Frankie Bones Part 5 | Energy 1989 | House Music’s Black Origins | UK Rave Culture Explained!
Billy Daniel Bunter and Frankie Bones continue their incredible deep dive into the true origins of rave culture in one of the most fascinating episodes yet of Rave Story TV.
In part 5, Frankie reflects on creating music in New York before rave culture even properly existed. Long before he understood ecstasy culture, UK acid house or illegal warehouse parties, Frankie was already making the breakbeat-heavy electronic music that would become the soundtrack to the British rave explosion.
This episode explores the strange collision between underground New York music and the emerging UK rave scene during the late 1980s.
Frankie talks about his early rivalry and eventual friendship with Lenny Dee, before the two became close collaborators and production partners helping shape the harder underground sounds of rave culture.
He also gives a detailed history of the legendary Fourth Floor Records and Nu Groove Records labels and explains how he began working at the Apexton pressing plant in New York, boxing and packing freshly pressed records as an apprentice.
Whilst working there, Frankie first heard Todd Terry in 1987 and explains how Todd’s music completely changed everything for New York underground dance culture.
Frankie says Todd Terry made house music feel B-boy, raw and street, inspiring an entire generation of producers and DJs. He also believes Todd’s success on Fourth Floor Records helped everyone else on the label sell records and gain attention.
Billy and Frankie then go incredibly deep into the making of Bones Breaks, the legendary label that would help pioneer breakbeat hardcore and rave culture worldwide.
Frankie openly explains there was no blueprint for what he was creating. The records were rough, fearless, sample-heavy, full of mistakes and driven entirely by instinct, energy and weekly inspiration.
Daniel compares Frankie’s production style to Hank Shocklee and the chaotic layered production techniques behind Public Enemy, something Frankie reveals he has personally discussed with Hank himself.
The conversation also focuses heavily on house music’s black origins, New York club culture, American street fashion and how different the scene was in the United States compared to what house music later became in the UK once it collided with ecstasy culture.
Frankie explains why he believes Bones Breaks connected so deeply with British ravers, who instantly understood the electro, hip hop and breakbeat influences within the music.
Then the story reaches one of the most important moments in rave history.
Frankie talks about signing records to the UK and receiving the invitation that changed his life forever, travelling to England in 1989 to play the legendary illegal rave Energy.
He remembers driving around the M25 motorway system, hearing stories about pirate radio stations, seeing flyers in record shops, hundreds and then thousands of ravers gathering at petrol stations during the early hours of the morning waiting for secret rave locations, and eventually arriving at a massive aircraft hangar packed with between 10,000 and 15,000 people.
Frankie vividly remembers country roads filled with parked cars stretching for miles after ravers discovered the location.
For Frankie Bones, this was the moment everything changed forever.
The incredible thing is the music he made that inspired the UK rave movement was never intentionally made for a rave scene, because when he created it, the rave scene itself did not yet exist.
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