Robot Soap Memories...

(Me DJing @ Robot Soap) Photo by Katie Wynne

So there's now officially less than a week until the last ever Robot Soap and I'm feeling nostalgic today, it's probably a combination of it being a Sunday, the Manchester Rain, feeling slightly hungover and having too much time to myself at work thats doing it but I've been thinking a lot about what we've achieved in the last couple of years so I thought I'd compile a list of a few of my favourite Robot Soap related memories, they're not in any particular order of importance...

1) 'The Dirty Social Club' - We hosted the live music room at a night called Filth, a 6 room super-rave witha total capacity of about 3000. The line up for our room was Hiem (Crosstown Rebels) Far From The Dance, The Dirty SOUL club and Ruthless Producer. Unfortunately I messed up the line up in an email with the main promoters so The Dirty Soul Club became The Dirty Social Club on about 20,000 flyers and 100's of posters all around town, thankfully the band saw the funny side of it! (I'm still sorry about it though!)

2)The D-Percussion after party with Back To Front, 700 people packed into our room dancing to Elliot and my DJ-ing and the place going absolutely nuts all night long without the need for guests. It was an amazing night and as I wound down to what I thought was the last tune of the night (I had nothing else cued up!) Elliot shouts 'Who wants one fucking more tune!?' to a room which was at this stage nothing short of a riot. The reply was rapturous 'Yes!'. I quickly picked a record - The Pet Shop Boys 'Flamboyant' (Micheal Mayer Remix) it was a bit of a change in tempo and you could feel the tension in the crowd as everyone was waiting for the beat to drop, the entire room seemed to go very quiet except for the music and then as the beat came in the room when absolutely insane with a mass pogoing mess of a crowd all together in unison. Beautiful.

3)Playing Tribal Sessions, There's an entire blog entry about this previously about how much this meant to me but playing at it as part of Robot Soap was fantastic.

4)I don't know if this should be a bad or a good memory but its funny either way, Porl and I used to have a residency as Robot Soap DJs at an indie night called Mooch - every Thursday night we'd play with Manc heroes like Bez, Mani and Tim Burgess. On one particular night, mid-set, myself and a friend were thrown out of the club for being a bit naughty, leaving Porl to finish up the evening

5)The first ever Robot Soap we held was at a club/bar called Fuel, a tiny little place with a dodgy set up in the DJ booth. Marco Giannini (The Warehouse Project) was on the decks and the room was starting to go off, only every time people started properly going for it the record's needle skipped, we couldn't find a way to make it stop but a great night was had by all regardless, by the end of the night it seemed to be adding to procedings quiet nicely! On the same night I was so nervous about people turning up that during my warm up set I took the wrong needle off the record twice!

6)We did a charity Robot Soap at Preston's 53 Degree's club and booked local heroes Gash DJs (Pete Carvell and Jim Da Mentalist) at the end of the night I was completely exhausted but Pete was adament I was coming back to his after party, to the point where he picked me up and put me over his shoulder and tried to bundle me off - kidnapping style - in a taxi. He didn't win in the end, but it was a valiant effort!

7)I DJ'ed with Mr Oizo for All Day Breakfast and after my set Mr Oizo was up, as I started to leave the DJ booth he shouted 'where do you think you're going? lets party!' and thrust a bottle of Champagne in my hands which we drunk (from the bottle!) together throughout his set.