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Baad-Vibes was the name of a Soul and Funk night a friend of mine Justin and myself set up about 15 years ago, in a small club in Accrington, Lancs that should have held about 150 people max. The secound time we held the night we took a membership which told us we had over 350 people in .......... no wonder it was packed solid ! The right thing at the right time i guess. I rang a good friend of mine Jazz fm [ now Smooth fm ] D.J. Richard Searling who was promoting 60's Soul nights at the time at King Georges Hall Blackburn and said i thought we could do this night on a bigger scale. So we got our heads together and the King Georges Hall - Jazz /Funk and Disco nights were born, Sept 23rd 1995 being the first night with Richard , Colin Curtis and myself as D.J.s . For the first couple of years the night ran separately from the 60's Soul nights but as the venue has 3 rooms it made more sense to conbine the events into one night. This meant Richard was too busy to D.J. in the Jazz/Funk room so we asked a good friend Mark Grice to D.J. alongside Colin and Myself.A couple of years after that a third room was opened to cater for brand new Soul and Funk , this meant we covered everything 60's 70's 80's right up to the present day. We sell out in advance 1700 aprox every time and the night is held 5 times a year with people travelling from all over the Country. To promote the very first night i took some records into Richard Searling's Radio show on Jazz f.m. where i was introduced as Baad-Vibes D. J. Ian....... however by the end of the show Richard got things mixed up and called me Ian Baad -Vibes and the name has stuck ...... it never was meant to be a nickname !Since early 1976 i have been to just about every major Soul and Funk night in the North from Wigan Casino , Blackpool Mecca , The Ritz Manchester , Cassinellis Standish , Rafters Manchester, Angels Burnley , Berlin Manchester ,Wigan Pier, Trafalger Blackburn , Halfway House nr Chorley , Hacienda Manchester , The early Soul weekenders from the first one at Berwick through Morecombe , Fleetwood and then the Southport Weekenders - right up to the present day. My first D,j. spot was way back in August 1977 at the Tower room ,Darwen on a Thursday night along side one of my oldest friends Gary Stewart , the Late Steve Fay and a old school friend Carlo, were we promoted a mixture of Northern Soul and what was then called New York Disco. From about 1980 right through the 80's i travelled with Richard Searling to just about every gig he did....... set off early to get to Radio Hallam in Sheffield , then drive down to Stafford for the allnighter, also the Halfway house , The Sandpiper and many many more, the All- Dayers with Bernie Goulding , the record buying trips down to Soul Bowl [the 5.30 starts] , helping Richard setting up the Expansion Records shop in Manchester when we worked right through the night putting L.P.. covers on the walls only to watch them fall off one by one at about 4.30 in the morning ! This was a golden era for Soul in the north - west with Richard on Red Rose Radio , the Halfway House , The Trafalger , Steve Plumb and the Leyland Collective at Leyland Cricket club , Dean and John Tracy at the Gallery and of course Colin Curtis and Hewan Clarke at Berlin....... Flowers , J.B Bingham , Leroy Hutson , Gloria Scott, etc the most in-demand records in the country, and who could forget Sam Dees live at the Gala gran Weekender-special times. Also about this time i became good mates with Colin Curtis and used to travel down to stay a few days with him and Sue where he taught me the art of staying up most of the night putting the world to rights ! One Tuesday night -early 80's Richard Searling, his wife Judith and myself had been to the Maze concert at Manchester Apollo and afterwards we went to check out a new night Colin Curtis was doing at a Manchester club Berlin, the mix of music was out of this world , serious Jazz , Rare Groove , Current Soul and the best new dance tunes a.k.a. Paradise Garage.......... i was hooked and went more or less every week for years. I'd be one of the first there and would talk to Hewan while he was doing one of his great Jazz sets, then Colin would arrive and i'd get roped into helping carrying his boxes downstairs into the club - about a dozen ! , i've never seen so many records just for one night ! Another funny story from the early 80's was Gary Stewart and myself were booked by Blackburn based promoter Ronnie Brown to do the warm up for the Spandau Ballet concert at the Opera House in Blackpool when "True" had got to number one, we were stuck down in the orchestra pit and could'nt see a thing ....... i've no idea what hundreds of pop music fans made of the mixture of hardcore Soul and Funk we played but the program seller tryed to buy a couple of albums from me......... no chance!!!!!!