Tribute to Shaft at Hull Welly Club 1993 to 1997

the true story that has never been told

The night called Shaft cannot be found in any histories of club culture.  While it existed, it was never publicized outside Hull, nor has it been acknowledged retrospectively since its demise in June 1997.  But for a few years, it was the best in the world.  Like nothing seen before or since, the only nights that compare are ones I have read about.  Unbelievable?  Yes, but true - these are my memories of Shaft.

Shaft wasn't a packed night, it was a PACKED night.  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.  Every Friday.  Year after year.  Coming for a night playing music that you could not find anywhere else, that the media was starting to lose interest in or had no knowledge of to begin with.  And in Hull, where supposedly there was no large scale audience for anything other than cheese, so called alternative or four to the floor.  How did this miracle occur?  

Firstly, I must admit, I DJed and promoted Shaft for 4 of its 4 and a half years, so my opinions may be biased.  However I am also in a better position than most to recount the Shaft story.  The only evidence I can offer is a couple of write ups from a long disbanded listings magazine, a few fliers that look better than the majority of fliers that have appeared in the following decade, and a collection of the most amazing music to come out of the 1990s, much of which was completely ignored by other DJs and the media at the time.  Oh, and the memories....

DJ Arms And Legs drops the future funk, circa 1995.  Courtesy Becky Small

1992, Hull, UK, I was a student, although I was more concerned with music and the local club scene than my studies.  I was aware that none of the funk nights in Hull were very funky, yet I was convinced that a night playing the classic '70s funk sound would be massive, as this music was becoming more and more popular and fashionable.  I asked my friend JP (now known as The Human Spirograph) to join forces with me in trying to start a night.  JP had been running a great 1960s night called Magic Roundabout at a Hull nightclub called The Welly, however for a number of reasons the night had gone off the boil and JP killed it in 1992. 

As well as being best of friends JP and I both had experience of collecting and DJing vintage black music.  Whereas my tastes veered more towards jazz, JP was rooted in northern soul.  We had both become interested in funk and '70s jazz over the course of 1992.  Our interests had been sparked by a night called Revival, run by DJs Mr Kicks and Paul Clark aka The Brothers In Jazz.  Revival used to play a lot of music that sounded very mainstream to us at the time, however they did play a number of harder edged funk and jazz cuts near the close of the night.  My dream was to have a night playing this sound all night, mixed with some '60s soul and R'n'B. 

Shaft 4th birthday party flier, 1997.  Each year we held a birthday party at rival Hull nightclub Room.

Revival was also based at The Welly, a large, dark, dirty club just outside the city centre.  Although Revival was packing in a massive student crowd on alternate Wednesdays, generally speaking The Welly was not at a high point in its history.  As dance music was becoming more mainstream its audience were attracted to cleaner, glitzier venues.  The Welly was stuck with a decreasing rave and hardcore audience on its weekends, and nothing else seemed to be working for them.  We both knew The Welly was a dive, we also knew that it was the only venue suitable for a night of obscure '70s street music.  Although there were other DJs in Hull who were also playing funk at this time, I had no intention of asking them, or anyone else, to join me in our proposed venture.  Or so I thought.

One night JP and I were at some crap night at long since disbanded Hull nightclub The Tower (famous for loose women and fight loving males) when he told me a drunk guy had just given him a flier for a funk night in Reading.  The guy had then gone on to insult JP over his dress sense and tried to chat up his girlfriend of the time, however I was more impressed by the fact that someone living in Hull was involved with a bona fide funk night.  I didn't manage to meet this 'kid' (in Hull kid refers to adults as well as children) until several weeks later when he was more sober and less obnoxious.  I spoke to Michael (later to become known as DJ Arms and Legs, then MJ Down) briefly, he struck me as having a definite interest in quality music, although he was quite reserved and also quite bemused at meeting 2 Mods who were so interested in funk.

Several weeks later I ended up going to Michael's house to check out his tunes.  In fact he'd had almost all his collection stolen several months earlier whilst he was DJing in Basingstoke, however between the tunes he had left and those he'd acquired since, I was impressed.  What really impressed me was Michael's attitude to music, he seemed to be really into what he thought was good rather than what  was fashionable, and like me his tastes were for the funkier sounds.  He also had an interest in jazz, and what really blew my mind was an Ed Thigpen LP from the mid '70s.  I knew Ed Thigpen as the drummer on a straight ahead mid '60s jazz LP by Oscar Peterson that I owned, but to be making his own funky jazz LP in the '70s - wow, I didn't know such things existed.  

