Clubs, Radio & Labels
The infrastructure. The Warehouse and the Music Box, Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy behind the decks, the Hot Mix 5 on WBMX, Trax and DJ International, and the record shops that sold it.
Part of Chicago House
28 moments in this segment.
- - The Warehouse opens (1977). The Warehouse opens on South Jefferson Street; Frankie Knuckles becomes resident DJ, mixing disco, soul and Philly into something new. The club gives the music its name.
- - Disco Demolition Night (1979). The infamous anti-disco riot at Comiskey Park marked disco’s mainstream "death", and pushed the dance underground, where house would be born.
- - Larry Levan & the Paradise Garage. In New York, Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage was house’s sister cathedral, Frankie Knuckles’ great friend and the other half of the story.
- - Inside The Warehouse. Footage from The Warehouse, the club that gave house music its name.
- - Ron Hardy @ the Music Box (1983). An actual Ron Hardy Music Box set, the raw, fearless heart of the Chicago sound.
- - Ron Hardy’s Music Box marathon. The legendary, fearless Music Box DJ marathons, the rawest dancefloor in Chicago.
- - DJ International Records. Rocky Jones’ DJ International was Trax’s great rival, releasing era-defining house and breaking it internationally.
- - Frankie Knuckles live at The Power Plant (1985). Frankie Knuckles working the floor at The Power Plant, the crowd, the energy, the room where house was forged.
- - Ron Hardy & the Music Box. At the Music Box, Ron Hardy span harder, wilder, more experimental sets than anyone, raw, loud, drug-fuelled marathons that shaped the rawer side of the Chicago sound.
- - Club LaRay, Chicago (c. 1986). Period footage from Club LaRay, Chicago house culture on the floor, the dancers and the crowd.
- - WBMX Hot Mix 5 - house on the radio. A vintage WBMX Hot Mix 5 radio mix, how house reached every Chicago bedroom.
- - Mickey "Mixin" Oliver & Ralphi Rosario - WBMX. The Hot Mix 5 DJs whose WBMX mixes spread house across Chicago radio.
- - Acid house rave, UK (1988). Chicago acid house crossed the Atlantic, warehouse raves, smiley-face tees and the UK’s Second Summer of Love.
- - Spectrum, London (1988). A live recording from Spectrum, one of the London nights that broke acid house in Britain.
- - Medusa’s - Chicago’s all-ages club (1989). A 1989 TV report on Medusa’s, the all-ages Chicago club where a young generation discovered house.
- - UK acid house rave footage (1989). The rave explosion in full swing, fields, warehouses and a cultural revolution born from Chicago house.
- - Chez Damier - "Can You Feel It" (Prescription). The Prescription Records deep-house sound.
- - Frankie Knuckles - Boiler Room. Frankie Knuckles behind the decks for Boiler Room, the Godfather of House, decades on, still moving the floor.
- - Gene Hunt - Boiler Room Chicago. A first-generation Chicago DJ keeping the house tradition alive.
- - Derrick Carter - all-disco set @ Smartbar. The Chicago DJ’s DJ at his home club Smartbar.
- - Duane Powell - Boiler Room Chicago. A Chicago selector carrying the city’s deep tradition forward.
- - Trax Records. Larry Sherman’s Trax Records pressed house cheaply and prolifically, on recycled, often warped vinyl, spreading the Chicago sound far and wide despite its rough quality and notorious royalties.
- - Who started Trax Records?. Vince Lawrence on co-founding the house sound and Trax Records.
- - Forty years of house in Millennium Park. Full recording of the Chicago House Music Festival at Millennium Park, filmed on 2 June 2024 at an edition billed as marking forty years of house. The free lakefront event is the city's yearly public celebration of the genre it invented.
- - The Chosen Few take over Defected. Alan King and Wayne Williams of the Chosen Few, the Chicago DJ collective behind the city's annual house picnic, play a joint set at Defected's studio. Their appearance abroad shows how the earliest Chicago crews are now booked as living history.
- - Green Velvet plays the Ditch in Valletta. Chicago's Green Velvet plays a long set for Defected in the Ditch below Valletta's fortifications in Malta. Curtis Jones, recording as both Green Velvet and Cajmere, has carried the city's harder, acid-flecked house to international stages since the early nineties.
- - The house festival returns to the lakefront. The Saturday programme of the 2025 Chicago House Music Festival in Millennium Park, filmed in full on 23 August. The festival has become the city's fixed annual marker for the music's local history.
- - A night at Smartbar. Chicago duo DRAMA play a full set at Smartbar, the long-running Chicago club that has kept the city's dance floors going for decades. The recording documents the venue as much as the artists.
