Coventry had became a great place to go raving in 1991. There was The Eclipse, obviously, but also raves were being held at TiC ToC, the Mercia Centre, the West Indian Centre, all over the city and was getting popular instead of being an underground thing like it was in 1990. We still went to the Eclipse often and i had met loads of people from around the country. The friendliness from those days is the thing i miss the most. People travelled a long way to go there, and i remember leaving there one night and saying to my mates “There was a lot of people from Bristol in there last night, the MC kept doing shout outs to the Bristol posse”. After a lot of laughing from everyone, someone kindly advised me that it was more likely that the shouts were for the ‘whistle posse’. I hung my head in shame, and rightly so.
TiC Toc, Coventry when it was the coluseum, it’s now Kasbah
LFO done a live P.A there one night. They came on the stage and started with the eponymous LFO hit, and the laser shone out in a wide, flat beam starting low and slowly rising. I had taken a purple ohm LSD tab and was standing on a dance platform waiting to come up on it when the laser slowly made its way up my body. Inch by inch it rose up me, past my knees and then i started to feel a bit wobbly in the old legs. The beam passed my belly on its upwards journey and my belly felt like a breakdancer was doing the caterpiller in there. As it passed my chest my breathing became laboured and eventually the beam of laser light went up and over my face. The whole process lasted no more than 15 seconds. That was the last thing i remember, as i had apparently fainted and collapsed, falling into a bunch of poor unsuspecting ravers. Not very dignified, is it? I know i probably doesn’t need saying, but when i came around i was tripping my tits off and had an amazing night. When i can be arsed i will update this, and i will find out the exact dates. I also remember seeing the Prodigy do a P.A there at Shrine, in April i think, and there is much debate on whether or not that was their first gig, with some people also citing a club in london or Essex as the first. Unless Liam lets me know himself, i guess we can only speculate (can’t be arsed to properly research)
Time Part II, Aston Villa leisure centre, 19/4/1991
This was looking like a top, top night. and me and all my mates looked forward to this one. We had already been to their first event (where i sold a lot of drugs) and this time was no different. I soon shifted 100 pills and 2 ounces of speed again. We got in and i remember being paranoid about the £1500 being pinched from the car, and it was spoiling my high. Me and one of the lads went upstairs to the chill out room and ate a pill, hoping that when i came up i would put all paranoia out of my head and enjoy the night. Who remembers double doves? Those pills took your head off, and i had necked one with my mate as we sat there chatting. As we started to come up on the pill we decided to head back to the rave and made our way back to main hall. Walking down the stairs my mate suddenly put his hand over his mouth and his eyes bulged and off he ran, obviously being sick. On my journey down the stairs, people were sat down and most looking very annoyed and others puking up, because as my mate legged it past them he was doing the 5 finger spray; puke spraying out from between the gaps in his fingers and showering everyone with his bile. It reminded me of chunk in Goonies when he tells the tale at the cinema. A sublime moment of high comedy! I also saw a couple lay down making the beast with two backs behind the speakers. Pretty good night all in all. 2 weeks later, 5/5/1991 was Birmingham Rag Market rave. This was a big event and tickets were harder to get hold of than chicken teeth. Some of my mates got tickets but others didn’t, but loads of us still piled over there to see if we could get a ticket. My mate had found someone selling tickets and stupidly handed his money over (£50!) to a stranger without getting a ticket. He followed this tout around and eventually was handed a ticket. I say a ticket, it was a black and white photocopy. £50 for a useless scrap of paper, not funny for him, hilarious for the rest of us. Eventually he managed to get a real ticket for another £50, and got in. We went home after selling all my drugs again. I have seen the video of this night and wished i had got in, but ho hum, there was plenty of other nights to have fun. Remember me saying about my dealer who got armed feds to arrest the drug squad? I went round his gaff on a thursday night, as usual, to collect the speed and pills for the weekend, and he gave a acid tab while he was weighing up. I had recently started injecting speed with a 1mm insulin needle, the rush was amazing and being young and stupid, i didn’t realise this path lead to bad times. My dealer offered my to try the speed with his needles so i said yes. I had only injected a handful of times with those skinny needles but he had an old fashioned brass syringe with a screw on 2mm needle that you could see down. The acid was taking effect so i asked him to inject me. He missed the vein about 4 times and as he kept trying i could feel the needle piercing every layer of my skin and it fucking hurt. So much so that i eventually fainted. That was the best decision i ever made, because i never injected any drug again. The road to junkyville had been diverted and i am eternally grateful for that night. I left there with 100 double doves and 2oz of speed for the weekend, but little did i know the good times being a drug dealer were coming to an end. My dealer got busted 2 days later and it was nearly 10 years before i saw him again. On the plus side…100 pills and 56 grams of speed were mine! WOOHOOO! After he had been put on remand, drugs were harder to get hold of, or at least decent ones anyway. We had nobody to buy acid off so one night we made the journey over to The Eclipse to score from the car park. My mate walked up to a load of dealers, handed over £50 for 10 acid tabs and started to walk back to when he looked into the bag, turned around and walked back to the gang of dealers and started arguing with them. After much chatter he came back over to us looking a bit narked. “the fuckers tried to rip me off, they only gave me 8 instead of 10″ His smugness lasted all of 30 seconds, till he opened the bag to find he had indeed been given 10….bits of beer mat. Gimp.I had met a few dealers in Nuneaton willing to ‘tick’ me speed and got acid and pills from a member of a world wide biker gang (no fucking chance of me naming them, but think of the biggest biker gang you know, then think of the second gang; it was them) Circumstances dictated that i had to leave Atherstone at last and i moved back to Nunny to where my school mates lived. Back to civilisation at last! This was around christmas 1991, and also is where i will leave this story for the time being…..
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