Northern Carnival Against Racism in Leeds 1981: Specials and more

The Northern Carnival Against Racism in Leeds was I think the last of the great Rock Against Racism festivals, taking place in July 1981 as riots spread across the country. The following report is from Rock Against Racism's Temporary Hoarding zine, August 1981:

'We had a great day. Anyone who came along to the Great Northern Carnival against Racism as it snaked through the city centre or as it rocked Chapeltown got the message. Love music, hate racism, have fun and fight for a future with the Carnival. It's a pity only the people of Leeds heard. The march through town was amazing, the Law didn't know what was happening. Their estimates were 7,000 on Woodhouse Moor swelling to 20,000 for the park. Anyway that's all guess the weight of the cake stuff and any way you look at it it was the biggest demo Leeds has ever seen.

It was big, it was loud, it was multi racial, it was a militant and happy. There were only 40 cops on the march but we stewarded it with black and white skins.

When the March reached the park, the sound system has already filling the park with militant rhythm. We spent all afternoon sitting in the sunshine, buying anti-racist balloons and anti-nuclear hotdogs and rocking to the sounds of Barry Ford, the Au Pairs, Misty in Roots and the Specials. The message is clear from the stage: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm, there are 22 women political prisoners in Armagh jail and the sound from another ghetto about to explode.

But why did we have the carnival in Leeds? We wanted it here and we made it happen here. It's not just the NF [National Front] dogs at Elland Road football ground and it's not just the Nationality Bill those other animals are putting through parliament at the moment. The fascists have knifed people in our town, last September Anthony Clarke died and the local BM [British Movement] organiser went to jail for it. Blacks don't walk alone in town at night anymore. Jewish cemeteries are daubed with swastikas and the nazis come up to Chapeltown in cars at night'.

A report of the Carnival by Joanna Rollo was included in Socialist Worker, 4 July 1981:

.'The day began with a march to the city centre. Around 4000 left the assembly point. There were ANL [Anti Nazi League] banners from all over the north and some from the Midlands as well. There were floats some with bands on board, themes ranging from "stop the deportation of Asians" to "Punks against the Cruise". The Rebel float had his own band – No Swastikas from York. The two hour long march was brilliantly stewarded by black and white skinhead gangs from Leeds and Sheffield. And they had quite a job on their hands because by the time it reached Chapeltown where the Carnival was held the numbers had swelled to 20,000 and the march was spreading right across the streets. But there wasn't a single arrest and rumours that the Nazis were planning an attack the match came to nothing (a miserable 300 NF and BM members staged a half-hearted crawl through the city centre later that afternoon and ended up fighting each other).

The Carnival was remarkable. and not just for the numbers. It was the youngest, most working-class carnival yet, and there were more black youth than ever before – 50%. Looking out over the vast crowds The Specials singer Neville said "it's like a zebra crossing, black-and-white, black-and-white as far as you can see". And it put paid to the idea that all skins are Nazis because skins came in  their hundreds to hear the best the best anti ban-racist bands around – The Specials, Barry Forde, Misty and the Au Pairs – and dance and cheer alongside their black friends. It was a great day and a real slap in the face for Nazis everywhere'

Interview with Terry Hall

The Specials were riding high at this point and were no doubt the biggest draw on the day. Terry Hall was interviewed about the Leeds carnival for Temporary Hoarding by Leigh Bayley of 2 Tone

Why did you agree to play the Leeds carnival?

Because in Leeds there were a lot of racial problems so we thought it was the ideal place to play

Did you enjoy the day?

Yes. It was good. We played with Rico in Bristol the night before. I got up at 7:30 and travelled to Coventry, had a bath and drove to Leeds. We arrived only half an hour before  we went on stage.  I would have liked to have gone on the march, but we didn't have time. It was a good turnout.

There was no mention of the carnival in the National press. this is a sad reflection on the media, what are your comments?

The media is not interested in peacefulness. It is only interested in violence and what will shock people. They are not interested in a good time and peace because that does not make news. All good news is bad news. All the bad things that are happening go straight into the paper. They do not want to know about people having a good time.

Why do you think the riots have started? Do you see it as a movement against repression, unemployment, high prices, racism?

I think it is a hell of a lot of things, like unemployment. People have absolutely nothing to do. Take Coventry – you can't go to see a group. You can't go down the pub. I think a lot boils down to the price of cheeseburgers. Rioting is the only way  people can communicate. If they sent letters in an orderly fashion to Margaret Thatcher, she would not take any notice. It is the only way people can protest.

I am interested in the things that are happening with the kids, I am very interested in the youth. I am 22 now but two years ago I was a youth. I do understand what it is like because I used to be in gang fights all the time. When I used to fight it was only because I wasn't involved in anything else. I was unemployed, I was 16 but the leaders don't take any notice. I was watching a programme ‘Body Talk’ about Coventry and it was like they had to make use of a scapegoat for all the problems.

The problem is there are bad people whether they are black, white, whatever. The colour has nothing to do with it. There are nasty people who do bad things. Whether it is a black person doing bad things or a white person doing bad things it doesn't make any difference. Racism is just an excuse. It's just a word.

Do you think Mrs Thatcher can take all the blame? Has the government really left the youth on the shelf?

She is responsible. It is her government who are making the decisions so they must take the blame for what is happening. She chose to be prime minister and by making that choice she must take the blame. I blame the people who voted for her. They are so shortsighted. People say ‘let's give he woman a chance’. Well sex is just not important. If you are a fool it does not matter if you are male or female.

Do you think Labour could have avoided the trouble?

I never say what could be. Because you could say if there was a nuclear war tomorrow the rioting would end. Just what is happening today is important and what happened yesterday has happened. It is today that you have got to think about. As for Mrs Thatcher I think she should be put on the dole.

Are you disappointed that people haven't taken more notice of 2 Tone’s message of racial harmony?

Yes. Really it is just because people still think that the colour of the skin is important. I'm white but I'm not proud of it. I would paint myself green if it would make any difference. But 2 Tone is a very small thing. We are going to carry on and that is all we can do.

