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May 30, 2019Music

DJ Profiles & Tales: #Stu Lefevre

(Lightspeed / Zap)

Stu @Strathmartine Rd.

Blending a mix of dark jax, break beat, techno and samples, Stu’s mix of 2003 was the sound track I used to put on before every big night out.. It’s still a belter.

Check it out below on mixcloud if you haven’t heard it already…

We Dj’ed and promoted together for around 3 years in Dundee in the mid 90’s.

Destination, further…

I met Stu just before my 20th birthday in 1994; we were with mutual friends, and both at the legendary club Pure in Edinburgh for the first time.

It was Pure’s 4th birthday celebrations, we both joined the club’s membership immediately.

The party lasted all night, and by the time everyone sobered up a couple of days later, we all had made new friends for life.

We didn’t know it at the time, but we were embarking on a journey – destination, further, faster, louder, more…

The Techno Society

Stu is a great DJ now, but back then we were both learning the absolute basics, the hard way – no sync buttons or free mp3 tracks, just a beat up mixer and belt drive decks!

At the time we were making an almost weekly pilgrimage to either Edinburgh or Glasgow to dance and party – what we really wanted was to party in Dundee where we lived, but choices were limited.

Dundee is a great city for nurturing and reinventing the ‘underground’ scene over and over – before our time, there had already been an ‘original rave’ scene come and go.. by the mid 90’s Fat Sam’s (an ‘original’ rave venue) was only known as a boozy student club which did occasional live gigs.

My earliest experiences of ‘proper’ parties in Dundee were hosted by The Spaceship – they were a student focused party outfit, pumping out a lighter, slower side of dance music with funk and soul thrown in..

They were very popular, but it wasn’t what we were looking for.

There was a bit of a vacuum for tougher House and Techno beats to dance to; others had noticed too – new clubs opened at the Dundee Uni student union, standouts, ‘Taste’ and ‘DoThisDoThat’ – both bringing in big budget house and techno guests, encouraging the ‘party vibe’.

Dundee Uni’s union had a strong anti-reaction to the non-student party people filling their dance floor, fuelling a need for a venue outside the university’s jurisdiction.

By the start of the summer of ’95 I had dropped out of Uni, and moved into the large detached house Stu and some others had rented.

I traded my guitar for belt-drive ‘pro150’ decks and a basic 4 channel mixer from our mate Keith (who was an amazing DJ and one of our early inspirations)

Between us we had almost enough vinyl to mix a full C90 tape.

Every day we turned it up to 11, and ‘practiced’. We must have driven our house mates nuts!

The very 1st Lightspeed flyer

Stu had discovered that anyone could start a special interests club in the Abertay Student Union, and one of the benefits was that you could book the union’s main hall on Thursday nights to run events…

They had a bar, dancefloor, PA, lights and a proper set of Technics SL1200 MK2 decks… The Techno Society was created!

We were super excited to play on the big system, and finally get a shot on a set of pro standard Technics decks over a PA, what could go wrong?!?

I actually cant remember how Stu’s first set went, but mine was a disaster!

I hadn’t realised until almost the very end of my set that the pitch controller on my cheap Pro150’s were orientated in reversed position, so the whole night I had been in complete despair as I couldn’t mix anything and .. well, let’s just say: it was a very loud and public lesson on the PA.

Aww, we were so happy…

After a few months, we had gotten considerably better at mixing (but still very raw) when we decided to throw an after Taste party in our house.. it was a big house, so we needed big speakers.. of course.

A hippy friend introduced us to a fella named Ray Ross who would sort the music system for us.. and, he did it a treat!

Ray became a good friend, and would be an ever present part of the underground music scene in the north east coast of Scotland until well after I left.

At this point we weren’t really part of Dundee’s party scene as we were going out of town to dance; we didn’t think many people would come – this was pre-social media and very early days for mobiles…

We shouldn’t have worried!

An hour after Taste had closed its doors (2:30am), our house was jumping, and rammed full.

A lucky double exposure from our party camera

Cool party people I didn’t even know existed in Dundee were having an amazing night in our house.. Stu and I had our very first proper audience.

Our house looked like a scene from a movie party, smoke billowing out of the back door, strobes punching a staccato against the curtains, and bass man… lots of bass.

The next morning we had a little trouble with some party crashers who were body builder ‘roid boys.. it could have gone really wrong, but a larger than life character who had been the life and soul of the party all night intervened with only fast talking and humour .. everyone went home happy.

That character was Scott Preston – Scott was a little older than us and had been through the earlier party scene, he knew everyone had boundless energy, and along with his cousin Ricky was the funniest most entertaining double act you could ever meet at a party.

We knew we’d see them again.

Scott ended up as a partner in our first club ‘Lightspeed’ later in the year.

Ray tidied up pretty much all of our house the next morning, set the fire, pulled the sofa in and wired his cd player into the PA..

We were all pretty worse for wear and couldn’t believe it, we’d had such an amazing night..

I have a fond memory of being super chilled on the couch listening to Born Slippy by Underworld (well before it was a hit), toasting by the roaring fire laughing about the night’s events.

Ray had a huge grin on his face as he chilled with us – something had started!

The very next week we got a call – There’s a house who would like you to do a party for them? you in?

