Let’s face it – there’s nothing quite like Slammin’ Vinyl anymore these days in the UK. They are the masters of rave. Nothing quite compares to their multi-arena, 10,000 capacity events that evoke the spirit of the raucous parties of the early-to-mid ‘90s. Their flagship events aren’t just about 1 or 2 styles of music – but about representing all the tough, underground music that stemmed from the original rave culture in the UK. Many a dance music fanatic (myself included) cut their clubbing teeth at their legendary events at the Milton Keynes Sanctuary – now sadly a deceased venue. Grant, one of the promoters of Slammin’, guided us through the promotions illustrious and highly successful history.

“In 1990, everybody in the 6th form at our school got into rave music all of a sudden” Grant recalls. “It was THE youth movement of the decade. Absolutely everybody was into it, and most of those people thought they could actually be a part of it. Everyone was trying to promote their own nights, start a pirate radio station, make the music or be a DJ. We weren’t any different, we just somehow made a career out of it. Everybody from our area went to Camden Palace, or some of the more underground warehouse raves such as Telepathy and Freedom in East London.” Along with his schoolmate Mike Rooney, he started making old skool hardcore tracks under the name Red Alert & Mike Slammer, and soon set up Radioactive Recordings – later renamed Slammin’ Vinyl. So how did a record label turn into a rave? “The honest answer is that we had been making tunes for about 3 years, and were rapidly running out of ideas! “What next?” we thought to ourselves. So we tried our hand at putting some parties on, lost £3000 on the first one and swore we’d never do it again. It was at The Rhythm Station, Aldershot, September or October 1994. I think we had people like Slipmatt, Dougal, Sy, plus one DnB DJ to break it up, which was Hype. It was a challenging and expensive evening. We only got 440 people and lost all that money”. At the time of the first event, Grant was in the midst of finishing off a Masters Degree while Mike was tied up in running his father’s business. “At that point we should have got proper jobs in the City, but we tried again after about 9 months and broke even on the event. It carried on from there.” The next few years were spent promoting parties and building up a following while working hard to bring in revenue from other streams. This was the mid ‘90s, when dance music / rave related merchandise was still a big seller. “Promoting was never a full-time thing ‘til about 1997. Up to that point we were still doing records and selling a hell of a lot of merchandise such as bomber jackets, record bags, etc. In 1996 we did some work with Vanessa, an ex-Dreamscape staff member, and she really opened our eyes up to how you should go about promoting things properly. We started to do events at Bagley’s [now Canvas in London] regularly throughout 1997, and then started branching out.” I ask if they would have done anything differently back then, had they been equipped with the knowledge they have now. Slightly paradoxical perhaps but Grant is a realist as ever. “We’d have done something else! No, seriously, I can’t think of anything major that we would have changed. The whole promoting thing is a massive learning curve, and you only learn from your mistakes. It also takes a huge amount of time to establish any sort of reputation.”