Terry Hall interview in Temporary Hoarding

Another report from TH: '20,000 people marched through Leeds to tell all racists everywhere just where to go. Fascist allsorts only managed 200 through the town centre in the afternoon, 30,000 popped along to the Barry Ford Band, the Au Pairs, Misty and The Specials in Potternewton Park'

Leeds Rudies

In the lead up to the Carnival, SW (4 July 1981) included an interview with Neville Staple and Lynval Golding from the Specials and an interesting feature on Leeds Rudies, a gang of young black and white ska fans involved with the Carnival: ''Rudies do what we please, how we please, when we please. We're black and white together, we look good and we show we're having fun - always dancing' (click to enlarge)

Centrespread montage from Temporary Hoarding, August 1981 with images from the summer riots

A more sceptical take from The Leveller magazine -'The Specials - the best anti-racist band you've ever heard' but rising racist attacks in Leeds, with some resistance: 'a mixed gang from the Two Tone Cafe smashed up the Scarborough Arms the local fascist meeting place'. Interesting critique - 'neo colonialist calls for "Black and White Unite and Fight" are embarrassingly abstract coming from white lefties'. I guess in the sense that the slogan could be read as undermining the reality of  black people organising themselves to fight racism, albeit with some white support.

 

[updated February 2023 with Leveller article]

See also:

Funk the Royal Wedding 1981

The Specials play Coventry 1981

Rock Against Racism documents 1979

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Brixton comes to Bedfordshire: The Luton Riots of 1981

Blinded by the Light - memories of racism and job cuts in 1980s Luton (including the Luton Youth Movement)

 

Gays Against Nazis, Leeds 1978

Gays Against Nazis/Rock Against Racism gig at Leeds Poly, 30 June 1978 with The Mekons, reggae band Tribesman and Sheffield post-punk band 2.3

source: Record Mirror, 1 July 1978

 

'Weird youths in tight trousers' and 'demoralising scenes' at 1950s dance in Huddersfield

An everyday tale of police, the licensing laws, spooning and weird youths from Leeds in 1950s Yorkshire:

Huddersfield club wants inquiry into dance "slur"

'A public inquiry into police allegations about a dance in Huddersfield is to be requested by the organisers. Longwood Harriers Athletic Club at its annual meeting last night decided to ask Huddersfield Town Council for an inquiry. The club was recently refused a licence for a dance after police witnesses had spoken of "disgusting and demoralising scenes"..

Huddersfield teenagers' dance hall behaviour was defended last night at a meeting of Huddersfield Youth Committee. The troublemakers whose actions were criticised might have been some of those weird youths in tight trousers and extraordinary dress who come into the town from Leeds and the Spen Valley, said Mr W A Hinchcliffe'.

(Bradford Observer, 21 September 1955)

Longwood Harriers protest at police criticism of dances 

'A police officer stated in court that when he visited a dance which Longwood Harriers held at the Town Hall on August 19, the bar was crowded out, the floor was littered with empty bottles, and some of the couples were spooning. The officer suggested that 90 per cent of the people in the bar were under 20 years of age, and he described conditions as disgusting.

(Bradford Observer, 9 September 1955)

Harriers are granted dance drinks licence after police objection

Longwood Harriers Athletic Club who were recently refused a drinks licence for a dance at Huddersfield Town Hall after police complaints about a previous dance, successfully supported an applicatoin at the Borough Court yesterday for an occasional liquor licence for a ball which they will run at Cambridge Road Baths, Huddersfield

(Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 1 October 1955)

I stumbled across this story at the great British Newspaper Archive while looking for something else, as you do. Longwood Harriers is still going as an athletics club, as a committee member for an athletic club myself I can only dream that we could put on an event today that could attract such notoriety.

Pirate Radio: Article from Muzik magazine, 1995

There's now an online archive of every issue of Muzik magazine, from 1995 to 2003. The launch of the magazine by IPC was an indicator of the state of music in the UK a the time - dance music was massive and the coverage of it in IPC's NME was woeful. Magazines like Mixmag and DJ were flying off the shelves and IPC wanted some of the action. Likewise by 2003 the boom was well and truly over and there had been a revival of the guitar-led bands that NME liked to feature - so it was farewell Muzik.

There's lots of great material to be found in this archive. From Issue no.2, July 1995, here's an article on pirate radio (click on image to enlarge, or go to the archive and look through the whole issue).

'''Meet me outside McDonals in Crystal Palace. I'll be there in 10 minutes". The voice on the mobile phone belongs to the man behind Energy FM, one of London's longest-running pirate radio stations... As one of the highest places in London, Crystal Palace is a prime location for pirate radio transmitters and a prime target for the DTI investigators. Energy has been broadcasting on and off from here for over three years and the station's boss knows the area intimately. Tower blocks are central to pirate radio mythology because their height provides stations with the widest possible catchment area. Most hide their transmitter in a lift shaft or a drainage pipe within cable reach of an aerial placed on top of a block. Energy's transmitter is sufficiently high to enable their programmes to occasionally be picked up in Luton, which is some 50 miles away'. Dream FM (Leeds) and Power FM (Nottingham) also feature in the article, as does Kiss which by then had gone from being a pirate to being legit (the article mentions that they also used Crystal Palace tower blocks).

Dancing Questionnaire (25): Mark, New York

Mark is 38 years old and works as an Advertising Executive in New York, following an odyssey from Tamworth and London via Sheffield.

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I think the very earliest was bopping around to Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ with my grandma at a family wedding reception near Walsall, but the one that really stands out is headbanging to AC/DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ at a primary school disco in Tamworth, Staffs, where I grew up. I’d seen some older kids doing it at the previous year’s event - my first taste of youth rebellion aged 8! I remembered the names of the bands on the patches sewed onto their sleeveless denim jackets and over the next twelve months become an entry-level rocker, renting albums from the local record library and getting my own cut-off denim with patches and studs. Then eventually it was me and my mates’ turn to headbang at the disco when the token metal record was played. The DJ cut it off before the end as the teachers were concerned about potential brain damage.

What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while dancing?

Building a deeper relationship with music. I’ve devoted much of my life to music in all its forms and through dancing I enjoy exploring its qualities more deeply, amongst the thrills and spills. I remember dancing in Manchester in 1996 in the Village to ‘The Love I Lost’ by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and suddenly realizing that the dance music I enjoyed most had a particular combination of uplifting-ness and melancholy which then set the course ahead for many years.



You. Dancing. The Best of times...

New York 2007-2010. People say dancing in New York’s not what it was. Sure, over-zealous regulation has harmed the vibrancy and scale of the club scene but this has been replaced by an amazing DIY attitude for the past decade or so. This manifests in all-night semi-legal dance parties in lofts and warehouses mainly in Brooklyn often featuring an eclectic mix of music, DJs, performance and participation. There’s a real sense of excitement for me around something genuinely underground, unpredictable, community based and musically eclectic which has totally revitalized my love of dancing. It’s as if dance music has resumed its role in the city as outsiders’ music, which is how I’ve always most enjoyed it.

