How did you get into dance music?

[hoke]

Warning: long, self-involved story ahead.

When I was about 11 years old, I had a Duck Tales video. For those of you who watched Duck Tales, it was the one where the Beagle Boys steal a device that lets them teleport Scrooge's money from his vault to their hideout.

At one point in the video, the nephews are chasing the Beagle Boys down the street, and there's *gasp* electronic music playing in the background... I knew the first time I heard it that I like that music A LOT.

I mentioned it to my mom, and for my next birthday she got me a Tangerine Dream tape... it was nice, but it didn't have the same upbeat, get-up-and-move feel that I liked about the other song. I didn't think much more of it at that point...

Fast forward 2 years.

I'm listening to the radio, and an ad comes on for a 21+ club in San Francisco. Playing in the background is C&C Music Factory, "Gonna Make You Sweat." I also knew I like that, but again, didn't know what to do with that knowledge.

Fast forward another year.

I'm living in Switzerland. I get my first CD player for my birthday, and most of the CDs I pick up are Eurodance -- compilations with Haddaway, Jam & Spoon, Snap, 2 Unlimited, etc. There wasn't anything unique about me buying those CDs -- it was the pop music of the moment at the time. Still, I liked the music a lot, and tended to like the songs at the end of the CDs best -- the trippy stuff, Depeche Mode remixes, stuff that I might later identify as acid house.

When I moved back to California, I still listened to those CDs, but I didn't buy any new ones. Everybody was listening to hip-hop, and I was desperate to fit in after having moved so often.

Then, about 5 years later, in college, I started hanging out with a couple guys who were really into trance. They had a suite at the top of one of the dorms where they'd throw huge parties, and I went to every one of them because I loved the music and the dancing... those were probably the best times I ever had in college.

The summer before my senior year, one of those same guys, who'd recently graduated, offered me an internship in New York. I accepted, largely because I'd recently broken up with my girlfriend of two years and wanted a change.

Two weeks into my stay at New York, we went to Cheetah on a Friday night. I don't remember what music they were playing specifically -- in fact, I don't remember much of that night at all -- but I'm guessing it was anthem house, because that's what I ended up listening to most of that summer.

At the same time, Napster was still popular, and I was using downtime at work to download as much electronic music as possible. I still have a CD of my favorite MP3s that I downloaded... there's everything from Alice Deejay to Freestylers on there!

Back in college, I continued downloading electronic music, and before long I stumbled across a DJ named Danny Tenaglia. His GU London, to be precise. I'd never heard of him before, but I loved his style. It was different from anything I'd heard before. It was smooth. It was tribal. It was upbeat and dark at the same time. It made me want to get up and move.

I researched DT and found out that he had a residency at a club named Vinyl. When I moved back to New York last July, one of the first things I did was look up that club. I eased into it... started out with Body & Soul, next checked out Shelter, and finally went to see DT himself.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[phuturephunk]

. . . I moved to Florida when I was twelve . ...

[mylexicon]

well about 5 or 6 years ago...I was getting tired of the music I was listening to....(U2,Radiohead,Dmode)and I asked a friend who was a DJ if there was anything different out there...he took me to tower records and placed the Northern Exposure cd in my hand...it was like a drug...I am addicted for life:D

[bigpoppanils]

way back in junior high i was first exposed to it

i bought the single of "cant help falling in love" by UB40...the b-side of the tape was a jungle song called "jungle love"...lost the tape when i moved last (4yrs ago)...cant find it anywhere

i also remember my sister was bringing home Mike Ski mix tapes

in 1995 (when i started HS) i remeber listening to Sandy B, Funky Green Dogs, and Faithless and buying their singles...

Kinda got lost in the crap called "alternative rock" until senior year when i got the NIN Perfect Drug single, Chemical Brothers-Surrender, and Faithless-Sunday 8pm

Freshman year of college...killing time on first day...wandered into Virgin Union Square by the listening stations...spotting the Run Lola Run soundtrack (heard good stuff about it)

i picked up the disc...went over to the next station...Plastic Volume 3....

it was all over from there

[ReginaP]

Not sure...just somehow ended up at limelight....

