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House should really be divided into two sections of importance
New York House and Chicago House
New York House started really with Francois K and others but I will focus on the club culture to keep it simple because I probably go on for weeks about this. Larry Levan played a club in the mid 70's and his 2nd in command was Frankie Knuckles who became known for spiking the punch at a party. Larry Levan was a crazy character who played videos and stopped the music at times and left silence, he used to clean the mirrorballs in the middle of a night. He was a crazy guy, well someone from a Chicago club comes to Levan and says hey do you want to be the deejay for this new club that we are opening. He says No but I know who does and he suggested Frankie Knuckles. So Frankie Knuckles moves to Chicago and plays at a club called the wareHOUSE, which really gave house, the name and direction. He played from 1977-1983 and funny enough, he lived there in a loft in the warehouse. While Knuckles was pushing his sound to a wider audience, you still had Barbara Tucker, Chaka Khan, Giorgio Moroder pushing disco (well it was not really house till the early 80's). It all started out as a place that gay kids could have a good time and hang out.
Chicago House
So Frankie Knuckles is playing the warehouse and really shaping house (dunno why it took off in Chicago) in the late 70's and he had a friend who would also shape the House music scene. Frankie Knuckles had a friend named Ron Hardy and they got along very well. Eventually some club owner comes to Knuckles and says I need a dj for upscale gay Chicago club (more for the rich people in Chicago) and Knuckles said No he would not but said I know who would and suggested. Deja Vu anybody?, anyway Hardy went to play the musicbox, which would influence a ton of people, which I'll get into later. Knuckles eventually left the warehouse because they wanted to double the admission to something like 8 bucks. Knuckles moves on to the powerplant nightclub and Hardy was playing at the musicbox. Now some people think that Knuckles and Hardy really hated each other and went for people like vultures but that was not the case, they were friends and Knuckles played to the non rich gay crowd in one side of Chicago and Hardy played to the upscale gay crowd. Knuckles fades a bit, even tho he was still the one pushing house and really helped it make it's name. Chicago's scene was to grow in the next few years but Hardy's biggest contribution was the person that influenced the big names. At the musicbox, you had marshall jefferson, chez damier and others who basically got the inspiration to become house producers from Hardy. That was still not Hardy's biggest contribution to music, at times he had a black kid who came to the musicbox when he visited his mother in Chicago and his name was Derrick May. May's biggest inspiration was Hardy and Atkins and Saunderson went with him. They later went on the 3 of them with May in the lead to create techno and shape different music. Now about Ron Hardy's character, he was a mean guy who was really nasty to certain people and he was hated as a person but they say, boy could he play great music. About that time, Ron Hardy got into the wrong crowd (well some argue it was before that) but he got into heroin addiction and it led him to destruction. He did not have a stable job after the musicbox closed in 1987 and he even sold his rare house records for money for drugs. Hardy fades into obscurity. Oh I forgot to mention that Levan had a tremendous drug problem and after Studio 54 closed in 1987, levan did not have a stable job, tho he helped set up the original MOS soundsystem. Anyway in 1991, Levan was on a tour in Japan and fell ill and died, complication with the heart, brought on by drugs. 10 months later, Ron Hardy died of health problems because of his addiction problem. So Levan and Hardy died (walter gibbons died that same year)
I'm tired, so I'll go into how Chicago House grew with the Hot Mix 5 and some others and trax records another time. Remember around this time, btw acid house hit big in the UK (1988).
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