You. Dancing. The Worst of times...

When I first moved to London in the late 90s I found it hard to find a scene that satisfied me. DnB was too hard and fast, House had got too cheesy, Big Beat was too beery and everything was too segmented and focused on one style of music. Maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough though at the time.

Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?

I started dancing regularly in 1987 at an under 18s discos in Tamworth at a club called the Embassy. It wasn’t really my scene though and things didn’t really take off until I discovered ‘indie’ music via John Peel and then started to make regular trips to Birmingham to indie disco nights and 60s psychedelic nights like the Sensateria at the Institute, as well as the odd hardcore rave. University in Sheffield in 1992 meant a headlong rush into house, techno, garage and funk with the poly-sexual scene around Vague [Leeds], Flesh [Manchester] and Sheffield’s Trash providing a little spice around the slightly-cheesy uniformity of the post-acid house scene up north at the time.

A move to London in the late 90s meant a hotch-potch of east-London fare – reggae, DnB, ragga, hip hop, a bit of house and the electroclash scene around Nag Nag Nag. Carnival weekend was always the highlight of the year, and I had a brief involvement with a north London pirate station. But gradually dancing died away. In 2005 the move to New York reignited it all again.

When and where did you last dance?

To a Robert Owens DJ set at Dalston Superstore, London last November.

You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make you leap up for one final dance?

‘I Want Your Love’ by Chic. The perfect combination of yearning, hope and melancholy that characterizes much of my favorite music to dance to.

All questionnaires welcome, just answer the same questions - or even make up a few of your own - and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

1980 Leeds Nightlife

247TopCat has done a great service to social and cultural history by putting some old 1980s photos on youtube, including this series taken at Belinda's, a club in Leeds, in 1980.



Entrance to the club in Leeds, on Briggate
(see discussion at Secret Leeds)

I've never been out dancing in Leeds, but these images are very evocative of the whole British early 1980s soul/funk/disco scene. 247topcat has also posted similar photos/films of an all-dayer at another Leeds club, Tiffanys in 1983 and at various other places at that time

Bruce Turner - Pavlova

Bruce Turner's painting 'Pavlova' is a remarkable early modernist image of a dancer in motion painted in around 1912. I saw it yesterday in Tate Britain, where it is currently on display.



Don't know too much about Turner (1894-1963), but he was from Leeds and seemingly involved in the Leeds Art Club, an interesting avant garde grouping from before the First World War through which flowed various counter-currents including socialism, anarchism, spiritualism, suffragism and theosophy



Anna Pavlova made her sensational first appearance in London in 1910, and performed at the Leeds Grand on 17 January 1912 advertised as the 'dancing revelation of the age' (see Leeds Play Bills). Maybe Turner was there.

Dancing Questionnaire 22: Jamie Potter

Jamie Potter (http://twitter.com/jamiepotter) gives us the low down on 21st century nights out in Hull, Leicester and Leeds.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

I have a strange relationship with dancing. I bought my first decks when I was 15 but I was about the only person in my school/town who had any interest in dance music so parties and club visits were non-existent. When I first started going out drinking there were small dancefloors in some of the bars with cheesy DJs playing horrible cheesy music. I was generally reluctant to dance as I was scared of looking like an idiot, though if I saw an attractive girl on the dancefloor I was occasionally tempted into some awkward shuffling that barely registered as 'dancing'.

My first 'proper' dancing experience will have been at either Spiders or Welly in Hull, I can't remember which. Both are rock/indie clubs catering to very young crowds. As I said, I was mainly into dance music but I also liked a lot of rock music and most of my friends were into it, so it was a scene I felt comfortable in. Some and friends and I, while in sixth form, got a train over one night and I remember actually dancing to the likes of Rage Against the Machine and At The Drive In.

2. What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

At Gatecrasher Summer Soundsystem in 2008 somebody died after taking drugs in one of the tents we'd been dancing in at the time. I think they had a heart attack. We weren't aware of it until a few hours later when word got around the campsite, at which point we were all chilling out by our tents. I wasn't taking drugs that weekend, I don't really like or need them, but everybody I was there with was on something or other, so the news hit home a bit and led to some glum faces. Though, of course, a few hours later normal service had been resumed.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…

Getting lost in the music, there's only the here and now, the world doesn't exist beyond the four walls (or railway tunnel...) and the range of the speakers. Tapping into the groove of the music that transcends individual tracks, like a pulse, with this record pulling you to this side and the next record tugging you in the opposite direction. Warmth, sweat, skin on skin, jostling and bumping. Timeless.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…

Listening to the DJ play the same record he did last week and the week before that and the crowd responding like it's the first time they've ever heard Living On A Prayer and you neck bottles of artificially flavoured alcohol packed with sugar because the other option is being alone in your room mixing together some minimal techno and you hope for a beautiful girl to come and rescue you, but it doesn't happen. In the morning you vow to give up on these crap nights but the other option is being alone in your room mixing together some minimal techno...

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?

As previously mentioned my first dancing experiences were among the rock and indie clubs in Hull when I was 17 or 18. The party scene in my home town was pretty non-existent with house parties an excuse to drink rather than dance. I remember DJing at a friend's house party, my only house 'gig' back then, and I was essentially playing background music.

Things changed when I started university and I began going to my first 'proper' nightclubs. These were often to see drum and bass/hip hop/breakbeat nights, usually in small, sweaty venues like the old Po Na Na or Charlotte in Leicester. Such gigs were nearly always dominated by white males, despite the cultural mix of Leicester. The large number of music technology students also contributed to the crowds at these gigs.

At the same time, I was also going to the cheesy student nights with my wider circle of friends, who tended to be fairly disinterested in dance music, especially the house and techno I love. These nights were always bigger, drink fuelled and soundtracked by chart hits and classic cheese like the Baywatch theme. There would be an even mix of girls and guys in what I could only really term a cattle market - people on the prowl for members of the opposite sex. I couldn't stand these nights out and only went along because my social life would be non-existent otherwise and I tended to depend on copious amounts of drink to get me through them.

