How Manchester got down in '86.
DocMcCoy
"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
I was going to post this in the Brits thread, but I thought there might be one or two others curious about the nature of the LBE in the North West of England during the mid-80s. This was a good 18 months before Southern clubbers "discovered" house music, btw (just to throw a little provincial needle into the mix). Moss Side was my manor back then and I used to go to quite a few jams at the community centre. When house music first hit, around mid-85, the younger black kids were on it right away. I was a little older, more into hip-hop, soul and r&b, so it took me a while to get to grips with it. But you'd go to jams like this - and you'd be one of the few white faces there, and you'd be scruffier than everyone else - and immediately know that something was happening, that this was a bit different.
The original article where I first saw this clip is here, on Greg Wilson's site. Speaking as someone who was there at the time, I can testify that this is 100% dead on. And he's right about the drugs, too - they drove the black crowds away. All the places he mentions in that piece went from being 70/30 or 75/25 black/white to all-white in a matter of weeks after ecstasy hit Manchester.
The original article where I first saw this clip is here, on Greg Wilson's site. Speaking as someone who was there at the time, I can testify that this is 100% dead on. And he's right about the drugs, too - they drove the black crowds away. All the places he mentions in that piece went from being 70/30 or 75/25 black/white to all-white in a matter of weeks after ecstasy hit Manchester.
Comments
Fixed for Harvey. :-P
Looks like a good doc, will check later.
Can't imagine seein somethin like that now.
Greg Wilson has always be a bit of a hero in my eyes, even though I'm too young to have seen him in his heyday. Perplexes me why he didn't go on to become a superstar Dj in the 90s, but then I guess plenty of the other early pioneers didn't either.
He stopped playing out in '84 and didn't start again for about 20 years -- it took Manchester DJ legend Danny Webb to get him out of retirement for a one nighter and it all started again from there.
I know that selling actual mix CDs is passe these days, but Greg Wilson should be putting them out. His Essential Mix for Radio 1 a couple of years back was mindblowing (and not available to DL @ 320!).