Richy Ahmed's First Club: School Shoes, Tracksuits and Glow Sticks

My First Club takes us back to the beginning, transporting DJs and producers back into the depths of their memory, asking them to take us on a trip to those pivotal first nights in clubland. This time round we follow Hot Creations' North Eastern general Richy Ahmed down the dark steps of the past.

The first club I ever went to was the After Dark in South Shields. It opened at 10 and it stayed open till 12 the next day. While it was nominally a happy hardcore night, 17 year old me was all about the MCs. MC Techno T, MC Stompin, DJ Selector C — they were the guys we queued up for weekend after weekend. The club was super rough, one of those places stuffed with villians and scumbags, the kind of club that doesn't even need to serve alcohol. I remember it being somewhere you could get anything you wanted at any time of night. It was a disparate crowd but tracksuits and glowsticks were the common denominator.

When you're 16, a club that's open all night is automatically the best thing you've ever seen. Plus, the fact that it didn't serve alcohol meant you could actually get in when you were that age too. Everyone used to go there after the bars in South Shields shut, so you'd go in wearing the kind of clothes you had to wear to get into a bar. Which meant you'd be in this dodgy as fuck rave in school shoes. After Dark was like the depths of hell: everyone clad in gold chains and tattoos, no tops but track bottoms, all rounded off withshiny school shoes.

As great as After Dark was, it was Space and DC-10 over in the slightly more exotic Ibiza that properly changed my life. Me and my mates had been going on lads holidays from '98, '99, and we finally ventured to the White Isle in 2001. That week we went to Space six times. The terrace drew us in every single night. DC-10 we discovered a bit later on, but those two are twinned in my mind as the places that made me want to devote myself to clubbing and dance music.

Having immersed myself in the Ibiza scene I kind of left those After Dark days behind and people like Derrick Carter became really important to me. Back then he was my absolute favourite. He loved house music and his sets were super tight, super funky, super groovy. I just loved how immaculately he controlled the vinyl. This takes us to about 2004/5, and the guy who was a huge inspiration then was Matthew Jonson. He wasn't a DJ but his music changed the game for me. Damien Lazarus was up there as well. He was one of the first DJs I used to specifically go and see when I first came to London. I got to know him actually and would always get really excited about seeing him because his sets were always so different.

However far you go, you can't forget where you came from. There weren't many DJs in South Shields but the most vital DJs in nearby Newcastle were Scott Bradford, Scooby and a guy called Steve Butler. I used to like a lot of US house and garage and Steve was a really good DJ for that. Scott Bradford and Scooby were always solid, they are still really good DJs now, I think. A lot of the DJs I knew in Newcastle are still playing there, and are still amazing DJs now. I didn't start DJing till later, I used to have a little bit of a mix but it was Ibiza that really got me into wanting to be a DJ. I do remember thinking how good these guys were and even when I went out to bigger stages and to see bigger DJs in different areas, I realised how quality the residents were in Newcastle at that time. That's so important when you start out — having a strong scene makes you want to get better and better. You wanna make those guys jealous of you, in a way.

Richy Ahmed's Can't See You EP is out now on Strictly Rhythm.

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