Shelleys Laserdome - Memories of Martin Red

The early 80’s carried on with changing and rearranging electronic sounds from the 70’s. Music doesn’t seem to just stop at the end of the decade; we carry on from the previous decade, year, month. It’s also worth noting that Shelley’s in the new decade of the 90’s was not the first club that was known for upbeat music, dancing and drugs. Many years before with the
Legendary Golden Torch, a northern soul club, how history repeats itself. 

The Torch and Shelleys both closed down due to the authorities.

The 80’s, Electro, with dancing styles and art we loved from America, not forgetting the domestic British electronic bands, such as Human League, Visage, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, New Order, as well as euro imports such as Alexander Robotnik, Happy Station, Telex, Klein & mbo, Trans X, Kraftwerk in the 80’s where adding more electro beats, certainly around the time Francois Kevorkian’s mix of Tour de France. Not to forget the Japanese either, Ryuichi Sakamoto especially worthy of a mention. These perhaps looked on as music new romantics listened too, New Romantic was more a  fashion than a style of music, to me it was more New Wave perhaps. Rave wasn’t a music, it was an event to begin with, you went to a rave and you listened to house or techno, it wasn’t until later when the media bundled music played at raves as “rave music”.

Nothing happens overnight, all these paved the way for the later styles, such as House and Techno. In the early 80’s, I suppose Juan Atkins had already invented Techno, although it was termed Electro and was more part of the Hip Hop and break dancing scene here. House had been brewing in Chicago from the early 80’s, and had came to world wide acclaim by the mid 80’s with it’s mix of stark European music and disco to a 4/4 beat. The first House imports reaching us around 85, Then the first house LP released in Britain, “The House sound of Chicago” 1986. This was really the new start, Euro,  avant-garde, Electro, Disco. It was something that combined all but sounded totally fresh.

In the UK, The Tory’s had been in power sometime and caused much unhappiness, to live through the eighties for most people was a living nightmare, record high unemployment in the UK being the main factor in urban areas. There was also the cold war and reflected in music like Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Two Tribes, apocalyptic visions regularly appeared on our
goggle boxes. The north south divide was widened. The post punk era  brought, strikes, race riots in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds.

Police corruption in Birmingham, the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad who didn’t help race relations at all. Mass football hooliganism, most cities where the same as Birmingham. I remember in the early-mid 80’s when Birmingham City played at home, the city centre would be a seen of pitch battles, usually with the Police or away fans or both, looting of shops, this was expected and after a while shops like Olympus sports would close around the time the match ended. A lot of discontent, and angry people looking for a release, it manifested itself in violence, music, and art.

Music and art seemed a lot more useful. Art such as graffiti painting, break dancing we caught a glimpse of, in books like Subway Art and films like Wild Style, Beat Street.

So what’s this history lesson got to do with the acid house and later rave party scene?

Well, all of this led up to it. The people who dived firstly into House, then Acid House, Techno, had previously known each other through the Electro music that came earlier and felt the politics that bonded them together.

Around 83, I was Break dancing to Electro music, going to alldayers on Sundays at Cannon Hill’s Mac centre, south Birmingham. “Unknown DJ” from Shelley’s used to go around with crew called Sonic Shock, the best in Birmingham in my opinion. I used to be around a crew called Rock 6 also from south Birmingham, we went to the same places when they had challenges, we shared similar music backgrounds. Same way Bod and Steve Warner shared music in north Birmingham. I met Bod and Steve through music also. That’s the 4 residents of Sindrome at Shelley’s: - Myself, Unknown DJ, Bod and Steve Warner. Music broke a lot of boundaries, who supported who, who you ran with, tribalism was also a massive factor in the mid eighties. A lot of people made good friends they may not have met with, because of music, it saved a lot of people from getting into mischief. It also made for strong foundations as the music your into reflects something about your character, well perhaps, yet I’m no psychologist

Like some at the time, I wasn’t following so and so’s latest chart, that ground has been covered, obviously. We where on the ground ourselves, in the record shops, we had the history to have an idea what was new, good, interesting, danceable. Also, what had been done before.

We have to know where we have been to know where we are going.

