At the wee age of three I started dancing, and as far back as I can remember, music has been an important part of my life.
When I turned 8, Mum and Dad bought me a cheap record player, and a few kiddies tunes. I just loved watching the records go round, and when it came to the end of the song, the needle would lift itself off and this fascinated me for a while, but it was annoying having to put the needle back on to listen to the track again, so I devised a way to ensure the needle would drop straight down on to the start of the record again. My next musical treat was a twin radio/cassette player, and I used this to record songs off the radio and make my own mix compilations.
When I was 14, I went to Pleasure Island; a big fun dome at the Festival Gardens site in Liverpool, it had bowling, go-karts, quasar, a huge play area with 'monster drop' slides and what became my favourite ever roller rink. After a few visits I became addicted to roller skating and bought a pair of Bauer Turbos from a car boot sale. Roller skating has certainly shaped my taste in music. Sometimes the rink had DJs on, sometimes just a mix cd. I soon realised that the music the DJs were playing was much more fun to skate to than the lastest NOW cd. I became friendly with a few of the DJs because they also skated, and I found out the names of the tunes they played that I liked. One day, DJ Ricky Cartwright took me to 3 Beat records and HMV to buy some of the tunes he played. From there on until I left school my Mum bought me records whenever she had a bit of spare cash, some were good, some not so good but I still have them all.
Throughout my last 2 years at high school I put on monthly school discos. My first DJing experience was with one 1210 (yes my school had one of these babies, but at the time I didn't realise what it was), and there was also one cassette player and one cd player!
GCSEs came and went, I decided to a local college, carried on skating for the next 2 years and didn't think anymore of the DJing thing, but was still hooked on music and bought records to play on my 1980's record player.
At the ripe old age of 19, I went to live in Chester during the week, as I was at Uni there. I became friendly with a guy named Matt through the roller hockey team that we both played for. I liked Matt and Matt liked me, so we soon became boyfriend and girlfriend. When I went to his house, I discovered he had a set of Numark belt driven decks, I had one go then I was hooked. Matt was into what they called ‘funky house’. I had been buying trance anthems while at college and the first 'funky' house record I bought was the promo for M&S - Salsoul Nugget. After I bought this record, I didn't dig deep into my pockets for trance any more - I was house music all the way.
At 19, I bought my first pair of decks (thank goodness the guy next door was partially deaf!), they were Numark direct drive, and I loved them to death - although my parents did not. I kept the noise levels down after the first warning, I didn't want to lose them.
A few months after buying my decks I saw an ad for a DJ competition at a club called Kudos in Wigan, where I used to go at weekends with friends from college. I sent in a mixtape, which was a mixture of house and trance, and was delighted when I was asked to take part. I won my heat, then came second overall in the final.
My second year student loan was spent on, erm, two 1210s, a better mixer and hundreds of records.
In year three, I lived at home again and Matt wanted to look for DJ work, so asked if I would be his DJ partner.
Preston gigs:
First ever Preston gig was at what used to be The Blue Moon in Preston, did a few times on a Thursday, not ideal venue so moved to Café D:Reem, wich is now Hush in Preston, on a Thursday night, playing house music.
Then Matt and I were offered Base Bar on Friday nights, the owner wanted me to play ‘funky trance’ so I decided that house music would work better than whatever on earth funky trance was supposed to be.
One Saturday I went in and one of the DJs that night was playing all the records that I’d recently been buying: deep, jackin', dirty, funky, hip shaking house.
I introduced myself and we hit it off. Kid Blast worked with Joe Petherwick at Base and they called themselves the Immoral DJs, and shortly after we discovered our shared love of this type of house music I was invited to become part of Immoral.
Played Voodoo Lounge (now Forum) on Saturdays with Kid Blast, while Joe Petherwick continued at Base Bar.
Kid Blast also played alongside Bob Swerve at a club called Jazzy Kex in Blackburn at a night called Sticky Fingers on Saturdays. I loved the block party music he played there, so went to as many gigs as I could.
When Kid Blast decided to take a break from DJing, I was presented with the opportunity to take over at Jazzy Kex, playing alongside Bob Swerve. The club owner, decided to give us two gigs a month, so I jammed like hell in the few weeks leading up to my first gig. The music policy was almost anything goes, however mainly consisted of funk, hip hop, disco, house and other funky beats. I have been the fortnightly resident there now for 2 years, and still look forward to every gig.
Thought I'd stop by and say hi. Hope you are well. We are off to skate at Wembley this friday can't wait. Wish we were able to skate at Leeds again. But I guess that will have to wait for next holiday off work. New job going great they are so nice. See you soon. Sal xxx
Hi Miz Diz I hope your well? I hope you can make it to the return of "FEEL", the OFFICIAL AFTERPARTY of Radio 1's One Big Weekend. The count down begins. See ya there? Peace
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