A Potted History of Lloydee

I think most kid's get there first proper introduction to music through the radio, mine came at the age of eleven when Father Christmas left me a top spec Realistic Portable Radio by Tandy with an ariel, I could pick-up pirate stations etc including Luxumberg 208.  This opened up a whole new world of music and by thirteen we'd moved from just outside Gloucester to Stourport-on-Severn, what a move that turned out to be, the local Youth Centre was very active with Disco's and this gave me my first taste of DJ'ing.

Now I to confess; I had no records to really talk about at fourteen but I did have an older brother that was starting to collect.  A big thanks goes to my big brother Mick, even now he's an inspiration to the type of music I both play and collect these day's.  Once word got around that I had Motown & Northern Soul to play I was asked both to play at Stourport Youth Club and the local High School.

By the age of fifteen I could pretty much go where I liked within the Stourport/Kidderminster area and hooked up with a local DJ called Keith Gavin.  Keith was running events at Stourport Civic Centre but the real place's he got to play proper music was in the smaller club's; this included a stint on a floating bar on the River Severn, with modified Garrard decks Keith could switch the 78 speed control to play at 48rpm, this was wild, suddenly a mid tempo record would sound like the 100mph records we were dancing to at the time.  Unfortunately Keith died in 2004 just as he was starting to get back onto the scene again, he'll be sorly missed..

From here I started playing regular spot's at Kidderminster Town Hall, this then introduced me to a whole new crowd and once I'd reached sixteen my Mother finally let go/allowed me to start going to All-Dayers and then All-Niters - dancing, record collecting, wow what a way to spend your time.  Tiffany's Halesowen on a Tuesday night, some place in Wolves, Birmingham's Lacarno, like most of us at the time it was down to where you could get a lift determined which SoulNite you ended up at.  My favorite to this day were the All-Niters being run out of Yate, more Southern then Northern Soul, a lot more Modern than the nights up North.  Come snow or rain we'd make our way down there, I even ended up running coach's from Kidderminster and calling in at Worcester, stopping at Michael Woods Services and onto Yate, as I remember it was £2.10 return, bargain.

I bumped in Mac G from Malvern selling records in Worcester the one weekend and even got lift's to Yate in the van, Mac ended up supplying the equipment towards the end for them.  Mac was running a Monday night in a bar in the then Blackfriers called The Dive Bar, although I think it's real name at the time was the Horseshoe Bar, whichever; I ended up playing the music there too.

Then: Got married and moved to Kidderminster in 82' and hooked up with Ian 'Wally' Wallace who was organising a Soulnite at The Briers in Kidderminster.  It went well for the first year but as we know the Early Eighties saw to demise of about 90% of music event's, everyone was getting married and having kids.  I sold the bulk of the collection, half to my brother and the other to Wally's brother-in-law.

Kid's have grown up and what else is there to do; find out where Soul do's are on, Mick had managed to keep a healthy interest in the music by playing at Scooter do's so his collection wasn't much affected.  Me, I discovered eBay in 2000 and started putting back together a collection, I see 1999/2000 as the re-start point for a lot people, over the last two years it's exploded again.

That's me done then, small time DJ in the backwaters of Worcestershire.  Favorite all time record and the one that moved me away from Slade & Bowie; Jnr Walker - Walk In The Night.  This made me sit up and take notice of Black Music properly from the USA.