THE NIGHT WAS NEVER MINE.

The night was never mine

I ran one of the best and most respected drum and bass nights in Wales for close to a decade. But the biggest question mark came straight after, why did I give the night away whilst it was successful? Why did I give it to an unknown without any promotion experience? Back when I started promoting, it was still the wild west, you could still get a black eye or worse for fly postering over an in-date poster, there was lots of climbing fences, carrying wall paper paste in buckets, breaking into student venues, flyering events at 6am etc etc. The only algorithm to getting noticed within a five mile radius of the event was to do it in such a manner that your venue didn’t get a call from the police or the council, a line you regularly crossed with only the vague hope of not getting caught. Posters, stickers, wallpaper paste, blu-tac, sellotape, spray cans, flyers, badges, by whatever means necessary. No upfront tickets, just on the door sales, so you had to make sure you were seen and seen by the right people.

I always saw running events like managing a football team. You have to make sure you had the best squad possible so that on match day you could field the best team to play against the opposition. I always saw the headliner as the opposition. I loved having my favourite DJs/producers down but I was always most proud when my stable of DJs played them out the park.  They would always remark on the skill and knowhow of the locals and on more than one occasion they joined in with a back to back set at the end. The whole crew were known.

You could also enlarge the metaphor to include the different positions the different local DJs played. As a promoter you had to have a philosophy that ran through the whole event and you had to know the different styles and ways each individual played so you could fit them into your team in the best way possible. My nights would play out from the back. The first set would more than often be given to one of the youth so I could take time out to see how they played, making mental notes about how they’d fit in, in the future, (maybe I’d give them half hour before doors opened to get used to the set-up and dispel any nerves, then let the crowd in for the second half). The first named local would then play more liquid, longer mixes, more of a journey, so the crowd could have a chat, meet their mates, warm up the dance-floor. The next two DJs would then be picked with the headliner in mind, to either compliment or contrast the main DJ, running through the gears so that by the time the headliner came on, they would already have the crowd eating out of their hand. The final DJ after the main act then had to raise the heat all the way to eleven, until lights on. To lose the metaphorical match, would be to have a half empty club at lights on, to win would mean there was sweat dripping from the walls and the bouncer in charge of turning the decks off would be boo’ed and heckled until they let the DJ have one more tune. Spoiler the bouncer always got heckled. You had to know each individual DJ, their style, the sub genre they played, how they mixed and if they played well with others. I always had a large squad to draw from, maybe thirty/forty DJs for nights that only had space for five at most. This kept competition and hunger high but also meant you could build perfect nights for different headliners.  You just had to keep the squad happy through the times they weren’t playing too, which was the hardest part as there were always promotions snapping at your heels, stealing ideas and taking the best locals.

DJs were and are a completely different breed.  The best place to see this was the record shop. In Cardiff we had one of the best in the country ‘Catapult’ records. On a Saturday it would be like the sweet shop from Willy Wonka, just a bit weirder and more of a hint of drugs wearing off. The basement was the vinyl shop with an ‘L’ shaped counter that rested eight Technics 1210’s each with headphones and one connected to the shop sound system (more often than not playing the twelve inch they needed to sell more of). Behind the counter were racks of vinyl, all facing out so that you could see the artwork (I would stare at these artworks hoping one day I’d see one of my images don a twelve inch sleeve). Underneath the counter were the new released white labels and on the side and along the floor crates filled with stock vinyl and albums. Then there were the elusive bags with the prominent local DJs names on, filled with the latest and hand selected bangers, white labels with questionnaires attached asking how the crowd reacted to the tune. The staff were the lion tamers, whipping the packed crowd into a frenzy over the latest white label banger, appeasing some of the ferocious locals who didn’t quite get their hands on the latest fire dubplate, deciphering and decoded some poor guy on a come down humming and thudding the bass line of a tune he either heard or imagined the night before. They were the street level councillors, the beef squashers, the connectors of culture. Shouts to Lincoln, Raeph, Stu, Richie, Phoenix, Meehan, Mel, Tom and all the others I have temporarily forgotten their names who enriched the city, the culture and the music back in the day. I’m naming them because they were the vinyl slingers that kept the local DJs loaded. The people who frequented these record shops were ruthless with how they got their hands on new tunes. Drum and Bass nights are and were traditionally Friday night affairs, but first thing Saturday morning, they would either be pulled from their slumber or make their way from the kitchen afters they found themselves in, to Catapult records to barter their way to the freshest and finest slices of vinyl delights, ready to practice for the following weekend. If ever I found myself in a DJs house, their room was inevitably a small bed, shabby wardrobe, old desk with the mintest pair of technics 1210s and a Numark mixer factory fresh and polished. Every last bit of space taking up the rest of the room, was crates of vinyl and records and sleeves strewn across the floor. Every inch of wall space was taken up with flyposters ripped from walls, flyers blutac’d and photos from events. They lived and breathed it and so did their neighbours. It was in your blood, it was who you were and who you always will be. Back then there was literally no posing, you were found out in a second if you weren’t legit. Everyone learn’t on shitty belt drives so when they made their way up to direct drives they could literally mix anything. What money didn’t get blown at the raves, got spent the next day at the record shop and this Friday/Saturday loop was the same up and down the country, week in week out.

