16: More tunes

15: The drugs part two

Cocaine.

A.K.A posh, sniff, charlie, Bolivian marching powder, coke and my favourite, wanker dust. This is basically speed but with the added effect that you feel like you have a twelve inch cock and you're as hard as nails. All the chattiness of speed, but with added ego and at up to five times the price. I went to the Eclipse reunion in Coventry a few years ago and my mate had got me a £15 apparently top pill. I hadn't taken a pill since my wedding day (4 actually..and they were crap, but that's another story) and was reluctant to neck it. When i walked in i went straight to the bar... and found a baggie with a couple of grams of sniff inside. I have to say i had a great night, thanks to that little find and didn't even touch the pill. Raving on coke? brilliant. sitting around a table in a pub with a few mates all trying to outdo each other with bullshit anecdotes is not so much fun.

Heroin.

The bad one. The 'morish' one. I have lost a few mates to this cunt of a drug. I used to think you were either gullible, arrogant or thick to try this, as everyone knows it's addictive.  Nobody ever said "oh that smackhead looks a mess, i think i will go for that look" but many get sucked into it's lure and find it very difficult to get out of the hole they find themselves in. A mate of mine served in the coldstream guards, done a tour of iraq in the first gulf war and had been mentioned in despatches. He came from a military background and was destined to serve for his majesty's army. The problem was that he was a tender soul, not really mentally strong enough for the horrors (and he showed me some iraq photos, very grim) that war subjected him to. He kept asking me to get him some smack, i obviously refused and told him often of the tales of woe i had seen happen to mates previously, but he didn't listen. he was found dead in his flat with a needle in his arm. Bad times.

Ketamine

Have you ever been hit around the head really hard, either a punch, errant football, or headbutted a tree? (i have, i came second) if so, you may know that feeling of nothing is real, reality slipping away as your brain tries to reboot. things appear in flashes, certain parts of your body won't respond in the way you need them to. That sort of thing. This was my first and only experience of ket. I assumed it was coke and sniffed as soon as it came my way, only afterwards being told what it was, and informed it was my set time now, get on with it. It didn't go well. For a start off, i couldn't physically turn left. I had to slope round like a hunchback butler called igor, leading some dashing hero to my masters destruction. My vision was limited to a strobe like effect. going on the decks was a massive challenge. Enough was enough, i came off the decks and tried to communicate with my fellow ravers, but my mouth had decided to slow down by a considerable amount. I would say if you like being properly spazzed out, incapable of anything other than being twatted then this is your drug of choice. I know only taking it once doesn't make me an expert, i never said i was. I do tend to waffle, but waffle is not what you get taking this stuff.

Weed/Draw/Hash

The drug of choice for Bob marley.

Oh, you want me to say more on it? Ok.

soapbar's cheap, and so are my clothes. They gotta because of all the fucking holes. 

It tastes like shit and it makes you cough but it's the fucking rubber in it that gets you off.

That was the Goldie lookin chain, from their song 'soap bar'. It hits the mark though, smoking any resin always involved everyone sitting forward with ashtray under the spliff, but eventually resorting to sitting back. This was the time of much anger and hilarity as one of your mates just hot rocked on his new Fila top. I didn't have a sofa without at least one rock hole till nearly 12 years ago. Then i moved onto the weed. This shit keeps getting stronger, but i honestly find it hard to slate weed. You don't want to eat? have a spliff, you soon will. do you want to act like a child and laugh at daft things? This is good for that. Music is thoroughly enjoyable, but that goes without saying. Downsides include concentration levels dropping. When i am stoned i love firing up my decks and pull out the best selections. The problem is that i can't get it on beat correctly. I will get it near enough then forget what i am doing and let the track wander way off pitch, to restart and follow this whole futile process again, till jamming in the tune and tweaking it as i go, or worst still, getting it on beat then imagining it has wandered, correct it then realise it hadn't. and i just clanged a mix. Anything creative is fun.

I think the only downside is the er..... that fucking thing i mentioned earlier. Hang on, i'm going to read it back.

Oh yeah. Short term memory.

14: My mate Joel

I was 14, sat in the lunch hall one day when i heard that the new lad that had started at our school today had stood up in geography lesson and said "My name is Joel Watts, and i'm hard" What a twat, now every lad in the year that fancied their fighting skills had to prove him wrong. A couple of them did and even more tried and failed. I was blown away by both his audacity and stunning lack of forethought. What a twat. It didn't take very long for us to be lifelong pals.

I am writing this today because on the 17th August 2003 he passed away. 12 years ago. A long time now, but i still find myself thinking of phoning him or telling myself to remember to tell him some madness that recently occurred. While he was alive, he was normally the source of half of the madness and chaos with me being along for the ride with equal gusto, putting bad idea's into his head and encouraging his appetite for carnage and utter stupidity. I want to share some of those memories with you here. Some are funny, Some are sad. some are shameful and others are just plain stupid. I hope you enjoy them.

After having half of the schools hard nuts after him, Joel had to be inventive when it came to leaving school. Going out of the main gates was an obviously bad idea, but then again so was going out the back way, which meant walking past someones house who often kicked off with him. The lad that lived at this house was a year older than us but no match for joel. You see the problem was that this lad hung around with the hardest lad in our year, and keeping away from him was a big enough challenge. Kicking the living shit out his older mate would only exacerbate the situation. It was a gamble he took on a daily basis. I met him properly in Camp Hill when i was with some of my mates. Joel said he had heard i said he was a pussy. To put things into perpsective, he was clearly a foot taller then me. I had said that, but with the context of the hardest lads i knew. So just like typical chinese whispers for teenagers it had got twisted. I didn't deny it, in fact went as far as to cheekily say i would easily knock him out, with one arm behind my back, an eye patch and someone tickling my balls. It was a bold gamble by me, he could easily made me look very stupid in front of a dozen lads, but he took it how it was intended and pissed himself laughing. We all had a laugh and after no more than five minutes i had pulled him to one side and asked him if he wanted to do a burglary.

