Alan Thompson Interview Part 1.

Alan Thompson Interview Part 1.

What clubs did you play at in the 90s?

So many! I played pretty much every major club in the UK, the obvious being my residencies at Trade & DTPM, my DJ homes as I called them but guest DJ’ed at clubs such as Ministry of Sound, Gatecrasher, Gods Kitchen, Moneypennys, Progress, Hard Times, Enter The Dragon, Sundessential, Federation, The Tunnel and the list goes on. I was also lucky enough to play at all the major festivals too so spent a lot of time on the road dashing from club to club.

How did you get into DJing?

I was first inspired by the new wave of Acid House music that was sweeping the UK in 1987 “The Summer of Love” and embraced this new style of music. Going to clubs like Schoom, Spectrum, Land of Oz and a big favourite of mine and the original gay dance club, Troll. I was very much a part of the scene at the time as a clubber and would wait with anticipation for the weekend to come along. As I got more in to the music I started to watch and listen carefully to what some of the DJs were doing at the time, beat mixing! Up until this point DJs would blend tracks as they called it, not mix as we know it now. The audience’s reaction also caught my attention and this blew me away, at that point I knew that this is what I wanted to do. So I saved and bout myself a pair of technics 1200 (which I still have) amp, mixer and speakers. I taught myself to mix, at the time there were no DJ/music magazines, or even the internet! So I spent the next few months practising and practising until I was confident enough to give out mix tapes!

Favourite clubs to visit in the 90s?

I was playing all over the country every weekend during the 90s so really didn’t have any opportunity to visit clubs myself as a clubber but if I got the chance would got to Carl Cox’s night Ultimate Bass, Full Circle on Sundays and Pushca parties were always a good night….

Favourite Trade records.

Wow, far too many to pick out to be honest but 1 that always springs to mind is Gat Décor “Passion” this for me sums up Trade at its best, a pure classic track that to this day sends shivers up an down my spine. When Tony in particular would drop this in the middle of his set and the lights would go out the whole club would be filled with an electric atmosphere, very special indeed.

www.djalanthompson.com

Part 2 tomorrow.