Every cloud has a silver lining, as the old saying goes. I don’t believe that thought crossed my mind at all as the police officer standing outside the club gave me short shrift, apparently running very low on the ‘fucks I could give’ meter.
I had finished DJing at the Escape Club, a little sweatbox of a club in Southampton where, for a brief period, I had a Saturday night residency.
As far as I remember, it had been another cracking night but my memory of the evening was somewhat tainted by the theft of all of my records that I had brought with me that night.
At this point in my life, I had not yet learned to drive, and walking with a box of records 20 miles to a venue was not an option. Thankfully, I had the perfect arrangement whereby my brother would give me a lift there and back, and he and some friends would get free entry to the club. He had a VW transporter which made the logistics of moving a large box of records back and forth nice and easy, thanks to the sliding door.
That evening, while waiting out the front of the club as I was inside about to get paid for the night, a group of guys piled into his van. While a group jumped into the back and made themselves at home, another guy also jumped into the passenger seat up front. “Give us a lift home, mate! Go on, gis a lift” said the guy at the front, and who knows what else. It didn’t really matter what he was asking for, he wasn’t after a lift at all. No, his job was to be the distraction. Moments later, all the guys in the back left as quickly as they had arrived … along with all of my records.
Now, this was not a small record box. I had used a large food packing crate for a while and the extra space meant that I didn’t necessarily have to pick and chose a set for the evening. More choice = more records … but that’s not a problem for would-be thieves if you have four burly blokes to take a corner each of the convenient carry handles that this crate had.
In the blink of an eye I had lost all of the records that I needed to DJ with. Even worse, because I tended to group my collection based on the record label, I had entire collections wiped out that evening.
- Moving Shadow? All gone.
- Suburban Base? Nothing left.
- Shut Up and Dance? Sit down and cry!
Even now I can remember extremely rare white label promos that went that evening which could never be replaced (because they ran into legal problems due to samples used and later were released with new singers instead of the sample).
Two things happened soon after this event that are the silver lining (that I had no idea about at that point in time).
Firstly, somehow I was able to claim on house insurance for the record theft. I can’t remember the details, not sure if there was some bending of description here (tools of the trade?), but eventually insurance paid out based on my assessment of their value at the time.
I could not have waited for that payout to sort me out for the next weekend’s DJ slot, though, so I had already bought a load of replacement records by the time the payout came. What to do with this money, then? More records? Or … maybe I could finally upgrade the crappy belt drive Technics turntables I had for something better. That’s right, dickheads, you stealing my records actually ended up paying for my Technics 1210s!
The other silver lining was down to the generosity and kindness of various record label owners and promotions agencies who used to send me promo records back then. Having had whole collections wiped out in one go, I asked some of the labels if they could help me out to try to replenish before the next gig. I mentioned Moving Shadow and Suburban Base earlier and the reason they stick out for me is because they both sent me literally their resepecive label’s entire back catalogue at the time. I actually ended up owning more of their 12″ releases than I previously did. Hats off to you, Rob Playford and Danny Donnelly.
Just going back to the decks again for a moment, note that the slipmats on there—Boogie Times Records and Suburban Base—came in the same bumper record relief package from Suburban Base, and I am still using those slipmats 32 years later.
I dunno, maybe that grumpy copper did me a favour after all by not bothering to go after the thieving bastards?
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