Andrew Weatherall

Ahhh maybe that’s it, it really does seem strange it’s not really out there.

I had a similar experience at Basics around that time (could well have been the same night). He was in the basement at the Music Factory playing a particularly pummelling set of panel beaters. We stuck it out though and were rewarded by this as his last tune:

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Sounds like it! Was definitely in the basement

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Ahhhhh the Basics Basement during the Pleasure Room years was a wonderful dungeon of delight.

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Did it have a room like a study/library with books on shelves??
Vague memory of that at a night in Leeds.

I went to the Basics at the Music Factory, Pleasure Rooms and Mint, but my memories of those early years are a bit hazy. I could well be wrong, but the Music Factory was two floors (with DJ Ease’s Funky Mule upstairs), a very black interior with a boat on one floor or was that elsewhere? The Pleasure Rooms was far more opulent and rouge, I’m sure the upper floors had fish tanks (?), but the basement I can only remember being dark and musically heavy.

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Can’t remember (30 years ago :face_with_peeking_eye:) but it was a maze of different rooms. I preferred the music factory venue before it which had a great upstairs bit. The “chill out” room at pleasure rooms wasn’t as good.

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It was a lorry cab not a boat I think - it’s where the decks were in the main room. I think there was a basement at music factory too and it was over three floors but I may just be getting mixed up with the Pleasure Rooms, it’s so long ago. PR was definitely less scuzzy.

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Music Factory was three floors - Huggy with more techno leanings in the basement, Ralph more house on middle floor (with lorry cab), and the chill out upstairs.

Pleasure Rooms (formerly Rickys) was also three floors with similar musical set up. Huggy in the basement playing harder stuff, Ralph on ground floor which had a double height ceiling and balcony I think, and then the chill out in a room off to the side upstairs.

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Ah yes, it was a truck with the DJ booth in the cabin, maybe.

Yeah the chill out on the top floor was where Ease did Funky Mule I think.

I thought the basement floor at the Music Factory was a separate gay club called Bananas?

I remember MF had a merch cabinet near the stairs that had a BtB tshirt I would love now, but never felt right buying at the time.

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Basics at The Music Factory started on one floor for the first few months late 91, early days it was actually called The Chocolate Factory before being renamed. Second room then opened, then finally the basement (which was originally a seperate gay club (i think) until Basics took it over. Ali Cooke resident in the basement playing hard stuff, Ralph Lawson on the middle floor with the truck as the DJ booth, and top floor as Jolyon says was chill out / balearic and funky. Not really a permanent resident top floor but Boggy, Cziz Hall played most weeks up there with regular guest like Moonboots, Joanne Hall, Chris Cruiks, Jake Purdey, JAM MCs and a few more. That top floor was amazing. The little cave like dancefloor with its camouflage netting walls and ceiling was a right little sweatbox. And the porn films being projected on the walls opposite the upstairs bar, Good times!. Your right that the Pleasure Rooms was more fancy, lots of red and burgundy, with fish tanks built into the walls. Boggy and Simon Mu residents in that “chill out” room, which had the big window behind the decks looking out over the main street below.

@jolyon, do you remember the clothes shop next to the middle floor DJ booth in the music factory ? Think it was called Sacred. Lad called Moose used to work in there, and occasionally DJ’d upstairs as well.

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So you remember the little clothes / merch shop in the MF ?

Had this discussion with my mates over Christmas and none of them could remember it existing.

I don’t think I do.

I have to admit I mainly went to Ronson at The Music Factory, I was 18 and didn’t quite feel dapper enough for BtB until later in the day, but did catch a couple at the MF.

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When Huggy first started he used play top floor most weeks, playing all his funky balearic stuff. He then took over in the basement after Ali Cooke passed away.

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MD basement was my go to, loved it in there. Pleasure Rooms never cut it in the same way for me.

That library/study room sounds very much like the ‘chillout’ room at Hard Times which at that time was under C&A. Jason Boardman played regularly in there.

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Sorry going off topic even further but my mention of Hard Times just reminded me of this picture of a HT party at Bagleys. What a picture. Imagine the wage bill now.

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Was that club under C&A called Nato ?

Yes I think that’s right

Thank you! That sounds about right, queueing up on the street outside some shops. That’s why the picture above was reminding me, but you’re right it must have been a C&A.

I was over from Sheff where most of the clubs were off somewhere down a street, so it was new to me to be in the middle of town on a high street!