TITLE: EMPIRE
AUTHOR: H. Beam Piper
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Collection
FORMAT: Paperback
PUBLISHER: Ace Books, New York, 1981 (ISBN: 0-441-20557-7-250)

CONTENTS:

• Terro-Human Future History Chronology
• Introduction, by John F. Carr
• The Edge of the Knife
• A Slave is a Slave
• Ministry of Disturbance
• The Return (with John J. McGuire)
• The Keeper

Last time out, I featured FEDERATION, the first of two collections gathering together the short fiction of H. Beam Piper’s classic Terro-Human Future History cycle. This time it’s the turn of EMPIRE, the second collection of stories set in that future history.

The book starts with an excellent three-page chronology of Piper’s Terro-Human Future History, put together from dates, events and other data spread over all of Piper’s short fiction and novels. This is followed by yet another fascinating and detailed ten-page Introduction by Piper scholar John F. Carr, which gives a lot of useful additional details on the future history as related in the five stories in this collection.

The five stories in the FEDERATION collection are from the earlier phase of Piper’s Future History, whereas the five stories in EMPIRE cover the later stages of that Future History, with the exception of The Edge of the Knife, which is unique in that it is set in the more contemporary timeframe of the early 1970s, pre-dating the formation of the Federation, and thus placing the story effectively outside of the future history itself.

I haven’t read this collection for years, but I have fond memories of The Keeper, Ministry of Disturbance, and The Edge of the Knife, although I remember very little about either A Slave is a Slave or The Return (which are lined up for a much-needed re-read in the not-too-distant future). If they turn out to be even half as good as the other stories, that will be the cream on top of the cake, as far as I’m concerned.

The Keeper, in particular, is very moody and atmospheric, and is one of my favourite Piper stories, in my opinion bettered by only Omnilingual (I’ve always found it funny that my two favourite stories in Piper’s Future History chronology are, by their positions in that future history, the very first, Omnilingual, and the very last, The Keeper). The Keeper allows us the only available brief and tantalizing glimpses into the mysterious far future of the Fifth Empire, and is also the only known story written by Piper which is set beyond the end of the First Empire. The rest of the existing Terro-Human Future History Chronology doesn’t go beyond the First Empire, which makes The Keeper seem strange and out of place compared to the other stories, until we accept that it is the only surviving proof that Piper intended to write other stories extending his future history far into the distant future.

Aside from the few snippets of background information contained in The Keeper, we know absolutely nothing about Piper’s plans for developing the details of these distant far-future eras of his chronology. According to Jerry Pournelle, who had a lot of contact with Piper back in the day, he had certainly planned something much bigger. Pournelle has always asserted that he had seen Piper’s folders full of extensive notes and details of a much longer and more complex future history chronology. Tragically, those notes were lost after Piper’s suicide, and all that we’re left with is a big bunch of “maybes” and “what-might-have-beens”, only too aware that the future history material which (fortunately) still exists in print, as good as it is, gives us only a tiny portion of the greatness that might have been.

As it stands, EMPIRE is a strong collection, and already contains at least three of my favourite Piper stories, plus the excellent chronology and introduction. And as such, it’s definitely well worth adding to any aspiring SF reader’s bookshelf.

Yet another very good H. Beam Piper collection.

I’ve been sitting back on a quiet Saturday evening, chillin’ out and listening to some good music. Playing right now, all the way from 1968, it’s one of the great funk classics, “Tighten Up”, by another of my favourite groups, Archie Bell & the Drells.

This is one of the early true funk masterpieces, with some great grooves and incredible dance rhythms. Aside from Bell’s voice, the one thing that really stands out for me in the tune is the fantastic bass rhythm, followed closely by the funky lead. Everything that makes funk great is present in this song. I defy anybody with an ounce of rhythm in their body not to start tapping their feet or shaking their booty when “Tighten Up” comes on the radio.

I usually associate the emergence of funk with the early-1970s, but there was a period in the late 1960s where the soul music of the earlier era was beginning to give rise to a more up-tempo funky sound, epitomised my the likes of Archie and his Drells, James Brown and others. The end of the Sixties and start of the Seventies saw the evolution of soul into funk, and then into a funky disco sound that was to be the vanguard for the coming disco movement of the next decade. It was an incredible era for music.

