Introduction

It was the revenge of the suburbs, those conservative yet curiously radical stains of land that surround London like a Native-American encampment. It was the homeland of the Mods, the soulboys of the jazz-funk era and it channeled the greatest explosion of British youth culture since punk rock. The suburbs begat acid house and the story of Junior Boys Own is inexorably tied into its mythology.

JBO, along with Warp, was the most important British dance label of its era, one that not only defined what British dance music actually sounded like but also what it should sound like. Long ago, however, when Underworld were still known by a squiggle rather than a name (it was pronounced Freur, apparently) and the Chemical Brothers weren’t yet the Dust Brothers or even Ariel, a fanzine was launched from the badlands of Berkshire. It was called Boys Own and it was the distillation of several years’ growing disenchantment with the popular culture bibles of the day, The Face and i-D and reflected the writers obsessions with football, funk and Socialism.

For more info visit www.juniorboysown.com