With Sankeys Soap in Manchester closing suddenly in the summer of 1998, we thought that would be the end of Bugged Out. But it didn’t take long for the phone to ring with an offer, one we almost refused. Cream in Liverpool had been running an all-nighter on the last Friday of eachmonth which it felt had run its course. It offered us the date and the venue. Having kept Sankeys relatively underground and with a modest capacity we were now looking at a three-roomed 4,000-person space and we were initially wary: we didn’t think our night would translate. The deciding factor came after considering our magazine Jockey Slut – the new venue would give us more options to reflect all the music we were covering and broaden the remit of the club. One room would remain resolutely techno like Sankeys before it, but the huge main room could be headlined by acts like Basement Jaxx and Cassius. The smaller annexe was the lair of master eclecticist Jon Carter and to championthe emerging breaks scene. We also wanted to include a live act each month – Roots Manuva, Quannum and Röyksopp played early shows. The Chemical Brothers were confirmed for the opening night that September - so we knew people would come en masse – and we put the train times for all northern cities on the flyers. It was quite a sight to see hundreds of clubbers pouring off the trains from Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester just after 9pm.
This was the era of the superclub – Cream had the likes of Seb Fontaine and Judge Jules on their weekly Saturdays, so we had to remain the alternative. Northern trance mecca Gatecrasher’s slogan was the rather earnest “It Will Always Be With You”, so we had a banner emblazoned down the main room; the balloon puncturing “It’s Just A Big Disco”. Sometimes we tried too hard; Badly Drawn Boy had recently graced the cover of Jockey Slut so we gave him a platform – but you could hear DJ Sneak’s house beats ruining his acoustic set from the adjoining room.
Daft Punk DJed and Thomas Bangalter played live at our fourth birthday, not that there’s any evidence of that on a flyer. They requested to play at such late notice that we could only announce them by scrawling their names on posters outside the club. Twitter would have been handy back then. Because it was such a late request, they only asked for their travel and hotels to be covered. As we knew they liked the Beach Boys we left Pet Sounds box sets on their pillows to thank them.
The heart of the club remained the banging techno room with resident Dave Clarke going through a purple patchat the time. One unlikely No 2 hit came out of this, with his mix of Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation which was aired in every tent of new dance festival Creamfields in 2000. He also closed his set often with Emerge by Fisherspooner – a punky techno track that seemed to borrow the chord progression from Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Emboldened by the success of Liverpool we expanded too rapidly. We held a financially disastrous weekly run in Ibiza in 1999 – naively taking the dead Saturday night – and bringing the likes of Jeff Mills to the island at a time when trance ruled and Manumission’s highlight was a live sex show. Muzik magazine criticised us, asking if anyone cared about techno in Ibiza. They did the following year – but we’d already been burnt.
With 4,000 people still filling the Liverpool club every month we decided to launch a Weekender festival for a similar capacity in November 2000 at the Pontins Holiday Camp in Prestatyn. Because we were late with the marketing it didn’t sell well, despite a line up that still looks incredible on the poster in our office. The NME called it a “spiritual success” and it had it’s moments – Underworld, Richie Hawtin, Reprazent, Carl Craig all played – and you could at least get right to the front without pushing to see the whites of Karl Hyde’s eyes.
It was another financial blow that nearly finished us at a time when the dance scene started to feel overblown, the superclubs no longer deserving of their “super” prefix. But a new wave of DJs and a further mutation of techno was bubbling beneath the surface that would kick against the big and the beige. That track Dave Clarke had been finishing his sets with was a portent of things to come.