I have mentioned albeit briefly that i had committed a few burglaries as a wayward youth. This is where it started. We sloped off from the gang and walked a mile or two off the estate to where some posher houses were and formulated a plan. One of us would go to a house, knock the front door and ask for a made up person if anyone answered. If nobody was in....bingo. This plan worked quite well, until Joel thought it was high comedy to use my name. One of the houses we called at knew me and remembered this when they heard of local burglaries. Nice one Joel. Anyway we wasn't really any good at it, we only ever got a few big hauls and gave up after a couple of months.I am telling you all this because in those short few months we had to trust each other and this was where our friendship was founded.

We both loved the same music, along with our gang, Fast Eddie. Tyree Cooper, Public Enemy, EPMD, NWA, and would often spend a lazy day around Joels having dancing competitions in his front room. I used to cringe when i remembered that but we was young, 14/15 and enjoying ourselves. There was a girl that used to come up and visit her sister, who lived a few doors up. Marissa. Mixed race girl, and that is pretty much the only thing i remember about her, apart from this. It was the day before my 16th birthday and although i wasn't a virgin, i was yet to have my first blow job. Marissa was very sporting and offered to help me. It was strange watching a girl gag on my cock. Maybe i should have washed it, first?

I eventually ended up moving in with him and his dad in 1992 when i was 18. Joels dad was seeing a girl i knew from school, just 2 years above me. I would say lucky git but you didn't know her. You had to eat her sunday dinner quickly before the water from the inadequately drained vegetables turned your tinned new potatoes that had been deep fried and cheekily masquerading as roasties turned to a soggy pulp.

Me and joel used to go raving together, or him carrying my records into gigs for me so that people would think he was a dj, bless him. we set up our own raves, illegally of course. those stories will be in the main blog.

I  have been remembering some of the funniest things he said over the years, and seeing as we mostly laughed when together, i think this is the best way to remember him.

Mars bars had a promotion on where they were giving away 1,000,000 mars bars. You buy one, and inside the wrapper it tells you if you had won one. Joel bought a Mars bar and won. This is how the conversation went...

Joel; Fucking hell, i've won!
Me: Oh yeah....cool....
Joel; Jamie, I HAVE FUCKING WON!!
Me; Yeah mate, i know. well done. (?)
Joel wanders off muttering to himself; I can't believe it, i've won.... mumble mumble..
A few minutes later he comes back and says..
Joel; If i sell them for a penny each, i will make £10,000!
Me; Er...what? Do you think you have won a million Mars bars? What are they gonna do, rock up outside the flat with 3 truckloads of them and ask 'where d'ya want them, lads?'
Joel; Oh. are you sure?
Me; Yes. Very.

Me and my girlfriend at the time used to enjoy cheese. Not that foreign pseudo techno peddler,  Scooter, i mean your Edams, Caerphilly and so on. Every friday night we would have our mates round, listen to music, chat, drink beer and eat some cheese and crackers. Joel loved the cheese but never really went shopping so he asked me to get him a selection next time i went shopping, so i did. He came around to collect his cheese one day and i told him nearly got some of that cheese with the holes in but wasn't sure if he would like it. Joel told me to fuck off, he isn't in the mood for a wind up today. This confused me so i asked what he meant. He replied "i'm not thick, that cheese with holes in only exists in cartoons"

A few short ones.

Joel; I wish i was a paki
Me; Er....what?
Joel; I wish i was a paki, they eat really nice food.
Me;.......I don't think you have to change your ethnicity to enjoy the food, mate?

On working in a cake factory, where his role was placing cherries on top of cherry bakewells as they passed down a production line.. "it's alright, but it can get a bit boring sometimes"

In a sex shop
Joel; have you got any linguuuuur? (very long uuuur)
Shopkeeper:.............. any....?
Joel. Linguuuur...Sexy linguuuuur?
Shopkeeper: Do you mean lingerie?
Joel blank stare:...................
Me; Yes he does.

Off to town to buy his dads girlfriend a meatloaf cd for her birthday, and all the way there i kept saying malt loaf malt loaf malt loaf... trying to get it to stick in his head, and kept this up till he reached the counter, defiantly staring at me he casually asked for the new meat leaf cd. Success! he wasn't happy.

I have many more things floating around my head, but i shall leave it there for now. Rest In peace my friend, i hope you are sat eating mars bars and curry till it comes out of your ears.

13: The drugs, man.....

Most, if not all ravers at some point have taken some recreational drugs. I always wondered why whoever coined that phrase felt the need to specify that these drugs are for recreation. I mean, who needs to take an acid tab to go to work? Anyway, like i said most of us have popped a pill, dropped acid, snorted cocaine/ket/speed and smoked a spliff. I take my hat off to those straight ravers, dancing for up to 10 hours a night without some chemical aids must be a bit tiring. Way back in the 1980's the term 'Acid House' was applied to the emerging scene but not because LSD was the drug of choice; far from it. The drug was obviously E, but to those people that didn't like the music, they gave it that name due to the sound it apparently reminded them of. If acid had a sound, then the TB303 must have been the source.

love dove pill

Ecstasy.

 The drug of the scene was ecstasy, and it came in various guises. Love doves, Cali sunrise, Disco biscuit... they all had funky names and all had varying strengths. The first E i took was a disco biscuit  and if i am honest, i think i was sold a bob martins worming tablet, as it had no effect on me other than my bum hole stopped itching. A week or two later i took a double dove and BANG! i never saw life in the same light again. E's are a perfect drug for creating the sense of Euphoria and making you talk utter cod shit to a stranger. Who remembers "where ya from, what you had.....?" starting most conversations? People would open up and tell anyone who was arsed to listen their deepest darkest secrets while off their noodle of illicit pills, and i heard a lot of depressing shit. I thought alcohol was bad for making you say stuff you would later regret but i heard stories of sexual and physical abuse, girlfriend/boyfriend secrets, you name it, some raver off his or her cake spouted all this out to all and sundry. I'm not making light of any of this but i bet more than a few people winced the following day after realising they told a mate their first sexual experience was with their step mum or half sister. Seeing people with eyes rolling, jaws swinging and huffing and puffing a lot are tell tale signs of being under the influence, but other drugs affect manifest themselves in other ways, for example...