[hotcheme]

i always used to like commercials or randoms bits of electronic music through high school but i never knew anything about the genre at all except that it was bigger in europe.

then in my 3rd year of college i met some people who constantly listened to Trance and I was immediately consumed by the music and the culture around it. the first CD i ever listened to was Sasha's GU San Francisco and it is still a favorite for me. I still haven't seen him and that is why I am so excited for Buzz on the 16th.

Unfortunately, all of my initial exposure was local and I passed up repeated inviatations to go to Twilo with those people and never made it there.

then i started going out in NY about 6 months ago and learned that there is more quality music than just Trance (which i still love).

so anyway, Thanks, CP!

[joeg]

Originally posted by ReginaP

Not sure...just somehow ended up at limelight....

lol, same!

[bsb2002]

when you grow up in the detroit area (as i did) all you have to do is turn on the radio at night and you will hear some wild shit (especially later on). It's amazing how as i got more into the stuff over the years, especially after working in london, i'd hear old classic detroit and chicago tracks and recognize them from the radio back in the day. Even as a kid when i didn't have a clue who say Frankie Knuckles was, I knew "whistle song".

[georgym]

Back when i was like 8 or 9, My friend Bart in Belgium played me some house music, but the beat had me addicted.

He made me tapes, and told me how techno began in Europe and al the different styles emerging.

Eventually, it caught on here in the States, and the rest is history

[tastyt]

My soph yr of college I started going clubbing with some friends... the music was really lame remixes so at the time I was more into the "scene" aspect and just really had fun hanging out there... then, a few months later, I hit my first rave... and heard *real* electronic music for the first time... now there's no hope for me, lol...

[cintron]

I'm latin and i grew up in PuertoRico.

Nuff Said.

seriously, the rhythms always gave me a flavor for percussion and chanting, singing your heart. It really made music into a spiritual experience.

i actually found ELECTRONIC music through experimentation. Prodigy - Firestarter, had me look into them. C&C music factory - especially Robbie Rob's Boriqua anthem!!

there was a long time where i listened to chilled out music like Alanis Morisette (yeah fuck you i was 15), Dave Matthews (but then i realized i wasn't a modern hippie), and other stuff closer to my roots such as Sergio Mendes, tito puente, the Latin Kings, etc...

It was ONE track in particular that got the whole party started.

Sergio Mendes - Capoiera Do Brasil. Also known as Magalenha.

That song is the root of all latin/tribal house.

I figured there HAD to be more music like that out there - the record stores couldn't POSSIBLY cover everything... so i searched.

And after discovering "House" music, i can say i'm glad with what i've found.

[crowina]

i met someone that introduced me to the world of sasha and digweed....i felt more complete.

[brooklynkid]

Originally posted by cintron

I'm latin and i grew up in PuertoRico.

Nuff Said.

I'm italian and I grew up in Brooklyn. Nuff said.

What do I remember?

Disco on the *original* 92 WKTU in the early 80's...

Freestyle music on HOT 103 in the late 80's and then HOT 97 in the early 90s before they changed to all hip hip.

Started DJing in 1989, starting out by carrying records and setting up stuff for the school dance DJs...

In 1993, house music at the Palladium on 14th Street with DJ Charlie Cassanova, and techno and trance at Limelight.

The first song I ever heard in a club was "I Like to Move It" by Reel 2 Real (yikes!) at a place called Club Morocco on Staten Island.

Have I dated myself enough?

[bustaknut2001]

It all started at the Sound Factory for me. (To the young crowd, that means the ORIGINAL Sound Factory).