Sweaty Shaft dancefloor circa 1996.  Courtesy MJ Down

On my way home I realized that with Michael involved in our night we would be unstoppable.  Next time I saw JP I told him I wanted to ask Michael to join us, which JP agreed to readily.  In fact he looked a bit surprised that I wanted someone else onboard, as normally I was reluctant to work with other DJs, most of whom I looked down on.  Next time I saw Michael I asked him if he wanted to become an equal partner in our night, should we get one,  and he agreed instantly to the idea.  By now the idea of doing a night seemed very exciting,  yet none of us had any idea just how much our lives were going to be changed by our decision to work together. 

Towards the end of '92 JP and I approached The Welly and agreed to start up a weekly Monday night beginning in January.  I had decided on the name Shaft several months previously.  I had watched the film Shaft earlier in the year and it had totally changed my life, I found the sheer style of it unbelievable and I had watched it again and again.  It seemed like the perfect name for a night.  At this time none of us had had any massive success with our previous promotions, in fact Michael had not even DJed in Hull before.  Getting a weekly night was a blast.  

In 1992 club culture was a long way off from what it is now, and I was living in my own world at the time anyway, so my knowledge of music in general, and DJing in particular, was very limited.  For instance, a week before the first Shaft JP mentioned the term 'mixing' to me and I had literally no idea what he was talking about.  I knew no one who owned decks, at this time mixing records was an obscure hobby that few people indulged in, a lot of DJs certainly didn't bother.  People were telling me we should be playing hip hop, another term that I knew nothing about, although I had heard the phrase before.  Modern music was of little interest to me, as a jazzer I looked down on anything made with the aid of computers.  My interests had been widened over the previous year by a few acid jazz type releases with a bit of a retro funk feel, but hip hop?  I didn't know what it meant, but I knew I didn't like it.

The very first Shaft poster, Jan 1993.  It worked perfectly, although in retrospect our low budget and lack of experience are apparent.

Soon enough, the first Shaft rolled around.  We fly posted the city the week before, and during the day we bombarded University campuses with our home made, photocopied fliers.  By Monday night my stress levels were off the scale,  but all went well.  So we couldn't mix and weren't experts on the music?  At least we were trying to do something good.  Our strengths were that all 3 of us had our own different tastes and tunes, and we all had very high musical standards.  Fortunately Michael had some more progressive tracks, including some hip hop, which much to my surprise I really liked.  We all had enough experience to know how to play to an audience, and we made the music as mainstream as we could get it without compromising our standards.

So far so good.  The night had a clearly defined music policy - we played funk, jazz and hip hop, and by playing a lot of hits we made it accessible to a range of people.  Our audience knew roughly what to expect and they got it.  Although our lack of experience was obvious we tried our best to learn as quickly as we could, and, slowly, the night grew in popularity.  By March the Welly management offered us Friday nights.  We had been trying to persuade them to do this from the off, however we were still unsure as to whether or not such minority music could work on a weekend.  The first Shaft on a Friday was packed beyond belief, although we attracted a lot of students our hip hop leanings meant we also attracted an increasing non student audience as well.  The numbers seemed to grow each Friday.  Not only were we attracting a lot of people, we seemed to get slightly more females than males each week - success beyond our wildest dreams. 

Our next Shaft poster, March 1993.  Again our low budget is apparent, however it still looks good.

The first year of Shaft was an exciting time for me.  I had never considered that I would be able to play music to a massive amount of people every week, least of all in Hull.  Yet it was happening.  It wasn't easy - for the first few months I actually came out in a rash each week after Shaft because I was so stressed.  I felt out of my depth playing sounds I was unfamiliar with.  And during the summer our numbers were decimated, suddenly we were trying to play to a large nightclub with hardly any one in it.  But we got better and more confident, the summer ended and the hordes grew and grew - Shaft was back on top.

All well and good, but the best night ever?  Hardly, we had the numbers but there were still a lot of people in Hull who were not interested in a night playing retro music mixed with hip hop.  Our audience loved hip hop, but it attracted an aggressive element who refused to dance to anything else and seemed determined to ruin the atmosphere we had worked so hard to create.  Fortunately salvation was at hand. 

From the beginning of Shaft, Michael had played a small number of records that were hard to categorise but fitted in perfectly with our policy of funk, jazz and hip hop.  They were tunes that sampled funk and jazz, yet they didn't have rapping on them.  Nor were they particularly famous, in fact tunes like Huh?, Sweet Sister Funk and How Gee were unknown to anyone apart from adventurous DJs.  Yet they rocked the dance floor better than anything and appealed to a progressive audience.  Their jazz funk flavour meant they fitted in perfectly with our hip hop selection, they also appealed to a house audience due to their structure of instrumental and vocal loops building in intensity. 

