1996: A Definition Of Taste
What I would give to be twenty-one again.
In so many ways, my favourite year from my young adult life was 1996. While journeys around the sun can become fairly humdrum, particularly once the bridge of forty is passed, vintage years of experiencing things for the first time – even more so when those years are like reserve wine calendar years and boxes of life’s needs are ticked unreservedly – 1996, for me was a classic which has always struggled to be beaten.
For me, it was a year of personal prosperity in a spiritual way with its own defined soundtrack – in the truest sense of the word (and not the overused throwaway media term of the 2020s), attached to an iconic time. Health-wise personally, also socially with the overall outlook in the mid-nineties being a positive perspective where the breaking down of barriers across the world such as the iron curtain and the old secluded states with little or no access to our world - felt tangible in the futures to come. In my second year at Nottingham Trent University, I had probably reached the most confident point about myself that I’d ever reached in my existence for a number of reasons, for someone without natural burgeoning confidence. Despite still not having a clue about what I wanted to be when I “grew up” after leaving university, there were elements pointing me in directions which made me inwardly content.
Culture, particularly music was in one of the strongest epochs I can remember. I was sharply inducted into the nightclubbing community, in my first six weeks of university life in October 1994. From then on, what began as simply friends’ fascinations – began taking hold of me and the summer of 1996 was possibly the biggest high-speed catalyst for my taste in the decades to follow. It was not only House Music alongside the then-uncategorised electronic and upcoming alternative music genres which were sweeping the country and the world – but a halcyon time for indie rock and guitars, in the unfortunately named ‘Britpop’ wave which has sadly never made such a resounding return to public taste.
Nottingham was a city, buzzing with events and life – ideally situated as a hub for students with the vibrant network of goings on across the country. I was regularly asked the vague and never confirmed question each time I was back in my home town in Carmarthenshire, “isn’t that where there are a squillion girls to every bloke?” To which I’d just nod, raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders at the same time because – there was never any proof of this overblown theory. Plenty of life and charisma - there was. More than anything, living in a hub when the world brought a plethora of excitement was the best.
I began the year, waking up in County Dublin on New Year’s Day having visited my friend Shane over new year. It was the first time I experienced Guinness in all its actual, genuine native glory – not the muddy stout provided outside Ireland before the millennium. This seemed to set the scene for the whole chapter; future facets and definitive elements of life which would stay with me. More than any other facet of life, certain music styles and genres were drawn like a tattoo onto my persona’s skin. However, as mentioned, one of the benefits of being young in that timeframe was the undefined nature – the less-categorised cauldron of electronic music. House Music had perhaps a couple of sub-genres to its frame, what was known as Jungle had begun to be channelled into Drum and Bass; and techno – was techno.
As the year progressed towards the summer, it was shaping up to be memorable. Early in the year I’d begun working on the bar at what was already my university crew’s go-to nightclub, Beatroot. Being involved with a smaller, lesser-known club was perfect for me – I worked with a nice crowd but more importantly over the longer term, I was exposed to acts and events I may not have attended had I not worked there. Nottingham’s renowned promoter David Baillie whose previous glory came while building Venus to legendary status a few years previously – held different nights that year at the club. I was fortunate to work shifts while drum and bass’s genre heroes Grooverider and more poignantly, the late DJ Kemistry – and Storm played a couple of times. My first live introductions to drum and bass were pretty special.
The “Big Beat” movement had begun and one double act who played for Baillie’s night were known then as the Big Kahuna Brothers, then known as FC Kahuna by the turn of the century. One of the two members (Dan Ormondroyd and Jon Nowell) actually bought me a pint of beer in the club after my shift had finished – over twenty years later I mentioned this on an Instagram post to Dan, as the remaining member of FC Kahuna responded wittily with something like “It would have been Jon who bought it as I wouldn’t do anything like that!” Thinking of it reminds me of how small a world it all is, as they recorded one of my favourite downtempo electronic tracks of all-time, Hayling; in a bedroom flat around four to five hundred metres from where I lived in South London between 2020 and 2024.
No year is complete without pitfalls, with this one soured mainly by sporting falls – especially, football. 1996’s FA Cup Final is one which felt like trying to swallow a jagged rock. In a decade which followed my team’s (Liverpool) most decorated decade – with a painfully (and tragically, following the events of 1989) minimalist trophy haul, while watching the auld enemy gain their most decorated decade – losing this match to said enemy (not even naming them) felt like losing a big job, at the time. I’d also be justifiably scorned by my fellow countrymen for wanting England – or at least the representing Liverpool players, to do well at Euro 96. At this historic juncture, I had no real belief under the old continental and global tournament structures – that Wales would ever reach a finals stage. In November 1996, we were drubbed 7-1 by a Netherlands team whose media were so obnoxious following the game that they questioned the validity of Wales in the qualifying group. Humiliating. Thankfully, the negative aspects of the year end there.
