” (D.J. International – 1988) Bobby Konders “Version” (Nu Groove 1992) Phuture “Phuture Jacks” (Trax Records – 1987) The Children “Freedom (Factory Mix)” (D.J. International – 1987) Mr. Lee “Never Gonna Change” (Trax Records – 1988) Pierre’s Pfantasy Club “Fantasy Girl (Club Mix)” (SRO 1987) Phuture “Slam! (Vocal)” (Trax Records – 1988)
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 3: Slow Motion Acid
Phuture “Your Only Friend” (Trax Records – 1987) Adonis “No Way Back” (Trax Records – 1986) Blake Baxter “When A Thought Becomes U” (Underground Resistance – 1991) Fingers Inc. “Can You Feel It” (Serious Records – 1988) Maurice “This is Acid (New Dance Craze)” (Trax – 1988) Jamie Principle “Baby Wants To Ride” (ffrr – 1988) Bam Bam “Where’s Your Child” (Westbrook – 1988) Farley “Jackmaster” Funk & Ricky Dillard “It’s U” ( D.J. International – 1987)
MCLUHAN: The upsurge in drug taking is intimately related to the impact of the electric media. Look at the metaphor for getting high: turning on. One turns on his consciousness through drugs just as he opens up all his senses to a total depth involvement by turning on the TV dial. Drug taking is stimulated by today's pervasive environment of instant information, with its feedback mechanism of the inner trip. The inner trip is not the sole prerogative of the LSD traveler; it's the universal experience of TV watchers. LSD is a way of miming the invisible electronic world; it releases a person from acquired verbal and visual habits and reactions, and gives the potential of instant and total involvement, both all-at-onceness and all-at-oneness, which are the basic needs of people translated by electric extensions of their central nervous systems out of the old rational, sequential value system. The attraction to hallucinogenic drugs is a means of achieving empathy with our penetrating electric environment, an environment that in itself is a drugless inner trip.
Drug taking is also a means of expressing rejection of the obsolescent mechanical world and values. And drugs often stimulate a fresh interest in artistic expression, which is primarily of the audile-tactile world. The hallucinogenic drugs, as chemical simulations of our electric environment, thus revive senses long atrophied by the overwhelmingly visual orientation of the mechanical culture. LSD and related hallucinogenic drugs, furthermore, breed a highly tribal and communally oriented subculture, so it's understandable why the retribalized young take to drugs like a duck to water.
PLAYBOY: A Columbia coed was recently quoted in Newsweek as equating you and LSD. "LSD doesn't mean anything until you consume it," she said. "Likewise McLuhan." Do you see any similarities?
MCLUHAN: I'm flattered to hear my work described as hallucinogenic, but I suspect that some of my academic critics find me a bad trip.
PLAYBOY: Have you ever taken LSD yourself?
MCLUHAN: No, I never have. I'm an observer in these matters, not a participant. I had an operation last year to remove a tumor that was expanding my brain in a less pleasant manner, and during my prolonged convalescence I'm not allowed any stimulant stronger than coffee. Alas! A few months ago, however, I was almost "busted" on a drug charge. On a plane returning from Vancouver, where a university had awarded me an honorary degree, I ran into a colleague who asked me where I'd been. "To Vancouver to pick up my LL. D.," I told him. I noticed a fellow passenger looking at me with a strange expression, and when I got off the plane at Toronto Airport, two customs guards pulled me into a little room and started going over my luggage. "Do you know Timothy Leary?" one asked. I replied I did and that seemed to wrap it up for him. "All right," he said. "Where's the stuff? We know you told somebody you'd gone to Vancouver to pick up some LL. D." After a laborious dialog, I persuaded him that an LL. D. has nothing to do with consciousness expansion--just the opposite, in fact--and I was released. Of course, in light of the present educational crisis, I'm not sure there isn't something to be said for making possession of an LL. D. a felony.
"at one point i had the twelve inch but i actually traded it to charka d in lubbock for a ten strip of lsd probably around age 17. as i recall it was before i went to student government camp and i took 5 hits and tripped for 2 days." (DJ Harry Bennett)
Published by Acid Age. A field report compiling the research from the Acid Age blog, and new interviews.
Contributors include Antonin Artaud, William James, Timothy Leary, Rodney Graham, and Francis Alÿs. Interviews with Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman, Arik Roper, and Hamilton Morris.
