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Rave legend winds back the years for 60th birthday

Lee Blakeman,BBC Radio Stokeand
Tim Page,West Midlands
News imageR00 A man with greying dreadlocks and beard, and wearing sunglasses, smiles at the camera. He is sitting in a room with pictures on the white wall and a pink door behind himR00
MC Ragga pioneered early rave nights at Introspective and Entropy in the late 1980s

A pioneer of the rave scene in Stoke-on-Trent is to reunite with contemporaries for a one-off warehouse event as he turns 60.

MC Ragga said the Longton Mega Rave at Aynsley Mill would recreate the type of events he had been involved with in the late 1980s.

"You've seen the reunions... the legacy events... this is going to be a real authentic rave with me and Daz Willott for one night only."

The rave takes place on Saturday 25 July, at the earlier-than-traditional time of 14:00 to 22:00 BST.

"Longton was the epicentre of rave back in those days," Ragga told BBC Radio Stoke.

"I first started at a club called Introspective in the back end of 1988... It's where acid house met the Manchester indie scene and garage.

"Those three partners had a baby, and what was born out of it was rave!"

News imageGoogle A three-storey mill building in red brick with white detail including the window lintels and door arches. A white sign with blue writing on the side reads "Aynsley Mill". Cars are parked in a car park in the foreground. Google
Ragga said the venue was a "proper authentic warehouse", recreating the vibe of the raves of the 80s and 90s

Alongside Ragga and Willott, the rave will feature Daba, Grade A, MC Energy and Tekkaz, as well as Farayen and Trax FM DJs Paddy and Tim Bee.

While Stoke-on-Trent later played host to star DJs including Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Carl Cox, Ragga said the early days were less glamorous.

"It started out with the hard, back-breaking work of moving speaker boxes, giving out flyers and me and Daz Willott playing week after week and building up the crowd. That took three or four years."

Longton was the "epicentre" of rave at the time, said the DJ, whose real name is Gary Oliver.

"What made Stoke-on-Trent such an appealing place was its place on the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester.

"The club scene was dying, it had good venues... We got there and said 'hey, this is perfect!'"

News imageDaz Willott A man in a black baseball cap and T-shirt has headphones on one ear and a silver chain round his neck. He is looking at the camera as he stands in front of a screen showing a green patterned background.Daz Willott
Daz Willott is among the DJs sharing the stage with MC Ragga

MC Ragga, who went on to tour with bands including the Happy Mondays and has become better known for his poetry in recent years, insisted the event at Aynsley Mill did not mark a full-time return to the turntables.

Hesitating as he considered whether he missed DJing, 35 years after stopping regular events in the city, he said: "Well, yes and no. I'm ambivalent about it.

"I'm never doing it again. Ragga's in the house only one more time!"

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