He turns up each month waving paper with words on insisting he’s a columnist. We think he might be lost. If he’s yours, would you please come and get him?
Acid house. It’s not real music, is it. Proper music’s made from sensible instruments such as guitars and pipe organs and stuffed elephants with flute-holes in their trunks. Acid is just repetitive nonsense for clubbers who dress like belisha beacons and dance to overpaid DJs jabbing buttons on a reel-to-reel. It’s not even wrote proper: the makers of acid house wouldn’t recognise a chorus if Erasure jumped out of a toilet bowl singing the 1991 Top Five hit ‘Chorus’, but just the chorus bit of ‘Chorus’. If I wanted to waste time with pointless repetition, I’d type this sentence twice. If I wanted to waste time with pointless repetition, I’d type this sentence twice. Acid house is for losers.
If you read that paragraph and nodded your pathetic head in agreement, I hate you. How dare anyone besmirch the glorious name of acid house, the greatest music genre since yodelling. People who don’t like acid house are the worst kind of fart-faces, and I’ve met Jim Davidson. We have fascists in America draining fictional swamps and Eton toffs chauffeuring Britain off the side of a cliff, but the real enemy is anyone who’s not spending their weekends gurning their gnashers off to acid-tweakin’ 303-squeakin’ party bangers. I want to throttle acid house deniers with my MDMA-flecked white gloves. Acid house is for winners.
For this next bit, please get a parent or responsible adult to help you. Take a pair of scissors and cut out the above two paragraphs. Make sure you leave a border around the printed words so you don’t slice into the letters. Place the two snippets in front of you and decide which one is better. Now glue your favoured cutting into the comments section of an Instagram post or YouTube video. Congratulations: you are now arguing eloquently about music with strangers on the internet. You have passed module 137 of the national qualification of Being A Dick Online.
Although it’s known for its smiley faces and brain-softening drugs, acid house is more divisive than you think. In the hot heat of a club with its sour beers and sticky floors, it feels like the most uniting thing ever. But the world is full of people who have never been clubbing: people such as accountants and dog walkers and violinists and Mel Giedroyc. These people know nothing about the thrill of a squelch thrumming through your bladder as you dance the macarena to Josh Wink.
This is forgivable: they’re innocent, like a child, a puppy or OJ Simpson. It’s difficult to describe the sound of acid house, but you can recreate it for yourself by doing the following. Get the squeaky-voiced comic Joe Pasquale jogging on a hamster wheel. When he starts to whine, poke him with a broom. Then gut him with a cheese knife and replace his innards with the workings of a Roland TB-303. Congratulations, you now have the sound of acid house.
Speaking as a professional raver, I am hardcore into acid. I dance in forests to Bam Bam. I gyrate on b-roads to D Mob. I find Mariah Carey records on SoundCloud and type comments like “tHiS iSnT aS gOoD aS aCiD hOuSe LoL”. You can think of me as an international acid house ambassador spreading the gospel of 303 unto nations, like Mother Teresa, the Pope or OJ Simpson. You can support my efforts by posting a Sports Direct bag full of brightly-coloured drug pills to the usual address. Please now cut out this entire column and frame it with the finest glow sticks. Aciieeed!