Further in to my uni life I started working at some cool bars in Leicester, often finishing in the early hours of the morning and hitting one of a couple of late night bars until 7 or 8 in the morning. Both were fairly small places, frequented by bar staff with a nice community feel. One, the Basement, played funk, ska and soul and was a refreshing change to all the crap elsewhere. The other, Esko, started as a members only space and soon grew into a hot, underground club pulling in some of the finest drum and bass and dubstep DJs.

Working a bar every weekend often meant I missed a lot of the big gigs elsewhere. In my final year at university I started DJing out a bit more getting a set at a tiny bar in Leicester called The Hub which had a great DIY feel and regular bunch of customers. House parties, again, were danceless affairs despite asking for my services as a DJ. Around this time I started falling out with the scene. Drugs were integral and it was very cliquey. If you weren't quaffing MDMA it was hard to integrate and I found most of the people boring. I'm personally very political and found the lack of politics, the rape jokes, materialism, sexism and so on really uncomfortable. Similarly, the clubs and gigs seemed to be dominated by faddish music (tropical etc.) and were all about getting off your tits, dropping tune after tune, which I like in moderation, but I was yearning for more nuanced music and sets from techno DJs and the like.

Since then and finishing university I've been floating around following jobs or postgrad degrees and haven't really settled down yet. Subsequently the dancing has had a hit too, being few and far between.

6. When and where did you last dance?

Aside from a shuffling my hips while mixing in my bedroom, it was unfortunately a while ago now, at the Brudenell in Leeds for Jeremiah Jae, Tokimonsta, Teebs and Daedelus.




I went along with a friend who usually listens to folk, indie and punk/riot grrl so it was an eye opening experience for her and it was nice to be the one who drew her out of her comfort zone, to share some new music and experiences with her. I distinctly remember she asked during the warm-up set, while we were sat drinking, how on earth you dance to such music. But as soon as Jeremiah Jae took to the decks and the crowd swelled she just started dancing without any kind of prompt or 'education', it just came naturally. Great night!

7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?

That's a tricky one to answer. I have many favourite pieces of music for dancing to, but with something like techno, which is some of the music I listen to and mix the most, they're not records that I'd immediately jump up and dance to. Rather, I find with a lot of techno and other electronic music that the urge to dance follows on from all the music that has come previously in the set. There has to be a groove, so to speak. So I may hear a track that I absolutely love, but if I haven't been 'warmed up', if I'm not in that dancing trance, then I might not feel that immediate urge. Saying that, I remember walking past a tent at a festival and hearing Vitalic's performing Pony live and I just left my friends and ran into the tent.

To get back to the question though, there is music that does make me jump right up and that's usually hip-hop/funk kind of stuff. So, death bed track? That would probably have to be Hip Hop by Dead Prez. Soon as I hear that bassline, my mood perks up.



All questionnaires welcome, just answer the same questions - or even make up a few of your own - and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

Dancing Questionnaire (20): Smith3000, Expletive Undeleted

Next up on the Dancing Questionnaire, is Smith3000 of Expletive Undeleted blog and much more besides - 'did fanzines as a kid, promoted bands like the Membranes and Bogshed in Scunthorpe, first DJed in Darlington in 1984, moved to Leeds, was a founder member of techno collective Microdot, DJed on Leeds pirate Dream FM for five years, freelanced for NME, Mixmag and iD, started after-hours Ministry of Shite parties, moved to Manchester. Now write a blog and occassionally DJ at our 'early doors easy listening and bossa nova' do Easy Tiger with the lovely Jeanie'.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

My parents used to buy a bit of chart music and I remember us all doing some awful synchronised hands-on-hips dance to Mud’s Tiger Feet in the front room, over and over and over again. Wikipedia tells me this would have been 1974, so I will have been nine. I got a rush.

2. What's the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

I met my girlfriend when I was DJing early doors in a bar in Manchester a few years ago and persuaded her to stay out later than she planned so we could go to a club where a mate was playing. It was on the dancefloor there that I began to really understand exactly how fantastic she was. We’re still together.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…

A lot of is to do with women and drink and drugs. If I’m dancing, I’m probably in a pretty contented state of mind anyway. But I have two happy moments that immediately spring to mind: Glastonbury’s experimental music field, sometime in the early 90s. Underworld played through Pink Floyd’s quadraphonic soundsystem for like 12 hours or something and me and my then girlfriend were tripping and dancing and acting daft pretty much the whole time.

One new year’s eve at the Band on the Wall in Manchester, at a gig by A Certain Ratio and Fila Brazillia, drunk but completely synchronised with an equally drunk then girlfriend. We tripped the light fantastic. It felt like a scene from a musical. And I also have very happy memories of making shapes at a birthday party for Bob Marley in Jamaica, at Bora Bora on the Playa den Bossa in Ibiza, on a podium at la Terrazza in Barcelona, the Mardi Gras in Kings Cross in Sydney and at Robodisco at Planet K in Manchester. When it got to 6am and the light started to come in through the glass roof during Back to Basics residency at the Pleasure Rooms always felt very special. Maybe it was just the drugs. And the night that I met my lady, of course. I could go on all night here.

Back to Basics, Leeds - detourning Jamie Reid's God Save the Queen détournement

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times...
I had a bit of a funny turn at the Big Chill a few years ago where I inadvertently did too much MDMA and got some intense visual hallucinations (every surface of everything had like a layer of cling film hovering about a centimetre above it) which was kind of okay - but eventually I became utterly disorientated and incoherent and would have been up shit creek if I’d not had a mate with me. I also ending up puking so hard I did something to my diaphragm (which hurt for weeks afterwards). I had to go for a lie down.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you've frequented?
I always used to dance at punk and indie gigs but as far as clubbing goes, I went to places like the Limit and the Top Rank in Sheffield, Spiders in Hull and the Ad-Lib in Nottingham.The club where I was first a regular was the Baths Hall in Scunthorpe in the early Eighties, where they stuck a dancefloor over the pool in winter and Steve Bird used to play punk, indie, alternative stuff and a little bit of reggae. Big tunes (for me at least) were stuff like Puppet Life by Punilux, Where Were You by the Mekons, Walls of Jericho and Nag Nag Nag by the Cabs, Follow The Leaders by Killing Joke and anything by the Stranglers. It was fucking brilliant. John Peel always used to say that the Baths was his favourite gig. We believed him.