I liked these tunes but I had no idea where to find similar ones, and anyway I was convinced that our audience had come to hear a specific, mostly retro sound that had established our name.  It was JP who turned me around at this time.  He didn't DJ much for the first few months of Shaft, helping more on the promotional side.  At this time he was working as assistant manager at a very fashionable bar in Hull city centre called Room 1795, where he was exposed to a lot of house DJs.  He also got to meet rising stars of the Hull music scene, Pork Recordings artists like Citrus, Deep Six and Fila Brazilia who were making left field electronic music for a tiny audience.  These influences affected JP a lot, and when he was ready to start DJing more at Shaft he played very little retro, instead dropping a bizarre mixture of modern music with a vague funk flavour.  At first I was horrified, then after a few weeks I realised that playing a set of modern tunes that were as good as the funk and jazz of old was almost impossible, but if it could be achieved it would be phenomenal.

In those long lost days of the early to mid '90s, jazz and funk influenced music had become somewhat fashionable, with artists like The Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai finding chart success.  Although we did touch this sound initially, we were more interested in finding more progressive, computer generated, hip hop influenced music with a funky, jazzy flavour.  Mo Wax Records was very new and very fashionable at this time, and a host of other underground tunes were appearing.  The problem was, most of these tunes were far too abstract for a Hull audience.  We weren't playing to people who wanted to show off their allegiance to a particular movement, we were playing to people who had come to dance and enjoy themselves.  

None the less, by searching hard we found an abundance of quality tunes that were perfect to dance to.  We still played some old funk and jazz and we still played the funkier hip hop, but from late 1993 onwards we played increasing amounts of this new music with no name.  In a very complimentary review of 1995 the writer said "the music style is hard to put your finger on .... you could say it has a funky edge to it, but you have to hear it to believe it".  It was too fast to be trip hop, too progressive to be acid jazz, too funky to be breakbeat, so we called it funk, but with reference to the fact that it was futuristic - pure new funk, the future of the funk, 21st century funk (that last one was my idea - in 1995, yes I'm proud).

Shaft fliers from 1994 and 1995 - after a year of having a massive night we began to invest more time and money in our promotions.

1994 and 1995 were the glory years of Shaft.  The music that we played was astoundingly good.  While the media went on about Blur, Oasis and The Spice Girls, we were playing artists like The Ballistic Brothers, DJ Smash and many, many others.  Some were million selling hip hop acts, a lot were obscure artists from around the world who came out of nowhere to produce an amazing record or two and then disappeared again.

All 3 of us had our own sound.  A lot of people told me that I was the best of the three.  A lot of other people told me Michael was the one with the most amazing tunes.  And a lot of other people told me that JP was their favourite.  We worked on a rota so that each week a different one of us had the last set, and that way the variety was always there.  It seemed like every week someone would ask me "who's playing the last set this week?"  The end of the night was an obsession to all of us, somehow building the set so that by the last tune people felt they were touching God.  Although we had a futuristic funk sound it was a very open ended style, meaning we could drop in some old funk, disco or jazz, or something with a house or breakbeat feel, or anything else - as long as it worked it didn't matter what it was.

Our audience broke all the rules, which was what made Shaft so good.  The variety of people was astounding, the atmosphere was amazing, and still we kept getting more chicks than guys, which meant fighting was virtually unheard of.  The audience relation with drugs was completely anomalous.  At dance music clubs nearly everyone was on pills or speed, and at other nights most people were drunk, but at Shaft some people were on class As and some, the majority, weren't.  Those who did take pills before they came to our nights did so out of choice, not necessity, and most people were happy simply drinking alcohol and/or smoking herbs, or being straight.  The management attitude to ganja was a breath of fresh air (not literally), other than occasional token confiscation of herbs the audience were left to make their own judgment. 

Because we were able to find such good tunes, people who were really into music came to our nights.  Initially the Pork Recordings posse came to Shaft rarely or not at all, but once we stepped up our game they were there week in and week out.  So were plenty of other people - we now had downstairs open, meaning we could fit in a lot of people.  And we did, every week (apart from each summer, when the numbers dropped dramatically).  Not every one was happy, I still have great memories of a funk purist telling me we had no right to call our sound funk.  But for a lot of people, Shaft was literally the focus of their week.  Hull was just not used to seeing large numbers of people dancing to obscure music without all being on drugs, and our audience combined students with people from the roughest housing estates, all eager to enjoy the special atmosphere.

