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. Following entries from the likes of Michael Mayer, Herve, MK, Slimzee, and Hudson Mohawke_, _we caught up longterm fabric resident Terry Francis.__There are a couple key memories I remember but I can't be sure which was the first so I'll do them both!
Advertisement
One of them was at Dingwalls, I think it was Norman J and Paul 'Trouble' Anderson. It was mainly funk, jazz funk and all the old rare groove sort of stuff. I was sixteen/seventeen, just a wide-eyed boy from the country really. It was a bit daunting for me really. You had all these guys in baggy trousers doing flips with their legs in the air and there was me standing at the edge with a pint just looking at them, amazed at how good they were! And then gradually after a few beers I'd move onto the dancefloor into the corner and start having a boogie. And I wasn't a bad dancer back then, but those guys were unbelievable!Another memory I remember was when we went to a Kiss FM do, but this was before it was Kiss FM. It was Gordon Mac and Paul 'Trouble' Anderson again. I remember we met up in Holloway Rd and all got a coach to an old barn and had a big party in it until about 4 am and then got a coach back. I was with my ex girlfriend Dianna at the time, we went up together. I remember watching the DJ and thinking "wow that's how he mixes two records together!" I had a pair of decks myself by then, but it was only on that night out that I started to suss out that they moved the pitch control to get the records timed up together and the penny dropped all of a sudden! Up until then I'd just been blending in the intros and choosing records that sort of followed on from each other. I didn't have a clue when I first got my decks. They were just these belt driven ones, no stop or start on them, the record started spinning automatically as you moved the needle across, but they were great! My parents probably wondered what all that noise was coming out of my room.It was all good underground stuff back then, nothing cheesy. Some of the tracks that stick with me from that era were Maceo and The Macks 'Cross The Tracks' and Backroom Productions 'The Definition Of A Track'. Those were good days you know; we were just out there enjoying ourselves. Sure, there were people out on gear back then, but I wasn't there for that, they were just good times with everyone dancing, it was a great atmosphere. I felt a bit out of place at first, there was me, a carrot cruncher from the countryside! But people made me feel really welcome.Terry Francis' Gasworks EP —his first release on vinyl in almost a decade— via Default Position on 23rd November.