The version that I am listening to now is the LP version, which is just over three minutes long. There are two different versions of the song, Parts 1 and 2, which are the first and last tracks respectively on the album that I’m listening to now, ARCHIE BELL & THE DRELLS: THE PLATINUM COLLECTION. This one features twenty of the Drell’s best tracks, and “Tighten Up” is by no means the only good track on it. The album can be found here on Amazon.com, and here on Amazon.uk.

Here also is a link to a YouTube video of a combined version of Archie Bell & the Drells – “Tighten Up” Parts 1 & 2. At about six minutes long, it’s well worth listening to.

I’ve been sitting back on a quiet Saturday evening, chillin’ out and listening to some good music. Playing right now, all the way from 1968, it’s one of the great funk classics, “Tighten Up”, by another of my favourite groups, Archie Bell & the Drells.

This is one of the early true funk masterpieces, with some great grooves and incredible dance rhythms. Aside from Bell’s voice, the one thing that really stands out for me in the tune is the fantastic bass rhythm, followed closely by the funky lead. Everything that makes funk great is present in this song. I defy anybody with an ounce of rhythm in their body not to start tapping their feet or shaking their booty when “Tighten Up” comes on the radio.

I usually associate the emergence of funk with the early-1970s, but there was a period in the late 1960s where the soul music of the earlier era was beginning to give rise to a more up-tempo funky sound, epitomised my the likes of Archie and his Drells, James Brown and others. The end of the Sixties and start of the Seventies saw the evolution of soul into funk, and then into a funky disco sound that was to be the vanguard for the coming disco movement of the next decade. It was an incredible era for music.

The version that I am listening to now is the LP version, which is just over three minutes long. There are two different versions of the song, Parts 1 and 2, which are the first and last tracks respectively on the album that I’m listening to now, ARCHIE BELL & THE DRELLS: THE PLATINUM COLLECTION. This one features twenty of the Drell’s best tracks, and “Tighten Up” is by no means the only good track on it. The album can be found here on Amazon.com, and here on Amazon.uk.

Here also is a link to a YouTube video of a combined version of Archie Bell & the Drells – “Tighten Up” Parts 1 & 2. At about six minutes long, it’s well worth listening to.

I’m sitting back at the moment, relaxing, and listening to one of the greatest arena rock albums of all time, the classic 1983 six-times platinum masterpiece, FRONTIERS, by US band Journey, which came out on the Columbia Records label.

This is one of my all-time favourite rock albums, and is, in my opinion, Journey’s strongest album, surpassing even their previous album, the 1981 classic nine-times platinum ESCAPE.

There isn’t a single bad song on FRONTIERS (even the “weaker” songs are good), but one of the best is the song that is currently playing, the first track on the album, “Separate Ways”. This is a truly powerful rock song, pounding drums, driving keyboards and guitars, and above it all, Steve Perry’s gorgeous, soaring vocals. Sheer bliss!

This is an excellent, strong intro to a fantastic rock album. It’s also gratifying to know that it ISN’T all downhill from here, and that the rest of the album is just as good.

TITLE: FEDERATION
AUTHOR: H. Beam Piper
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Collection
FORMAT: Paperback
PUBLISHER: Ace Books, New York, 1981, ISBN: 0-441-23189-6-295)

Contents:

• Preface, by Jerry Pournelle
• Introduction, by John F. Carr
• Omnilingual
• Naudsonce
• Oomphel in the Sky
• Graveyard of Dreams
• When in the Course-

The book starts with the brief Preface by Jerry Pournelle, a short but fitting tribute to Piper and his writing. This is followed by the lengthy twenty-page Introduction by John Carr, which is a much more detailed and even more fascinating essay on the life and writings of Piper.

The five stories themselves are from H. Beam Piper’s acclaimed TerroHuman Future History cycle, one of the most complex and detailed future histories in science fiction literature. This collection, Federation, is made up of stories from the earlier stages of that Future History, and a later collection, Empire, completes the stories from the later part of the cycle.

