Eddie Amador “House Music”

The birth of our underground brand, Factory 93, not only brought on an adrenaline rush reminiscent of the renegade warehouse era of raving—on which Insomniac was founded—but it also had us thinking back to all the people, places and parties that made this whole operation possible. And with that came a burning desire to crack open our collection and dust off the classic records we couldn’t live without. Through our From the Crate series, we’ll be breaking out both seminal and obscure cuts alike, imparting some knowledge in the process.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 19 years since Eddie Amador’s “House Music” was released on Deep Dish’s Yoshitoshi imprint and shot its way to the top of the charts in more than 20 countries. Even harder to comprehend, to this day, is the fact that it was Eddie’s first release. It would be the first of many chart-topping hits, but still, there’s no ignoring the way that one tune not only changed Eddie’s life but impacted the ongoing evolution of house music as a genre in innumerable ways.

When we talk about Eddie’s “House Music,” we’re not just talking about the minimalist groove or the vocal call to arms—the now-legendary house music manifesto that announces, “Not everyone understands house music. It’s a spiritual thing, a body thing, a soul thing.”

It was that “soul thing” refrain in particular that stands out to this day. The words returned over and over throughout the tune, riding on top of a hypnotic kick, the swirling melody and hook still able to take the old-school heads back to those days of dark after-hours clubs, lost in the beat, surrounded by a heaving mass of like-minded souls.

But before we get into that, it’s important that we contextualize things so we can truly understand the ways in which a tune like this not only captures the attention of the dancefloor but is part of a broader conversation with the culture from which it was born. Of course, we’re talking house music, but we’re also talking about the ways in which the tune not only put Eddie Amador on the map but legitimized the West Coast house music scene that many felt was being overlooked in favor of well-known hot spots like Chicago or New York.

While some trace the lineage of house to Chicago’s Warehouse nightclub—popular in the late 1970s and early ‘80s—for the L.A. underground, the dancefloor was just as likely to be in an actual warehouse reflecting the scene’s penchant for rejecting the limelight of mainstream clubs and instead seeking out (or being forced into) the darker, edgier corners of the city that would come to signify the Los Angeles dance music experience for decades to come.

It’s here, in the span between the 1970s and the ‘90s, that the intersection of disco, hip-hop, electro-funk and pop would give way to an electronic music scene that continues to evolve to this day. House music, in particular, would not only rise from the ashes of disco, but distance itself from its predecessor by seeming to revel in a kind of anti-mainstream ethos that appealed to and attracted a wide range of figures on the fringes of mainstream club culture. While a great deal of attention has been given to the ways in which house music attracted black, Latino and gay youth, for those in the know, the real appeal of house music transcended class, color and sexuality by creating a community that moved people in a spiritual way. We’re not talking organized religion here; we’re talking about the kind of mystical experience brought on by losing yourself to a tribal beat and relentless groove, the kind of experience that puts you in touch with your primal self at the same time it grants you communion with a room full of people riding the same wave.

Now, before I lose you, this is exactly what Eddie Amador’s “House Music” was able to capture in one place. It was an homage to the roots of the genre while also serving to articulate the experience that brought old- and new-school house heads to the dancefloor. The very act of untangling the DNA of the tune should show what I mean, as the foundation of the track leads us directly to “Together Forever” by Exodus. Released in 1982 by a group that apparently came together to record this one song before breaking up, “Together Forever” already had legendary status on the post-disco dancefloor years before Eddie and others would use it as a sample source.

One listen, and you know you’re in straight-up Chicago house territory, with the lingering aftertaste of the 1970s still hanging over the proceedings. Soul, funk and disco genes fight for dominance on the record as the tune unfolds like a jam session, complete with live horns, drums, and a funky bass guitar that brings to mind an affinity for the loose feel of Santana or Earth, Wind, and Fire over that of the highly polished output of Donna Summer or KC & the Sunshine Band.

Flash-forward to the late 1990s, and Eddie Amador and his contemporaries are deep in a world where after-hours club nights like Does Your Mama Know rule the underground and serve as the vortex where house music continues to morph and evolve. It was a world that was suddenly swelling with new house music fans, a place where all walks of life and lovers of music came together. Ravers, clubbers, college kids, cholos, rockers, gay, straight, black, white, Asian and Latino all came together with love for the almighty groove, to let loose on the dancefloor.

For Los Angeles heads old enough to remember Beat Non Stop, Street Sounds, WAX, DMC, Aaron’s or Higher Source, those long nights at the Coconut Teaszer captured the shifting energy in the air as venues ranging from after-hours to raves and even ditch parties featured some form of music that traced its roots to soul, funk, Latin, and disco.

“Robert’s voice still calls out to us across the years, capturing the essence of what the tune is really all about: a love letter to the streets and a hint at the eternal wisdom of an underground world, where the almighty beat beckons and unites the spirit, body, and soul on the dancefloor.”

It’s out of this environment that Eddie Amador emerges. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering at Arizona State University, Eddie moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles in 1996 and was instantly captivated by the vibrant underground scene that was going full-steam. A proper engineer at heart, Eddie spent countless hours trying to marry his love of mathematics and technology to his passion for music and the production process. After a year in his homegrown lab, all that hard work seemed to pay off in a huge way as Eddie knocked out his first track, the simply titled “House Music.”

While Eddie continues to be in demand as a DJ, producer and remixer worldwide, there’s no denying the power that this first hit has to this day. He once proclaimed that his mission as a producer was to “take the classic elements of house and infuse it with technology to create a redefined, streamlined form of music that has twice as much soul and twice as much energy but with just as much groove.”

Central to this ethos is the vocal itself. As Eddie tells it, the vocals were courtesy of Robert, a “homeless guy” who used to come into Street Sounds record shop on Melrose and listen to music (without ever actually buying anything). Having heard his voice while singing along to tunes, Eddie had the idea of having Robert record vocals for what would soon be his first track.

The next day, when Robert came in, Eddie handed Robert a piece of paper that read, “Not everyone understands house music. It’s a spiritual thing, a body thing, a soul thing.” Using the bathroom in Street Sounds as a makeshift recording booth, Eddie captured the legendary vocal hook of “House Music” with nothing more than a handheld cassette recorder.

It’s a fitting coda to the epic vibe that “House Music” continues to represent. Robert’s voice still calls out to us across the years, capturing the essence of what the tune is really all about: a love letter to the streets and a hint at the eternal wisdom of an underground world, where the almighty beat beckons and unites the spirit, body, and soul on the dancefloor.