My twenty-first birthday was a momentous one, as it lasted a week. Well, the socialising and partying lasted a week, commencing six days before my actual birthday. The good thing about university was that there is always someone’s birthday in close proximity to celebrate. As mine falls in May, around bank holiday week – it’s always held eventful dates around my day. The day itself didn’t fall until the Tuesday after bank holiday weekend, so it was the most timid day of them all – I think I roughly nursed four pints at a local pub after a grossly heavy six days had caught up with me. It went something like this: Wednesday; final match of rugby league season – drinks session. Thursday; my ex-girlfriend’s housemate’s birthday – drinks. Friday; my actual birthday meal where forty-seven people (I didn’t really have that many friends – friends of friends of friends came) attended and shamefully we only managed to leave a five-pound tip (someone unknown slyly pocketed some quids) … Saturday; birthday house party, Sunday; techno all-nighter at the Marcus Garvey Centre in Lenton, Monday; bank holiday Monday drinks on the river and then; eventually – a quiet Tuesday with painful sipping at the pub.
I will always remember how remarkable 1996’s summer was, based on the travels I made in Britain (just before the cheap flights to Europe boom) and the music which accompanied it – this clicks into the current date while writing and how warmly I will celebrate it in the coming days. While not in date order, I have to first mention Knebworth. While I was part of Camp Oasis at this time and became very excited that I had a ticket for the mini-festival on Sunday August 11th, 1996 – it was one which years later didn’t make me ache to revisit. If you’re going to go to immerse yourself in that whole environment; 125,000 people in the middle of the English countryside – in retrospect; driving a few hundred miles, staying sober and navigating the return drive to West Wales which took over five hours – was not the residing memory I’d choose.
It was an incredible day, don’t get me wrong – hearing The Charlatans, Cast, Manics and Oasis (which sounded like a giant high-resolution CD player at the time – sounding crisper and less grungy than any other concert I’d been to at the time) was a unique experience at that time. Yet, as I had committed to an intense pre-season fitness promise while training with my boyhood hero rugby club, Llanelli RFC – it was a bit like window shopping while skint. I’d even run into a friend I’d worked with the previous summer, Ian who volunteered there collecting rubbish – except he’d turned it into an adventure and taken acid which made his refuse experience a little freer and easier. I must have seemed like a miserably chastised designated driver to everyone else who’d arrived in their dozens by coach.
An upside to the sacrifice of being less of a hedonist student, in my temporary sobriety and being a designated driver was that I was the fittest I’d ever been which resulted, firstly in playing some of the best rugby of my life; also the following year in representing Wales Students rugby league XI. That summer, I was training with players who were either already rugby legends such as Ieuan Evans, as well as a future one in Stephen Jones who joined the club at that time.
The rest of the gigs I’d visited that summer were all at nightclubs, with a linked sound which timestamped my taste forever. After travelling home to Llanelli from Nottingham earlier than the previous summer due to second year skintness and that training regime-to-come, I’d been working two jobs, as well as a fitness timetable which would frighten my fifty-one-year-old body today. By day, a porter and till worker at Marks and Spencer, by night, twice or three times a week – at the now-distant memory of the Island House. A legendary pub in my home town, bulldozed by the council – despite it being a listed building. For the sake of building a car park. This became a habitual council degradation of the town by ridiculous undermining of its assets. I won’t even bother describing Llanelli in 2026 to you, as it is a thorny thought.
Anyway, as any clubber from the nineties will tell you, recording Radio 1’s Essential Mix on a weekend basis was a priceless way of gaining a soundtrack. As Pete Tong used to say in the show’s intro – “press record and play, or whatever…” On the twenty-third of June, 1996 I happened to record what became my musical Bible for a very long time. Brothers In Rhythm were the guest DJs that weekend and what I heard on that particular mix guided and linked my taste to everything I heard on dancefloors that year. Part of the warming feeling today is that in the last month, I’ve been to see; chatted to - and danced to Dave Seaman, one half of Brothers In Rhythm, playing here in Brighton thirty years after he’d inadvertently activated a power switch in my taste box.
On the following final weekend in June, I travelled to Liverpool; to visit and stay with my good friend Paul as a crew of us from university, plus Paul’s home friends would visit Cream once more. It is a memory which has always stayed with me: listening to that Brothers In Rhythm Essential Mix on the train to Liverpool and hearing some of the tracks from that mix played that night. These are experiences which, for me; defined the best times of that decade and highlighted what I’d look and listen for, in time to come. Before I’d even bought my first set of turntables (that didn’t come until November 1997), I was buying vinyl records which were played that summer. Bedrock’s Set In Stone, Chakra’s I Am and even the lesser-known De’Lacy – That Look (Hani’s Club Mix) became my anthems. Hearing Jon Pleased Wimmin playing Blue Amazon’s And Then The Rain Falls in the second room, with a feeling of energetic peace in such a packed room was one of my happiest moments of the year.