A 'wrap' of speed

Speed.

Mouth chewing, jaw grinding, chain smoking and an ability to waffle endlessly about things nobody else has any interest in are the main tell tale signs of a speeding raver. The ability to dance in a service station 3 hours after the rave has finished and while no music is being played is another sign. Speed is a great drug to dance on, but by god does it make you chat. I used to take a couple of grams of speed for an all nighter, ensuring non stop dancing and guarenteed jaw ache the following day, along with total loss of appetite on sunday for dinner at your parents house. Mouth ulcers are common and annoying if swallowing speed and a fucked up septum if snorted. Great fun though!


LSD aka acid tabs

Acid.

This was the most mind bending drug i have ever taken. It is very hard to explain clearly what this drug does to you. Imagine finding your hand THE MOST INTERESTING THING EVER.... for 4 hours. It magnifies all of your senses to the point of madness. You will laugh uncontrollably at a photo of a pigeon. Or your dog. Or anything else for that matter. I'm not one for telling people to take drugs, madness lies that way but LSD is the most fun you can ever have...unless you have a bad trip. Bad trips are terrible, and any random thought can take you from hallucinogenic utopia to the depths of hell in an instant. Like your mum catching you watching porn, you will be convinced that the world is about to end, or worse still, anything evil you can think of will and does pop into your mind. I used to go raving on acid and have to say i had a ball, but there's no trips like bad trips so unless you are headstrong or comfortable in your surroundings i wouldn't suggest this as a party drug, really.

12: Happy hardcore days

The split had started, jungle had turned into soundbwoy ragga based proto D&B and happy hardcore was emerging from the jungle-techno sound and the scene was changing. I wasn’t very keen on the new style so leaned towards the happier sound that DJ’s like Dougal, Stu Allen and Brisk were pushing. We had found a club in Leicester called Die Hard. If you never went there it was a crazy venue. The main room was breakbeat hardcore and at ground floor level but down in the cellars were the techno rooms. A bit of a labyrinth when flying off your noodle, but a great club. Me and a load of mates decided to go there for my 20th birthday. I set off from home with my mate Andy to walk to my brothers flat to meet up with the rest of our pals, and on the way there we passed a house with a young lady leaning out of a bedroom window in just a bra! Lovely thing to do in itself but as we got nearer she waved, whipped off her bra and flashed her tits at us! Andy was very keen to knock the door but looking at her she must have lived with her parents and asking them if we can go meet her to inspect her norks closely probably would have resulted in, at best an argument, at worst, lost teeth and bruises. We carried on walking and had to go through what used to be a clay pit, but was then a nature reserve. There was a big rock with some funky artwork sculpted into it, and some guy with a red light from a push bike flashing it on and off mumbling incoherently till he saw us, then went into hyperdrive with insane rambling, very surreal. After a while we arrived at my brothers and Andy had to go home to get changed, so one of the girls took us to his house. He ran inside and i got out of the car to get some fags from the nearby shop. I came out of the shop and looked through the window of the car and she had gone, i could only assume she went into his house, so i opened the car door door, sat down and helped myself to a fag from an already opened packet. After a few minutes Andy came out his front door and got into the car behind me. It slowly dawned on me that i had got into the wrong car, and as my luck would have it, the car owner came out of his house, saw me sat there with a shit eating grin and exploded, understandably. It took a while for Andy to stop laughing, get out the car and explain to his neighbour, who eventually saw the funny side. There was only one car so most of us went over to Leicester by train. When we arrived there we got into a taxi which immediately broke down and needed us to bump start it, then the cheeky taxi driver tried taking us some bizarre long way to the club. We knew where it was but he assumed we didn’t so after us moaning to take us the right way we got there and the twat tried to charge us £20. we chucked him a fiver and told him to fuck off or call the old bill, we was happy to explain to them which way he had taken us. Seeing he was onto a loser he left. We got in the club and it was heaving, full on cheese fest upstairs but we headed down to the cellars for the gabba/techno. After a few short hours the girls that came in the car wanted to go home and as we had left our stuff  in her we had to go out to get it before she pissed off. The doormen stamped our hands but when we came back they wouldn’t let us back in because we were clearly off our heads…. Had they not looked inside? The whole club was! That was a downer, we had to wander around town till 7am to get the train home, but it didn’t put us off going back, it was a wicked place.

Fantasy island

We went to loads of great raves during this period, my favourite being at Fantasy Island, skegness (Ingoldmells actually) for NYE 95/96.  This is a crazy place for a rave, a big room with rides, watrerslides and shops, and loads of other rooms for different styles of music. the place is crazy. i was off my noodle this night and somewhat confused. There was an MC on stage wearing a leotard, bumbag, black guy with a ‘tache calling himself MC Motivator. I had never seen him before and thought it actually was Mr Motivator. Turns out it isn’t the real one, but i was gobsmacked. Who looks at Mr motivator and thinks “He looks great, that’s the look for me!”? Alos that night i was in the house room and walked past diminutive pop prick Jay Kaye of jamiroquai fame singing “gold” by Spandau Ballet to his mate with his big stupid hat on. That geezer is tiny, gawd bless his cotton knee length (but ankle size for everyone else) socks.

