The night Rick Astley died.

I think we all have our own memories of how we first discovered house music and how we first caught the bug. I remember the exact night vividly. In 1987 I was starting to discover dance music for the first time, but in Wakefield, West Yorkshire it was a confusing mixed up mess of different sounds. Nights out would be a cocktail of Top of the Pops pap, Stock Aitken and Waterman, HI NRG and US soul sounds all thrown in together. Yes I had heard Jack Trax and liked it, but the pieces weren’t falling into place. I couldn’t work out how to respond to the music we would call house today. I loved Mantronix, Got To Have Your Love, but this was quite slow electro funk and I thought Kon Kan - ‘I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden)’ was like the coolest thing ever committed to vinyl. Later in life this proved to be seriously incorrect judgment. So yes, I knew I liked dance music but the lines were very blurred, as you can tell. Now I’d just like to say at this point, probably my entire social life for the next 20 years was in the balance in 1987. I didn’t know what I liked, I was musically unsure. But all that was about to change. It was just another night out in Wakefield, a small Northern City, close to Leeds. It had a rep as a crazy town for drinkers, with the main attraction being a club called Rooftop Gardens. It was legendary in the region and the only place to go when you want beer, women and late night action. I was wearing brogues, cream chinos, a pale blue shirt, stripy tie and blazer, which had a gold sailing emblem stitched on the pocket. But it was OK, because to look like Rick Astley was all the fashion. Or so I thought, until I walked into a small club connected to Rooftop Gardens called Casanovas. There on the dance floor was a throng of people going wild to house and acid. I know that night they played Royal House – ‘Can You Party’ and Marshall Jefferson - The House Music Anthem, but I couldn’t possibly ID the others, but hey it didn’t matter. Within about 10 seconds of seeing and hearing what was going on, I knew I wanted to be involved. Rick Astley was dead. I was about to become Acid Ted. I rapidly got into the tunes and the fashion, but above all, it all made sense, there was a purpose to going out, beyond beer, fights and putting your hand up a girl’s skirt. This was the new beginning, like a big flashing ‘Las Vegas’ style sign with my name on it. The missing jigsaw puzzle piece was found and I would never wear that stupid blazer again.