Some Good Times Were Had 💜

There’s a hat at The Imaginarium – a colourful trilby type hat. A festival hat is what I suppose it would be to some people. It’s been used as decoration, and occasionally worn. I recently apprehended someone, and asked them to please not leave with our hat. It holds sentimental value insofar as it’s travelled with us from the old space, and seen us through time. It arrived into our lives via a girl we used to know, who claimed it was Seth Troxler’s hat. I question this, because I’ve seen Seth Troxler’s head, and I don’t think it would fit too well. Not that I hold much store in having a hat that once belonged to Seth Troxler, anyway.

On New Year, it was placed on top of one of the speaker stacks, and I was stood behind the decks, speaking to my mate Livvy, and the hat fell down. I wasn’t even particularly paying attention to it, but as it fell, unthinkingly, I caught it.

“Good catch!” said my pal. And it was. That was my one and only winning moment of the whole night. I was not on top form. I joked that I’d used all my powers in that one moment of excellence, catching the hat, but of course I’d just overseshed. I’d had such a good week leading up to that night, that by the time NYE came around, I was spent. It was still a good night, though. The tunes were excellent, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it. The night before was the real high point for me. It was a mate’s 30th birthday, and it was lovely.

One thing I did get from NYE was one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received in my life. A guy was wearing a sweater with some Jean-Michel Basquiat art on it, and I told him I liked it, and he said he liked my style.

“You look like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Freddy Kreuger.”

Fucking brilliant.

I could apply the Monroe-Krueger effect to the whole of last year, really. There was so much that was nice, and a lot that was quite hideous. A lot happened. I spent the first part of the year in a kind of creative void and gloom. It was an odd way for me to be, because previously I’d dealt with so much that was actually quite awful, and just kind of walked through it with an odd sort of calm. Also, I’ve always been full of creative energy. The contrast between my output in 2022 and 2023 is massive. I recorded mixes for so many different people, played loads of gigs, made loads of art. And then… nothing. Part of it was The Imaginarium. Setting up a creative space – and a business – is hard. I did know I would have to take some time out. But also, I was kind of felled by a situation. It happens. For the most part, I am over it.

Given all that, there were some wonderful high points in 2023…

Camping Out in a Record Shop

I nearly titled this bit ‘Sleeping Over in a Record Shop’, but that would be incorrect, because no sleep was had. It seven o’clock on Sunday morning. I’d been awake, and at The Imaginarium, since Friday. I’d actually planned to call it hours before (believe it or not, most of my throughers are unintentional, although when I genuinely need to leave or sleep, I generally will do). My friend Sam and I had just shut and cleaned the bar down, and we were having a drink, when someone knocked on the door. It had been a midnight close, not a four am-er, so I guess it would have been around one in the morning.

The people at the door turned out to be two DJs we know – and excellent people – so we let them in. A couple of hours of hilarity ensued. One of them basically gave us a detailed history of garys from 1992 to the present day. All the different varieties, the ups and downs in quality, where they came from. Fascinating.

After they left, our mates messaged who’d been on a night out somewhere, and then a mix happened. I mixed for a while, and then my mates Sam and Bo played my tunes – and did so excellently. A few weeks later, I was really proud of Sam, because he’s always mixed pretty decently, but at afterparties with other peoples’ records, and at the 30th, he and Frenchy (not the DJ Frenchy – who played an excellent b2b with Kerouac at our space on NYD morning, but Sam’s close mate since time ago) played an ace set of tunes they’d picked. It was mainly UKG, and it was mint.

Anyway, around 7am, after our second round of visitors had left, Sam went home, and I decided to get a taxi. Then I undecided. Mainly because I wasn’t remotely tired, and I fancied playing some tunes. Then a further idea struck me. In Plant & Deck, there was a big crate of pre-owned records from Vinel. I thought it was probably the perfect time to go through them and pick out some gems. It took hours, and it was blissful, and I found some right good tunes.

Serendipitously, as I’d listened to the last record of the crate, I got a message from one of the crew asking if they and a few others would be okay to come to the space for a mix. That was also very good times, and went on until silly o’clock. I eventually ended up kipping upstairs, and woke up to my pal Pete tiptoeing around so as not to wake me. We both worked from there all day, and that afternoon, the first parts of our new sound system were delivered, and then I finally went home.

When I Called the Number on a White Label from 2003…

I found Suki – Let The Music Play in another haul from Vinel in Plant & Deck. It’s a really nice bit of UKG from 2003. It’s a white label and the deets are written in black marker. Artist and title on one side, and on the other side there’s a phone number. I decided to ring the number, just for shits and gigs. Nobody answered, so I left a voicemail…

“Sick record.”

