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There’s an interesting history of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer over at the No Dough Music blog. The 303 failed to catch on doing what it was designed to do (providing bass lines for musicians working without a full band) but turned out to be world-shiftingly good at something its creators probably never imagined (making the mind-altering throbs and squeals that would inspire the subgenre of dance music called acid house, which in turn provided the foundation for the first wave of UK rave culture). The 303 wouldn’t even be a footnote in the history of popular music if it weren’t for a house-music group called Phuture, who discovered the box’s consciousness-raising qualities pretty much by accident and whose single “Acid Tracks” would provide both a name and a sonic template for acid house. And “Acid Tracks” probably would never have caught on if legendary Chicago DJ Ron Hardy weren’t a badass:
A stubborn Ron Hardy did not take to this well and forced the clubbers to listen to the record again. This time some people made their way to the dance floor beginning to understand the bizarre melody pumping out of the speakers. Convinced this was the beginning of something new, Ron Hardy chose to play it a third time. This time the club embraced the record as they finally seemed to understand the point of this strange music and the track went down a storm, so Ron Hardy being Ron Hardy, decided before the night was over to give the record one final spin. It was on the fourth play of playing this record that the place truly erupted. Legend says, people were screaming hysterically whilst other were caught in a hypnotic track locked to the monotonous groove punctuated by it’s cowbell percussion.
