Happy New Year everyone...

Well looks like I am gonna write this before Tom Allardyce gets a chance! Judgement Day was brilliant on New Years Eve, basically.

I was trying to arrive early so that I had time to hear Smurf who was on first but didn't make it up there till 20 past 8 which left only 25 minutes before the end of Smurfs set. To my dismay I found that the queue was massive, but at least that gave me a chance to finish of my bottle of Vodka! I was surprised to find that I was in the venue after 15 minutes which was a lot quicker than at any of the Rez's.

As I entred the venue, I found really what I was expecting. The sound and lighting were fairly dissapointing but were adequte almost..... reminded me of what Rez used to be like. The stage was small and it was difficult to see the DJ, but the size of the stage made the venue seem bigger. I caught the last track of Smurf's set then headed over to have a chat with him. After speaking to Smurf, I saw Mr. Bass Generator and he looked a bit pissed allready, but I was hardly of a sober disposition myself. I was told that until last week there had only been 1,500 tickets sold but they had been selling like hotcakes in the last few days.

A nice thing in the venue was the two massive video screens at either side of the stage mostly playing the nuclear bomb scene from Terminator 2 and with the Judgement Day logo flashing about. Later on in the night, the Ultimate Buzz video was playing and it looked like they were live in Australia......... my God, if Australian raves are like the ones in the video, we are the ones who are missing out over here.

The DJ times were all strange so I can't remember who played when but the best DJ of the night would be Tom Wilson followed by Scott Brown. All the other DJs played all the old 1995 bouncy techno sets, which would have been good if just one DJ did it but there was about 8 that fucking did it! I really got sick of it by the end of the night....... oh yeah, almost everyone played Discoland.......... I counted it 9 times during the night. I went home and snapped that record in two cause I never wanna here it again! Other than that the music was fairly good during the night.

At midnight everyone moved into the main arena and it was packed..... after the bells everyone joined in singing "O' Flower Of Scotland" when the fireworks were going of inside. It was increddible. The night was a lot buisier than I had expected and it was the best atmosphere I have experienced recently.

At 3am a hangover set in and it was time to sit down so I staggared to arena two with a cup of coffee. This arena was supposed to be house and old skool...... but could the Scotland posse put up with this? NO! The funniest thing of the night was seeing the house arena turn in to pure 30000 bpm gabba..... excellent. There was a bit of trance thrown in at times as well though.

I asked Mr. Generator near the end of the night if he was going to do another one at Inglston and his reply was "Fuck Eye Man" which roughly translated "Yes I Definately Will" :)

The Fubar on Christmas day was so busy you could not move and I was also told it was jam packed on New Years Eve too......... so does this mean there could be a revival of the Scottish hardcore scene? YES! It looks as if there is a lot of life still in hardcore yet for Scotland.

And one thing that is bugging me is all the pesimists on this list who say the hardcore scene is dead.......... NO IT IS FUCKING NOT. Why were all the New Years Eve events packed out if the scene is dead? And as we have allready heard from someone..... Helter Skelter was so busy, you couldn't move. If there are people on the list that don't like hardcore anymore, fine, but stop posting to the list that the music is "shite" and the scene is "dead".

Hope 1998 is good year for everyone........

PLUR,

- Dave (DJ Cheddar) (david.mcneill@ukonline.co.uk)