Lapse dancing: the stories of Manchester clubbers

Maps are great. You can get big paper ones that are difficult to fold, and digital ones that ask you to rate places you've been nowhere near.

The Lapsed Clubber Audio Map is a crowd-sourced map that was launched a few years ago by the Manchester Digital Music Archive. The great thing about this map is it talks to you.

The Map contains audio and text memories of Greater Manchester ravers of their clubbing experiences between 1985 and 1995, easily covering the peak years of rave culture.

I had a pleasant trawl through some of the stories uploaded to the site. Here are some highlights from various clubbers in various venues, appended with my comments because I'm a blabbermouth who wants to make everything about me.

808 State at G-Mex: "It was a hell of a gig for us coming from out of town, us small country people... we heard all the same music that we listened to in the clubs of the back and beyond, but on a massive sound system and with a massive crowd of people."

Growing up in Manchester, it's easy to forget that the city was a bit of a Mecca for people out in the sticks. I went to the Hacienda because it was just down the road – albeit quite a long road. My earliest gig memories were at G-Mex: Radiohead supporting James comes to mind, mainly because it makes me sound cool. I probably went to awful gigs there too.

Tangled at the Phoenix: "It was small and it was dingy and there was sweat dropping off the ceilings... Everyone would end up at the garage at East Lancs getting Ribena, the king of all drinks. That was pretty much my life for about five or six years."

The Phoenix was very sweaty. We're talking Piers Morgan's armpits when he has the guilty sweats, which is all the time. I did my first ever DJing gig in their bar – I was terrible – and I remember grubby acid techno bashes in the club. I worked near the Phoenix and watched its building get knocked down. It's shops now. On warm summer nights, you can still smell the perspiration.

Daft Punk’s first UK live gig: "Daft Punk played live for the first ever time in Britain and played that song [Da Funk]... Still to this day, the B-side Rollin’ & Scratchin’ is the only song I can never listen to without vomiting."

When I saw Daft Punk DJ at Sankeys Soap back in the 1990s, a French stranger tried to roll my torso like plasticine while saying "wide boy, wide boy". I have nothing more to say about Daft Punk.

Devils Dancing: "I had this strange-shaped pill I bought, which actually turned out to be ketamine... These lights were making red shadows and all I could see were these weird devils dancing, in this weird, satanic fire dance, and my friend took me home."

I've always stayed away from the more hallucinogenic end of the drugs spectrum. My imagination has always been vivid and strange: my silly creative activities are my way of pressure-cooking that intensity out of my brain. If I didn't have that kind of release, I really would be seeing red devils all over my walls. For now, I just have slightly muted woodchip.

Dancing at Sankeys Soap: "I felt this body come up behind me and start dancing in the same rhythm as me. It got a little bit too close and so I turned round, not forgetting that I’m off me chops, and it was Zammo from Grange Hill."

So many good nights at Sankeys. And a bad trip that nearly destroyed me. Easy come, easy go. When I took on the name 'Fat Roland', I didn't even think of the Grange Hill connection. I should have gone for something different. Wide Boy, maybe. The forward Frenchman was right. Dammit.

I've plenty of memories of clubbing back in the day, so I really should upload something to the Lapsed Clubber Audio Map. Have a browse, why dontcha.

Further Fats: Store Street blues: waddling with the scrotes, the clubbers and the tokers (2007)

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011) 

The Stone Roses and the seriously stained alley of nostalgia

Edit: I was clearly way off the mark in this piece. Here are my 2016 reflections on the new Stone Roses single.

The Stone Roses are reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses might be reforming.

Manchester was awash with speculation yesterday. It's the only thing people were talking about in the porn shops. Drug dealers whispered the news from beneath street grids. All the flyers in Affleck's Palace were replaced with pictures of Ian Brown next to a big question mark.

In fact, Manchester does nostalgia almost as well as Liverpool, what with reformations by the likes of James, M People and, um, Northside. When in fact what we really want back are our dearly deceased, such as Joy Division, Frank Sidebottom and Together.

Although the cod-blues drudgery on the second Stone Roses album was a crock of anal splatter, the band's contribution to rock music stands as proudly as the Beetham Tower and we Mancunians should shout about it. Well. Drawl about it.

What we didn't need, though, was another trip down a syringe-ridden nostalgia alley. We'd just end up vomiting into our navals and using our hoody to wipe up the sick, thereby creating an ironically-pleasing hypercolour design on our clothing. How on earth can they recapture the Bez days of our lives? Stand in Harvey Nicks and pretend it's the Hacienda? No, thanks.

The rumours were quashed pretty quickly. Many commentators took a (private) post-funeral piss-up between ex-band members as genuine news. But Mani himself gave a journalist a right old ear-pummelling about the rumours, ending his rant with "It isn't true and isn't happening."

The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. The Stone Roses are not reforming. Let the whispers become murmers then shouts: the Stone Roses will not come again.

See also: How do you solve a problem like Madchester?

It's not a pie chart but I called it a Bri Chart because that was the only pun I could think of

This chart shows why I'm worried about Brian Eno. (Click here for large.)

I should have posted this months ago, when Eno told Radio 4's Front Row that he would be producing the latest LP from tapioca-flavoured, whinging popmunters Coldplay.

He said their new material "will be very original and very different from what they've done before."

It wasn't.

Viva La Whatever was released by Coldplay this week and, like past albums from James and U2, you can see the Eno sheen dripping from every note.

But what was Eno thinking of? What was the former producer of U2's sunglasses era and Talking Heads doing anywhere near a band I consider so bad, I'd rather trim my toenails with a chainsaw than listen to Chris Martin's Bluntesque mediocrity.

That's why I created my Bri Chart, above, showing the collapsing milestone's of Brian Eno's production career.

On a more delightful note, listen to Islands covering Eno's The Big Ship (you'll need to scroll down a bit).

Of his Eno cover, Islands' Nicholas Thorburn said "It doesn't matter if it's sloppy. Things can be a little rough around the edges if they have heart."

Or they can be as neat and tidy as a Coldplay song and have absolutely no pulse whatsoever.

Just time for an mpSunday, the series where I use the internet to give away music. Clever, I know. It only seems relevant to bust you some Eno, so here goes:

mpSunday: Brian Eno's Big Ship (this mp3 has now gaaawn - click here for the latest mpSunday.)