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I first got into a club when I was still in school, like a lot of people in the late 90s/early 2000s I guess. The Paradox; probably awful now thinking about it, but it was on Radio City on a Saturday night and in school listening to that was a big thing for us; a few of the girls had got in already because they always did. But- I had a growth spurt at 14 so the summer after I was 15 a couple of us lads tried to get in and somehow made it in. No tablets then, i didn't do any of that till I left school (the weekend after my last exam!) but we had enough for a couple of drinks and entry fee etc (fiver before 12), i got a grip of some woman, that was it I was hooked. The music was pretty shit in there, though, i don't have much nostalgia for it. But it's all the learning curve. I had decks from 14 so I was idolising all these hypothetical dj lads
A few years later I have left school and I'm on the sites for a bit, 16, but it dries up a bit as winter comes and I was a lazy cunt, not arsed, so I'm one of the first to get quietly binned- an uncle had done me a favour putting me on anyway really. But I had some good clothes, pretty face, end up working in Wade Smith in the run-up to christmas. It was on the downturn then I guess- went under a couple of years later- but that was one of the big independent clothes gaffs up north then, height of scouse fashion. Loads of girls and that, in my element, grafting away and getting nowhere. Loved it.
Anyway most of them were older than me, and some lads from south Liverpool who wouldn't be seen dead in the Paradox, listening to bugged out CDs in the stockroom, getting dragged out to Society, Garlands, G-Bar, the Barcelona, all that. I don't expect those things to mean much to you but you stepped away from the kid friendly world and into the proper clubs, grown and sexy vibes. Then onto Voodoo at the Masque which was a proper revelation to a little rat like me
Much later on when I left that job and got a "better" one we got into tablet overdrive and mainly went gaffs like the Sunrise, 150bpm oblivion, the beak started coming out at the after-parties, it got dark all that. Lots of mates starting to sell beak and that, not good buying off lads you know. Tick till payday
Anyway... a good raving girl in there, Sue something or other, said about "Intro"- it's that tune that's always on if you get into Barcelona about 12, and that felt like the realest thing I've ever heard at the time. She'd just bought the CD single, played it on the shop stereo. So vivid; just coming up on the tablet, that phasing effect on the Jets' "Crush On You" sample, the huge subs (probably tiny now).
When i was 19/20, after all this, I started coming down south and getting onto what was going on down here, and that was a different world again, though I wasn't really a part of it till much later; I kind of dismissed a lot of this then, and for years, which is stupid really, but you have different ideas throughout life eh