I lived in Leeds during the late Eighties / Nineties and haunted places like the Well Funked Society at the Phono, Dig at the Gallery, Joy at the Warehouse, Kaos at Ricky’s, the Dream all-nighters at the Trades in Leeds, Back to Basics at the Music Factory, and Hard Times in Huddersfield, plus odd dances at the West Indian Centre and blues like Les’s and 45s in Chapletown.

In Manchester, Mr Scruff’s Keep it Unreal things is always good, as was the Robodisco and Electrik Chair and anything that Chris Jam or Rob Bright are DJing at.

6. When and where did you last dance?
When Weatherall did the one-deck wonder thing at Electrik bar the other week.

7. You're on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
If I’ve got the energy, Le Freak by Chic. If not, Sweet Love by Anita Baker for one last erection section, propped up by my long-suffering missus.

All questionnaires welcome - just answer the same questions in as much or as little detail as you like and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires).

Michael Jackson Flashmobs

The inevitable Michael Jackson tribute flashmob drew a big crowd to London's Liverpool Street station this evening, the idea being to do a mass Moonwalk. The police prevented it happening in the train station itself (scene of several other silent raves in the past), so it relocated to the street outside. It doesn't look like there was much space for full on Moonwalking, but clearly there was lots of milling about, singing and dancing while the traffic ground to a halt. There was also Jackson-inspired flashmob dancing in the streets in downtown Toronto and by the Ferry building in San Francisco. Any way a good example of instant mobilisation, less than 24 hours after Jackson's death was announced.

The sense of slightly aimless but enjoyable chaos reminded me of my closest encounter with Michael Jackson, on his British tour in 1988. It was shortly after the 1987 release of the Bad album, the third of his great Quincy Jones-produced trilogy (after Off the Wall and Thriller). MJ and his sister Janet ruled the dancefloor (or at least the electronic dance pop end of it) at that time, the latter with the excellent 1986 Control album (produced by Jam and Lewis). I remember the week Bad was released and hearing it for the first time in a club in South London (Dance Chase at the Alexandra on Clapham Common), everyone was talking about it.

In August 1988 Michael Jackson was playing in Roundhay Park, Leeds, and as I was staying not too far away in Sheffield we decided to go and check it out. We didn't have tickets but figured we might be able to sneak in. At the Park it was apparent that thousands of others had had the same idea. As well as the ticket holders inside the gig, surrounded by a high fence, there was a big crowd in the park. Some were content with listening to the music and seeing the part of the screen next to the stage that was visible from outside but many others were determined to find a way in, using crowd barriers as ladders to climb over fences (only to be chased out again), and generally giving the runaround to the police, out in force in the park with dogs and horses.

It was all semi-riotous and put me in mind of 'Starlust - the Secret Fantasies of Fans' by Fred and Judy Vermorel (1985). Basically their thesis was that rather than simply being integrated into the capitalist spectacle, extreme fan behaviour created a kind of surplus energy of utopian romanticism that was potentially disruptive of everyday life.

Michael Jackson may have been a fucked up kid who grew up to fuck up other kids, let alone his crimes against good music (I refer to some of his awful schmaltzy ballads), but in the intersection of his best tracks, dancefloors, and the desires of dancers many interesting moments have arisen - and no doubt will continue to do so.

Taser = torture

Weekend nights in Anytown UK, boys and girls roam the town centre between pubs and the kind of nightclubs where they only play chart music. Violence is in the air from drunken blokes (sometimes women too), bouncers and pumped up police.

This is the landscape of songs like I Predict a Riot by the Kaiser Chiefs (Leeds): 'Watching the people get lairy, It's not very pretty I tell thee, Walking through town is quite scary, It's not very sensible either, A friend of a friend he got beaten, He looked the wrong way at a policeman...'

Or Riot Van by The Arctic Monkeys (Sheffield): 'And up rolls the riot van, And these lads just wind the coppers up, They ask why they don't catch proper crooks, They get their address and their names took, But they couldn't care less, Got thrown in a riot van, and all the coppers kicked him in'.

But now there's a new, potentially deadly weapon on the streets. A Sunday night in Nottingham two weeks ago, an altercation by a nightclub, and the police turn up - nothing unusual, but then we enter sci-fi territory. Captured on mobile phone by a passer-by, a policeman fires a taser at a guy on the ground, delivering a 50,000 volt electric shock via two darts on the end of wires (then a colleague comes along and delivers a more traditional thumping).



Yes electric shock treatment in public, and don't believe the hype about tasers being 'non-lethal'. As Harpy Marx notes, a man died in Australia this month and there have also been recent deaths in the US and Canada. In fact Amnesty International have documented hundreds of taser-related deaths. No doubt many more are on the way in the UK, since last year the Home Secretary announced plans to fund the provision of 10,000 Taser guns nationally and training for up to 30,000 frontline officers to use them. Not all police forces are enthusiastic are so enthusiastic about increasing the use of them - possibly because they too predict a riot.

Hillsborough 1989

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, when fans of Liverpool FC were crushed at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. The fans were caged in by metal fences and as a result were unable to escape on to pitch when the crush developed. 96 people died. The Manic Street Preachers later recorded a song SYMM - South Yorkshire Mass Murderer - perhaps not one of their best efforts musically or lyrically, but expressing the sentiment that the disaster was not an 'Act of God' but was caused by the actions of the police and football authorities. A better song is the Liverpool epic Does this Train Stop on Merseyside by Amsterdam, which refers to the disaster with the lines: 'Yorkshire policemen chat with folded arms, people try and save their fellow fans' (Christy Moore has also recently recorded this song).

The following article was written by Jeremy Seabrook immediately after the disaster. Unfortunately much of it still rings true today, not just for football but in terms of the way the wider 'leisure industry' processes crowds for profit - see for instance deaths from fires in nightclubs.

'We were like animals in a zoo' - Jeremy Seabrook (Guardian, 17 April 1989)

Hillsborough has now become yet another placename to add to those that make up the by-now voluminous gazeteer of wasted human lives. Already there has been talk of "learning the lessons of Hillsborough"; but if the lessons of Bradford, Heysel, Manchester Airport and the Herald of Free Enterprise had been even half absorbed, this most cruel visita­tion might have been avoided.

What all these have in common is that they arose from the processing of people through time or space for the sake of experiences provided by the entertainment, holiday and sports industries; as such, they touch upon one of the central purposes of the economy in its most benign guise - that of leisure society. This, it turns out, is dedicated to the necessity of making as much money out of people as possible, in this instance, by making them pay - some, alas, with their lives ­for the privilege of standing for two hours in what are nothing more than overcrowded cages.