When the opportunity came to do Shelley’s I was managing a record shop in Solihull. I had promoted and DJ’d various nights, and had a few residencies that where very important for me to get an idea on how much you should push new music and how much you should simply please the crowd with. I knew if you leant to far either way, you where either a jukebox or a DJ staring at
an empty dance floor, as with everything in life balance is important. I used to try and lull them into a false sense of security at the Hummingbird, play them something they knew, then when they are dancing away, slip in something a little less obvious, sometimes you had to play a record for three consecutive weeks before people would recognise the melody. I suppose there’s some psychology applied somewhere after all.

I already knew and respected Neil Macey from around the midlands, I was proud he was from around this neck of the woods. Neil Macey was consistently good. At the time he worked for Network./Koolkat records. I used to get records for the shop from Network HQ, which is little south of the city centre, the building is still their, Stratford House, it’s a listed building, born out of Shakespeare’s era.

I used to see Neil Rushton when visiting Network.Koolkat, Neil Rushton is a legendary Northern Soul DJ, funnily enough, he used to play at The Golden Torch in Stoke On Trent, mentioned earlier, and at the time he was manager  of Inner City. Network Records was a torch for Birmingham at least the ones that knew it was in Birmingham, I’d say every Detroit techno pioneer visited Stratford House at some time. Judy Nanton worked at Network/Koolkat, also a regular at the Powerhouse in Birmingham around 86.
The constructive Trio, Birmingham’s pioneer house DJ’s used to play at The Powerhouse.
Judy’s sister – Ann, married to Kevin Saunderson. Koolkat/Network licensed at lot of new music coming from Chicago and Detroit and seemed to have their finger on the pulse, very much at the time, but not always over seas acts.

Nexus 21, a very Detroit influenced British techno outfit, licensed to Network. Later, they changed there sound, donned masks and got into the British charts as Altern 8. It was Neil Macey who had the brainwave to bring the lorry to Shelley’s to shoot the video.


The owner of Shelley’s, John Matthews was quite eager to meet contacted me.  I found the meeting with John very pleasing. I believe we met on a Wednesday and the club was not open.

Living in Birmingham, the idea of promoting a night in a club, which was 50+ miles away, was a concern at first. Had to check out the local scene, which seemed to be Introspective. I spoke to people I knew from Stoke, I also questioned friends from Birmingham who knew Stoke from business or pleasure.

I got impartial advice here, the first person I asked was straight to the point, “Shelleys in Longton , don’t do it, it’s brawling central at the weekends”. I also heard that it was used as a concert venue in the early to mid eighties, bands like The Fall played Shelleys. The latter was a little more what I wanted to hear, a musical connection appealed to me, I was also versed to DJ’ing at a concert venue, The Hummingbird in Birmingham Fridays from early 1989.

The fact Shelleys wasn’t an established dancing venue made it harder work to promote, yet this was also a blessing, so many bad promoters soil a club and their reputation stays, whether that be through bad music, door policy, under age drinking, commercialism generally. We had a blank canvas, apart from the Kev n Trace element, Kev being the one with the hairy top lip
usually, but that didn’t bother me, the fighting side was more worrying.

Fighting and dance music don’t usually go hand in hand anyway, I thought with the right doorman and attitude it could be turned around. The venue was so perfect for dancing it was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.   £120K lasers system, podiums, spacious and fully kitted out DJ box, a ready built dance club basically, except we beefed the sound. After going to an 808 State concert at the Hummingbird and being blown away by the sound, I actually went partially deaf for a few minutes. We contacted the PA company that supplied 808 State concerts we had half what they used at the 808 State concert, 8K coming through new JBL speakers.


After the second meeting with the owner John Matthews finalising the details  and approach. I then got on the phone to find out DJ’s availability; then I got on and designed the first flyer. We discussed flyer distribution, a case back then of doing it yourself to guarantee them getting to the right hands, rather than on the floor, from knowing a lot of people, collectively we used word of mouth and got some of the dance music shepherds helping out.

The dance scene although it had grown massively year to year from the late 80’s, there still wasn’t the amount of businesses specialising in the dance music industry as say, nowadays. Now you have numerous agencies, flyer designers, marketing houses, etc. We also saw that paying someone to distribute your flyers wasn’t the best way forward. We wanted it to be a nice environment, what better way to create a nice environment than word of mouth; the flyer was a colourful reminder of this perhaps.

North of Stoke, Manchester was probably where we did most of the promoting.

