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Tony's Ballroom Headlines 8-11-1988


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You look back now at the furore of the time and doesn't it bring a wry smile to your face, was it a case of being  easy targets?

I don't think there would be a toilet in any half decent sized village public house these days that doesn't have traces of the old Columbian marching powder in them, yet no one mentions it.

Is it because it's the drug of choice of the "Establishment", or have the authorities just admitted defeat?

 

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interestingly at the same time, revenge were doing massive illegal raves for thousands, 50k sound systems ect, but it took the rozzers a while to catch on to it. I can remember hearing one on the way to Tony's as we stopped at little chef just outside Blackburn.

Edited by geeselad
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The bobbies where right about one thing though. People would travel from as far away as Southampton and Edinburgh to attend Tony,s. and much further as it turned out. Hate it when the lying bastard,s are right. After Wigan. Tony,s empress for me alongside Bretby  where the best nighter,s ever.

Steve

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Remember one night sat in the corner with Pete in our usual state when two heavy types in donkey jackets came in. They took one look at us and made a bee-line, plonked themselves directly in front of us and kept looking round and staring - I was packed off to get a drink and see if anyone knew them - they didn't and everyone swore they were squad, in fact when I returned everyone else around us had 'drifted off' to get a drink and failed to return - like vampires cowering away from the light. I sat back down trying, prompting them to stand up, turn round and I expected to flash their warrant cards - instead they drunkenly blurted out 'Pete isn't it? Haven't seen you since the Torch' - turned out it was their first nighter since about 74 (Pete it turned out knew them well - forget their names - one was Joe).

I always remember how there was a tide mark of states at the top of the stairs by the end of the night - us included - everyone used to bomb up their for verbals when they were flying high and then inevitably decided the long flights of threatening stone steps were simply too dangerous to make it down once they moved into the electric zombie stage after about 5.00am - even saw a few making their way down on their backsides one step at a time.

Dx

Edited by DaveNPete
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Found the scan on the discs from when I did the Top 500 book - this is full print quality.

Dx

 

PS If there are any images from the Top 500 book (most of the memorabillia is either mine or Pete's, obviously I can't let you have things I don't own) - like the boss' Wigan membership #0217 give me a shout.

Edited by DaveNPete
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plenty of soul goers went to raves yes it may of caused a few problems but it was just another youth movement like soul,punk,mods and new romantics etc enjoyed some great raves and was involved in running some of the biggest in north of england post breaking in warehouses using the same private club membership to get around the sunday observance act. blackburn was the main area of illegal warehouse raves and had the police in lancashire going crazy. so maybe that was one of the reasons of stopping soul allnighters not just the london raves i could go on but that was the main reason lancashire constabulary where objecting in my opinion

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4 hours ago, DaveNPete said:

Found the scan on the discs from when I did the Top 500 book - this is full print quality.

Dx

 

PS If there are any images from the Top 500 book (most of the memorabillia is either mine or Pete's, obviously I can't let you have things I don't own) - like the boss' Wigan membership #0217 give me a shout.

Many thanks Dave, appreciated mate. 

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Guest BabyBoyAndMyLass

Regularly used to attend this niter late eighties, used to take a car full of one-arm bandit addicts, and bags and bags of sweeties. Bang in the middle of Blackburn. Happily I can remember absolutely nothing about it, apart from one time, on the way back, everyone in the car singing 'Ain't no big thing' so assume that The Radiants was a spin there. Lot of Bury lads, Macclesfield and Crewe lads used to go there, I know cause they used to try to paranoid me out, me being so young, never worked though. Wasn't that great for lasses however. Cracking niter though.

Edited by BabyBoyAndMyLass
Grammar
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11 hours ago, BabyBoyAndMyLass said:

Regularly used to attend this niter late eighties, used to take a car full of one-arm bandit addicts, and bags and bags of sweeties. Bang in the middle of Blackburn. Happily I can remember absolutely nothing about it, apart from one time, on the way back, everyone in the car singing 'Ain't no big thing' so assume that The Radiants was a spin there. Lot of Bury lads, Macclesfield and Crewe lads used to go there, I know cause they used to try to paranoid me out, me being so young, never worked though. Wasn't that great for lasses however. Cracking niter though.

Ain't No Big Thing would have been the Jordan Brothers, Rob Marriott the Dj.

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10 hours ago, BabyBoyAndMyLass said:

Regularly used to attend this niter late eighties, used to take a car full of one-arm bandit addicts, and bags and bags of sweeties. Bang in the middle of Blackburn. Happily I can remember absolutely nothing about it, apart from one time, on the way back, everyone in the car singing 'Ain't no big thing' so assume that The Radiants was a spin there. Lot of Bury lads, Macclesfield and Crewe lads used to go there, I know cause they used to try to paranoid me out, me being so young, never worked though. Wasn't that great for lasses however. Cracking niter though.

More likely to be Rob Marriots  Jordan Brothers version of "Aint no big thing" :thumbsup:

Us lads from Aycliffe in the NE loved Guy's Blackburn and especially Mexborough do's, happy days

Kev

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Guest BabyBoyAndMyLass

Cheers Chalky and Kev, never heard of it!

But yeah I'll take your word for that, I have the song on Chess by The Radiants, always assumed that was the one, but yes thanks for the heads-up.

One thing I don't recall, having thought about it reading up the thread, is I can't recall any fuss with the fuzz at the place.

I remember an associate dropping 150 quid out of the one-arm bandit at Blackburn, later we went to an all-day snooker club and he put the whole lot into another bandit and dropped about a fiver! Some of my most vivid memories of allniters were the bandit addicts, there were loads of 'em, bet we all knew one or two, or were one, they spent the whole allniter playing 'em. A friend once told me to guard the bandit with my life as it was about to drop but he'd run out of money, it caused quite a fuss because another guy had been watching the machine and also knew it was about to pay out! I stood there pretending to play it and the guy was getting a bit frustrated, soon though my mate turned up having borrowed all his missus dough, he put another big chunk of cash in and still it didn't pay out, the machine had been set to not pay out! Keele it was, the machine owner must've been wise to the fact that allniter goers were like a magnet to the bandits!

I lived at that time in a shared house with a Hell's Angel, between us we bought an old early nudge machine and fixed it, set it to non-pay and guys used to come back to ours after the pub or after an allniter and put all their change into it, great it was!

Thing is the bandit guys didn't know that the machines can be set so that they don't win, used to make me laugh, small things amuse small minds eh? We'd take tons of risks to get some dough and then most of it'd go in the bandit, not my share though!

I dunno, things you remember eh? I didn't play the bandits myself, Morecombe was funny as well for the same reason.

Happy days!

 

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Guest BabyBoyAndMyLass
22 hours ago, DaveNPete said:

Sounds like Martin Brogan and Curley to me - remember Brian Rae dropping £100 out of the machine and then another £50 later on.

Dx

Hi, no it wasn't those guys. I know precisely who it was in my tale, but I'm not saying no to your comment obviously, as I said before I'm sure we all knew lads who played the bandits and have similar tales to the one I told. Do recall Brian being into the bandits as well!

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