[mssabina]

when i was fourteen, i had older friends that went to tunnel and twilo all the time. they always talked about johnny vicious and paul van dyk and whoever else they were hearing... so i download some songs and went from there

[sexxyme]

I was with my ex for 3 and a half years..and he was a music fanatic..so he kind of got me into it...THAT...and...I somehow ended up at Twilo:D

[sdeelite]

well...

i had always been way into music as a lil' kid...liked everything but especially the pop and dance stuff...

in the 80's for instance stuff like MJ (back when he was semi-normal), JJ, Madonna (since she came from the club scene her being into dance music of all types has influenced me a lot greatly too), Whitney, Cyndi Lauper....

also random songs i know i dug a whole lot were stacy q-two of hearts, nu shooz-i can't wait, and pretty poison-catch me i'm falling....(i was 7 at the time)

also loved the freestyle thing, silent morning being one of my faves (and still is)...

this eventually transformed into c+c, black box, ce ce peniston and stuff like that...

i also used to buy the bootleg mix tapes on the street which also helped me get more into the "techno" thing (at the time that is what most of this music was called indefinitely)...

then for a couple yrs, there was something about the grunge movement, but i grew outta that (not that their wasn't good music from that era, but....)

then in 1994 (i was 14), being a huge madonna fan, i was watching her pajama party on MTV being broadcast from webster hall and Junior was spinning...and i heard him and his tracks and i was like woah! what the fuck is that?! i luved it instantly.

and that was it for me--instant house head. house isn't the only type o' dance music i listen to but it will always be my first love.

Didn't mean to type a novel, but it was a long evolutionary process for me...

[gmoneyjive]

lol... I think I was the only person in northern Maine who listened to dance music. We only had 2 radio stations, an 80's soft rock station & of course country (god I hated that shit with a passion)... and for a few years there was only a country station which lead me into some severe depression Fortunately there was this french station out of Montreal & relayed somewhere so we could hear it. All the talking & some songs were in french, but there was some really good dance mixes late night... friends thought I was weird as hell listening to the french station when I couldn't speak it & it had "weird" music... u know them damn french ppl

the rest is history...

[gothzane]

My ears started to turn towards electronica when I heard Robert Miles - Children on the radio. I can also remember questioning the theme song to the movie Beverly Hills Cop...with Eddie Murphy.

But I wandered back into my metal grunge phase untill about 2 years ago when I dating a lovely latino girl and she took me to Exit for my birthday...

That was the day when I truely understood how much I dispise house music. but I could stand there for hours watching people dance, spin glowsticks....but the music was damn terrible

....but luckily for me there was this room in the upper corner...the red room..where they spun tech/trance/ and hard house which saved me from running away from electronica all togeather.

I used to go to the red room by myself every other friday.

Me and 500 asians all sitting there bopping our heads away.

I used to sneak in bags of candy...blopops, butterscotch..all the good stuff...and so they always left me a spot on the edge of the subwoofer to sit and cool off...definitly some good memories.

Then I just happened to stumble onto CP one day at work...

Found other venues...and some excellent people to hang out with.

Im still searching for the style of electronica that fits me.

Heretic909, Mugz, theHacker, Xpander, and BigPopa

theyve helped me come a loooong way

and im definitly ever so greatfull.

[jesx81]

I was just walking chilling in the city some1 handed me a twilo flyer. I looked at it and it showed a picture of junior vasquez. Couple months later I went to tower records to but A new Hip pop Cd. As I was browsing I stumbled across a junior Vasquez CD. It was X'99: Junior Vasquez to be exact...I decided to try it out.. As soon as i popped in the cd I was blown away....The x'99(club 69 anthem future mix) was the first electronic song i heard... Since then im hooked on house trance tribal...

[Xpander]

I became really fascinated with the movie "Pi" by Darren Arnofsky. Being as interested, I convinced my friends to buy me a copy of the soundtrack for my birthday. One track that caught my ear was Orbital - "P.E.T.R.O.L.", which I became "slighty" obsessed with.

Then a couple of weeks later, I saw an Orbital CD playing at a listening station in the Virgin Megastore...

