In the last installment of this trip down memory lane, I left you in 1987 and Britain was on the brink of the biggest youth counter culture movement to happen, and eventually turn into a music scene that would take the world by storm.

The midlands and the north of England had embraced House music first, but it was the London clubs championed by DJs like Oakenfold, Rampling, Holloway and others that gave the music an identity, a dance and a fashion.

Acid House was when Britain shook off the grey dust it had been wearing since the war, and when a nation built on acceptance and duty started asking questions. Though there weren't many answers, Britain was starting to become a very different place. There had been plenty of sunny moment before but none as weirdly, disruptively and creatively universal as the Acid House explosion.

In the 60s you could tune in, turn on, and drop out, and if you were a hip photographer or if Daddy could pay your rent. With Acid House, however, this voyage of discovery was opened up to nearly everyone. Builders became record producers, market traders launched fashion labels, football hooligans became poets, and binmen started magazines. All over the country boys and girls stopped wanting to grow into cool successful Armani-suited adults and settled gleefully for being boys and girls. At the end of the 80s, Britain had been through a decade of greed and Acid House brought with it a youth culture of smiley faces and togetherness and talking rubbish - like puppies rumbling in the garden we found the best way to learn about the world was to play.

But, a quick history lesson - if you're younger than 30 years old, then I need to explain how bad social life in Britain was back in the 80s before Acid House, so I can show you how important House music was and still is.

Before Acid House took over the UK, pubs shut at 11pm, bars didn't exist apart from up-market wine bars, clubs closed at 2am and would turn out drunks into the street for a punch up. There were even clubs with racial policies letting mainly whites only in, a window into the frightening level of racism Britain experienced in those days.

Acid house broke down all social barriers at the time and created a cultural social youth revolution of empathy with the mix of the music that took away peoples fears and opened up a stronger communication between all.

Originally Acid house was a name for a certain style of house music coming out of Chicago as discussed in previous issues. But in Britain, the term Acid House was used to encompass the whole scene including house music, techno and the Balearic beat coming out of Ibiza.

A generation began to redefine itself around the emotions and etiquette of the dancefloor. When this experience became mainstream, these new nightlife rules swept Britain clean of its previous division, and the end result - thousands of smiling friends you had never met before - was genuinely revolutionary. Acid House was nothing less than a defining era in British social history

Club crowds quickly grew from 3-400 to 2-3000, and it was time for acid house to explode out of the clubs into bigger venues with less restrictions: namely disused warehouses. Contrary to popular belief, warehouse raves had been going for 2-3 years before Acid House hit the UK, with the rare groove scene - helmed by Norman Jay - taking over huge warehouses and delivering all-night parties.

The first ever Acid House warehouse rave in London in 1988 was called Hedonism, and they went on to throw 3-4 parties and set the template for the scene.

Summer of love (Part 2)

Tony Colston-Hayter who had made his money from a video games business and later from counting cards at Blackjack, was a regular at Danny Rampling's Shoom club and was getting disillusioned with the increasingly strict door policy and decided to start his own warehouse parties. The first one was held at a London film studio called Apocalypse Now but he made one big mistake by letting a national TV crew to come in and film it. The mainstream media had a field day reporting the footage of spaced-out kids, and this alerted the authorities who wanted to find out what was going on. But when the police turned up, they were faced with thousands of smiling youths hugging each other and in turn started hugging the police.

But the cat was out of the bag, and soon warehouse raves were springing up all over London. Genesis was the East London rave promoted by Wayne Anthony, Tony Colsten changed his rave's name to Sunrise and promoted them across London, and last but not least, 'Biology', run by Jarvis Sandy took off in a big way, with each rave attracting 4-5000 people, and sometimes more if promoters joined forces.

I remember going to one Genesis rave and they had created an entrance from old car tyres, lit them with UV lights, hung parachutes, netting and inflatables around the venue. At one point, they ran out of soft drinks (no alcohol was served at the raves) and the promoter had to drive round every shop in the local area buying up their water and soft drinks!

The warehouse parties were promoted by giving away flyers at acid house clubs, and by pirate radio stations which would announce a meeting point for the night. You would be told to meet at a location in a random street, then you'd be directed to the venue which could be miles from the meeting point which was designed to keep the authorities guessing - and it also added a big element of fun to your night out.

This system was then used on a far larger scale when the warehouse scene became the outdoor rave scene in the fields on the outskirts of London that were on the perimeter of a huge motorway that circled around London and the surrounding counties. Known as the M25 Orbital Motorway, I'll bring you the full run-down on the infamous raves that took place the following summer, 1989-90, in the next issue.