We went to other cities or had friends who helped with that, certainly Nottingham was a regular stop off, having house nights from 1986 we understood cities that had a house / techno music history, this to us was important as the DJ’s we booked also had a history. We always had flyers in shops like Eastern Bloc, Spin Inn, Piccadilly, etc; we tried to fly the clubs as much as possible. Promoting up north and around the Midlands seemed to work, we promoted at a lot of the all-nighters, north and south.

As long as our night didn’t clash, most helpful, some giving Shelleys a shout out over the mic. The Eclipse in Coventry, on certain nights was a good place to flyer as you would catch people from all over the country, pretty handy to get too from Birmingham, which was also a bonus, less time travelling, more time spent give out flyers.

July 1990, the first week we had Evil Eddie Richards. The sound was set  up, the crowd had turned out, and the club was looking nice. We had a crowd Birmingham and from all over the midlands, northeast and surrounding areas.

The crowd was very mixed and some people had turned up as they had the week before. Some of these hugged the bar, as they didn’t like the music of our new night. We actually asked the doormen not to turn anyone away as we wanted as close to capacity as possible and we weren’t keen on doorman, fashion policing either, we just didn’t want any known scumbags to enter.

We had quite a large guest list that night and myself and Bod where on the door when possible. None of the people where troublesome at all. Some of the suited and booted types didn’t return, some returned the week after wide eyes and kitted out for dancing.

Evil Eddie played a storming set as usual, playing different styles new and old. We had the Club Culture video playing on the large screens. I remember him having a chuckle at the people he knew, including himself.

Very amiable guy who done a great job on the first night, there was much rejoicing and much calling for another one. I also remember going to Hilton Park service station on the way home and being very happy how it had gone.

It carried on building in numbers weekly, John Matthews had already pointed out the capacity, from memory – around 750. Having 750 inside the club, people queuing outside, who we let in anyway, I think we got 1300+ from memory. Derrick May doing strange and marvellous stuff, he would play a tone, which he would pitch up and down, basically playing the deck like an instrument. Playing hot of the press Detroit shit that wasn’t released, playing Juan Atkins tracks and joking with him, his and Juan seemed very tight, as you would expect, both very nice people.

When Dave Angel came, he played Technarchy before anyone else, he also had a lot of other records that blew you away, totally new techno stuff, Dave Angel was the only DJ that turned up late, I remember Daz Willot was playing, Daz was looking in his box, Dave basically walked straight in, unplugged Daz’s headphones and was mixing the next record in before Daz had
noticed he had arrived. Dave was with a massive geezer that kind of reminded me of the Marlboro man, very serious guy, but he got the job done and the crowd, again rejoiced. Neil Macey playing some moody deep tracks, like Defcon Bass, this was also probably the only night where we saw any nonsense, basically a guy from Birmingham was celebrating his release, of course we didn’t know this for certain but this is what I was told after, the violence was due to a guy from Birmingham just released from prison, some guy from Stoke had done something to his sister, then bumped into the guy from Stoke and put a hammer in his head on the weekend of his release, this was on road directly outside, this happened as people where leaving the club around 2ish. One incident isn’t bad over the time.

Delight, one night the doormen got done over by some Manchester gang, which was the only bad thing I knew of during that time also. Remember Manchester very much had that problem, remember the Hacienda kept opening and closing because of it. So one incident that was chance didn’t worry me too much for the future. Hugging was more of a weekly event.

Tony Ross was always a pleasure, why he never got as acclaimed as people that were of equal or lesser skill, I don’t know, that’s a media thing perhaps.

Colin Dale had me reaching for that mirror ball, amazing, thoughtful set of music, he was probably one of my favourites around this time, he also played a variety and brought the crowd to their knees at points and then bringing them back into the world of lasers. The night he played was packed.

After that night at Shelleys where Colin Dale played there was some illegal do in Hanley, we where asked to come down and play. I remember most of Shelleys piled down to this place, a disused abattoir but we didn’t know this till later. This was like some circus show, as we walked up to the place a guy ran past, the organiser in hot pursuit. We later found out a guy from Birmingham had stolen the door takings. As I got closer to the entrance, I spotted a guy having a fit on the floor, vigorously shaking, he had friends with him, I asked if there was anything I could do, they declined and said they had it in hand. I carried on up to the entrance
with my record box. I was having second thoughts about having my records and was thinking about sticking back in the car until I’d had a look around.