There are certainly some very good stories in this collection, but the stand-out for me is definitely Omnilingual, which I first read a long time ago, way back in my teens. Along with He Walked Around the Horses (which isn’t in this collection, and isn’t part of the Future History), this has always been one of my favourite pieces of SF short fiction, and I regard both Omnilingual and He Walked Around the Horses as his two best short stories.

As far as I’m concerned, the collection is worth buying just for Omnilingual alone. But the other four stories are nothing to turn your nose up at either. This is H. Beam Piper we’re talking about here, and he simply did not write bad SF stories.

Very good collection.

I’m sitting here on New Year’s Eve, with barely ten minutes to go before 2014 is upon us, listening to some excellent music. At the moment, it’s Joy Division’s classic post-punk anthem 1979 debut album, Unknown Pleasures, released on the fledgling Factory Records indie label.

Playing right now is the first track, and one of my favourite tracks on the album, “Disorder”. This one sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the album. It’s fast and emotionally charged, with Bernard Sumner’s aggressive, distorted guitars assaulting us in powerful, short riffs, Peter Hook’s driving, pulsating base providing the rhythm, backed up by Stephen Morris’ rhythmic, almost robotic, pounding drums. And over everything, Ian Curtis’ powerful, monotone baratone voice driving the song forward.

This deliciously chaotic tune is a great way to begin such an innovative, classic album. Joy Division, despite their tragically short career (only two studio albums, a live album and a handful of singles), are one of my favourite groups of all time, true pioneers of the post-punk/proto-goth scene. I can listen to this song (and the whole album) over and over again without ever getting fed up with it.

I feel a review of Unknown Pleasures coming up!

In my last post I commented that I’d recently bought a couple of nice old SF anthologies from Amazon UK. I made a few comments about one of the anthologies, TRIPS IN TIME and gave a contents listing for it. Here’s the same routine for the other anthology, which was published ten years earlier, but can be considered a “companion” anthology, from a thematic viewpoint, since both books contain short stories about time travel. The second of the two anthologies is:

TITLE: VOYAGERS IN TIME – Twelve Stories of Science Fiction
EDITED BY: Robert Silverberg
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Anthology
PUBLISHER: Meredith Press, New York, 1967
FORMAT: Hardcover, 243 pages.

This anthology is a collection of more traditional (but still fun) time travel stories than those in TRIPS IN TIME. The stories in this one span a thirty year period, the earliest originally published in 1937, and the last in 1967. Here’s a listing of the contents:

• The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (1937)
• …And It Comes Out Here by Lester del Rey (1950)
• Brooklyn Project by William Tenn (1948)
• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester (1964)
• Time Heals by Poul Anderson (1949)
• Wrong-Way Street by Larry Niven (1965)
• Flux by Michael Moorcock (1963)
• Dominoes by C. M. Kornbluth (1953)
• A Bulletin from the Trustees by Wilma Shore (1964)
• Traveler’s Rest by David I. Masson (1965)
• Absolutely Inflexible by Robert Silverberg (1956, revised version 1967)
• THE TIME MACHINE [Chapter XI, XII – part] by H. G. Wells (1895)

This looks like another very interesting anthology of short fiction. Silverbob certainly does know how to put together a good anthology of stories. Again, some of them I remember well (Wells, Bester, Tenn, and Moorcock), others I vaguely remember (Miller, del Rey, Anderson, Niven, Kornbluth and Silverberg), and the last two I’m not familiar with at all (Shore, Masson).

As I’ve already said, this is a kinda/sorta “sister” anthology to the later TRIPS IN TIME (1977), which is a more unusual and quirky collection of time travel tales. I’ve already read several of the stories in TRIPS IN TIME, but now I’ve started reading some of the stories in VOYAGERS IN TIME as well. I’m dipping in and out of both books, and it will be nice to compare the two anthologies when I’ve finished both of them.

As usual, I’m working my way through the stories in both books slowly, as and when I get free time to do so, and not in any kind of order. I’ll just pick stories at random, usually with favourite authors first and working my way to least favourite or least familiar. Once I’ve finished I’ll start posting comments on individual stories (with the exception of the excerpts from The Time Machine, as I’ll be reviewing the novel at some point), and comments on the two anthologies as a whole.

I’m listening to this one right now on a various artists double-CD compilation of indie music, FEAR OF MUSIC.