Because these experiences are associated with pleasure, it is easy to disregard the dangers, whether these are the use of unsuitable material in the manufacture of aircraft seats, insecure and overloaded ferry boats, or football grounds that prove to be deathtraps. It is only when things go wrong that some deep insight is granted us into the true value placed on human life by the purveyors of entertainment, escape and fun to the people.

"We were like animals in a zoo," said one man afterwards. It was a zoo in which the watchers were primarily electronic: the cameras of the media, the police videos and computers, represent a vast investment in the paraphernalia of surveil­lance, which could monitor every anguished moment, but do absolutely nothing to help. What a contrast this prodigious outlay of money presents with the absence of life-saving equipment. The doctors present testified that there were no defibrillators, and that the oxygen tents were without oxygen; but the presence of all the media hardware ensured that the spectacle of football was swiftly transformed into a spectacle of a quite different genre.

The carnage – how sad that the hyperbole of football writing becomes hideously appropriate – raises intently political issues. Those who insist upon referring to the incident as though it were an Act of God, a sort of natural tragedy, betray only their interest in concealment. The very public display of their humanitarian concern merely masks its absence in the more fundamental matter of preventing the gratuitous squandering of young lives.

Football is perhaps the only remaining experience in our social life where passion - and partisan passion at that - is engaged. Nothing could be further removed from the other characteristic crowd scenes in our society: the people shuffling through the shopping malls, for instance, are self-policing, introspectively concerned as they are upon the relationship between individual desire, money and the prize to be purchased; remote too from pop concerts, where the shared focus of cathartic emotion is funnelled on to a single person, and its ex­pression is without conflict.

But football continues to reach something which neither of these possesses - the pas­sion of locality, and of places once associated with something more than football teams. That Liverpool should have been connected twice with such un­bearable events is perhaps not entirely by chance. For the great maritime city, with its decayed function rooted in an archaic Imperial and industrial past, sport now has to bear a freight of symbolism that it can scarcely contain.

The energies of partisan, mainly working-class male crowds remain, as they always have been, the object of great anxiety and suspicion to their betters. These energies are perceived as perhaps the last vestiges of the turbulence of the mob - unruly, defiant and unpredictable - in a society where all other public passions have been tamed.

The forces released by football provide a glimpse of collective power that has been successfully neutralised in the rich Western societies; a suggestion that such passion could possibly be harnessed to social and political endeavour rather than sublimated in sporting conflicts.

Apart from the sight of the inert young bodies stretched out in the sunlight, perhaps the most chilling images were those of the anguished faces pressed against wire fences. They looked as if they had been taken from the iconography of repression of authoritarian states, and they evoke something quite other than the idea of sport. They bore the tormented expression of those in prison camps; indeed, many spoke of "the terracing that had become a prison", the inevitability of disaster within those reinforced enclosures, where the grisly facts of the quantity of pressure they. were calculated to withstand was conveyed with scientific precision.

We can only guess at what unwanted and redundant human powers are being con­trolled in the use of all this apparatus of containment; what frustrated visions and cancelled dreams are being policed, what doomed alternative use of these energies is being fenced in, sifted through the mechanistic click of the turnstiles. What an irony is the Government's obsession with identity cards in this context, when it is precisely a sense of identity that so many are trying to reclaim in these conflicts between geographic entities that have become, physically, interchangeable. For what now differentiates Sheffield from Nottingham, Manchester from Liverpool, Bradford from Leeds, with their homogeneous housing estates, the sameness of their shopping centres, the identical service sector economy?

There remains also an old class prejudice in the treatment of those who must be systemati­cally humiliated in the pursuit of their afternoon's pleasure. "We are treated like animals," some said afterwards; and in their words is an echo of how Government ministers had described them at the time of earlier disasters. The very idea of "fans" is a humbling social role, a diminishing and partial account of human beings.

Indeed, there could be no greater gulf than that created by the exaggerated adulation that the stars and heroes receive - the inflated transfer fees, the publicity, the column inches and admiring TV interviews - and the abasement and inferiorising of the fans, punters or consumers. The players are mythicised, whisked upwards into an empyrean of fame and celebrity, in which everything they do or say is reported, no matter how trivial; in the process they become remote from their votaries and followers, who are kept in their place as effectively as they once might have been through the mysteries of breeding or station. Part of the process of erecting the infamous steel barriers is connected with enforcing this separation: the pitch is inviolate, the fans must remain content with the wall poster, the autograph, the fantasy.

Already, the aftermath of these tragic disasters has taken on the aspect of a known ritual: the Prime Minister arrives, prayers are offered up, shrines are set up at the scene of the accident, and a fund is opened. It means that these inadmissable horrors have become part and parcel of our social life; they have become familiar. Once again, the real lessons are likely to be that the public enquiry will be a vast exercise in concealment of the true relationship of these unnecessary tragedies to the necessities of what are no longer amiable Saturday afternoon pastimes but are part of a remorseless machine for making money; how fitting that the advertising hoardings had to serve in place of absent stretchers.

More: see the Hillsborough Justice Campaign; there's also a couple of good articles by Merrick at Head Heritage, one summarising the Hillsborough events and the other comparing the policing of football fans with the recent G20 protests.

1996: chronology of parties and police

Following the recent 1997 chronology we go back another year to 1996, a time of Reclaim the Streets parties, police raids on gay clubs and, in Algeria, the killing of rai performers . All events below from UK unless otherwise stated. As always I'd be interested in any recollections or reflections on these events

January:

100 police raid Hollywoods club in Romford, Essex. As well as arresting some people for drugs, two women are arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Police bust a Vox Pop/Virus squat party in South London, and people move up to a Hackney venue. When they get there the police steam in making arrests and beating people up.

Police confiscate rig at Immersion Sound System party on the site of the Newbury road protest in Berkshire.

Gay rubber night GUMMI at Club 180 in London is stopped after a visit from the Met’s Vice Squad.

Local council take out injunction against four members of the Exodus Collective in Luton, forbidding them to hold free parties

February:

200 police in riot gear raid the Coliseum nightclub near Stockton-on-Tees, arresting 35 people

On Valentine’s Day hundreds of people dance, drum and bounce on Brighton’s North Street. Police pile in at end of the Reclaim the Streets party and arrest 43 people.

