I've always been one for big events but when I was the line up for United Dance I didn't really fancy it. I was disappointed by the way that they had relegated hardcore and when I saw that Revolution was on the same night I decided that looked much better. Slammin Sam made the trip up north to Sheffield for it and I'm glad that we chose to do something different as it was a really good night. We got there at about 9:45 and were pleased to see there were plenty of people queueing outside for it. It opened at 10:00 and we were in for about 10:25. I was told later on by someone that they had to queue for 40 minutes so maybe that is something that could be improved for next time. The venue was all contained in the same room with a dancefloor in the middle, a bar, seating areas and a really loud sound system. It was a good rave venue with a capacity of 700 and on the night the attendance couldn't have been far off that as it was pretty full. First set was Topgroove and he played a good trancey set including the 1999 remix that Hixxy tends to play a lot. Next was Sarge and he also played a trance set including a few Scott Brown tunes which as always went down well. On at midnight was CJ Glover, another of the Revolution residents. He played a slightly harder set than those before him and kept the energy going. Following him was Energy and for me he played the set of the night. He played a great selection of really hard and banging tunes. Recently I've been slowly getting into freeform and I was impressed by his set. Hopefully Paul-O will book him again soon. After him came Brisk who has now played at all three Revolution events so far. It's easy to see why he keeps getting booked as he came on and did his usual hard set. He arrived late and was on till about 3:20. This meant that the last DJ Paul-O only had 40 minutes but no-one seemed to mind. Paul-O played a hard trance set to finish the night off with. The thing I most enjoyed about this night was the crowd. I went there in my Liverpool shirt and had loads of people shaking my hand and chatting to me about it. I met loads of new people there, a classic example of this was DJ Spinner. He got chatting to Sam in the toilets and when he found out Sam was from London he said "Respect to you Sam. It's people like you that keep the hardcore scene going". The revolution music policy is no cheese, only hard and banging hardcore. This works well and all the crowd seem to love it. The MC's were all good and at one point one of them was right in the middle of the crowd with the mike. I thought that was a nice touch and meant he could interact with the crowd better. It's events like Revolution that will keep the hardcore scene going. When promoters like Slammin Vinyl are losing faith in hardcore and turning their backs on it there are promoters such as Revolution who are making the effort to move the scene forward. If you live in the midlands or the north then you have no excuse not to go. If you live in London or down south you should still make the effort as you won't be disappointed. Revolution is on fortnightly so the next one is on Feb 18th. If all goes to plan I'll be making it a double raving weekend with Raindance. Shouts go to Slammin Sam for making the journey up, Bug (didn't expect to see you here mate), Majestik, Spinner and Paul-O.
