Guest post from my dear brother Ernie (in the photo with my beautiful niece Kariana) who will be a frequent contributor to this Blog.

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It’s a bit hard going down this road without feeling old, so bare with me please.  I found myself searching for an old House Music classic…“The Pressure by Sounds of   Blackness” – the Frankie Knuckles remixes and found it on YouTube.  I can’t lie, I turned that sucker up and blasted it for all it had and danced like it was 1988.

In 1988 I had just graduated from high school and moved back to my hometown of NYC and hit the club scene with a vengeance.  I had never truly been on my own and now having graduated and going to college, I was in my time of exploration.  I hit clubs like “The Limelight”, “Red Zone”, “The World”, “Webster Hall”, “The Tunnel”, “The Loft” and my personal favorite – and to me the best – “Sound Factory”-a TRUE House Music Mecca.  This was a time when you started getting ready to go to SF at midnight and knew you’d be leaving when fabled vampires are just turning in from a night of the hunt.  It was always my best friend at the time and I and some might say, WE WERE VAMPIRES.  I wouldn’t trade those times for anything. I guess we were a bit like the children of the night hunting for that bass, that catchy hook and just plain nourishment for our weary souls.

We danced all night and morning by the huge speakers at the end of the ramp to the main dance floor and mingled amongst other like minded, totally entranced, blissful, true House Music lovers. I can clearly recall as if yesterday, being on the floor when one song died away and at a whisper and almost fading into the percussion of the preceding song…we heard: “ The Pressure, The Pressure, Soon I will be done with the pressure…”  It was like a primal calling to all present.  You left one state of trance and entered another more heightened one.  Your body could be screaming for a break, to rehydrate or check for a stress fracture even… but you’d shake your ass like you had just gotten there or downed a Red Bull, which we didn’t have at the time.  This song always set off a frenzy of jumps, smiles, screams and howls but an overall sense of ecstasy.

Don’t get me wrong, there were many UBER CLUB HITS that sent us into a spiral of joy, rejuvenation and release, but this is one of my many personal favorites that still affects me the same way. It still riles me up, makes me smile but exhausts me a lot sooner than ever before…and sometimes I DO have to check for a stress fracture…and THAT my friends is real HOUSE MUSIC…House Music all night long!