Our greatest flier, 1995

So why have few people heard of Shaft?  Simply, despite the massive size of our venue and the fact that we were a weekly event, we had more people coming than we had room for, so alerting the national media to our night was something we could not be bothered with.  We didn't think they would ever come to look anyway, although we may have been wrong.  Also, for various legal reasons I won't delve into, we weren't too anxious to draw attention to our success.  Another thing that kept us in obscurity was our refusal to invite in guest DJs.  We knew of no one playing our sound, our audience loved the music we played, so why even consider trying to find a name DJ?  Splitting 3 and a half hours between 3 DJs did not leave room to invite someone else in, and if it's not broke, don't fix it. 

The unfortunate side effect of this was that our night was unknown outside Hull, even at the time.  I remember a mobile record dealer turning up at Top Tunes (Hull dance music shop) in 1995 and showing me a DJ Krush twelve.  Unlike most of DJ Krush's releases this one featured a danceable cut that I'd bought a few weeks previously, which had gone on to become an instant Shaft classic.  I mentioned to the dealer that I already had a copy and one of the tunes was big in Hull, at which point he laughed in my face.  I tried to explain that we had a massive night playing this sort of sound but he refused to believe me.  We were out of step with the rest of the country, we knew of nights in London that had a vaguely similar vibe such as Funkin' Pussy or Bar Rumba's Monday nights, but there were no nights that were that similar in terms of tunes or audience.  Unknown to the outside world we had something very special going on in Hull.

So what went wrong?  Many things.  As drum and bass began to monopolise the underground music scene of 1995 onwards, slowly but surely the supply of good new releases decreased.  Tastes change, and people wanted to hear name DJs instead of nobodies.  And we were nobodies - for the entire 4 plus years of Shaft we always publicised our night and not ourselves, in keeping with the positive spirit of the night.  Also, there were fundamental problems with The Welly that really put off a lot of our long term fans.  In 1996 we were still getting massive amounts of people each week, but somehow the atmosphere was slipping.  In December of 1996 I left Shaft, and within 6 months MJ Down and JP decided to call it quits.

The last Shaft flier, produced by MJ Down and JP in 1997 

The final Shaft was a night I will never forget.  As the last record ended JP, MJ and I were grabbed by the audience and swung onto peoples' shoulders.  Normally the Welly's aggressive doormen were straight into the main room at 2 to clear people away, but that night, for once, they stayed downstairs.  The entire room shouted 'Shaft Shaft Shaft Shaft' repeatedly as we were carried round the room and cheered.  No words can describe those moments, but I am shaking now as I write this (mind you I am hungry).

Within a year of Shaft ending all 3 Shaft DJs had left Hull for pastures new, and The Welly had closed.  (Eventually it did reopen under completely different management - just for the record, ganja consumption is certainly not tolerated there any longer.)  A couple of years after Shaft ended I spent several months going through all my Shaft tunes.  I found that nearly all were simply brilliant, very funky music.  Of course, I have kept all those old tunes, I wouldn't part with them for anything.  As well as being great music they stand as proof that Shaft really was as good as people remember it to be.  Cutting edge music progresses quickly, and loads of quality music has appeared since Shaft ended, none the less I do still drop occasional Shaft classics when I'm DJing.

All 3 Shaft DJs are still playing music, finding music, talking about music, obsessing over music.  Shaft seems so long ago now, I rarely think about it or discuss it, and writing this article has proved an emotional and enjoyable experience.  No night will ever capture the vibe we had then, but that doesn't mean there will never be a night as good as, or better than, Shaft.  After all, there were certain drawbacks to The Welly and Shaft, although I'm reluctant to mention them all these years later. 

What really made Shaft so special was not just the DJs or the audience.  What worked so well was the fact that an amazing amount of wonderful, progressive, underground music appeared, and massive numbers of people came out to dance to it and enjoy themselves, with no concern for whether it was fashionable or not (it wasn't particularly) or even if the music had a name (which it didn't).  That has happened before and I hope it happens again, many times.

Very special thanks to MJ Down, JP, Tog, all staff at Hull Welly Club in the 1990s, and the thousands of people who attended Shaft between 1993 and 1997.

Appendix - Shaft in the media

We never asked the media to take notice of us, we didn't need to.  And they didn't, with the exception of Hull listings magazine Radar, who ran two articles on us in the course of our 4 and a half years, both of which can be found on the Press page.  The first (printed last on the Press page) from May 1994 was based on an interview with JP and myself.  It was very complimentary and featured some funny photos, but it was not particularly well written or informative.  The second write up came from Radar Student Guide '95.  I would like to thank whoever wrote this article as they captured perfectly the phenomenon that was Shaft - if you think I'm making up our success or exaggerating it then read this article and reconsider.  

If you used to attend Shaft, feel free to share your memories on the message board.