[ecstatichigh35]

At like 17 my best friend Jeremy let me borrow his Robert Miles cd that he just got and I listened to it all day in school, I thought it was such a deep amazing sound and I really felt it, but I still had no idea about scene, A couple weeks later, it was new years of 2000 and we went to my friend had a huge party at her house. I didn't realize at the time but the crowd was pretty ravey there and all they played a lot of dave seaman and listened to some happy hardcore too. That night while shrooming my ass off I fell in love with the music. The next few days I couldn't get it out of my head. I went to a cd store and bought a few random cd's from the "Dance" section. One which was HarDeserTrance 2, which I fell in love with. A little while later, Napster came around and I started downloading a lot of Paul Oakenfold and PVD and from then on it was all I listened to and I got deeper and deeper into the scene. Summer before senior year of high school I started researching how to produce your own electronic music and then a couple months later I started building a studio, by that summer I was producing tracks, and december 2001 I bought turntables off my friend and started spinning which was one of the greatest things I have ever done.

[hitokiri24]

Originally posted by hoke

Warning: long, self-involved story ahead.

When I was about 11 years old, I had a Duck Tales video. For those of you who watched Duck Tales, it was the one where the Beagle Boys steal a device that lets them teleport Scrooge's money from his vault to their hideout.

At one point in the video, the nephews are chasing the Beagle Boys down the street, and there's *gasp* electronic music playing in the background... I knew the first time I heard it that I like that music A LOT.

I mentioned it to my mom, and for my next birthday she got me a Tangerine Dream tape... it was nice, but it didn't have the same upbeat, get-up-and-move feel that I liked about the other song. I didn't think much more of it at that point...

Fast forward 2 years.

I'm listening to the radio, and an ad comes on for a 21+ club in San Francisco. Playing in the background is C&C Music Factory, "Gonna Make You Sweat." I also knew I like that, but again, didn't know what to do with that knowledge.

Fast forward another year.

I'm living in Switzerland. I get my first CD player for my birthday, and most of the CDs I pick up are Eurodance -- compilations with Haddaway, Jam & Spoon, Snap, 2 Unlimited, etc. There wasn't anything unique about me buying those CDs -- it was the pop music of the moment at the time. Still, I liked the music a lot, and tended to like the songs at the end of the CDs best -- the trippy stuff, Depeche Mode remixes, stuff that I might later identify as acid house.

When I moved back to California, I still listened to those CDs, but I didn't buy any new ones. Everybody was listening to hip-hop, and I was desperate to fit in after having moved so often.

Then, about 5 years later, in college, I started hanging out with a couple guys who were really into trance. They had a suite at the top of one of the dorms where they'd throw huge parties, and I went to every one of them because I loved the music and the dancing... those were probably the best times I ever had in college.

The summer before my senior year, one of those same guys, who'd recently graduated, offered me an internship in New York. I accepted, largely because I'd recently broken up with my girlfriend of two years and wanted a change.

Two weeks into my stay at New York, we went to Cheetah on a Friday night. I don't remember what music they were playing specifically -- in fact, I don't remember much of that night at all -- but I'm guessing it was anthem house, because that's what I ended up listening to most of that summer.

At the same time, Napster was still popular, and I was using downtime at work to download as much electronic music as possible. I still have a CD of my favorite MP3s that I downloaded... there's everything from Alice Deejay to Freestylers on there!

Back in college, I continued downloading electronic music, and before long I stumbled across a DJ named Danny Tenaglia. His GU London, to be precise. I'd never heard of him before, but I loved his style. It was different from anything I'd heard before. It was smooth. It was tribal. It was upbeat and dark at the same time. It made me want to get up and move.

I researched DT and found out that he had a residency at a club named Vinyl. When I moved back to New York last July, one of the first things I did was look up that club. I eased into it... started out with Body & Soul, next checked out Shelter, and finally went to see DT himself.

The rest, as they say, is history.

daaaamn u wern t kiddin that shit is long.....

well for me it happened when i was in new mexico back in '99 i was a hip hop head back then... i was walkin down a dirt road late one night an this yellowish light engulfed me i woke up to find that i was abducted by aliens from the planet electronica (no joke) i discovered that these sinister alien with soul implanted a chip in my brain that always play the same repeatitive melody an they instructed me to spread this new sound to the masses ...oO(whaddya think ya buy it?).....na but seriously my friend put me on to it after i grew to detest hip hop after big an pac died thats all