In 1988, I spotted a paper nightclub flyer in the smoker’s common room of the Manchester sixth-form college where I was studying for my A-levels. A smiley face logo had been given a sunshine hat in honour of Hot, the new Wednesday night starting at The Hacienda, two miles down the road.
Summer 1988 brought us Inner City’s Big Fun, Sterling Void’s It’s Alright, Joe Smooth’s Promised Land, CeCe Rogers’s Someday and early pressings of Lil’ Louis’s French Kiss, the most gleefully pornographic acid house record I’d ever heard. For a fleeting two months during the year, I wore dungarees and grew my hair. In the hands of the right DJ, these records represented resistance, a joyful fightback against relentless societal grimness.