Three people from Black Moon Sound System arrested in Corby at the prevous July’s attempted Mother festival found guilty under Section 63 of the Criminal Justice Act and their £6000 rig confiscated.

March:

Police raid a party at the A.R.T.L.A.B. in Preston with an Environmental Health Officer who removes equipment under noise pollution regulations [Dream Creation, 1996]

Police set up road blocks to search people going to Lost in Paradise at Fantasy Island, Skegness. 11 arrests.

Jury throw out disorderly house charges against Club Whiplash in London, raided by sixty police with dogs in 1994.

Sex Maniacs Ball at the Fridge in Brixton cancelled at the last minute after police pressure. The tenth annual Ball, a charity event, was to be held at Brixton Academy, but they cancelled the booking after the police threatened a raid. Bagley’s at Kings Cross did the same. [Pink Paper 29/3/86] In response the Sexual Freedom Coalition was set up to “combat police inteference in clubs and with publications”, and on April 20th 200 people danced through Soho to Downing Street in protest at police action.

“Four people were arrested on drug possession and sale charges after police crashed a ‘rave’' party at a local nightclub in Danbury [USA]. More than 600 people ranging in age from about 14 to 21 attended the party, staged by an out-of-state production company at the Subzero nightclub on Elm Street”. [News Times, Danbury, March 25, 1996]

April:

Police in Essex board a privately-hired coach taking people clubbing in London and search everybody on board. Several arrests for drugs offences.

May:

Sussex police seize a sound system at a warehouse party in Bevendean.

Mounted police move in at the end of a Leeds Reclaim the Streets party; 12 people arrested

Tribal Gathering festival, Britain’s largest dance event, cancelled after authorities in Oxfordshire refuse it a licence following police objections - despite a successful event last year, months of preparation, and advance ticket sales of 25,000.

50 people arrested in dawn raids on two gay clubs in Santiago, Chile [Pink Paper, 24 May 1996]

June

100 riot police raid the Zoom Bar in Halle, Germany on the day before the city’s first ever gay pride event. 70 people inside the gay bar are handcuffed and made to lie on the floor during searches for drugs. Some are clubbed to the floor, others strip searched [Pink Paper, 4 July 1996].

On June 9th, several hundred people block the main A6 road into Leicester city centre for a Reclaim the Streets party, with sound system, comfy chairs, children’s paddling pool and fire jugglers. After three hours the police force people off the road, making six arrests.

A woman in Melbourne, Australia, wins compensation from the police after being stripsearched in a raid on the city’s Tasty nightclub in 1994. During the drugs raid, 465 were stripsearched, many of whom now claim compensation [Pink Paper14 June 1996]

The Tunnel and Limelight clubs in New York are raided and closed down, and the owners charged with conspiracy to sell ecstasy.

July:

On the biggest Reclaim the Streets action so far, 8000 people party on the M41 motorway in West London. There are no arrests on the day, although in the aftermath police raid the RTS office and an activist’s home and charge one person with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to the M41, parts of which were dug up during the party.

Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army crack down on Irish nationalists in Derry (N.Ireland), blocking off the streets in the city centre as people leave pubs and clubs. 900 plastic bullets are fired. 41 people suffer injuries including a fractured skull, broken jaw, and a broken leg. 18-year-old Michael McEleny, on the way home from Henry J’s disco with his sister, is hit in the face with a plastic bullet which tears away his cheek leaving him with a broken palate and cheekbone. According to his sister “Bullets just flew everywhere. Every two seconds there was another one. You couldn’t stand up. Every time I tired to get up and run, another bullet was fired. Anyone who stood up was hit”. 16 year-old Kevin McCafferty is left unconscious and critically injured after being shot in the chest and head with plastic bullets on the way home from Squires disco. Rioting spreads throughout Derry in the following days, and Dermot McShane iss killed after being run over by a British army vehicle. [An Phoblact/Republican News, 18 July 1996].

350 CRS police close down the Bordeaux Arts Festival in France, searching 600 people and making 23 arrests. Although the dance music festival had the permission of the landowner, the French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre declared it an illegal event. [Wax, August 1996, Muzik September 1996]

August:

Big police operation against Smokey Bears legalise cannabis picnic in Portsmouth - sound systems stopped from entering the area

Riot police baton charge revellers at Maidstone River Festival in Kent.

10 people arrested at Reclaim the Streets party in Birmingham on.17 August. On the same day there is a five hour RTS party in Bath. The following week, 80 people are arrested as police mobilise to stop a Brighton Reclaim the Streets party.

Sussex police use a helicopter to break up a party near Brighton.

September:

95 police raid the Living Room club, the Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead. 250 clubbers are evacuated, and 18 arrested, mostly on drugs charges.

100 police stage a drugs raid on I Spy, a gay night at Leeds club Nato. 19 people arrested. Police clear the club with people being met on the streets by at least 25 vans of police [Mixmag, Nov 1996]

Reclaim the Streets activists take part in the Reclaim the Future events in Liverpool in support of striking dockers. A march of 10,000 people is livened up with sound system, and a docks building squatted for a free party. On the Monday 600 people picket the docks and there are 44 arrests.

In Barnsley a planned gay night at the local Hedon Rock bar is blocked after a local hompohopic campiagn by the so-called Campaign Against Homosexual Equality [Pink Paper27/9/96]

The popular Rai singer Boudjema Bechiri, 28 (known as Cheb Aziz) is killed by Islamic militants. He is the fourth Rai star to be killed, since Rai songs which are often about sex and drink have been declared blashpemous and banned in areas dominated by Islamic fundamentalists [Observer, 22 Sept 1996]

October:

Police raid on Love Muscle gay club at the Fridge, Brixton, London.

Reclaim the Streets Halloween Party in Oxford- over a thousand people dance on the road and on bus shelters with music from Virus Sound System, Desert Storm, Rinky Dink and some bagpipers. Police escort sound systems out of Oxford as they attempt to set up an after party-party. There is also an RTS party in Cambridge.

Reclaim the Streets party in Manchester with free music and free food. No arrests, but one van is impounded

Taliban seize power in Afghanistan: “Women are barred from work, men ordered to grow beards... They snatch music cassettes from cars and smash them with rocks by the roadside” [Guardian 9.10.96]

Riot cops evict squatted social centres in Madrid and Barcelona. Armed riot cops storm a squatted cinema firing hundreds of rubber bullets. Riots follow as people marched on the police station to demand the freeing of the 48 people nicked. The centre has been used for films, gigs, exhibitions and debates as well as huge parties to raise money for the Zapatistas and other causes.