To manage this passion and commitment was more than spinning plates. Most DJ’s worked hard jobs and the few hours they’d get in the clubs was like gold dust and if they got the chance to let rip behind the decks, to show their peers what they were made of, to dust off the white labels, to play next to their heroes, that was proper bonafide highlight material, the stuff to tell your kids. As a promoter you had to be cut from a different cloth, you couldn’t be both promoter and DJ, the time put into achieving that level of skill, the commitment to getting the tunes, there is no way you wouldn’t be putting your name on every line-up you booked. Especially as every event was a gamble, the likelihood of recouping the money, small. Every DJ worth their salt would book their heroes and would then play alongside them. To be a proper promoter you had to be a step back. Even the booking of the DJs, couldn’t be rightly undertaken by a DJ as you are too close to the bone, the heartbeat, the culture. The promoter has to look at it voyeuristically, be somewhere in-between the crowd and the DJ. Book a DJ too soon and most of the crowd won’t know who they are, book too late and some other promoter would have already had them, there was and is a Goldilocks zone, where the DJ’s have already been playing their tunes for a few months so they are on most ravers radars (at least the kingpin of the social groups radar, nowadays the one putting the name on the WhatsApp group chat). Most DJs book up and coming DJs too soon and don’t hit this sweet spot, by trying to show they are the ones in the know, as that is their job.

My love and passion has always been visuals, my heroes are graphic designers, street artists and photographers. My record shops are book shops, my white labels are magazines. At the end of raves my pockets would be full of flyers and I would travel up and down the country collecting them. This was the skill that made me a good promoter. My playing out would be putting my artwork around the city in the forms of fly posters and flyers. The feedback of flyering and getting complimented on the artwork, people putting them in their pockets or sticking them on their walls was my rush. Maybe its sad, but it made me go out on rainy nights, walk miles putting them up and making sure they were seen. Thats the cloth I was cut from and what made me better than most at promoting my love of drum and bass nights as it mingled with my love of art. I am still mostly known by the stickers I stick on lampposts and I’m fully alright with that. I was the manager of the team, the one who looked at the whole picture, loved the game, loved the people and looked after every aspect, making sure everyone played for and respected the badge, brand, night.

When it was time to move on and start a clothing brand I couldn’t give it to one of my DJs as I knew it would eventually be detrimental to the night and it was too important, to many DJs relied on it. I wanted the city to always have a place for up and coming DJs to learn the craft and showcase their talent. I wanted the whole sound of drum and bass to be showcased, not just a sub genre. Through a stroke of luck I found a young aspiring graphic designer with a love for drum and bass and the culture. I told him my plan to give it to him, but with two rules, he could never DJ for it and to leave he had to give it away not sell it. For the next year or so I trained him up and showed him the ropes. He took on the night and ran it well, giving it his own flair and philosophy, booking some phenomenal events. I think the night lasted another five years (I got to DJ, I held down the second room for a few years, because I wasn’t in charge). When it was time for him to walk away he gave it away again, but this time he lapsed on the not giving it to a DJ. It lasted a few months, then died. Not sure whether that was vindication or a curse I put on it. I still think the night only worked because I stood slightly outside of it. If I’d stayed, sooner or later I wouldn’t have been looking after the night anymore. I’d have been looking after my place in it. Maybe DJs can promote and I’m wrong. The night just needed someone who like me loved it more than they loved being a part of it.