At this point, the Police turned up in numbers. The large industrial doors where opened and everyone was told to pile in, which we did. We found not much lighting on the ground floor, people tripping over various industrial stuff, once our eyes got used to the dark we spotted the stairway and we headed straight for it. As we where going up the stairs we where reminded to be careful as some steps where missing. Once we got upstairs in this dive, we realise we where in a abattoir that hadn’t been used for many years, what looked like a dance podium was actually a huge meet scale covering a hole in the floor, I don’t think the people dancing on it realised this either.

I think? Pete Bromley was DJ’ing and the crowd where going loopy, perhaps already pre hyped from Colin Dale earlier. I respected Pete a lot; him and me had many a long musical chat. Anyway, The door downstairs was closed and we where in a lock in situation, positive thinking may have fooled ourselves that the Police would just disappear. It was kind of second nature to us, we had experienced this kind of thing before, many stories of strange nights and brushes with the police. Yet, dancing in an abattoir was a first for me. It carried on with no hassle so, I was celebrating a great night at Shelleys and wasn’t totally with it, I still had a pocket full of love.

Anyway, I starting DJ’ing and all was going great guns. Then the Police come up the stairs and head straight for source of the noise, me. I noticed one had a different hat and looked like the authority figure of the bunch.

He asks me to turn the sound down and to play something mellow, the party was over. I think the Police where expecting me to have Truly by Lionel in my box, alas, they where mistaken. I played Radio Babylon by Meat Beat Manifesto, I didn’t have “fuck the Police”, which I had played at a party a few years before when the police tried to stop it, too much rejoicing.
Anyway I think the copper was a little put out by the “wooh alright , b-a-b-y-l-o-n burning in ecstasy” and they left. The party was down as the meet wagons where arriving outside by now. I thought, no, actually, I didn’t. I believed I may not be arrested anyway so much awake partying for me, I necked the love I had.

Better to be safe than sorry and I would continue the party elsewhere, back in Birmingham. Wrong, I had a meet wagon to myself and a belly full. That  night in the cell was real fun they put me in a cell with a psycho arsonist who had caused £60K worth of damage by setting fire to some gypsy caravans, he had a cigarette dangling through the cell door and all night he was saying over & over, repeating to the same thing to any passing officer “got a light hahahaha” . I had a lot of money from the takings of the door at Shelleys, they believe that I organised the party, The Criminal Justice Bill hadn’t yet come in but there was much distant at illegal parties at this time. With nothing really on me, except “suspicion” and no charge they  released me in the early hours on Monday. As the one officer was waking me down the corridor to let me out he makes sure he tells me what he thinks of me, I’m pinned with this copper telling me he hates scum like me, he had a kids of his own, that kid died because of people like me. I didn’t know the guy who was fitting later died in hospital. Nice thought for the way home, rip, whoever you are.

I was cold, in the same sweaty clothes from Saturday, pissed off and well down. I know found there was no trains, nothing, so I called my brother and arranged to pick me where junction 15 comes into Stoke, got in the taxi, and was waiting for my brother for around an hour, pissed off, freezing, tired.

Then the Police turn up again, what are you doing sunny, we’ve had reports of someone loitering, you can’t make it up. My brother turned up and that was that, unfortunately this was when the Stoke police stepped it up a gear.

I was grateful to meet several people who attended Shelleys, Eric, the manager of K Klass, also the guy you see dancing in the 808 State videos with the fan, I suppose you could say Eric was the “Bez” from 808 State, he always brought some nice people. I was playing the record “in a state” one night and was thanked by a member of 2 for Joy, he was over the moon that his song was being played.

This was around 15 years ago, some of the nights are a bit of a hazy, especially trying to sum it up in text. Getting lost in the laser tunnel, remember a mate from school turning up in a pink VW camper van which was a nice lounge space in the car park afterwards, and then Bod crashing into it later, travelling at great speed on the M6, the girls, the love in the club (sounds corny but fuck it – it was special) Queuing to get out of the car park and sharing friendly banter, the general sound montage outside the club as cars passed with various tracks blasting out, people outside flyering that you knew, going to motorway services that where the opposite direction to home, the one more shouts at the end, breaking down on the motorway on the way home and calling the AA and saying we are across from your HQ we’re the ones dancing on the hard shoulder.


All the Best
Martin