When we started the club night Bugged Out in November 1994, I didn’t know if it would even last until that Christmas. Twenty years later and I’m writing this, the first of five pieces detailing the ever-mutating club scene we’ve been involved in.
That year was certainly a fertile time for “dance music”, an umbrella term that encompassed everything from house and techno to emerging sounds including drum’n’bass, big beat and trip-hop. In 1993, Paul Benney and I had launched Jockey Slut, a fanzine in Manchester to reflect the burgeoning techno scene. It had finally started to reach a wider audience, with the likes of Underworld and Aphex Twin injecting some much-needed charisma into a previously faceless genre. Inkies such as NME still ghettoised techno, bafflingly finding bands such as Chapterhouse more interesting than Karl Hyde singing about skyscrapers. With Jockey Slut, we could put Hyde on the cover and give Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers their first interviews.
We were in other people’s clubs every weekend, so it didn’t take long for someone to offer us own own night. Andrew Spiro, who owned the new Sankeys Soap in Manchester, gave us the weekly Friday spot. As with the fanzine, we were relative amateurs and hadn’t a clue how to fill a club. The spirit of acid house still had a strong hold over Manchester – we had been regulars on the dancefloor of the Haçienda during its peak in the late 80s – and it had sparked an entrepreneurial air: record labels and shops, along with fashion brands had sprung up in its wake. We were inspired by that have-a-go attitude.
The beginning was relatively easy. We were handed the opening night on a plate by the venue, in the form of a Warp Records showcase with LFO and Autechre on the bill. LFO were featured on the cover of the NME in 1992 smashing up guitars, which seemed like the only way the paper could make techno interesting for its readers. For Jockey Slut, we had them dressed in bondage gear as a nod to their new single, Tied Up.
With the opening bill in the bag, we just had to think of a name for our night. Sankeys had suggested the Soap Opera and Okey Dokey – I’m not sure we would still be here if the latter had been optioned. With 24 hours to think of something, the name Bugged Out was plucked from the pages of our fanzine, where an artist had described his techno thus, and it was also the name of a new record by Murk, so it seemed prescient.
The first night sold out, but the following weeks and months were tough, with only a few hundred making the trek up to the venue in Ancoats each week. The location itself required steely nerves – when he played, Derrick May told us: “This area is more fucked up than Detroit!” But this did filter the audience, and it eventually paid off as a proper mix of people bonded each week over their love of deep techno and off-kilter house; friendships were cemented at the after parties.
Six months later, the word had spread, and by the time we were booking Jockey Slut cover stars including Richie Hawtin and the Chemical Brothers we were full.
The audience was mixed: there were a smattering of attendees of the visiting dog-on-a-string techno circus Megadog who favoured the harder sounds of Dave Clarke; there were pretty boys and girls who were used to joining the hairdressers who now populated the Haçienda but wanted something different; there were fresh-faced students and ageing punks, and also a strong gay contingent (we even made Attitude magazine’s top 10 club nights in 1995). Most of all, there were proper music heads that would be straining over the top of the DJ booth to see what head-melting track Andrew Weatherall was playing. A lot of guests from those first four years in Manchester still play for us regularly. The Chemical Brothers performed one of their earliest live sets (Mark E Smith came down to see what all the fuss was about); Daft Punk played a five-track set that included Da Funk and Chicago pioneers Derrick Carter; and Green Velvet made an appearance on their debut tour of the UK.
In late 1998, Sankeys suddenly closed, a victim of the city’s gang problems of the 90s. We held the last Bugged Out in a small club nearby the following week. We were sure to add a question mark to the word “final” on the flyer, though. The next chapter was about to begin.