Over the summer I visited Cream once more, as well as my own local club in Swansea; Escape. One connecting occurrence from both trips – Boy George didn’t turn up to play at either gig that summer which, over the years; didn’t really make me feel like I’d lost out too much - as I’d found my taste and direction in the other DJs I’d heard. At the Swansea gig, the event was a Renaissance night which tied in to the Brothers In Rhythm mix and added more fuel to what was building to be an ‘epic house’ (as it was then coined) furnace in my brain. Then, on the twenty-eighth of July, I recorded another, longer Essential Mix with a couple of my Maxell two-hour blank tapes. As it was the very first one broadcast live from Ibiza, you could hear the party (ole-ing almost like a football crowd) atmosphere in the background.
Where the previous Brothers In Rhythm mix laid some taste foundations, it was the first time I’d heard a live broadcasted Sasha mix. My university friends who’d introduced me to House Music a mere twenty months previously were more fixed upon the “happy house” sound, plus at this time I was flyering for local pioneer Allister Whitehead’s Zero G night and hearing more of the vocal, New York version of House at his events; so I’d not been in enough close contact with the more progressive sound; but only read about aspects of it in Mixmag and Muzik. This one, from a DJ who – at the time – I had no idea was Welsh, was a springboard for new earworms. While Pete Tong’s mix leading into Sasha’s became the precursor for commercial house classics for the next few years with its smorgasbord of anthems, the unbelievable edge which Sasha gave was a changing moment for me. My taste suddenly felt heightened in the sense that I knew of a new sound.
In the months to come, coolness deepened. Introductions to the Balearic sound having moved into a bigger house for my final university year, borrowing – and by no fault of my own; still in 2026 having in my possession - my mate James’s Café Del Mar Vol. 2 CD – introduced me to the slower side of electronic music and an interest in Ibiza. All of my friends back home in Llanelli, when I left for university listened to either indie rock, grunge or heavy metal (or cheese) so I was culturally ignorant of this side of life. How different life is in the information age cyberworld of the twenty-first century. A mixtape (in the actual sense of the word) called Positive, bought by another friend, Jon; which was supposedly by Sasha’s partner-in-prog John Digweed was another introduction to life from autumn 1996. It was only a few years ago that I was told (as was done often in the nineties – using a well-known DJ’s name to sell tapes and make money) that it wasn’t actually Digweed, but a DJ from the northwest of England, DJ Vertigo.
This wasn’t an uncommon finding; using either misinformed information for selling DJ mix tapes or blatantly using an established DJ’s name to sell and cash in. One memory I have while spending my Beatroot earnings that year was walking into a cool clothes shop in Hockley called Joy For Life which also sold mix tapes. I asked the gentleman behind the counter to listen to a part of one mixtape; and only a couple of minutes into the mix we realised something – I said I’d heard this recording before and asked who it was. He declared it was himself, Gordon Kaye and after telling him it was nice to meet him, I mentioned a friend had it wrongly labelled as Al Mackenzie back home. Little did I know at the time that the Joy For Life chain of shops (which were dotted across a few cities – one being in Greenwich ten years later, where I lived briefly), were actually Gordon’s. I now live in his home town of Brighton and Hove. Small world. Even smaller when I realised that he was in Nottingham in connection with Dave Seaman’s drafted team of DJs on the groundbreaking Stress Records label, also based in the city. Cluelessly oblivious at the time…
For the remainder of the year, I carried on with my happy self in the final year of my humanities degree. I had a freedom which can be summed up by the existence and soundtrack of; and final scene of one film which captured the year, for me. Trainspotting. In the final month of the summer term in Nottingham, I went to one of my favourite short-lived nightclubs on St. James Street; Deluxe.
Paul Oakenfold and Jon Da Silva were playing and I remember vividly, the moment Oakenfold’s first track kicked in – Underworld's Born Slippy. I asked someone what it was and all I remember the answer being was “the track from Trainspotting”. A week or so later, I went to the now-closed Odeon behind Market Square to watch the masterpiece which had an instant effect on me. There is no better encapsulation of that liberation felt in 1996, than of the closing shot of Mark Renton fiendishly walking out of the hotel with a sports bag carrying fourteen thousand pounds, while escaping the misery of life’s dead ends and dodgy friends, with the chords of Underworld’s Born Slippy injecting further emotion into the climax. It resonated with me immediately and I even have a rare (and not cheap) collector’s item, twenty-fifth anniversary Trainspotting “story of” book by Jay Glennie.
There was a shift, a depth of feeling I gained; in 1996 which opened my eyes and served me well at the time and informed me forever more. That first group of vinyl purchases for when the time came to begin DJing. A confidence in my abilities which had to be drummed into me by those who cared previously. A knowledge of music which kept widening and the want to be part, however big; of a music industry which was originally anti-establishment and certainly groundbreaking for a very large stretch of my life. My upbeat progress continued into 1997, until I abruptly reached my twenty-second birthday; where my life was almost ended by a freakish accident and was altered, permanently.
Keep your own personal vintage ninety-six in your lockers for as long as possible. It can be priceless when you need reminding that life can be a sparkle, not a spear in your souls.