Moving into the club

The ‘Nod Collective’

The party scene was in full swing almost every weekend in Dundee, eventually we caught the attention of a group of – well, let’s be kind and say, entrepreneurs – who realised that we had become popular enough to fill a club.

They had the resources and know how to start a club night; and we had the hunger for more – we got top billing and by the end of the summer ‘Nod Collective featuring Lightspeed’ at Jasper’s started..

Jasper’s was a pokey little dark shit-hole of a place, out of the way and off the beaten path – perfect.

Those first nights were an insane amount of fun, every night it was packed well beyond its capacity and it was riotous to say the least.

We had a couple of gripes with the organisers which lead to us leaving to do our own thing.

Firstly, they were only paying us with a trivial record allowance.. enough to buy a couple of 12″/wk … not enough to keep the sound fresh.

(..with hindsight, it was amazing to get paid at all for our first real gig!)

Second, (more importantly) the night also included a couple of other DJ’s who had a very different view on what was quality dance music, they preferred a much more commercial, vocal style than we wanted.

We knew that the time had come for us to strike out on our own.

We had allies now.

Ray introduced us to some new PA people and Scott joined us as a partner.. using his knowledge of the party people of Dundee to help us manage the clientele.

We needed a venue – Jasper’s was in the basement of the Tay Hotel, they had 2 large function rooms, but we couldn’t afford both – so we hired the smaller of the two and filled the end of the room with as big a PA as we could squeeze in!

We invited our pals Adi and Funky to bring their drums and percussive instruments, and ‘The Amazing Ringworm Brothers’ offered to perform fire breathing, and hanging things from their intimate piercings on stage.. Our madness was ready!

Our first night was on an off week for the Jaspers club, so we didn’t clash with them, but the hotel had hired out the other function room for a wedding function…

Dave & Stu, mid set, Tay Hotel

It turned out great in the end, many of the wedding guests ended up in our room dancing the night away as the puny PA playing wedding music next door was no match for our wall of speakers!

The hotel did eventually stop booking other events at the same time, and we moved into the bigger room, and doubled the PA!

We never sold out completely , but we did manage to bring in enough customers to hire both rooms with a set of ‘chill out’ djs in the second room, and make enough to continue and buy records as needed.

By the time we moved back downstairs we had become popular enough to start hiring our DJ heros, and we brought the Pure DJs to Dundee for the first of many times.

The owners of the Tay Hotel had decided that there was money to be made out of the club scene, so they gave Jasper’s a makeover and called it ‘The Purple Rooms’.

We were moved into the new venue on alternate Friday nights and had to take the new deal..

We weren’t too unhappy as the Purple Rooms were basically Jasper’s with a bit of tacky glam added..

We turned down the lights and let the techno rip.

The place was jumping, people seemed to like the new cleaner set up and it still gave us that basement vibe we liked.

Unfortunately, the troubles began there. The owner had taken a renewed interest in her club / investment and didn’t really like our vibe

*although she loved the money we made her.. she wanted us to be, basically something else..

Saturday nights were run by another local club – the promoters had a pretty low reputation around the scene as they conducted themselves in a way that just pissed people off..to us they would do things like try to make it so that we would leave our kit in situ, and then they would try use it for free.. this became a constant hassle.

We had many great nights and funny moment in the Purple Rooms, but eventually we said enough, and went to look for another venue.

By November ’97 we had been doing gigs elsewhere in Scotland, playing parties and other local gigs, but nothing regular in Dundee.

We decided on one last hurrah…

Two of the greatest clubs Scotland has ever produced are Pure, and Slam.. as far as we knew they had never been billed together so we decided to do it.

It was a Wednesday night that i will always remember.. We had convinced an owner of a club called ‘Oasis’ that our party would be a great diversification for him – his usual clientele were middle aged crooners.. certainly not 300 crazy ravers.

‘Oasis’ were totally unprepared for the party of chaos that ensued.. at one crescendo the fire breathing ‘Amazing Ring Worm Bros’ cabaret act set off the fire alarm, which no-one heard because we had brought our own PA..

When the fully suited up firemen came in a few minutes later, the party just cheered harder and raved on..

It all ended on an amusing but sad note… we didn’t make nearly enough to settle our bills for the night.

We paid token amounts to each of the local services we hired and then had to face the 4 DJ’s who were expecting cash payment.. we had some but not all – we decided that an even split was the only fair deal.

With equal parts loathing and laughter I remember counting out 1 & 2p’s from the bucket as Scott (who was wearing an extendable pair of ‘Mr Tickle’ arms) asked the leaving ravers if anyone would donate for the poor DJ fees… we didn’t make enough, and they took everything we gave them. (we did settle up the outstanding some time afterwards)

I didn’t work with Slam or anyone from Soma for years after that.. such a shame, embarrassing for all concerned.

Life took over and we went our separate ways for a few years, Stu ended up in the USA where he continued to DJ until he returned to the UK.

In 2000 I invited Stu to take up a residency at ZAP on Friday nights in a new venue I was involved with called Foundation.

He played some stonking sets with co residents RIB and supported some heavy hitter guests at the club including Colin Favor, Bake Baxter, and Frankie Bones.

Stu remained a resident at Foundation after I left, until Foundation closed in 2002 – but, that’s a whole other part to the story 🙂