                                                                                                                       

We hadn’t put an event on purely for happy hardcore yet so we decided to go for it, and had a mate who owned a club in Coventry called Capitol Club. He had a regular house night on and let us use the club for our event for an all nighter. The club was only usually open till 4 so this was good news for us, albeit a bit dodgy. We spent a few quid on this one (flyer above) and it looked to be a great night. I got there early to set up as usual and when we opened the doors the ravers started to file in nicely. There was a lot of our crew and loads from Bell green/ Wood end in cov, a rough part of town. The night went swimmingly at first (see casualties stories for the pool table tale) but later on, around 4:30am i was back on the decks when the main lights came on and this ALWAYS means turn the music off, something is going off. The Cov lads had decided they didn’t want to pay for beers anymore and jumped the bar to rob it. The bikers had control of the bar and the whole place kicked off, big time. i was ushered upstairs while the bikers and doormen fought with the idiots, watching it all on cctv. That was the last rave we put on as Utopia, but not the last rave ever, we went back to our roots and underground, back to illegal raves, where the fun was at…..

11: Bonus beats

So…. time for me to put up a few of my fave tunes. All these tunes hold special memories for me in one form or another. Here we go…

10: The casualties

I recently attended the funeral of a very dear friend of mine, who was in fact the dad of one of my female mates. He employed me for several years and was more than just my boss, he was a true mate. When i first met him i was an impressionable 18 years old and he was the dad i never had but wanted. He smoked weed, went raving, took pills, powders and potions and was the polar opposite of my real dad. His name was Skip, obviously not his real name, he was called skip due to a very strange stutter and when at school his mates said he sounded like Skippy the bush kangaroo, and it stayed with him through his life, even being called it at his funeral. He taught me a massive amount of life skills and i looked up to him. He was 63 when he died from a sudden brain hemorrhage and was still out partying most weekends. A true legend and sorely missed. R.I.P me old pal.

Now, i know i called this post ‘The casualties’ but it isn’t all doom and gloom over dead pals, there are some people who fall into this category on merit due to strange things they have been up to. I can honestly say, hand on heart my head has never gone whilst off it on drugs but several of my mates lost the plot proper, and this is where i embarrass (but not naming) them….

HEAD’S GONE….

I was dj’ing at a club in Coventry (i will come to the full story later in this blog) and while i was waiting for my 2nd set (i played twice that night) me and my mates watched one of the lads walking around a pool table, and pretending to plane it, even stopping to wipe the imaginary shavings away every now and then. my mate approached him to ask what he was doing and was told to fuck off, this coffee table needs to be finished before he clocks off. 2 hours he was at it for! 2 hours of us laughing at winding him up with comments like “you missed a bit” and “time for lunch fella!” i hope it looked lovely in his mind, bless him.

One of my brothers mates was somewhat of a coke enthusiast and when Ketamine first came out he was offered a line by one of the lads. Jonny big balls wasn’t happy with the poxy line he thought he was getting and insisted on a bigger line. He was advised this was a bad idea but he was adamant so a whopper he got. After spending quite a while spazzing out on the floor with arms akimbo the lads left him to enjoy rolling around on the floor like he was having a fit. In the morning my bro came downstairs and found him lay on the floor with soaking wet jeans from pissing himself and his hand on his lap. My bro woke him and he lifted his hand up, which looked like he had spent all night in the bath and humbly made his way home. A lesson was learned that day; he never touched Ket again. Idiot.

ACID…….

Lysergic acid diethlamide, as it’s known to boffins was my drug of choice in 1991, and if you have never taken it I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO! Ok, probably not great advice but fuck you, i ain’t Zammo Maguire. Acid is the most surreal experience you will ever have, and i fucking loved it. One of the downsides to LSD is bad trips. There’s no trips like bad trips, trust me. Like i said on an earlier post, i thought my jaw was broken on my first trip. We had gone around to my house after a night in town on the piss and we all had a purple om acid tab. Very strong and mind bending for the uninitiated. My mate came to me and asked if his eyes were bloodshot. Mischievous me said “er…yeah and there is blood coming from the corner of your eyes pal!” he disappeared home and the next day told me he had spent all night crying into a mirror scared stiff that he was going to go blind! oopsy. That night i had a double dove and he told me i had green gunk coming out my eyes. Nice try dick head, i’m not falling for that! Next morning i woke up and my eyelids had crusted together, it turned out i had conjunctivitis. He wasn’t lying after all haha!

9: Into 1993

So….

1993 saw us putting on more and more raves, illegal and legal and Utopia was building up a decent following now. We had put on raves with Easygroove, Tango, Ratty, Fallout, Food Junky and lots more big names. Times were good. The illegal nights we put on were in rooms above pubs, bikers clubhouses, and one in a bike breakers yard! The sound crew from the now called Edge (formerly the Eclipse) supplied us with a dogs ‘taters P.A and their dj had decided to quit to start a family. DJ Addiction his name was with his mc Garvey. good lads and a great dj but family life came first so he quit. Good news for me though as they then offered me the chance to play at the Edge every weekend playing first and filling in for any dj’s that were late or no-shows on the first floor. I played at Dance planet, Amnesia House, and all the promoter nights on and was finally getting bumped up the schedule week on week. Only one drawback; The Darkside was upon us. I played some dark stuff but my heart wasn’t really in it. I loved Jungle Techno, nice amen break beats with a driving techno stab, but the dark stuff was all pervading, especially at The Edge. For those that never went there it was painted battleship grey inside, not exactly inviting good vibes.  At dance Planet one night, dj Mongoose was playing. I had one of his tapes from somewhere but had never seen him live. He was a great dj from Yorkshire and i never saw him again which was a shame. They had 2 big screens either side of the dj box showing mad videos and one was of a man getting smashed to bits by a train. This was the tipping point for me. I had played in the main room once and the sound crew thought it was high comedy to keep messing with the monitors, turning them right up then right down again. Not funny when you’re trying to impress the bosses and get sets in that room. One night, one of the biker gang was with me in the dj box while Stu Allen was on the decks. He (biker) was off his nut and pestering Stu while he was playing his set. The biker was leaning on the railing for the spiral staircase that led down to the stage and stood up straight before going to lean on the railing again. He missed, went arse over tit down the stairs and flopped out onto the stage behind the mc. One of the funniest things i have ever seen! The last night i played there i shouldn’t have. It was NYE 1993, Amnesia house. I rocked up with two mates, went to the side door and the bouncers let me in with my mates and we went upstairs and i started playing some tunes but was quickly kicked off the decks and told i wasn’t supposed to be playing, there was no guest list and Neville Fivey aka mc Loud & Nasty was pissed off and looking for me. Not good news, nobody had told me this before and i spent all night dodging him in case i got a slap or thrown out. Later that night i saw Mickey Lynas in the cinema room, and he glared at me whilst walking towards me, and crushed a polystyrene cup and slammed it on the table in front of me. I was off it and didn’t know whether i should be worried or laugh, as he looked like Eddie ‘the eagle’ Edwards and it was hard to take him seriously. I knew better though, as he WAS to be taken VERY seriously. This was the last time i set foot in the Edge, as the dark vibes had put me off and it closed not long after, that was the end of an era. A sad day.