Damaged Goods is one of my absolute favourite Gang of Four tracks, from their first classic 1979 album ENTERTAINMENT, although it had actually appeared previously as the A-side of their legendary first single, the 1978 Damaged Goods EP, which was released on the Fast Product record label. This EP also featured the equally legendary tracks Love Like Anthrax and Armalite Rifle.

Gang of Four incorporated various other genres such as funk, reggae and dub into their stylistic repertoire, which gave a lot of added “oomph!” to their music. Damaged Goods is like all good punk and post-punk – angry, short, and to the point – but it is also more sophisticated than many of its punk predecessors. This track is undoubtedly one of the pivotal post-punk anthems, and had a huge impact and influence on everything that came afterwards. The sheer simplicity of the best punk and post-punk classics like this reminds me so much of the great three chord/sub three minute garage tracks of the mid-to-late 1960s, albeit with large added dollops of anger and social awareness.

My tastes in music are pretty wide-ranging and eclectic, and on occasion I like some overproduced rock, disco and dance music as much of the next guy. But there are times that I just want to have it short, raw and punchy, like Damaged Goods, New Rose, Public Image, Ever Fallen In Love or Pretty Vacant. Heady company, that, and Damaged Goods is deservedly up there among these other classic tracks.

The version I’m listening to right now is the later re-recorded version of Damaged Goods, and the purists would undoubtedly groan and roll their eyes, and assert that the original version, and only the original version on the EP is the real Damaged Goods. And when it comes to music, I have to admit that I’m almost always a purist myself. So I invariably hate most cover versions of classic tunes. But not on this occasion.

I actually prefer this re-recorded version, which is faster and snappier than the slower original EP version. It just seems to be that bit more angry and aggressive, a searing indictment of love and lust. And angry and aggressive is how I feel a good punk or post-punk song should be. Both versions are classic, but the newer one just edges it for me.

Like I said, the purists will surely disagree with me strongly (most of them probably foaming at the mouth), but I don’t care! 🙂

The first few posts to this new blog were fairly long personal recollections of my early career as a DJ. Last time out, I posted my first full review of an album. And this time, in my ongoing efforts to add some variety to the blog, I’m trying something else. Here’s the first in what I hope will be a series of many ongoing random posts highlighting favourite “songs of the moment”.

There won’t be an album review in sight in these random posts, just a couple of paragraphs on any random, individual song that I happen to be listening to at any given time. It can be anything, old or new, but mostly will be older songs of various genres – alternative, rock, soul, funk, disco, reggae, ska – indeed ANY song that I happen to like or which holds a special significance for me.

Right now I’m listening to the glorious summer of 1979 dancefloor classic (on both sides of the Atlantic) Dancing in Outer Space (all 9 minutes 34 seconds of it) by the great jazz-funk group Atmosfear. This one is on a CD compilation, but is the same version as the original 1979 vinyl 12 inch single release, which I used to play at the clubs all those years ago.

This song, for me, epitomizes the best in hardcore jazz funk – an incredible ground-rumbling bass line, ethereal outer-space-ish keyboards, fat, hard drums and super-smooth funky guitars (and lets not forget the sizzlin’ saxophone). The ultimate in club dance music from that era, if you’re any kind of fan of jazz or funk music, this one just has to set you bopping.

When I think of “dance” music, sure, I like some modern EDM, but as an old fogie I think primarily of the jazz/funk/soul/disco phenomenon of the 1970s and 80s, not all this modern hip-hop, rap and R&B (R&B? Muddy Waters and B.B. King are R&B, not the modern rubbish that has hijacked the name), although I do quite like a select few modern rave/house/trance/funk tunes. Maybe I’m just showing my age, but, in my opinion, the 70s and 80s gave us REAL dance music. And Dancing in Outer Space is one of the true giants among 70s jazz funk dancefloor smash hits.

There are a number of YouTube links to the original 12 inch monster hit version of Dancing in Outer Space. Here’s one of them.

Welcome to the new Science Fiction Reader blog.

This blog is focused solely on science fiction literature, and is intended to be a review and recommendations showcase for the best SF stories that I’ve come across over the years, as well as any new material that I happen to read. As such, the nature of the blog posts will be very subjective, focused on what I like, rather than made up from lists of mainstream “Best-Sellers”.