A few minutes later I got a text asking who I was. Through the course of twenty years, the vocalist from this release had kept her number, and we ended up having a nice chat over SMS through the afternoon. She doesn’t actually have a copy of the pressing and asked if she would be able to buy it. I could absolutely not part with this gem, but there are copies out there, so I didn’t have to deal with feeling as mean as I could potentially have done (there were four on Discogs at the time).

My Pal Made These Sweaters and We All Looked Like a Cult

My mate Nigel is one of the most prolific creators of many things you could ever imagine. Amongst various other wonderful things, he designs and prints t-shirts and sweaters. A particularly good recent one is a design that says ‘Acid house till I fall over’ in a box emblazoned on the front. I particularly liked the blue one, and so did a lot of my pals, who were not put off by the fact that I had already snapped one up.

One Saturday morning, recently, Nigel turned up, and me and Phil were in the shop, and both wearing said blue sweater. Nigel was also wearing one.

This actually happened a few years ago, too. An old Nigel design was t-shirts, in various colours, with sunshine acid squares on the front. One day in Outlaws, both bar staff, me, and a mate all rocked up wearing versions of the tee. We looked like a weird cult.

Getting My Creative Buzz Back

As I’ve said, I spent months in an odd creative void, and it’s been a beautiful thing to have my general buzz and inspiration back. To have myself back, I guess.

I sort of had to force it. There’s only so long you can carry on being a certain way, if it makes you unhappy, and you know you can fight it. I had to start making art again, because we had an exhibition. I knew what I needed to do. I surrounded myself with canvases, and painted on them until I felt like I was actually doing something naturally, and that I liked.

With music, I dug out old half-finished tunes and set about working on them. It was different with making tunes. Through the void, I had a few moments of light, and in all of these I worked on music.

There were months when I didn’t mix. I realised, eventually, that in part I was being self-indulgent, albeit in the most doomy way. What struck me was that it was very easy to not have a mix with my mates, and to not play a gig in my own venue. If someone had booked me for any of those gigs, I’d have had a stern word with myself, and got on with it, and eventually, that’s what I did. The first gig I played, it was quite a weird feeling, because what I was doing didn’t feel natural or fluid. I felt like I was doing a calculated and mediocre impression of what I would usually do. After that, though, it came back. There was one really ace day in the shop when me and Phil played back to back two on, two off for most of the day. Then our pal joined us, and we did a b2b2b. I wish we’d recorded that. A really nice thing happened too, when someone who comes in the shop regularly had dropped by, and he sent me a message after thanking me for the music I played. Really heartwarming, that.

Don’t get me wrong. When you’ve lost your head – for want of a better way of putting it – it’s not an easy climb back. Through the winter lockdown, there were three months where I didn’t mix, but that wasn’t because I felt I couldn’t, I just had to work constantly on a really awful job, and had no time. Also, at that time, everybody seemed to lose inspiration, so that made it kind of easier. There was no point, though, then, at which I pranged, and thought ‘I can’t do this!’ Since the creative void time passed by, there have been a couple of times where something quite bad has happened, and I’ve felt pranged again, and ducked out of playing. Looking back, both times I know I would have loved it after a few minutes, and that I regretted being so silly. Not that if you ever feel like that, it means that you’re a silly person, but also it is kind of idiotic when you really think about it, to not do a thing you know you can do, and love doing, and you should always try and remember that, and always fight the doom.

One other positive thing, from all this, is I think I’ve kind of learned how to prang properly. That sounds mad, but there is such a thing as damage limitation, and it works. What I realised, just a short time ago, is that the way I felt, probably most people feel like that a lot, and they just have a val, or take a few deep breaths, or go outside for a cig, and then get on with it.

Not Going Outside for a Cig

The music we’ve been treated to in our own space has provided many of the high points of last year. I won’t go into specifics, because there are loads, but when people ask you if you want to go for a cig, and you say no because you’d rather stay where the tunes are, and when you think it’s probably around one, and it’s already four AM, you know you’ve been in the presence of something special.

Terminus Adventure

On the last day of Houghton, I ran into my friend, who had to leave the festival early – that afternoon – because he couldn’t get the Monday off work. I asked what he was going to do with the rest of his time there, and he said he was probably going to go and get his head down for a few hours.

“No, you’re not” I said. “You’re going to the Terminus.”

If you’ve not been to Houghton, the Terminus is a stage that never closes, and the line ups are not disclosed. Some of the best sets I’ve heard have been there.

My friend was with a group of maybe ten people, and I thought maybe all of them would come along, but in the end, just three of us went. Along the way, we gathered up two more pals, and headed to the Terminus, where we stayed until my mate had to leave. We also didn’t let him do the walk of doom – we all left when he did, and I left him at the festival gates. After that, I went to the main arena, bought and consumed a cheese toastie, and headed straight back to the Terminus.