Also in 1993 we lost a lot of money with our bigger club nights. We had booked the TicToC (then called Club Antics) and our first rave there wasn’t a big success, We had Easygroove again and he played a blinder as usual but there wasn’t many people in; we had forgot to check if there was any other big nights on that night in Coventry and the Edge was packed while we struggled to half fill the cavernous club. We put another rave on there but lost even more money as well. Things were looking grim for Utopia. We still put on illegal nights and our regular thursday night was still going strong, i was also getting bookings here, there and everywhere but like i said, i wasn’t liking the dark stuff. The tunes that i enjoyed at that stage bordered on happy hardcore, which was just starting to emerge, and would soon split the  scene the next year when the darkcore fucked off and was replaced by the soundbwoy sample heavy drum & bass.

Some 1993 hardcore that wasn’t too dark!

LTJ Bukem – Good Looking Records

I hated this stuff with a passion. I know this will rankle with some people but the chin stroking pseudo-intelligent jungle bored the shite out of me. It reminded me of the prog rock shit from the 70′s, like that blonde haired weird beard Rick Wakeman was churning out; self indulgent tripe. Some tunes on that label i enjoyed, like Tayla – Bang the drum but even that was a bit too dramatic for me. i was pining for some bludclart jungle techno and this stuff would make me either leave early or piss off to a chill out room. I heard a lot later of how much of a twunt LTJ had became, with artists not being paid, mc Conrad beating his mrs up and not being able to work in the U.S.A and all sorts of crapness.

The halcyon days of P.L.U.R had now long gone. The scene started to get serious and moody, but i had discovered a club in Leicester that would see the final leg of my raving days…. Die Hard!

8: More miscellaneous tripe...

Me and Hardcore Massive had now gone our own ways, although he played at our Utopia nights and i played at his Innovation nights, but we were now in competition with each other. This was a competition i wanted no part of, but our mates pretty much had this covered. I was a Camp Hill lad, he was a Hill Top lad, both are rough and ready estates at either end of Nuneaton. When we was kids we used to fight each other but now we all ate E’s regularly, we had chilled out somewhat and all got on. I remember some funny stuff from those days, and i have decided not to name people here, as i said earlier, because i don’t want to upset anyone or get  beaten up. We was at Milwaukees one night and one of the lads was ….well, lets say facially challenged. I still have no idea how anyone can be so ugly with just one face. So, this lad had somehow managed to pull a girl, and she wasn’t horrifically burned like Simon Weston, and neither was she wearing glasses thicker than a Coke bottle, she was a normal, human girl. Everybody was gobsmacked, but happy for him. Nobody dared mention what would happen when the E wore off for her but ho hum, the guy was fast kissing in a booth and having a jolly old time. Till he puked over her. /End

I was stood in the DJ booth at Milwaukees one night, watching DJ Sam doing his thing. I often wondered what happened to him, as his beatmixing was superb, always tight and rarely clanged, or at least as far as i remember. The only thing i thought let him down, was he had no original style or flair, a trademark style you could say. As i was watching him, DJ Rap came in and set her box of records down and gave me a sexy smile. Let’s not get this twisted, she was NOT flirting with me, she just had a sexy smile! (nice boobies too, she was a page 3 stunna before a dj) I had just rolled a spliff so i shared it with her and had a bit of a chat, and she asked me where Scott Prattley was, and i duly went off to fetch him for her. Him and his brother Dave (i think…bit hazy) ran Helter Skelter, and i grabbed him for her before returning to the booth to watch the DJ’s at work. HM was now playing there often, at least once a month and there was always loads of us that went along as well. Milwaukees was a great venue, Very low ceiling and a total sweat box.

I was there one night, grooving away to the beats of the day, when i found a bag of E’s on the floor. My hazy vision cleared just long enough to spot them before i trod on the bag and crushed half of them. Half a bag of crushed pills? no worries! They got collected and shared out between my mates, the rest we saved for a few days later. I wish i could remember what pills they were, but they were pretty good. I daren’t take the first one in case they were fakes, but one of the lads wasted no time or thought on the subject, he just grabbed one and necked it!

HM was doing well now, he was also playing at the big Helter Skelter raves and other  bits here and there, and fair play to him; he was and still is a great dj (under the name Andy Massive now) and deserves the breaks he had. While we are talking about Milwaukees, my mates knew the Prattley brothers (inc. HM) through working on Barkers fun fair when it came to town, so they got free tickets to the raves. BEFORE I START THIS TALE, THIS IS AN ALLEGED EVENT! ok, disclaimer out of the way, my mates were backstage at Helter Skelter, i believe at The Sanctuary but may be wrong. The Prodigy were due to play and Keith Flint was being a bit of a prima donna and was kicking off with one of the brothers saying they were amateur, what kind of shit set up was this etc, etc and generally being egotistical pop stars. The brother in question had had enough of his shit, so threw Keith out by the scruff of his throat and they never played at HS again. I wasn’t there for this but my mates said it was very funny. ALLEGEDLY.

I think that being under the bikers wings helped in some respects, but held me back in others. I played a do in Kidderminster once, i got there and it was a student night, with everyone sat on the floor and a rock/indie band on stage playing music that was nothing like the stuff i was about to play. The band finished their set and i let my first tune drop. I can clearly remember which one it was as well. It was Want you now – D’cruze – and before i had a chance to mix the next record in, i had not only cleared the dance floor but the entire room! The biker who got me the gig argued with the club owner and it all went pear shaped, we left in a hurry and never returned. That was the night i met MC Peta Pan, in another of the bikers clubhouses, although i cannot recall which one, as i had spent a lot of nights out at regional club houses and they all kinda blur into each other now. I think it was Worcester but might be wrong. This was also the night that i watched a biker punch a helmet off his mates head whilst pissed, it split into 2 from a couple of punches. Standard horse play for these guys, till it got a bit  carried away and one of them repeatedly smashed his mates head into a metal gate till he was knocked spark out. Such fun.

D’Cruze……Dance floor killer- literally!

Those clubhouse nights were intense. I remember being held at one in Birmingham for 3 days as the bikers that took me there didn’t want to come home or even let me out to make my own way home. They were a great laugh and very generous with drugs and alcohol, but hard work as well. Some of them are pure hardcore bikers, and didn’t like ravers but i was a bit of a cheeky chappie and charmed most of the ones i met. There are always exceptions though. I was in my local clubhouse when one of them threw a bowie knife at my mate, it sticking in the table in front of him. I saw one do a great wind up one day, he grabbed a beer bottle and opened it with his eye socket. Cue my mate JJJ spending 30 mins trying till he got told it can’t be done, you just make a pffft noise after loosening the cap before hand. His eye was red and swollen from trying, very funny. Another time, me and one of the bikers were in a clubhouse that we had done a rave in a couple of nights before and had gone in to strip the gear and back drops, camo netting etc. He got out a derringer pistol, little thing with 2 barrels, one on top on the other which fired .22 bullets. We spent a hour or so shooting the backdrops having much fun. The gun was used to shoot somebody a few months before and some of the bullets wouldn’t fire. He was grateful it didn’t jam when he shot this guy, and this is all i’m saying on this matter, I was playing with big boys now. These bikers used to do a weekender of their own (I’m not stupid enough to give it a name) and i attended a couple over the years. At one of these festivals i met a lad who was running a gyroscope ride there, that was towed by a proper Romany caravan, very cool thing. The lad was called Harley, and his dad was David, and they were very generous with the Cocaine. David explained that he never was able to afford a real Harley Davidson, so he called his son, Harley, Davids son. They were playing rock music whilst operating the gyroscope and i walked up to a prospect (a probationary biker without full patches) and asked him if we could putsome hardcore on, but noticed he was a prospect and foolishly said “ah, it don’t matter, i’ll ask a fully patched member” he pulled a knife on me and told me to go away or he would be ensure my spinal cord would be severed. Now i need my legs for walking with and thought i better do as i was told. A couple of years later, i DJ’ed there, along with MC Man Parris (MP) and a couple of other dj’s and i saw a club member using one of my records to chop his coke on. FFS, they are my tools so i walked to him and said “do you mind? that’s the tools of my job there, leave my records alone please” mistake again, i got a bowie knife shoved under my nose with the promise of having my septum removed. As much as i fancied Daniella Westbrooke back then, a nose like hers wasn’t something i aspired to having for myself.

A Derringer similar to the one we played with. Looks like a ladies gun, but would you want to be shot by it? Thought not……

7: The hills are alive with the sound of hardcore....

Back in post #5, i left it at the point where the bikers came to me with an idea. They owned a quarry in Dyserth, North Wales and wanted to put a rave on there. They put all the money up for it, i was more of a consultant and dj than promoter, which suited me. We booked dj’s, got the flyers printed and arranged coaches to leave from Bedworth and Nuneaton. I had met MC Peta Pan at a rave i was playing at in Kidderminster a few weeks before so we booked him, along with Ratty, Easygroove, DJ Luke from Amnesia House/ Bang in tunes and others. It was a great line up and we planned to have a big stage and use the clubhouse for the house music room. I set off there the day before so we could get there nice and early to set up. We had hired scaffolding for the stage, a huge generator for the leccy, a load of lights and the sound system from room 2 at the Eclipse by E.F.X. Nothing owned by any of us was used, so if we got busted, the feds couldn’t confiscate any gear. When we got to the quarry, we found the old bill had already raided the clubhouse and had taken the stereo sound system from there. HA! Nice try, cozzer! We had brought the proper P.A with us so they had achieved nothing. We spent all day building the stage, and the genny arrived and was set up a distance away from the stage. The sound system from The Eclipse was immense. Noel from E.F.X set up and helped with the lights and laser as well, and as we were nearly finished a police helicopter came overhead. We gave them a wave and carried on setting up. The quarry was a semi-circle cliff and we set the stage facing the cliff so we could make the most of the light and laser show, which looked splendid. The clubhouse was set up with backdrops and U.V stuff, we had set hay bales around the edge of the quarry for seats and built a huge bonfire while we waited for people top start to arrive. The police had formed a cordon around the village and were turning the coaches away, but they just drove half a mile away and everyone got out and made their own way to the rave. The police used usual tactics to piss people off, like sending them the wrong way, blocking the entrance, and flying overhead in the chopper with the spotlight on us. For those that had got in, this was great fun, the MC shouting out to to copper chopper and everyone waving to the plod. There were people climbing down the cliffs, on hands and knees through the woods, all trying to get past the rozzers. Ratty didn’t turn up but Tango and Neil Trix rocked up with their tunes instead so we had that covered. I was playing a couple of sets that night and my first set was quite early, when some guy came up to me and said “i’m on next, mate”. I had no idea who he was so i asked him what his name was… DJ Unknown. I was happy to let him on and went off to chat to the bikers and asked who he was,… the cheeky fucker had blagged the set! Fair play to him but he had interrupted my turn! I walked back to the stage to kick him off, but he was scratching very well, and i thought fuck it, let him have his time in the sun, i was due to go back on later anyway. It turned out that he became well known in his own right. A lot never made it in, but we still had about 500 people in there raving till the sun came up, and i was chuffed to play back to back with Easygroove for the last set on the main stage, before the heavens opened up and it pissed down, ending the night at 6am. Some of the dj’s and MC’s didn’t get paid for this rave, as the bikers lost a few grand thanks to the old bill ruining for us. Bloody shameful, as Peta Pan wanted to be my permanent MC, but blanked me after this, thanks to not getting his money. And rightly so, i suppose, but it wasn’t my fault.