I see this as a Very Good Thing. There are numerous blogs and websites “out there” reviewing the best of mainstream SF&F, and I intend this site to be something completely different. My own tastes in SF are heavily biased towards short fiction and older/classic SF, so those tastes will be reflected in the posts that I make here. I’m very widely read in older SF, and have an enormous collection of SF novels, individual author short story collections, and anthologies of short fiction by a range of authors, some of them very old and remembered only by a few of the “wrinklies” out there. So there will be no shortage of material to review.

I also have some truly eclectic and obscure tastes when it comes to older SF, so there will be quite a few posts spotlighting “forgotten” gems from the earlier days of the genre, as I attempt to bring them not only to the attention of the younger generation of SF readers who have never seen these stories before, but also to jog the memories of older readers who might have read some of these stories way back at the dawn of time.

As for more modern SF, I’m a huge fan of Hard SF, Classic Space Opera, and their modern offspring, New Space Opera. I absolutely LOVE New Space Opera! It’s easily my favourite sub-genre of modern SF. So there will be quite a few posts featuring some of the best new releases in New Space Opera novels and short fiction.

Okay, I’m off now to do some reading. I’ll not be making many reviews if I sit around here all day yapping. 🙂

Sometime around October-November 1986, the “Gay Disco” left the disastrous venue of the Union Hall and returned to its original home on the Magee College campus. A new Student’s Union had opened, a temporary portacabin structure known as “The Terrapin”, which was to house all the student entertainment facilities until the current permanent Student’s Union opened in September 1990.

As soon as the “Gay Disco” moved back to its original venue, the crowds came back and it returned to its former glory days again, with a packed house at every gig. The only fly in the ointment was that, from 1987-1990, until moving to the permanent Student’s Union building, the entertainment license available to the Student’s Union at that time only permitted the discos to play until 11.30pm. Admittedly, that was really irritating, but the solution was for the “Gay Disco” to begin earlier on Friday nights, and the revellers could then move onto another venue at 11.30 to continue the partying. Once the Student’s Union moved into the new, permanent building, the late license permitted the disco to stay open until 1am. The “Gay Disco” would continue its association with myself and Magee College right up until 1998, when it moved out of Magee altogether and onto another permanent venue.

But back to late 1986, and the return of the “Gay Disco” to Magee, where a whole new chapter in my DJ career was to begin. As a direct result of that move, I was to begin my long residency as in-house DJ for the students in Magee Student’s Union. After I’d performed at several Magee gigs for the local gays, all the time under the watchful eyes of members of the Student’s Union Bar Committee and a few students who attended the “Gay Disco” on Friday nights (still once a month), I was in for a really unexpected surprise. They must have really liked what they heard, because after only a couple of “Gay Discos”, I was approached by the Student’s Entertainments Officer and asked if I would like to start as in-house DJ for the Student’s Union, two nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I jumped at the offer, and thus began a very long residency as DJ at Magee Student’s Union, all twenty-seven years of it, lasting right up until the end of September 2013, when I eventually decided to call it a day.

As I said, the closing time for discos at Magee during this period was 11.30pm, but we were all able to move on to another local nightclub afterwards to continue having even more fun, so things weren’t so bad. For the first time since I’d started as a DJ, back in 1980-1981, I was now in regular work, two nights each week (along with live bands) for the students, one friday night per month for the gays, and almost every Saturday night and Fridays that I wasn’t in Magee, I was working random gigs outside of my regular workplace, mostly weddings, christenings and birthday parties. It was a good time during my DJ career, and this continued for over a decade, up until the end of the 1990s.

I detailed in my last post about the radically different nature of the music at the “Gay Disco” compared to my earlier gigs – mostly hi-energy dance, disco, funk, soul and pop. Well, the regular Student gig on Tuesdays and Thursdays added yet another dimension to my music. It had some music in common with the “Gay Disco”, mostly soul and late-1970s and early-1980s chart music, with lots of New Romantic tunes, which were very popular at that time. But there was also quite a bit of classic rock and glam rock music, such as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zepplin, T-Rex, The Sweet and Gary Glitter, and some hard rock favourites such as Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Black Sabbath.

