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Way
back in 1993 the only rock clubs in London were leftovers from
the 80's playing cock rock and the people who frequented them
wore cowboy boots and bandannas and it was all quite stale and
not representative of any of the great new music that was around.
It was also noteworthy that everyone played records from beginning
to end and with a gap between the songs and a lot of DJs still
gibbered on a microphone over the top of them.
At this time I had seen a lot of new US acts whilst selling
American comic books over there, had a history of fanzines and
underground music promotion and a few years working at the Marquee
club. I couldn't find anywhere playing the music I liked. Eventually
I found some like minded individuals and we started our own
night. Originally it started off named "Rage Hard" at the Forum
on a Saturday night. We were a group of DJs who liked new music.
Virginia Black (Melody Maker writer at the time) Shuff (of the
Rockit club night - the only other DJ to be starting to mix
up rock and hip hop) and myself DJ Urchin.
We played a wide range of new sounds from Poison Idea to Anthrax
and Public Enemy to Wildhearts to Pearl Jam, Sepultura, Bad
Religion, Offspring and Nirvana and threw in some hip hop and
beat matched the tracks so that they mixed together smoothly
in a dance club style. Sadly this night got stopped after complaints
from the nearby residents about our customers leaving noisily
and noise levels but we did make the front page of the local
newspaper with the headline "Rock club stopped as tribal drums
reverberate through the night terrorising local residents".
After this we re-located to the Astoria and renamed ourselves
Rockscene and played pretty much the same span of music spanning
hardcore, grunge, punk and thrash when no-one else was playing
any of it. We survived in there for a number of years and had
a very early live performance by One Minute Silence when they
were still puppies, and I was the first person to play Korn,
Limp Bizkit, Skunk Anansie and Nofx to a club crowd in the UK.
We also had a proud moment when Type O Negative guest DJed way
back in 1995 plus Machinehead amongst others.
Inevitably, eventually 800 scruffy rock kids every week was
too much for the venue and they threw us out in favour of a
townie crowd who'd pay a higher door price.
This has been something that has plagued us - the big venues
want to charge £10 and upwards on a weekend night and our admission
price is half that. I also bargained hard to keep a drinks special
so then the bar take is always lower for the venue over all.
We ended up at the Base in Piccadilly (where the video for Smack
My Bitch Up by the Prodigy was filmed, for reference) a two
floor former casino with a loud sound system - by now I was
doing one floor with DJ Yogurt aka Mark and we had a classic
rock floor up top complete with a grand piano! After a successful
run there the property owners decided to sell the venue and
it was knocked down and rebuilt as a casino again.
We jumped venues to Le Scandale which I never liked but we couldn't
get any other club to have the night. The DJ box was inside
a Rolls Royce car! DJing jammed inside that car was a nightmare
and the dance floor was in the middle of the club so people
were walking through it all night.. doh .... we left there soonest
and moved to Metro which I'd just finished re-naming and refitting
and re-doing as a rock and indie club only - no dance music,
no townies, no bother we hoped.
As some of you will recall about now I began running Beautiful
People in Metro on a Tuesday expressly to play brand new cutting
edge music. High Voltage on a Thursday playing pure classic
rock and our favourite night Rockscene on a Saturday. This all
went well for a long time and we were packed out and deafening
you lot every week, we also had guest DJ slots from Phil Anselmo,
the Slipknot guys when they first came to the UK, the Dog Eat
Dog posse, Marilyn Manson dropped in and even Sepultura and
Zyklon were regular visitors when they were in town. Sadly the
owner had a stroke and the venue got sold on - the new owners
didn't want the venue branded as a primarily rock venue and
to broaden its appeal ejected us again in 2001.
We checked out loads of venues in the year in between but on
a weekend night it was impossible to find anywhere we liked
with good drinks prices so we left it nowhere until we were
offered the Islington Academy - we ran there for a few months
but were hindered severely by early closing hours and despite
a fantastic turn out for New Year - Rockscene is currently homeless
again - we are hoping to have some one off events sorted by
the summer.
In the meantime Rockscene Rio Brazil starts April 2004 and will
carry the torch globally as DJ Urchin jets off to deafen them.
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