‘I remember going to parties,” says Anna Haigh, “and dancing on buses as we sped along the motorway – to Step On, Hallelujah, Loaded, Come Together, Fools Gold, The Only One I Know, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Sit Down.” She pauses then more memories come pouring out. “First meeting the
Primal Scream boys at the Milk Bar. Hot Soho streets and cold glasses of beer.”
Haigh has every excuse to get misty-eyed about the balmy summer of 1990. Just out of her teens and fresh from backpacking in Morocco, she found herself in the studio with Terry Farley, Pete Heller, Hugo Nicolson and
Andrew Weatherall, of the Boy’s Own party crew, adding her fierce Siouxsie-ish vocal to the Bocca Juniors track Raise. Now 30 years old,
Raise was a pinnacle of an indie-dance hybrid, one that soundtracked Bacchanalian scenes with its mischievous defiance, rave optimism and punk sass.
Across Britain, dozens of bands from newcomers to old lags were getting remixers in, absorbing the acid house of the previous two summers of love. Gigs became all-night raves. England surged ahead in the Italia 90 World Cup, soundtracked by New Order’s
E For England (as World in Motion was originally and flagrantly titled). Pop Will Eat Itself, Jesus Jones, the Shamen, and any number of pilled-up geezers, scallies and urchins such as
Flowered Up were crashing guitars and samplers together in the studio. Even the Cure got funky with 1990’s requisite Paul Oakenfold remix of Close to Me.
Others are a little less starry-eyed, though. Of the
Happy Mondays’ era-defining Glastonbury triumph in 1990, frontman
Shaun Ryder says: “I only remember the sex and drugs. I had a bird in me hotel. I’d see her, then I’d go back and sit in the luggage compartment of the tourbus with my smackhead buddies doing gear. The intro to our set was so long because they had to drag me out of the boot of the bus.” And of the
Stone Roses’ most fabled gig, the writer Jane Bussman says: “Spike Island was a bit shit. Not anyone’s fault, mind. Everyone desperately wanted it to be Woodstock, anarchy, freedom, joy. But it was on a pile of scorching concrete in a silage swamp.”
The seeds of indie-dance were planted in the preceding acid house years. “Indie-dance is what I was doing all along,” says
Paul Oakenfold. “We had two clubs from 1988. Spectrum was acid house, Future was indie-dance. I used to play the Clash, Thrashing Doves, Woodentops, a bit of hip-hop, some Bob Marley.” He cites the sound’s early proponents as “me, Nancy Noise, then Boy’s Own – Weatherall and Farley doing their own thing”.