But, aside from the above music, if I was to give a general description of the overall tone of the music that I was playing at the Student’s Union in those early days of 1986-1990, I’d have to say “alternative”. That’s how student music was back then. Lots of punk rock, post-punk, early goth, ska, reggae and general New Wave, and indie/alternative music. The Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Killing Joke, the Fall, early U2 and Simple Minds, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, early B-52s, the Pixies, Bauhaus, Joy Division, early New Order, the Police, the Beat, Madness, the Specials, the list goes on and on. It was a classic era for music at the Student’s Union.

I played my final gig in the old (portacabin) “Terrapin” in June 1990, before it was finally demolished during the summer to make way for the new, permanent Student’s Union, where I was to play my first gigs at the start of October 1990. This was to be the start of yet another new era in my career as a DJ. But I’ll leave that story for another time.

To Be Continued…

Last time out, I made the comment that, if I was going to get regular work, I’d have to start gigging outside my comfort zone of the rock and alternative scene, sell my soul to the dark side and start playing at commercial discos.

Well, sometime in 1983 (I can’t remember the exact date), and after several years of random, one-off soul, Northern Soul, punk, alternative, and hard rock discos (which I continued to gig at, by the way – the random gigs didn’t just stop), I got my first regular gig. Actually, it was only one Friday night per month, but it was still my first “regular”. And the music certainly was different from anything that I’d ever played before. Radically different. But it was most definitely NOT your typical Top 30 chart disco…

I’d been asked by some close friends if I would start playing once a month at a regular disco for the local gay community, which I thought was quite amusing, as I’m a card-carrying heterosexual myself. I was delighted to say “yes”, and this was to begin a fifteen-year association between myself and the gay community, during which I was the official DJ, from 1983-1998, at what everyone in Derry almost universally referred to as the “Gay Disco”. For the first couple of years, the disco was held in Dill House, an old Victorian red brick building which served as the Student’s Union at the local University of Ulster campus, sited at Magee College, a nice, quiet spot on the outskirts of the town, well away from the city centre.

Back in the early-1980s, the local gay music scene (and gay society as a whole) was much more underground and progressive than it is today. Many younger gays might disagree with me, but I’d argue that, in taking huge strides towards becoming more accepted and assimilated into “normal” society, the gay scene (in my town, at least), AND its music have lost their edge and become not only extremely similar to the “mainstream”, but, dare I say it, bland and dull, at least in comparison to the underground heyday of the 1980s, when virtually “anything goes” was the norm on the local gay scene.

Back in those days, anyone of LGBT orientation usually tried not to display their true nature and behaviour too much in public, in fear of the rampant homophobia (gay-bashing was pretty common in our town) in mainstream local society. The “Gay Disco” and other similar venues were usually in less central (to city centres) venues, well out of sight of any hostile anti-gay groups, and were places where gays of all shades could feel safe, let their hair down, and have fun. And, boy, did those people know how to have fun!

Everything about the “Gay Disco” was, exhibitionist, loud, and Proud To Be Gay. From the patrons themselves, many in drag, all trying to outdo each other with the most outrageously camp behaviour and dancing, to the music, which was, with very few exceptions (maybe a very short “slow set”), relentlessly upbeat in tempo. Aside from a handful of the better dance songs from the charts, it was non-stop classic soul, disco, funk, eurodance, and gay club anthems, many of which I had never even heard before. At the very beginning, I didn’t know whether I was coming or going half the time, and I was certainly winging it for the first few gigs before I started to find my feet. 🙂

Well, I had to learn the ropes pretty darned fast, I can tell you. So I went out and started hunting down some completely new (new to me, anyway) types of music, most of it unique to the gay music scene, just for this one monthly gig. As a guy who was accustomed to playing loud, heavy, guitar music to hairy rockers, or frenetic punk riffs and weird New Wave tunes to spikey-haired “fraggles”, punks and skinheads, this was like stepping into a completely different world. There wasn’t a hard rock or punk rock tune in sight. Absolutely NO guitar music at the “Gay Disco”.

