GOING SHOPPING #1: JACK LIKE THAT

ALBUM: Various Artists - Jackmaster 1 [Westside Records, 1987]
PRICE: £5.00
SHOP: Revival Records, Berwick St., London

Picked up this on my weekly Berwick Street splurge yesterday afternoon. Soho's not what it used to be for record digging, but Revival Records, which opened up where Reckless used to be, is proving pretty fertile ground. One of my favourite feelings is that which the record nerd experiences when exploring a new avenue for the first time - those initial weeks or months when all you know is that yeah, this sound is good and I WANT MORE!! No frame of reference to begin with, other than the barest fragments - the 'big names' or maybe the genre's approximate location in music's big happy Venn diagram of potential awesomeness - and then a frenzy of consumption - records, artists, labels, dates, clubs, forerunners, offspring - until newness recedes, and it finds itself either loved or, more rarely, dismissed as imposter on closer inspection like some bitch-goddess of broken dreams (see my flirtation with the conscious lame-hop of Jurassic 5 c. 2001).

One of my current fads is Chicago house, and luckily for me a bunch of start-up British labels of the mid-to-late 80s specialised in putting out newbie-friendly "House 101" compilations of licensed Chicago hits, invariably using titles including the words 'Jack', 'House' and 'Track', or some imaginative combination thereof. Early house basically centres around two labels - Trax and D.J. International, and the record I picked up yesterday was essentially a UK showcase for the latter and its offshoots Underground and Fierce. There's a few joints from deep-house pioneer Joe Smooth (house music's Mr. Ronseal), four from acid godhead Adonis and, interestingly, an excellent early cut from Todd Terry under his Masters At Work moniker (before he literally gave the name back to Dope and Vega) that shows house music's spread the east coast. Original 12s of some of these tracks can be quite hard to find, so grab-bag comps like Jackmaster or the Jack Trax series are invaluable and can be picked up for well under a tenner.

Download: House People - Godfather Of House (zshare)
Download: House People - Godfather Of House (FileDEN)

Chip E. gets his boast on with this one, but when you remember he's the guy who cut "Jack Trax" and gave Frankie Knuckles his first break, it seems only fair to give the man his dues.

Download: Adonis and The Endless Poker - The Poke (zshare)
Download: Adonis and The Endless Poker - The Poke (FileDEN)

Real bona fideee O.G. acid from Adonis and Magic Amp. More relevant than ever.

Download: Patrick Adams feat. Lari Lee - Jack In The Bush (zshare)
Download: Patrick Adams feat. Lari Lee - Jack In The Bush (FileDEN)


Bit of proto-pop house from NY. Future New Jack Swing mastermind Adams goes mental with the 'orchestra hit' key on his synth whilst Lee sings some rubbish about wanting to jack in the bush, which may or may not mean something a leeetle bit saucy.

Buy: Jackmaster 1 is out of print, but you can buy some D.J. International records here.