November:

100 police raid Jubilee pub in Camden, north London and arrest 23 people

Riot police with dogs bust a party in a tunnel in Beddgelert, North Wales

December:

Adrenalin Village, London fined for opening beyond their 2 am limit [South London Press, 13.12.96]

London gay sex pub/club the Anvil loses its licence; police had raided the pub (also known as the Shipwright’s Arms) in Tooley Street following reports of sex in the upstairs bar [Pink Paper, 29.11.96]

Heaven events in Motherwell cancelled after police pressure

Woofah

Nobody writes letters anymore, so outside of birthdays and Christmas I never receive anything worth opening in the post. But last week was the exception as the first issue of Woofah magazine landed on the doormat. Woofah is a new 'reggae - grime - dubstep' magazine edited by John Eden and Paul Meme, aiming to provide some intelligent coverage of scenes which just don't get enough written about them. Woofah combines high production values (glossy paper!) with some really good content. I particularly liked the interviews with Mark Iration (of Iration Steppas) and MC/thoughtist Lez Henry (author of the excellent What the deejay said).

These interviews made me reflect on how a feature of UK dance musics is the cross-pollination between genres in defiance of the efforts of various style border police to keep them separate, cf. Mark Iration's background in house music and bass'n'bleeps as well as dub. Also, how much of the history of these musics is largely undocumented - so much follows a familiar trajectory of central London and Manchester clubs. How about a history that was able to give credit where its due to places like Lewisham Boys Club (scene of some legendary reggae soundclashes) or the Checkpoint club in Bradford (where Mark Iration played house and bashment for the youth of
Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds)?

In a time when so much stuff is chucked on the web and skimmed rather than read, Woofah have taken a deliberate step back, arguing that some things have enough value to be worth stopping for a while and paying attenion to. So if you want to read it, you're going to have to get your hands on a copy.

Dancing Questionnaire 4: Sonic Truth

Our latest dancing questionnaire comes courtesy of Muz from Sonic Truth and Whorecull.

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
Aside from school-era disco and slow dances and the occasional breakdancing burn (we had our own ‘crew’ but were really too young to be serious), the first moment to stay in the memory is of someone’s birthday party in a village hall nr Farnham, Surrey, where I went to school. It was standard fare until the two Inner City tracks of the time – Big Fun and Good Life – were aired and enjoyed so much that they were, er, rewound several times. All the rave-like expressive hand and arm motions were employed.

What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
Nothing really stands out other than the usual catalogue of uncanny-then but sketchy-now moments. I’ve always been someone to get 'locked into' the dance, riding the ebb and flow, and no doubt critiquing the dj’s performance in my head, a complement to the whoops and come-ons around me. I’m also someone who instinctively migrates to the back of the dance rather than the front.

What’s the best place you’ve ever danced in?
Probably the Glastonbury car park at dawn with my mates in 2000. After three heavy nights with my mates, set and setting combined and Squarepusher never sounded more appropriate.

You. Dancing. The best of times…
Never really found a parallel to the hardcore scene for a year and a half from 1991-92. Not every event can be characterised by brilliant highs, but the expectation building up to events and the buzz at them are hard to recapture, not least because I would never have that youthful zeal again. In fact, I was known to dance so enthusiastically during these times that one or two associates were known to take the piss out of my full-cycle motions!

Ironically, the best collective moment through dancing was not music-related as such, but came when I was celebrating my team City get promoted in 2000. The outside lobby of the central Manchester hotel the players were at was a sea of blues, dancing and chanting to a City mantra until it was genuinely ‘tribal’ in nature, disconnected from place or time. Sean ‘Feed the’ Goater came and saw us and it was all good thereafter. Like carnival but more extreme.

You. Dancing. The worst of times…Any time where circumstances and habits compel you to drink too much before the main club action, or when someone says something at the wrong time, exploding paranoia and putting me right off the rhythm. It’s happened a few times.

Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
Though I’d been listening to rave pretty much since it went overground, the first serious dancing was via the aforementioned hardcore rave scene. During this time, there would also be the occasional mosh-out to whatever noise-rock we liked that week. One of my mates once ended up in first aid due to getting caught up in the moshpit at a Ride gig at the Kentish Town T&C; I ended up in Dorset.

The rave places included sanitised home counties venues like the Park Prewett Mental Hospital in Basingstoke, Farnborough Recreation Centre, Reading Rivermead Centre, as well as in lots of fields round Surrey or Hampshire and London venues such as Labryinth, the Lazerdrome in Peckham and the Tasco Warehouse in Plumstead. Nights included Evolution, Yikes!, Zen, Desire, Innersense and loads more cheesy-sounding names.

From late 1992 I went to Leeds university, and there was a self-imposed hiatus from the harder side of dance music where narcotics might be required. It was broken only by acid jazz/latin/funk nights, where I learned to express myself in different ways with alcohol as an accompaniment, or the occasional house/techno shindig in one of the city’s “clubs of the year” (Vague, @ the Warehouse, Back to Basics/Up Yer Ronson at the Music Factory, the Orbit in Morley).

On return from Leeds, there was another lull as Britpop dominated before I moved to London in late 1996, where eventually there were enough connections to start going out dancing again, mainly to ‘deep’ house (Rob Mello, Kenny Hawkes and co), jungle (in a scene increasingly ruled by techsteppers like Ed Rush) and electro, with the occasional hip-hop gig. During these times up to the commitment of raising a family last year, I probably got closest to where my mind needed to be for continued dancing, rather than hanging around jerking on the periphery. The house scene around London was the mainstay, at nights like Wednesday’s Space @ Bar Rhumba and Derrick Carter’s bimonthlies at the End, with the occasional label-related do in warehouses around Hackney. That contributed a lot to the more digital/synthy side of house now. Also, all my flatshares had decks as the main entertainment focus so there could be long nights dancing at home.

When and where did you last dance?
At the party after the screening of the McClintock Factor.

You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
Too many to mention – so I’ll pick a few faves from some of the highlighted genres. Derrick May/It is What it Is; Joey Beltram/Energy Flash; Nookie/Love Is; DJ Krust/Warhead; Gang Starr/Dwyck; Technasia/Technasia; Isolee – Beau Mot Plage/, etc, etc.

Desire flyer reproduced from the amazing collection at Hardcore U Know the Score