Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992

It's not terrible, but I wouldn't be able to read it.

Really? Yeah. Especially not upside down.

My mum hates my handwriting.

No, it's nice.

It looks like a doctor's writing.

Tasmine. Here. Hasma. Here.

Russell. Here. Iclith. Here.

Lily. Here. Chard. Here.

Serene. Here. Noelhela. Here.

Sadia. Here. Sarah. Here.

Platin. Here. Zafe. Here.

Habiba. Here. Mahima. Here.

Shazad. Here. Minnas. Here.

Leon. Here. Tringa. Here.

Needa. Here, Heeba. Here.

Nuna. Here. Julia. Here.

Harnett. Here. Drin. Here.

Radisha. Here.

Allan. Here. Yasmin. Here.

Issa. Here.

Today we've got Jeremy Della, who's going to be working

with you on a project to do with art, culture,

and society and politics.

So I will just hand over to Jeremy.

Thank you for having me here today.

I just want to start by telling a story.

It's really a fable about Britain that's seen through the eyes

of a TV show in the UK called The Hit Man and Her,

which was basically a record producer and a younger woman

going around nightclubs in the late '80s and early '90s.

He has an empire, basically. In 1988, he is probably

the most successful record producer in Britain.

He's selling millions and millions of records.

And I'm going to show you a clip of it.

Because inadvertently, or accidentally,

it really documented life in Britain.

It really documented the conservatism of life in Britain

as well at the time.

And in these two clips, you will see how the world changes

between 1988 and 1992.

Hello, and welcome to The Hit Man and Her,

This is the Hit Man. And this is Her.

And this is The Palace Nightclub at Blackpool.

Yes, we are back in Blackpool.

MUSIC PLAYING

OK, come on, right over to the side there.

Come on.

So these clubs were not really about music.

They were more about entertainment.

So like something out of the 1950s.

This is Britain as a holiday camp.

Four years later, the programme went to a club in Coventry,

and it was a totally different environment.

And you can see that the presenters don't know what's happened.

Hello, and welcome to The Hit Man and Her,

You might have noticed this isn't a normal Hit Man and Her.

We're not at a normal Roxy or a Ritzy or anything,

we're actually at a rave at the Eclipse in Coventry,

and this is energy night.

We've got live music tonight, exclusive, and it's all hot.

Three tracks from Altern-8, also an exclusive from Sunscreem.

It is so hot in here, it's unbelievable.

THUMPING RAVE MUSIC

So here, what's happened to Pete Waterman

is that his world has collapsed around him.

He's lost control of the nightclub.

There's been a coup.

Here, the king of the producers has been deposed.

This is a 41, 42-year-old man making music for like 13, 14-year-olds.

So in a way, he has no connection to that culture.

What you are seeing here is a real generation gap.

These photographs show a part of the gay club scene in Chicago

in the mid-1980s.

Ron Hardy was a producer and a DJ, and with his friends

set up a club called The Music Box. And these are some of the pictures -

they're very intimate, very loving photographs.

If you think about the club as a haven, so the club is the place

where you can be the person you want to be.

Maybe the closest equivalent to the nightclub is the church,

where people support each other and share common values.

For me, these photographs are like the beginning

of a new religion.

So possibly the earliest Christian services were like this -

illicit underground gatherings of people

who were whipped up into a frenzy through music and sound.

And the kind of music they were making,

it's like a tougher version of disco, but less straight

and less white.

These pictures were taken in the midst of the Aids epidemic.

So this is actually a very terrifying time to be gay,

because it still wasn't totally understood by the public,

at least.

So there is a theory that these clubs and this music

became popular because it was a way for men to spend time

with each other, without having to have sex.

And so a lot of the songs were about working your body,

working hard, all those kinds of things,

as if this is like a job almost.

But like any scene, this moves on,

and this is when it goes from being in this little club

to, like, bigger clubs.

It's still black, but it's more heterosexual.

It's a music scene that actually is making people money now.

This is from I think '86, about that.

...most recent contribution to the American music scene

is how it got its name.

So-called "house music" was first made in the creators' houses,

but was also performed at clubs called the Warehouse and Powerhouse.

However it got its name, it's one of the hottest things going,

and as Jay Levine reports, it may only be a matter of time

before house musicians become heroes in their own home.

HOUSE MUSIC PLAYING

They started playing house music

at this Michigan Avenue hotel and health club last summer,

and they've been packing them in ever since.

It's the first time house has escaped the South Side dance clubs

or North Side juice bars for a more upscale audience,

though it's still a long way from sweeping the city.

Check, check, check.

With Sweet D, Danny Wilson, on keyboards,

the DJ called Farley, Jack Master Funk,

one of the creators of house music,

is ready to make a tape.

It all starts with a heavy beat.

DRUMBEAT AND KEYBOARD RIFF

OK, that sounds pretty good.

Now I'm going to talk into the sampler right here.

Work your body... Then we can play it from the keyboard,

it stays into the sample, and I can play it on the keyboard

up and down the scale.

Work your body, work your body.

It can have a fast or slow effect.

Like a chipmunk, you know.

REPEATS SLOW AND DEEP

Then I'll bring in the percussion.

Lot of congos, no congos.

So now with the bass line or drumbeat set, the rhythm

in place, and the vocal all recorded, Farley and Sweet D

are ready to make what in the record business is known as a demo.

# Work, work, work your body Work your body, work your body... #

What were you trying to do when you started?

Make some money.

House has been very good to Farley, and to others.

But if it takes off like many believe it will,

those thousand-dollar advances they've been getting

may soon seem like peanuts.

Jay Levine, Channel Seven Eyewitness News.

The class which has the means of material production

at its disposal has control at the same time

over the means of mental production.

There is a theory by Marx, the theory of alienation,

which concerned the industrial worker's separation from

what he or she was producing.

This led to a separation from society, and ultimately,

other human beings.

So Marx thought, well, the only way for the worker not to be alienated

was to take control of the means of production.

Even though Karl Marx wouldn't have really understood house music,

I think he would've understood what these people are doing.

That they're taking control of the means of production, basically.

And making something for themselves

and also something that can make them money.

The technology has to progress, and by technology progressing,

it changes people's relationships to each other,

which is definitely what was happening here.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

They do not make it under self-selected circumstances,

but under circumstances existing already,

given and transmitted from the past.

Tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare

on the brains of the living.

So this is the Ronin 303 - it was originally made

to accompany guitarists.

But as a product, it was a failure,

as it was so difficult to use, and unruly.

But in the hands of DJs and dance music producers,

it made music that people have never heard before,

and forms the basis of a lot of the music you will hear today.

There's another scene going on almost at the same time in Detroit.

This is a city that has a landscape of ruins, effectively.

It's a city that was known for the automobile industry,

which was in the centre of the town, more or less,

and then moved out to the suburbs.

So the centre of town, for that reason,

and for others, became abandoned.

In a way, it's the first city in the world to be post-industrial.

It's a view of the future,

but it's the future that's in ruins, effectively.

It's the emptiness in the city

that puts the wholeness in the music.

It's like a blind person can smell and touch and sense things

that a person with eyes would never notice.

And I tend to think that a lot of us here in Detroit have been blind.

Blinded by what was happening around us.

And we sort of took those other senses and enhanced them.

And that's how the music developed.

So you have this different musical environment,

but also an environment of industry and technology,

and the tension between them.

Berry Gordy built the Motown sound on the same principles