Hardcore Massive on the decks, MC peta Pan and myself in the background at utopia, wales

After the rave had finished, we didn’t help the scaffolding firm take it all down, we were all ruined, but we stripped the House room and set off with the bikers back to one of their homes in Colwyn Bay. We drank all day and after a few hours we went to a pub, about 25 bikers and me. I asked the landlord if we could set the decks up and he agreed, although i suspect this was more out of fear of upsetting the bikers. We played there all day with just me and one of the bikers dj’ing. That weekend lasted till Tuesday, and it took me a week to recover. Best rave i ever went to.

6: Miscellaneous waffle

There was a lot of stuff in 1992 that i cannot remember in date order, or i feel are extraneous in certain stories, so i have decided to put bits in here and there, like this one.

I was living in Nunny in a bedsit because i had fallen out with the guy i lived with in Atherstone. He was getting £50 a week from social services for me living there, and he treated me like a cunt. never any food in, expected me to clean the house everyday like i was his wife and lots of other crap. i was supposed to pay him £5 a week and he told my social worker i wasnt paying it. we was selling £1000/£1500 of drugs a night. ok, only 2 nights a week, but enough. the deal from social workers was they pay him £50 a week and i pay £5 to show responsibility. he was a mate, and i had sorted this with him so me living there would pay his mortgage and food for me. lets put things in perspective; £50 a week in those days was easily worth triple now. So yeah, i fucked him off. I had been in a bedsit for about 6 weeks and now living in a womans house that was colder than outside. I wasn’t shagging her, i paid her £5 a week to rent a bedroom. I should have had change. She lived there with her daughter and it was always freezing. To put this into perspective, i was only there a couple of weeks, 7 at most but bugger me, i froze those whole weeks off. I had been out somewhere and met a girl i knew from my foster care days. We used to have to go out with other kids in care and learn how to get along, blah blah…. but this girl was one of only 4 on the same courses us foster kids had to endure. Her name was Marcella and her life was messed up. Most importantly, she was very fit. The other girls on these ‘social activities’ had big issues, most had been molested by those caring for them. I couldn’t comprehend that aged 15, but aged 41 now i still struggle with understanding how you would cope with that kind of trauma. Self harming was rife, we all had to talk about it, but it was alien to me, i don’t get why hurting yourself makes anything better?  Anyhoo, i met this girl Marcella and took her back to this house of ice. We had an acid between us and the walk back to house took ages. We kept stopping to look at things like lamp posts, imagining they had had ski lifts between each one, and where would make the best stops. Looking back, this would have freed up traffic on the A444, but what do i know about town planning?  So we made it back to the house of ice and snuggled up in my single mattress on the floor. That was the warmest night i had there. I did suffer from cash flow after my dealer went to jail, hence me living in this shot hole. Times were tough. 

I had started seeing a girl i had met who was from Corby, and perhaps surprisingly, not Scottish. She was tiny with short hair and very cute, but i didn’t want anything too serious. Her sister (who was scottish) came over to where i was living at the time to tell me her sister was seeing someone else and she took me to Corby to find out for myself. We got there and went round to her mates house where my bird was, and she didn’t deny it. I wasn’t bothered to be honest, i wasn’t looking for long term love anyway. I stayed at their gaff for a few hours and watched a lad absent mindedly pick a piece of cardboard up and start chewing it. As i looked closer i realised he had picked up a sheet of acid tabs! He had chewed up about 12 of them and was now panicking, and rightly so. I left shortly after that, but i heard he pulled a tooth out with plyers whilst flying his tits off. Nice! The girls sister drove me home and we both got into my bed and smoked a joint. She asked me if i had ever had sex on poppers and i hadn’t so she got a bottle of it out and gave me a sniff. Call me thick, but i didn’t realise what was going on here, and was somewhat surprised when she dived on me. I gotta say, she was a great fuck, far better than her sister. She left in the morning and that was the last i ever saw of either of them.

I was also very briefly seeing a girl called Jackie. Her brother was a complete psycho and i heard he wasn’t happy that she was seeing me, and had passed a message on that if i gave her any drugs he would rearrange my facial features manually for me. She came to Milwaukees with us one night and one of my girl mates gave her a double dove. Bad idea, she spent all night in the bogs freaking out. She eventually calmed down and when we got home i finished with her. She went mental, and said she would get her brother to beat me up. I couldn’t fucking win! Luckily he never found me as i moved again soon after, but this was another reason why i didn’t really bother with girls for a while.

