Our wee crew of ravers turned from partying to party promoters during the course of 1991. We dubbed ourselves the Trans Euro Cartel – inspired by the musical soundscape of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express and the rebel yell of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.
Summer 1991
It was the summer of 1991 and the techno scene in Glasgow seemed to be stuttering to a halt. Whilst the foundations of great things were being laid in Edinburgh with the launch of Twitch and Brainstorm’s Pure night in late 1990, the Glasgow scene seemed to be facing difficulties. The demise of The Orb night and closure of Tin Pan Alley due to a mysterious fire in mid 1991 meant there was no regular techno night in the city.
The Orb DJ’s Boydie and Scott had decanted to a venue in Paisley, with a night called Network. It was a good night and carried on The Orb vibe, but raving in Paisley was never going to be ideal. Here’s an old mix tape from Network posted by Boydie.
Unders
We’d been organising under 18’s nights in and around the city from early 1991, really as a dummy run for trying to get a full club night off the ground. But it was really difficult to secure a regular night at a decent venue. The Glasgow club owners and promoters of the time seemed entrenched in a more commercial sound, rather than taking a chance on more underground DJ’s. There was also a lack of smaller venues of a decent quality in the city.
We had a lot of fun doing those early under 18 nights. We were catering for the teenie ned division in schemes around south Glagsow, charging £2 entry. I was just back from Amsterdam and had a cache of top grade Eurotechno tunes for the little teenies to dance to, and we got great experience on how to set up and run a rave. One night we overdid the lighting rig somewhat for the little scheme community centre we were in. We had hired an industrial sized stroboscope, and sat it in front of the DJ box (well the DJ table!). It stood on a stand at about head height. This thing gave you a headache every time you walked past it, and half way through the night one of my mates took an epilectic fit and decked it. The funny thing was it didn’t even occur to us to stop the music as he was being stretchered out by the ambulance crew, because the tunes were too good!
Our next step forward came when we got an under 18 night in the Mardis Gras. This was a proper nightclub (albeit a right shit hole). The Mardis Gras sat next door to The Warehouse, the infamous venue where we started our raving careers. The Mardis Gras was the first night club to have a elevated dance floor in the U.K. The entire dance floor actually moved from ground to basement level – very confusing in the middle of a rave. You would get on the dance floor for a wee jive, the smoke machine would come on, and by the time the tune finished you would go back to where your friends were standing and where you’d left your bottle of Purdy’s. Imagine the confusion when you couldn’t find said friends or bottle of Purdy’s cause you were on a different floor level.
False Start
We were keen to move away from Unders and onto a full rave night, and our chance finally came when we secured a one off booking for a Sunday night at The Mayfair on Sauchiehall Street in the summer of 1991. The venue was a large dancehall, that had fallen on hard times. It would later be resurrected in 1994 as the hugely successful Garage Nightclub catering to students of the Brit Pop variety.
There had been a one off rave there a few weeks before, and this was first time we had heard Keith of Twitch and Brainstorm fame. He was playing hard house and techno of the sort we loved, but was very unusual in that he would mix in a thrash metal tune, or something totally left field. As a DJ you have to have a good ear for a tune, work out how to progress a mood through a set of tunes, and be able to imagine how people will react at particular points. But it’s a very brave thing for a DJ to be so creative, I suppose that’s what marked him out as a musical innovator.
We marketed our rave as “Bohemia”, and secured the services of Keith for the night, along with Boydie of The Orb, and my good self. Unfortunately, we had to pull the plug on it the week before due to poor ticket sales. I suppose this was due to lacklustre marketing on our behalf, the fact it was going to be on a Sunday night – always a hard sell – and I think we were being too ambitious thinking we could fill The Mayfair on our first Glasgow night – it was huge with a capacity of 1200!
Europort
Undaunted, we could see there was definitely still a gap in the scene that we could fill, and our attention diverted onto more unorthodox venues. On our side of the city you are never very far away from the criminal underworld, and we knew one or two characters of ill repute. A friend of a friend was able to introduce us to a guy with a farm on the outskirts of the city. This guy was up for holding an all night party.
In the late summer we went to see him. The venue was basically a large concrete livestock barn attached to a collection of farmhouse buildings arranged around a courtyard. He wasn’t actually a farmer, so the barn was not really used as far as we could see. He insisted that he would be able to clear out the area of rubbish and build a scaffolding platform for the stage. Crucially he reassured us that he would be happy to take the heat if the police had anything to say.
The potential of the place was awesome. It was a large square space, with a row of columns running down the central spine. There was ample space for at least 400 or 500 ravers. At one end would be the DJ podium and a stage, at the other end doors opened onto a field. The site was at the top of a hill and you could sit on the grass and see the twinkling streetlights of the city in the distance. Out a side door was a small internal courtyard, where we could set up a chill out space. Up the central spine of columns we would hang fabric to act as screens to project visuals onto. Add a few smoke machines and lighting and bob’s yer uncle – a fully functioning raver’s paradise. The piece de resistance were two large drainage troughs which ran up the length of the building. These were recessed into the floor and designed with concrete covers with a whole series of drainage slots in them, so you could walk right over them. By putting strobe lighting into the troughs, you would get shards of coloured light thrown up onto the ceiling, as if the whole floor was a light show – awesome!
Musical Intent
We were at the early stages of establishing contact with Evil Eddie Richards and his DJ agency dy-na-mix. The idea was to link up with London DJ’s from the pirate radio scene. As with many promoters at the time, we put the details on the flyers before we actually booked anybody! As things went we were unable to book anyone for the night, but put the disappointment behind us as we had some of Scotland’s hottest DJ talent lined up.
The DJ line up would feature DJ Twitch from Pure in Edinburgh and our very own DJ Boydie from Orb. Here’s a mixtape from Twitch from around the same time. This would be my first big gig and a chance to really step up.
All was set up for a fantastic rave. All we had to do was pull it off…..
djwuggs 