In his book Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, journalist Matthew Collin documents the cultural explosion sparked by the potent combination of house music and MDMA, which catalysed a remarkable upsurge of creative activity, from London to Glasgow, Manchester to Belfast – and Nottingham. Matthew tells us what made the city integral in this powerful cultural movement.
“Nottingham in the nineties was the place that bridged the north-south divide. It was the crossroads where people came together.”
Veteran nightlife impresario James Baillie is talking about Venus, one of several fabled clubs he ran in Nottingham over three decades. Venus was known for its exhilarating music and sheer hedonistic abandon, enticing Britain’s nocturnal tribes to travel across country each weekend to this ecstatically-charged sweatbox in the heart of the Midlands, making the city a cultural beacon as the rave era peaked in the nineties.
Nottingham-based rave collectives like DiY, DJs like Graeme Park and club promoters like James Baillie played key roles in the transformation of the UK’s nightlife culture. Park, a gifted mixer, was one of house music’s prime instigators in the UK with his zeitgeist-defining sets at The Garage (later renamed The Kool Kat). He founded one of the first UK house record labels, Submission, and became an inspirational figure for a golden generation of Nottingham DJs, including his Kool Kat successor Allister Whitehead.
Venus was a central node in what became known as the ‘Balearic Network’ of clubs and DJs around the UK in the early nineties. Helmed by the ever-innovative Baillie, a fashion-conscious ex-miner who previously ran the Barracuda and Eden, its innovation was to host guest one-nighters from stellar clubland crews from other cities: Most Excellent, Flying, Love Ranch, Kinky Disco, Boy’s Own, Better Days and many more.
“It had an extraordinary energy. Perhaps the coolest spot I’d been to, but really unhinged too,” Most Excellent’s Justin Robertson has recalled. “Musically it had some of the best [resident] DJs – Timm [Sure] and Laurie [Carter], Paul Wain, Christian Woodyatt – all at the top of their game and fearless in their selection.” After Venus, Baillie would continue to expand the city’s musical horizons at The Bomb.
Simultaneously, DiY Sound System were at the centre of the emerging free party scene, nurturing a “convergence of the urban club scene with the travelling festival movement,” as Harry Harrison recalls in his fascinating rave-era memoir Dreaming in Yellow. DiY also helped to infuse Midlands dance culture with the idealistic spirit and anarchistic zeal for action, whether or not it was illegal.
Sporadic outlaw warehouse parties staged by promoters like Baillie, DiY and The Duck Call fanzine crew provided the scene with illicit thrills, while eclectically-minded events at venues like the Marcus Garvey Centre brought influences from reggae, punk and hippie space-rock. Justin Turford of Nottingham-based DJ duo Truth and Lies recalls early nineties events where “On-U Sound bands like Revolutionary Dub Warriors and Tackhead, anarcho-hippie outfits like Back to the Planet and underground crusty psychedelic bands would play on the same bill as DiY DJs.”
How did Nottingham become such a nexus of creativity? Apart from the efforts of its nightlife innovators, both location and history played significant roles. Nottingham is on the cusp of north and south, and local cultural instigators have long been happy to travel around and pick up useful influences from creative centres like London, Manchester and Sheffield. It’s ethnically diverse; a relatively large city but small enough for people to connect and collaborate easily, and it has two universities bringing in fresh blood each year.
Nottingham also has “a history rich in non-conformism,” Harry Harrison says. The city’s traditions of grassroots radicalism date back centuries, from the Luddite rebels, the Chartist movement and voters’ rights rioters who torched the Castle in 1831 to the anarcho-punk squatters, anti-fascist campaigners and anti-nuclear marchers of the eighties. This background certainly shaped DiY: in Dreaming in Yellow, Harrison explains how the crew coalesced out of amorphous groups of “punks, squatters, students and ex-students, anarchists, vegans and other non-conformists”.
Nottingham also has a diverse clubbing history, which established a solid basis for the nineties scene. Before The Garage opened in 1983, its Lace Market venue had been the Ad Lib club, which hosted reggae, funk and post-punk industrial nights. For a long time, The Garage itself had an indie room as well as a hip US import-led dance-music floor, allowing subcultural styles to intermingle and cross-pollinate. The venue that later housed Venus was once The Asylum, Nottingham’s postpunk alternative zone, where mind-expanding bands like Clock DVA and Tuxedomoon played.
Over at Rock City in the eighties, DJ Jonathan Woodliffe was championing upfront Black American dance music. Woodliffe oversaw soul nights and jazz-funk all-dayers that attracted electro-funk and hip-hop crews from all over the Midlands and beyond, as well as Futurist nights showcasing synth-poppers and punk-funkers like Nottingham’s own Medium Medium.
Woodliffe, who went on to help nurture the audience for early house in Nottingham, has argued that the city was way ahead of London in embracing the Chicago sound: “We were the ones that grabbed it and went for it.” After Rock City hosted the 1987 Chicago house tour with Marshall Jefferson and Fingers Inc, Jefferson said the crowd had the most fanatical energy of anywhere they played. “They were losing their heads out there,” he marvelled.
Another underground dance scene was also flourishing in the eighties, little documented but highly influential on several key pioneers in the early days of acid house: Hi-NRG. At Nottingham’s premier gay club, Part Two, DJs were beat-mixing uptempo electronic dance music before house even came to Britain.
All of these influences came together in the nineties, when Nottingham was the place where all roads met. Graeme Park sums it up perfectly when he describes the “raw energy and innocence” coursing through the city’s dance scene at the time. Fired up by electronic rhythms and glowing with the wonder of new discovery, it felt like anything might be possible.
Matthew Collin
Piccys : Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge
