pure is
unadulterated, unalloyed, uncontaminated, untainted, unstained, undefiled, untarnished, immaculate, unpolluted, uncorrupted, without any discordant quality; clear and true: pure tones in music. independent of sense or experience: pure knowledge.
I'd like to meet:
How did the acid explosion of 1988 affect Glasgow?
“I think it kind of introduced a lot of people to it, but also it was still kind of bad because it was still really elitist. I remember we used to try and go to the Sub Club and it would be hit or miss if we could get in. It was really like what-you-were-wearing attitude and “regulars onlyâ€, which seemed to me to be the antithesis of what acid house was meant to be. It was actually a couple of years later the real explosion happened in Glasgow, like probably 1990. There was a club called Tin Pan Alley on Mitchell Lane and when it opened it did a night called UFO which was a big night on two floors, the club would take a thousand people, it was a lot easier to get in there. That’s when I think the whole dance rave thing kicked off through here. And from then on in there were clubs everywhere playing that kind of music. But even up to that point most other clubs were so stuck in the kind of like Soul II Soul/funk revival thing, and clubs in Glasgow were all about what you were wearing.
I was DJing at the Backroom, but in the loosest possible sense. The first night I DJed there I thought the pitch control was the volume on the decks. So we would do this club and basically it was full of the creatures of the night it was all mainly Goths and Punks would go. We were kind of a bit like that, but we were sporting bandanas and acid house gear and taking ecstasy. We were just sick of that kind of vibe, so from one week to the next we would change the Backroom, which was really dark, this kind of cavern in Edinburgh, and we had Day-Glo everywhere and UV and we totally changed the soundtrack to playing acid house music. So the first week it was packed ‘cos all these Goths had come thinking it was the same club they had been going to for the last three years, hated it, the next week there was ten people there, and the next week the management kicked us out! I thought that was the end of my career DJing. But somewhere I got a bit of a kick out of it. So I decided to take a year out from Uni and start my own night . I started a night in Glasgow at this place 46 West George St., which is now a hole I the ground. And I did that for about three months, and it was kind of quite popular to begin with and it tailed off and tailed off. I was like “Well this is DEFINATELY it, I’m gonna go back to Uni and finish my degreeâ€. And then some friends of mine in Edinburgh used to put loads of bands, and they had this concept where they would have a band every week and they would try and build a club around it. It was called UFO (coincidentally!) and we did that for nine months. It was at the time of indie dance, like the Happy Mondays and Primal Scream, which I hated, but the only way you could get people to dance was you could play like a Primal Scream records, THEN you could play a Belgian rave record, but then you had to play a Happy Mondays record then you could play an acid house record. So we did that for about nine months and basically the club got invaded. Edinburgh had a real problem with football casuals at this point and the Hibs football casuals decided that this was their club and they intimidated the most people from going. And then the last night we did it, there was this band from Manchester called the Paris Angles playing and for some reason lots of Hearts supporters wanted to see this band, and somehow it turned into a full scale riot. The band kind of incited it; the Hibs supporters jumped on stage, beat the living daylights out of the band, and the Hearts supporters tried to defend them. It was just like from some western bar room brawl! We were hiding under the decks with like chairs and furniture flying everywhere, and like 50 police came down and surrounded the club and took everyone away in coaches and basically arrested the whole club! And we were like, well that’s the end of that we’re not doing that again… But we actually really enjoyed it, so we decided we’d start a new night but we’d make it members only initially, so we could control who gets in, and we changed the name and it was called Pure. And instantly, it was just perfect perfect timing. It kind of co-incided with when the first big rave records were coming out when the rave explosion happened. Also when, I guess, ecstasy was readily available. From week one it was just a totally different crowd of what became known as ravers, and it was just immensely popular from the get-go. We thought, this will last a few months, it’s great fun to do, but it took over my whole life! I was in my honours year at Uni, and it was two weeks to get my dissertation in and I hadn’t done it, so I just never went back. I’ll just go with this for as long as I can. We ended up doing that club for ten years.â€
And it was through Pure, that “Keith McIvorâ€, humble student raver by day, became known across the land as the mysterious, shadowy figure named “Twitchâ€â€¦
“We were known as “Twitch†and “Brainstormâ€, and the reason we had the silly names cos when we were first doing it, it was again in that rave era. DJs had daft names; you had Grooverider, or whatever. We just thought it would be quite funny to have a silly name. Also we were signing on, and we didn’t want our names emblazoned all over the place. So we just had to think up names really quickly, on the spur of the moment, so I came up with Twitch, he came up with Brainstorm, obviously never thinking that 15 years down the line I’d still be stuck with it! That I’d be walking up Great Western road and people would go “Alright Twitch maaan!! How’s it goin?†and you’re kind of cringing with embarrassment! I even go into my local sandwich shop and the 60 year old woman goes “Hi Twitch!â€.
A legendary club among Scottish ravers in its own right, Pure moved from being primarily rave orientated, to symbolizing a new kind of harder edged techno style.
“When we first started we would be booking the rave acts of the day like A Homeboy a Hippy and a Funky Dred, the Ragga Twins, Shut Up and Dance but pretty soon we started to realise that there wasn’t that much mileage in it. We were the first people to bring Ritchie Hawtin to the UK, first people to bring Green Velvet, Jeff Mills, and I guess from that point on the club became more or less known as a techno club. Which it wasn’t. I mean we’d play lots of Strictly Rhythm house, lots of NY house, all sorts of stuff. As the years went on… I think the club was amazing up 'til around 1996, 1997 but by that point techno had become so defined that we were really stuck in this ghetto musically. The people that were coming just wanted to hear this banging pounding tech music which we hated but we couldn’t go anywhere else because that is what they wanted to hear. We were too scared to stop it because this is what we did for a living and we didn’t know what to do next. I wish we’d been brave and gone “That’s it†but we kept doing it for exactly ten years. We stopped it on it’s tenth birthday whereas we should have stopped it a lot sooner. My musical tastes had totally gone away from that kind of music, I was just going through the motions of doing it. But then the opportunity came to do a Sunday night in Glasgow, no pressure, no expectations, it didn’t matter if no-one went, Sub Club was just happy to take a few pounds on the Bar. And I’d had this concept brewing in my head of what it should be for quite a while and just went with it.â€(TWITCH)
Music:
SOME OF THE NAMES PLAYED AT PURE The Guest List - "Pure"Here is a list of Past Guests at Pure at all Locations and in no particular order:Derrick May / Juan Atkins / Kevin Saunderson / Carl Craig /
Paperclip People (Live UK Debut) / Richie Hawtin / F.U.S.E. / Plastikman (Live UK Debut) / Dimitri (Amsterdam) / Lenny Dee / Speedy J (Live) / Cybersonik (Live) / Jay Denham / DJ Skull / Moby / Robert Armani / Cajmere / Green Velvet (Live) / Marshall Jefferson / Farley Jackmaster Funk / Miss Djax / Steve Poindexter / Acid Junkies (Live) / Random XS (Live) / Orbital (Live) / David Holmes / Andrew Weatherall / Steve Bicknell / Billy Nasty / Westbam / Jeff Mills (1st UK show) / Marcello / Harvey / John Acquaviva / Buckfunk 3000 (Live) / Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia (Live) / Exquisite Corpse (Live) / State of Flux (Live) / Sparky (Live) / Ege Bam Yasi (Live) / Kenny Dixon Jnr / Mixmaster Morris / Alex Paterson / Teste (Live) / Pure Science (Live) / Stuart McMillan / Surgeon / Derrick Carter / Luke Solomon / Gemini / Orlando Voorn / DJ Rush / DJ Hell / Vainquer / Jimi Tenor (Live) / Zoviet France (Live) / Dr. Bob Jones / Kelli Hand / Cirillo / Ragga Twins / Homeboy / a Hippie & a Funky Dred / Frankie Bones / Scientist + DJ Hype / Claude Young / Funk D'Void (Live) / Dave Clarke / Luke Slater / Cabaret Voltaire (Live) / Dave Tarrida / Tobias Schmidt (Live) / Neil Landstrumm (Live & DJ) / Stephen "Earl" Brown (Live) / Swayzak (Live) / Sluts'n'Strings & 909 (Live) / Memory Foundation (Live) / Chez Damier / Ron Trent / Robert Owens / Suburban Knight / Rolando / Anthony "Shake" Shakir / DMX Krew / Ian Pooley (Live) / Rhythm Invention (Live) / Aphex Twin (Live) / U-Ziq (Live) / Jake Slazenger (Live) / Thomas Heckmann (Live) / Toxic Two (Live) / Panasonic (Live) / Blake Baxter / Kenny Larkin / Laurent Garnier / Alex Knight / Robert Armani / Ed Richards / Abraxas / Phidget / Mark (Guiding Light) / Wilba & Martin / Murray Woodburn / Tom / G-Mac / B12 (Live) / Revolutionary Dub Warriors / Kim Rapati (Live) / Kazi-M / Ken / Gerard / Black Dog (Live) / TAO Sound System / Eskimos & Egypt / Innersphere (Live) / Nomad (Live) / Urbania (Live) / Fred Gianelli (Live) / Nigel Smith / Craig Walsh /
Mikey / Johnny & Richie Wind-Up / Vapourspace (Live) / Re:Search (Live) / I.C.U. (Live) / Panic / Spamborskee / Kookie / Pressure of Speech / Ben Jamin / Sandy Paris / J. Sainsbury / Terry Mullen / Barada (Live) / Ken Ishii (Live) / Mellowtrons (Live) / Para / Eddy de Clercq / Armando / Tyree / Mike Dunn / Brian from The unspoken Thing / Tom Cullen / Arden and his magic trumpet / George T / Richie Rufftone / Chris / Jochem Hetzog / 6k / Kasbah / Paul Hartnoll / Decal / Bandulu (Live) / Legion of Green Men (Live) / Noodles / Frankie Bones / a burd called ger / Spacetime Continuum (live) / James Ruskin / Terry Francis / The Merry Pranksters / Donnacha Costello (live) / JohnnyDangerous aka The Foremost Poets / Rob Rowland (live) / Steve Glencross / Shandy / Steve Stoll / Radioactive Man / Fryer / Miss Yetti