20 Acid House Memories

Acid House is over 20 years old!

To celebrate over 20 years of acid house, here's a top twenty of personal acid house memories.

1. Acepromazine. Avoid high vet bills by buying in bulk; 'Just ask for 'Toxteth John' mate, he's usually over there dressed in a poncho, dust mask, jumbo cords and Patrick Cox.' 'The lights man! The Fookin' Lights!' 'Fuck! I can't feel my leg!' 'Calm down, Heather, Paul'll be back in a minute.'

2. Ginsters pies/Cherry Bakewells/24 Hr Garage Scotch Eggs. Why, when your mouth is as dry as Tutankhamen's cod piece do you insist on eating 'food' which sucks any minute remaining particles of saliva out of your mouth? See also, 'skinning up' when your mouth resembles the inside of a Dundee Haddock Smoke-box. 'Giz a toot on yer water bokkle bro.'

3. Mark E Smith's covert trip to the Hacienda. Walked round all night and sneered at all the loved up twitchers and fashion faux-pas. Went home and wrote – 'Idiot groups with no shape or form-uh, out of their heads on a quid of blow-uh, the shapeless keks flapping on the storm-ah looking what they are, a pack of worms-ah.' 'Even if it's just me and your granny on spoons, it's still The fookin' Fall-ah'.

4. Fractals. Shit hippy graphics for pinned out eyeballs. 'Look mate, did you just see that galaxy just being born?' 'No, mate, I did not. It just looks like someone's tipped a load of food colouring into a salt pot.'

5. The Farm on a Short Film About Chilling. Give a bunch of chippie clad 'chippies' some guitars and send them to the Balearics and what do you get? The Las go baggy with worse clothes.

6. The bloke selling bathroom tiles at the infamous Glastonbury mud bath. 'Only dry place to skin up my friends! Get one of Tony's Tiles now while they last'.

7. Sweaty long haired lads from Leeds wearing leather keks and rubbing Tiger balm into your temples without consent. Some high court judges pay a small fortune for this experience and yet at Back To Basics it was de rigueur.

8. The bandana, cycling shorts Wallabies and blouse look on the male raver always caused much piss taking. Still seen worn to this day by members of Age of Chance, footballers and sex pests at Dudley coach station public toilets.

9. Flowered Up. Like a cross between The Happy Mondays, Canadian rockers Rush and a Berwick St. vegetable seller's convention. Chuck in a bloke who looked like Peter Gabriel after a few years in Broadmoor, and you're cooking on gas.

10. The Orb playing in Manchester at such bowel quaking velocity that the queue for the bogs grew five times as long with legitimate punters banging on the door pleading with the gak nosed munters within. Weatherall came on afterwards and played the most blistering acid house set ever. So hard, it scorched the ambient skin off the bobble hatted hippy brigade.

11. Pilled up on Boxing Day watching Man City away at Stoke, waving a big fucking inflatable banana between a man waving a paddling pool and a lad waving an inflatable fried egg.

12. Hearing Voodoo Ray for the very first time at Hot 88 and realizing that the aliens had well and truly landed. Pushing through those huge rubber butcher's curtains into the main dance area and grinning. Spin In Records the next day, 'Yeah, uh, I'd like that one that goes, wooo-ooo-ooo-oo-ah-ah-yeah!' See also, Fini Tribe – Die Testimony/Thrashing Doves – Jesus On The Payroll/ Sure Beats Working – Sure Beats Working/ Phuture – Phuture/ Tyree – Acid Over.

13. Orbital playing the Belinda Carlisle sampling Halcyon at Glastonbury 94 and then encoring with Chime. If I could find the little 13 year old gypsy crusty who sorted me out that evening, I'd buy him a beer and shake his plastic hand.

14. Kids in Dixons tapping out tunes on Roland TB 303 equivalents and having more 'soul' in their music than the whole Stock, Aitken and Waterman back catalogue put together. See also 808 State's New Build. The Never Mind The Bollocks of Acid House.

15. Stone Roses taking fifteen hours to come on stage in Birmingham and playing acid house for the duration. We woz lovin' it but the dyed-in-the-wool indie sheep were suffering twat faced apoplexy of the highest order. See also the infamous Top of the Pops with Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and New Order. Barney doing the Bez dance felt like a storming of the fucking barricades.

16. Having a cheeky puff outside of Hastings pier ballroom whilst Digweed was on and getting into a chat with an over-sexed mental. Every two seconds he was like, 'Jeez mate, look at her, FWOOR!' and 'Bloody hell mate, I'd give her one! Oooar!'. Turns out his mate was a pig farmer and he'd managed to procure some tablets from him which were designed to get the swines shagging.

17. Having mates and brother come and party in Nottingham with me in smiley T-s, Kickers and Joe Bloggs when all around was barrow boy caps, MA1s with Lenin badges and steel toe capped Docs. Female clubber – 'Why are you dancing like that? This is Hip Hop.' Our Kid - 'Fuck off! I'm from Manchester'

18. Stu Allen playing Acid House for the first time on his predominantly Hip Hop/Soul based show on Piccadilly Radio 87/88. 'Woah, massive!'

19. Watching Primal Scream 'do' Screamadelica in its entirety in Glasgow. Was going out with a female youth worker at the time who spent a lot of time 'ahem' educating about drug misuse in the Gorbals. Jumped in a taxi afterwards and sped off to a warehouse party by the docks. Acid house all night long.

20. Listening to 'Can You Feel It' with the MLK speech underneath from a car tape player at Sale water park as the sun came up and realized that things couldn't get any better.

Oh go on then, one more

21. Joe Smooth – Promised Land