As the Slammin’ Vinyl brand got bigger and bigger with regular events at Bagley’s and with the accompanying tapepacks which documented the events, selling 1000s of copies in the wake of the party, they set their sights on bigger challenges. 1998 saw them embark on an ambitious venture (somewhat of a recurring them in their story!), hosting their first event at the massive Sanctuary complex in Milton Keynes. The site comprised of 3 huge warehouses (which by day were used for go-karting, rollerskating, and later indoor golf driving practise) which the Slammin’ team would kit out with seriously powerful sound and lighting rigs and décor to transform the venue from bland leisure centre into authentic rave palace. Slammin’ success would then lead them onto acquiring several other brands, as Grant explains. “[The acquisition of] United Dance came about because the previous owner had had enough of the scene. He offered the brand name to us, and we took it on. The same thing happened about a year later with Hardcore Heaven, then again in 2003 with One Nation. UD hasn’t had the attention paid to it in recent years that it deserves, but the other 2 brands are bigger than ever now.” Where Slammin’ started as a mostly a hardcore event, as it grew it developed to showcase hardcore and drum ‘n’ bass in equal measures (with separate arenas), with gabba and old skool getting representation later on. The events at The Sanctuary ran very successfully for 6 years, before in 2003, the landowner of the site decided to sell it to the MK Dons Football Club to enable them to build their new stadium on the patch. Although the Sanctuary era is remembered with a misty eye and held in legendary esteem by all who attended the dozens of events there, Grant points out that it was probably the right time for Slammin’ to move on from there. “It was sad, but it must be remembered that it was rapidly becoming stale up there. The last event of 2003 up there wasn’t very good at all, and it was generally dropping off. However, once it was announced that it was closing, it all picked up again, and on the last ever event we could have probably sold 20,000 tickets. We certainly felt privileged to have held the last one there, especially when you consider the now legendary promoters that have passed through that venue such as Dreamscape, World Dance & Helter Skelter. What it did do was prompt us to go out and do new venues such as The Royal Bath & West Showground, Alexandra Palace and the NEC, which have been extremely interesting for us and have really given the scene a bit of a boost.” Conquering of the country’s biggest venue aside, Grant and his colleagues aren’t complacent about their situation and certainly haven’t fulfilled all of their ambitions. They talk excitedly of the mammoth events that Dutch promoters put on, with their multi-million pound production aesthetics and die-hard crowds. “They fill up football stadiums and huge venues, and all this without having to book ‘superstar’ DJ’s. The only way we’re going to achieve that is to keep pushing the frontiers with what we’re doing, and try and make the whole scene more exciting and more inclusive to the outside world, not exclusive, without of course changing what we’re all about. You certainly have to offer an awful lot more and do a more professional show than what promoters were getting away with back in the 90’s. It’s no longer a mass market like it was when we were first into it. Loads of people don’t even know it’s still going on.”

Rave. What does that even mean anymore? When trendy journos are bandying it about in terms like “new-rave” and “the return of rave”, have they really got any idea what they’re talking about in the first place? “To us, it’s a style of music that is hard, fast and underground. Unfortunately, to the rest of the world it can have negative connotations, and as ‘rave’ promoters we get lumped in with any old pikey who pitches up in a field with a 2-bob sound system. We have to work twice as hard as any other music promoters to overcome this prejudice, especially when we’re dealing with internationally-known venues such as the NEC.” Luckily wide-eyed youths don’t pay as much attention as older clubbers to the connotations of various types of dance music, and new Slammin’ junkies join their crowd in their droves at every event. This change in demographic is the main difference that Grant sees in the rave scene these days. “We’ve got older, the crowd has got younger! I don’t think the basic vibe has changed an awful lot from when it started though.”

The few Slammin’ events I’ve been to definitely rank as some of my most memorable nights out thus far. With little or nothing else on this scale anymore, fewer people are getting the chance to experience full on raves like these. Grant’s understandably proud of all the opportunities his events have given people from all over the UK. “The last one at The Sanctuary was a privilege, because of everything the place meant to the rave scene. Doing Ally Pally was a major ambition of ours, because it’s only 10 minutes away from the office, so is on our manor, as it were. And also, doing a big event at The NEC…that speaks for itself I think.” Ah yes, NEC…a gargantuan conference centre and music arena just outside Birmingham that has played host to events from the likes of Gatecrasher and Slammin’ in previous years. After the success of last year’s NYE-NEC, Slammin’ Vinyl are returning for an even bigger effort this year – again with some of the country’s biggest promotions. “Every event we do, we learn from it and try and make the next one better. The only major gripe from the punter’s on last year’s show was the queuing to get in, so we’ve sat down with the NEC venue management and have sorted this out for this year. We’ve added another brand new 2500 capacity room for Goodgreef and Frantic, so they’ve got a nice space of their own, well away from anything else. Birmingham legends Flashback join us and are also given a 2000 capacity room, so that’s going to be a marked improvement on the tiny room we used for old skool last year. The lighting and video set from Westfest is going in both the Drum & Bass and Hardcore rooms, so that’s going to look fantastic again, even better than last year. Finally, we’ve got Miss Moneypennys doing a blinding VIP room for us, so that should be great. Capacity is now 11,000, so once again it’s the biggest NYE party in the UK and quite possibly Europe. We hope to see you all there!”

If you don’t like making a big deal out of New Year’s, this isn’t really your thing. But if you like your music hard, fast and underground, and you like your parties so big that they feel like they’re heralding the end of the world – NYE-NEC is for you. Slammin’ Vinyl is something that every dance music fan should experience at least once in their life – get yourself down to one of their parties before they up and move to Amsterdam!