Instruments used in house music
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20 Questions With Felix da Housecat: On Prince, Chicago & Why ‘I Take My Music Serious, But I Don’t Take Myself Serious’
It’s not an exaggeration to say Felix Da Housecat got his big break while still in high school.
Born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, the artist born Felix Stallings Jr. developed an early interest in house music, having been influenced by the first wave of the city’s house giants including Ron Hardy, Frankie Knucles and DJ Pierre.
It was Pierre who recruited a then 15-year-old Felix to work on the 1987 track “Fantasy Girl,” with the song giving the teenage producer — who dubbed himself Felix da Housecat in homage to his genre of choice — his start in the scene that would become his home over the next 30-plus years. Even Felix’s high school algebra teacher asked him to sign a copy of the single.
Since then, Felix da Housecat has become a fixture of the global scene, finding success in his native Chicago and points well beyond, including London and Ibiza, where this summer he holds down a
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Housecat, Felix da
Disc jockey, producer
For the Record…
Selected discography
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By the time Felix da Housecat (born Felix Stallings, Jr.) was 15 years old, his path to stardom was already being paved. As a teenager in Chicago in the mid-1980s, he embraced house music from its infancy and listened to it boom from warehouses in Chicago and resonate overseas into the clubs of Europe’s urban centers.
With his musical experience of playing clarinet in his school marching band, Stallings taught himself to play keyboards and was soon twiddling with rudimentary electronic gear—a drum machine and a synthesizer—and assembling ragtag acid house tracks in his bedroom. Although his sound was raw, it was enough to attract DJ Pierre, a preeminent house DJ and a friend of a friend, who took Stallings under his wing and used Felix da Housecat’s roughed-out backing track for his own hit, “Fantasy Girl.”
“I was a freshman in high school when it came out. And it was such a hit in Chicago that it was still on the radio when I graduated. Girls in the hallway would be like, ‘Can I be you
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Felix da Housecat (born Felix Stallings Jr. on , 1971 in Chicago, Illinois) is a DJ and record producer. He was born in Highland Park Hospital. Felix is a producer and DJ mostly known for house music and electroclash.
Felix is regarded as a member of the second wave of Chicago house. He entered the dance music elite not only via his recordings (under a number of aliases, including Thee Maddkatt Courtship, Aphrohead and Sharkimaxx), but also for his ownership of Radikal Fear Records, one of the premiere Chicago labels of the 1990s.
Beginnings
Living in Chicago as an up and coming graffiti artist, the young Stallings was perfectly located to develop a keen interest in the emergent House music scene, which found its hub in Chicago. While a student at Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois in the mid-1980s, a chance introduction to Acid House pioneer DJ Pierre gave 15-year-old Stallings his break, and under the patronage and guidance of Pierre, he released his first single, "Phantasy Girl," in 1987.
Also in 1987, Felix gave up house music to go to Alabama State Un
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