It was nearly 20 years ago.....

...but here's what my life looked like back then. I was working in Slam City, when we co-hosted this skate night at the Limelight, in London. Back then, to put a mini-ramp in a club was quite revolutionary, I seem to recall it making the evening news here in town. Anyway, I think that's my disembodied hand in the photo at the bottom of the page, the shot was taken by my then boss, Paul Sunman, and IIRC, we were standing up by the VIP lounge, where we'd been having a beer with Kevin Staab. I managed to drink way too much beer and twist my ankle on a rock fakie, but apart from that, a truly great night. There's more here, and the rest of the site is highly recommended for all you old-schoolers out there.

Wow!

This may only be of interest to the Skaters out there...but here goes anyway: Stevie Caballero has a blog. Hurrah!

Here's one from the photo archive...

That's me and Mike, at Harrow skatepark, in 1988

Hardcore, you know the score........

I had a DJing gig on Saturday night that was a wonderful excuse to rip a load of Old School Hardcore vinyl onto mp3....and first out of the box and onto the hard drive was this slice of dub'n'break madness from 1992: truly one of the biggest old school tunes EVER:
The Criminal Minds: "Baptised By Dub"

(the sample "Can't beat the system, go with the flow!" is from an old MC Duke tune "I'm Riffin" which also provided most of the breaks for the early 2 Bad Mice tunes....)
But what else have I been up to? Well, trying to emerge from the depression of a long and difficult February. I'm getting there.

Damn!

Look, here's my first ever "Pig" deck. I bought a second-hand one of these from the old Alpine Action on Notting Hill Gate, sometime in 1982. It was delaminated at the nose and tail, but was only a fiver. A bit of TLC, not to mention some Plastic Padding and a vice, and it was up and running again. The Cab "Bearing" deck was the first Powell deck to have a concave (a nice little spoon to the nose) and was such a nice board to ride. I kept mine for about 18 months, before swapping it with Steve Douglas, for a lovely Powell "Gelfand".
This board in the photo sold on ebay recently, for a little more than a fiver.
It went for..................



$2,250.

:(

Bloody Hell!

Every now and again, I go through my record collection, sorting out what should stay and what should go. I've been doing it tonight, looking for stuff to post up on the mp3 blog. Well, I found a copy of the "Live At The Soul All Dayer Of the Century" LP, pretty legendary LP, it was sampled heavily by lots of Old-School Hardcore artists (the most obvious one: "North London Posse in the place!" taken from Kaotic Chemistry's "Drum Trip")
Turns out it's a little more valuable than I'd thought.
:)
Reading the small print, it would appear that 12 copies reached the public. just to make you even more pissed off, I've got TWO of those twelve copies. One sold on eBay recently for 650 quid. Jeebus!!! There's more info here: one of the people on the forum reckons there's only five copies worldwide.
Cripes!