After finally managing to blag 4 of my non raving mates to come to this, (and after doing some pissed up disco dancing on the dancefloor in flares) we arrived at Heaven and Hell. First thing I thought as I walked through the door, was that I was gonna kill that woman from heaven and hell if I saw her, as she banged on about a dresscode down the phone and really you could wear anything ! Anyway enough whinging (for now) as we walked through the door we found ourselves in the corridor and I could hear thumping beats coming from the heaven room. As I walked in I was confronted by what sounded like hardcore, but not the hardcore I was expecting from an old skool nite ! I literally ran to the DJ booth and saw DJ Brisk bouncing behind the decks and Storm on stage doing his usual class act ! ‘Heartbeatz’ was banging out of the speakers and I was loving it, then ‘Angel eyes’ then ‘Crazy love’, I was in heaven....In Heaven! Next up was Dougal and Smiley. Dougal started off with some right classics: ‘Steamtrain’, ‘Toytown’ etc, but only for about 20 mins. He then dropped '3000 cycles' and 'Can’t compete'- and then continued for the next 40 mins to rock the place with some great tunes. I had my doubts when I saw Dougal playing upfront, because after hearing him on Radio One doing his set I wasn’t really expecting a blinding set as the one I heard ! This was also the first time I had heard Smiley in person and he f*cking rocked it!! During this time my mates had been in hell, where some scally had threatened to kill one of them, so they came back into the heaven room. Following Dougal was Hixxy + Storm, who just dispensed of this whole old skool nite tradition and played a full hour of upfront hardcore, which was ace ! There was a lot of Raver Baby in there (in fact if I’m not mistaken probably all), but I have to say I didn’t care, I was happy in the knowledge that I was in a local(ish) place getting to listen to all these DJs.... and I was loving it!! After a quick trip to the bar as I hadn’t moved from the dancefloor in ages, I heard Smiley introduce a special guest MC for Vibes......It was Junior!! I have to say that my mates an MC and this guy is his idol, so he probably jizzed his pants as he came running from the hell room straight to the front of the stage! Anyway, at this point I noticed something a little odd about the sound when Vibes came on. Either I just went partially deaf or the speakers seemed to go to half power, I was gutted ! Vibes played a typical set, but the room seemed to be emptying ?? The next DJ was Slam, and I was ready to move to this one but my mates had gone home because they where knackered. So I was left with just me and my girlfriend, in the middle of heavens dance floor going absolutely mental with about 3 other people.......hmmm. I really didn’t know what it was but Slam was playing some great tunes and there was just no-one there! Got me down a bit that one. I went off to the bogs and when I returned my girlfriend started whinging that she was tired. It was 3.30 and it was her first rave I suppose, so off we went. As we left it looked like quite a few people were in the hell room, with Breeze's 'Lets fly' banging out. As I left the venue i asked one of the bouncers a question. Me - "excuse me, do you know where there are any taxi ranks round here?" . Bouncer "erm...Preston" (group of bouncers start laughing) Even after all the little shitty things that went on, for the first few hours I loved it. It got me down a bit at the end when the heaven room started to empty (but there’s no accounting for peoples tastes is there ). I had a good night, even my mates who weren’t ravers still outweighed the bad bits and say they had a good night. It was my first rave since Future Dance 7 and it still has got me (and some of my friends) wanting to go to another rave. And I daresay I'll be there if they have another in Blackpool as well.
