Can You Feel It?

It’s July, 1989 and the temperature is hot! 

Actually, for a lot of the UK it surprisingly was, but let’s leave meteorological memories aside, we’re talking the dancefloor. The country, the WHOLE nation was completely right on one, matey. 

Well maybe not the entire nation, but there was no doubt that the BPMs were sweeping the nation much quicker than the BSB squarial was in the last summer of the eighties. 

As 1988 became 1989, the underground was rapidly moving overground. The house sound of Chicago and Detroit had landed on our sceptred isle and we were making it out own. Artists such as The Beatmasters, Coldcut and Mark Moore’s S-Express had stamped their authority on the charts and across the country as teens were pouring over Smash Hits for the lyrics of Inner City tracks and swapping mixtapes of the latest grooves.

And, NOW That’s What I Call Music were THERE!

Well, yes they were, but that’s not the whole story.

Get on the dancefloor legendary compilers K-tel and new variously compiled whippershappers from Telstar, who (for once) were ahead of the compilation curve. Albums series such as Deep Heat (in those large cassette boxes Discog fans!) were bringing the cool kids a real mix of dance, hip hop and sounds from both sides of the Atlantic. 

So what did our friends at EMI/Virgin do? What they always do - respond, and then some!

Join author, journalist, compiler and all round dance music fanatic Joe Muggs as we revisit the explosive dancefloor culture of summer 1989 though the lens of NOW Dance 89. Rediscover some iconic tracks from Inner City, Soul II Soul and Coldcut. Remember (because you may have forgotten) the VERY 89 sound of Hip House with the likes of The Cookie Crew, Merlin and (awesome super duper) Tyree. Find out how NOW navigated a groove between the mainstream and the emerging underground through some amazing 12” mixes and laid a blueprint for the impending sound of the 90s, and indeed an unavoidable cultural shift into the next century of pop and beyond.

And if that wasn’t enough, find out which dance icon Joe sought out an autograph from, how the legendary producer Youth may have missed a chance to be on The Fast Show, which track brings tears to mothers eyes at Big Fish Little Fish discos and why we need the uplifting and uniting experience of house music now more than ever.

People, hold on!

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