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.....
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