And y’know what? It was FUN! For a long time, the “Gay Disco” was the place to be for the best nightlife in Derry. Even the “straights” from the town (in the shape of crowds of gay-friendly punks and “fraggles”), looking for a late-night spot to hang out, would land up in large numbers at around 1.30am or 2am with their carry-outs (it was a “bring your own booze” gig), as the other pubs in the town would close around 1am, and the “Gay Disco” continued on sometimes until 3am or even 3.30am. For a couple of years, from 1983-1985, it was the best disco in the town.

But that all got put on hold for a year or two, as things temporarily took a turn for the worse on the gay social scene. The new, growing university campus at Magee College was being greatly expanded and redeveloped, with many of the older Victorian buildings demolished to make way for the brand spanking new modern university buildings. Unfortunately for the “Gay Disco”, venerable old Dill House was scheduled for demolition, and at some point during early 1985, the “Gay Disco” found itself without a home.

A quick relocation of venue was organized, but, unfortunately it was a very bad move, to the Union Hall, which was right bang smack in the centre of town, beside the city walls. This was very hostile territory for gays, with gangs of drunken “gay bashers” roaming the town and waiting outside at the end of each gig to give some unfortunate victims a beating. So very few gays actually ever went to this gig (there were rarely any more than a couple of dozen people at each disco), bar a handful of hardcore, brave, hardy souls. The “Gay Disco” limped along in limbo to near-empty halls for the best part of a year and a half.

Then, in late 1986, the “Gay Disco” returned to its original home on the Magee College campus, and a whole new chapter in my DJ career was to begin…

To Be Continued…

Since I’m a DJ and (obviously) one of my greatest passions in life is music, I reckon that the time’s long overdue for me to start up a music blog, something covering both my thoughts and memories about music AND copious reviews of albums and specific music that I’m a fan of. Given that I’m a big fan of older music, I think that this rather retro, colourful theme suits the mood of my new blog perfectly. If it blinds anyone, just stick on the old sunglasses. 🙂

But before I start posting any music reviews, I’m going to make a few introductory posts detailing my own personal music history, both as a fan and as a DJ. To set the ball rolling, here’s the first part of a short history of how I first started out as a DJ in my home town of Derry, Northern Ireland, and how my career has progressed (or not) up until the present day.

Well, I’ve been a DJ for a long, long time. Somewhere around thirty-two, maybe thirty-three years. I’m pretty sure that I started sometime in 1980, maybe early-1981 (I was nineteen or twenty years old at the time), although I can’t recall the exact date of my first gig, which is now lost somewhere in the mists of time. I know it was backing some local band or another. Most other young local DJs tended to start off helping out more experienced, more established DJs at discos, playing the start of shows before the main DJ took over. Me, I had to be different. I started off backing local alternative and rock bands at gigs.

Back in those days, I was heavily into the alternative and rock music (both hard and classic) scenes, a much bigger fan of those types of music than of more commercial pop music, and I had (still have) an enormous collection of that type of music on vinyl, both singles and LPs. In these early days, I always stayed the hell away from the safe option of playing any Top 30 chart hits at gigs, unless absolutely necessary (and I mean ABSOLUTELY necessary, like someone-has-a-gun-to-my-head necessary), and I very quickly started to gain a reputation for playing more adventurous, non-mainstream music at gigs, which of course began attracting those audiences with less commercial tastes in music. Pretty soon I had a nice little following.

Luckily for me the local alternative and rock scenes in my hometown were buzzing back in those days, and work was plentiful, if a bit sporadic. Within a few months, I was a regular feature, playing as backup DJ with local bands, almost always punk rock, New Wave and hard rock bands. This led me, shortly after that, to start spreading my wings a bit, breaking away from backing up groups on the band scene and playing my first solo discos.

All of these early solo gigs were one-off rock and alternative nights, most of them 21st birthday parties or something similar for friends who just happened to be rockers or punks, as those were the kind of people that I hung out with. It was a great thing being able to play only the kind of music that I really liked, for people in my own social circles, who liked exactly the same kind of music. 🙂

But even back in those earliest days, I was starting to realize that if I wanted to actually get regular work, to become really successful as a DJ on the local scene, I’d have to start gigging outside of my comfort zones, at more commercial music discos. Which brings me to my first regular gig as a DJ…

To Be Continued…