A few days ago, an old friend of mine from school sent me an email saying he'd come across some DTP pictures and did I want to have a look. As soon as I saw them a had a wee chuckle to myself, not just because I had a shaved eyebrow, how serious the pictures are and the fact that I still wear that blue Nike hoody (though most of the blue has by now faded) but it made me realise how much has changed since then (I think the pictures must have been from 2002), but also, how much hasn't!
DTP (Digital Transition Promotions) was a little crew set up myself and a guy I was at Crawley College with called Mike (Mickey T, though back then his DJ name was Delusion), we're still very good mates now and speak often.
He was a DJ, I was an MC and we both wanted to perform. They were quite a lot of people doing it back then in the Crawley, Horley, Redhill and Croydon areas but not many places to do it at. Looking back, we wanted to create a small local scene for underground music, but in hindsight, having London half an hour north and Brighton half an hour south, it was wishful thinking!
Anyway, we eventually got a monthly event at this little nightclub in Horley called the Liquid Lounge (which over the years had several name changes and often had it's licence revoked but it was always the same family owning it, just a different brother!). The venue had possibly the most 2 bob soundsystem I have ever come across and was certainly not in anyway equipped to handle sub heavy Garage and Drum and Bass. There weren't many nights that didn't have some kind of punch up either during or after (having lots of different rude boys, and not many girls, from a series of small towns in the same space was never a good idea) but I learnt a lot from doing those and we drove on. We eventually ran 2 nights down in Brighton and forged links in London and many other places. We set up a website, had a bank account, T shirts and business cards, banners and we owned a bit of equipment. Not bad a for a pair of 18/19 year olds, I'm quite proud (There was also a 3rd guy for a while, another old mate called Marc, who was also a DJ, the 3 of us are at the front of 2 of the pictures).
We wanted to run events where it wasn't just the same style of Music all night long. Myself and Mike both had a passion for most forms of underground dance music and wanted to push it all, as well as give ourselves and others a platform to perform, as gigs were to hard to come by.
In the end, it didn't quite work and it all died down. I realised event running weren't really for me, and often at our events we found some people to be very closed minded about other genres of music, even between Garage and Drum and Bass. However, low and behold, with this new umbrella term of "UK Bass" or whatever it is, DJ's now seem to be drawing for tune across the board. It's not uncommon to hear Garage, Jungle, House, Dubstep and Techno all blended in to sets now which I think is wicked.
What hasn't changed is my own drive. Back then, all I thought about (apart form girls of course) was how we could push DTP. What was the next thing we could do, lyrics I could MC with, should we set up a record label etc etc, it's never stopped and has continued, in my head, through every job, lunch break, bed time and holiday I've had since. I learnt a lot doing all that back then, one day, I hope, it might just pay off!
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