Benji Espinoza’s work for Quantum Distributors and the D.J. International label helped boost house into its exalted place in the global pop pantheon.
Tag: Jamie Principle
Posted inMusic
Life was just a party: Prince’s 1999 and Chicago house music
Prince could hardly have avoided influencing Chicago house, whose earliest, most ardent fans were queer Black and Brown kids.
Posted inMusic
Plugging into Chicago’s forgotten house venues
A tour and oral history of the long-gone spaces that birthed one of the foundational sounds in modern pop
Posted inMusic
Marcus Mixx has lost his home, but he still has house
Marcus Mixx’s early records fetch hundreds of dollars apiece from a cult of collectors, but he just wants a space of his own to make his new tracks.
Posted inMusic
Chicago producer Larry Sturm worked with Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley and Naked Raygun—just for starters
His influential career took him from house and punk to gigs for the likes of Prince, Destiny’s Child, and Michael Jackson.
Posted inMusic
How the USA fell for EDM, chapter one
In these excerpts from his lively and meticulous new book, The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America, longtime Reader contributor Michaelangelo Matos chronicles the three-decade ascent of EDM.
Posted inBlogs
A great DJ, a better human being: Last night at Frankie Knuckles’s memorial service
Chicago (and people from all over the world) remembered the influential musician, DJ, and producer at Progressive Baptist Church yesterday.
Posted inBlogs
12 O’Clock Track(s): RIP Frankie Knuckles, a megamix
An assortment of some of the departed house legend’s greatest work
Posted inMusic
Sick beats and lake breezes at the Wavefront Music Festival
Sick beats and lake breezes at the Wavefront Music Festival, with Frankie Knuckles, Justice, and dozens more.