I had met a load of lads from Corby at the Eclipse and we were writing to each other regularly (yup, pen pals. Now THAT’S old skool!) I had been out one night with some mates and we ate a lot of speed that night. We were at Corley services on the M6, where ravers would meet up at the weekend and i collapsed. My mates took me to hospital and waited with me for a few hours. I was hooked up to a cardiograph and my heartbeat was going through the roof, even more so when my mates pointed it out to me. They got caught by the nurse snorting speed and got thrown out. I got put on a ward and there was 4 beds; all of them had old men in them coughing, snoring and farting and i was lying there, flying my tits off. I signed myself out and recovered at home, rather than stay in gods waiting room. My mates from Corby heard and came to pick me for the weekend and party. When they came my weird flatmate insisted on tagging along so off to Corby we went. I had dj’ed at a couple of their raves, which they had called ‘Elysium’, and they were top lads. They paid for me to go Milwaukees but my heart wasn’t in it, i still felt crap and didn’t want to take any drugs. We left there and went to one of the lads houses for a session on the decks, but my flat mate was off his cake and talking bollocks which was winding up the lads. They didn’t know him and the only reason they let him come was because he was moaning like a kid about being left out. After a short while they had had enough and told me sorry, but we have to take you home before somebody kicks your mates head in. When we got back to the flat we had a massive row, and he moved out the next day which i thought was a bit weird, he had bought the flat! I stayed there for a few weeks on my own but eventually left and moved in with a mate elsewhere. Years later i heard he had killed himself, so imagine my surprise when in 2005 i saw him on a tv programme called ‘The Sex Doctor’, getting help for premature ejaculation! MEGALOL!

A few mates died in 1992, and every year after i lost at least 2-3 mates per years, either through drugs, car crashes, cancer and an alarmingly high number of suicides. R.I.P to all those lads, it’s never nice losing people but even worse when they are young. I think i will end this here, on this depressing point……

5: 1992 Madness

I was living in a shitty bedsit by now, proper shit hole with only one redeeming quality; the landlady dropped the key to the 50p 'leccy meter when i was moving in, so i had free electricity! (to be honest, i never paid any rent there either and was there for 6 weeks before i got thrown out) It was a bit of a turbulent year, i think i moved about 8 times that year but i will explain all those moves in due course. My residency at The Pump & Tap was still going strong, we had a good loyal following and every week was packed. We had also started doing every other Saturday night as well, a big leap as Rave still wasn't massive yet but steadily growing and this was reflected in the attendance at our little bash. I had played at other raves by now as well and was building a name in my own right. i remember playing at an illegal rave just outside Lutterworth, Leics, in a tent (yup, 6 man camping tent) with one Technics 1210, a HiFi turntable and crappiest mixer ever set up on a wallpaper pasting table, but what a night! There was only about 100 people there but it was great fun and gave me a taste for playing  outside, something i would go back to later on (and will go to great length talking about later on in this blog)  I wasn't working as selling drugs was a better earner and to be frank, i'm rather lazy. I spent most of my time during the day in Rage 'N' Razors, a clothes shop in Nuneaton with hairdressers in there along with record shop as well. Most of the day was spent playing golf and drinking cups of tea. The resident barnett butcher shaved a big E into the back of my head one day, and this turned out to be a good way to get talking to girls at raves, although that was not on my mind then, i wasn't really bothered with chasing skirt, i had raving to do! Me and a load of mates had met a couple of girls at The Dance Factory, under the Institute, Birmingham, and arranged to meet them at Handsworth leisure centre the next night for a rave. We picked the girls up at a pub nearby and sat in the car park hiding our drugs. As everyone was stashing i was looking around at the people forming the queue. Now let me make this clear, i have never been racist BUT... there was no white faces anywhere to be seen. I wasn't liking the idea of trying to sell drugs here and the girls decided not to go in, as they were worried about being harrassed all night. A shocking way of thinking i know, but we had all been once bitten, twice shy with this kind of thing so after a few spliffs and hard thinking we gave it the swerve, to err on the side of caution. We ended up in some ropey boozer and i fucked one of the girls in the loo, not the best place as midway through somebody was puking in the next cubicle. Nice. That was one of only 4 sexual experiences in a full 12 months.

                         The Dance Factory, Birmingham.

                          The Coach and Horses, Nuneaton, today.ish

           The Pump & tap, today, ish also.

Me and a couple of mates had started putting on illegal raves by now in fields, woods and railway tunnels but due to the locations we only got about 100-150 people there and they nearly all got shut down early. It was time to think a bit bigger. The biker gang i was selling drugs for started to get into the music and soon they suggested putting on another pub night in Nuneaton on Thursday night. This was a bit of a conflict of interests for me as i was still at the Pump & Tap, although it had died down a little bit now. We put on an all nighter first to test the water, in a very dodgy pub called The Coach and Horses , where the bikers drank. This do was a belter, it was rammed within 30 minutes and all the local dj's played there. This made it a goer - but i had to tell the landlord at the Pump that i was doing both nights. He hit the roof and sacked me immediately, forcing my hand. He also gave me a warning; those bikers will eventually rip you off, so don't come back to me if they do. He turned out to be right but not for a couple of years. We started off the Thursday nights to a whimper, rather than carrying the momentum from the all nighter, but over the coming weeks it started to take off and soon the Pump stopped doing both Saturday and Thursday nights. The end of an era, sadly. I was resident now, playing every week with guest dj's, and we started advertising for up and coming dj's to join the team and give them a chance at play live. We had some proper stinkers, including a fella i will never forget, DJ Roo, or as we called him, DJ Schzoo... after the noise made by pressing stop on the decks before throwing in the next tune, normally halfway through. He was a nice lad but couldn't mix a cake, let alone 2 records. Amongst the new crowd of dj's we recruited was MC Reggie P and his brother DJ T-Rex who were both MC man parris's brothers. This brought us in contact with Man Parris (MP) and he became a regular MC for us there. We had ambitions though, and so did Hardcore Massive (HM) who had stayed at the Pump till the end. Our new night was called 'Utopia' and from now on, 'Innovation' (pump &tap crew) were our competition. This year i had started to get better gigs and had played with Doc Scott, Dobbo (The Eclipse dj) and things were on the up and up. That being said, i played some right shocking nights, including a club in Rugby called 'Ponders alley'. we took a coach load over there and we were the only people in the club. We made the best of it but it was a poor show and i never went back there. Obviously Rugby wasn't ready for the rave scene just yet! The biker gang came to me with an idea, and this is still talked about in Nuneaton to this day, as it was such a mental event.

I will save that story for later on though, as plenty more things were occurring.....