'Gorgeous' at Paradise Factory. Illustration by Paul Patterson.

Jenny White writes:

Andy K with Tony Dean at Paradise Factory, January 1998. Tony Dean was a regular at Manto and Paradise, in his trademark tux and bow tie.

A piece from the Manchester Evening News about the first ever Homo Electric club night at Follies, Whitworth Street West.

The photo demonstrates the change in tone from days of Flesh at the Haç and their 'Thank You For Not Being Heterosexual' or 'Wish You Were Queer- type slogans.

Homo Electric was billed as 'A night for Homos, Hetros, Lesbos and Don't Knows'. 'No exclusions'.

It had a very different door policy to Flesh, where, famously, you’d be subjected to a quiz to ascertain the veracity of your gayness.

By 1998, some of the same DJs and club goers that had inspired Manchester's LGBT house music boom were growing tired of the commercialisation of both the scene and the music. At this point, LGBT club nights boasting a more eclectic soundtrack spanning disco, hip hop, funk and indie began to emerge. Club Brenda, Poptastic and Homo Electric were at the forefront of this movement.

This bottle was given out at the first ever Homo Electric on April 9th 1998. As I recall, Manc-Geordie music scene legend Brian Hartley was on the door in a fairly unique outfit.

I remember hearing the Creative Source version of Bill Withers' 'Who is He and What is He to You'. I got very excited because this tune had been a favourite of mine ever since I picked it up on a K-Tel compilation ('Souled Out') from Preston Car Boot for 50p.

DJ Kath McDermott writes:

"I think this is the flyer for the first ever Homoelectric in 1998. It was a bit of a leap of faith that rewarded us with many years of brilliantly twisted parties. I was an 'Electric Chair' regular, having grown tired of Canal St and its Muscle Marys, incessant cheesy music and hen nights galore. I really enjoyed hearing a truly eclectic mix of music at the 'Chair' and liked the open-minded nature of the crowd.

When Luke asked me to become a resident at this new night, I wasn't sure if it had legs, but thought we should give it a go.

Ryan Minchin had been developing an ethos that he thought the night should stand for which really grabbed me. He later expanded on his views in the the Homoelectric Chronicle fanzine, which was always worth a read. Much of it was against the uniformity and conformity of the gay scene at that time. He wanted to gather all the misfits and outsiders who had become marginalised on the increasingly commercialised and mainstream gay scene and take the party underground. Homoelectric would be a place for all open-minded, free-thinking folk, regardless of who they had sex with (homos, heteros, lesbos, don't knows) to dance to quality music that wasn't being played elsewhere on the scene. Bingo!

It seemed to work.

I took my Mum to the first one and it was great, despite a brush with the law on the way home! I remember playing Norma Jean Bell and Blondie and being surprised by how many nice people came out on a Thursday.

This brilliant flyer designed by the lovely Paula McNamara was perfect for the night."

Clit Club - direct from New York as part of Queer Up North festival. With DJ Jackie Christie.

Hosted by Julie Tolentino
Dancers Cinnamon & Jackie
Door Host Tjet Clark
Slide Exhibit Lola Flesh

Entry £5/£4 with
Open to all dykes and queers

An early Homo Electric flyer from the days when it was on a Thursday night. Follies was a great, intimate venue. The bar was run by ladies who you would not fuck with for one moment. There was a picture of Martina Navratilova on the wall overlooking proceedings like some Slavic Our Lady.

Follies was divided into two halves. The smaller room, by the entrance, sometimes housed bands. I remember seeing Superstring there - a great, mainly instrumental outfit who, as I recall, wore white boiler suits a la Devo and featured Mark Hart, who went on to run In The City.

I remember the night that Superstring played, I was with my friend, a slightly tall and scary looking sort of bloke, who was a talented piss artist. He got it into his head that one of their songs sounded like the theme from the Sweeney. This caused him to scream 'SHUT IT!' John Thaw-style into the face of the terrified keyboard player...several times.

The small room also featured two strange, hanging, lit-up torsos. These torsos tended to frighten me when I was on drugs.

The DJs in the main room were Philippa Jarman and Kath McDermott who also worked in Piccadilly Records and Vinyl Exchange respectively. Their sets were always great, pervy, celebratory affairs, although I used to hide in the toilets when Phil did her ragga bit.

In the toilets there was a blackboard for people to write stuff on. Every month the same mysterious message would get scribbled down: Say No To Pubic Triangles (with an accompanying diagram).

Could the author of said slogan please contact info@mdmarchive.co.uk

DJ Kath McDermott writes:

"Homoelectric #5, still on a Thursday till 2am, but now with the addition of a casino and Master Morgan (Mogsy) DJing in the front room. Mogsy is a legend, a Welsh dragon who ensures that electrikal ventures don't short-fuse. I'm not sure if Mogsy had DJed much before, but he ceratinly made his presence felt at Homoelectric. He played some great disco but was most loved there for playing r'n'b and hip-hop to a rammed room that would usually be singing along very loudly. That front room became known as 'The Brandy and Monica' room as the place would erupt whenever he played 'The Boy Is Mine'!
I'm not sure how Luke and I split up the DJing in the main room, but I think at that time I was playing deep house, U.S. garage, lots of disco and a bit of funk and hip-hop. The crowd was getting pretty big by this stage and was fantastic to play to: very mixed, open ears, very responsive, ace drunken moves on the floor (hardly anyone on drugs as it was a week night and the crowd was a bit older)."

One of the earliest Club Brenda flyers when it was still at the Star & Garter.

Chloe Poems (aka Gerry Potter Poet), Tracy Elizabeth and Jen Chen were regular Brenda heads at that point.

Poptastic came into being as a one-off event in the basement of Blooms Hotel in Manchester. Promoter and 'Mr Poptastic' Jon Hamilton wanted to offer an alternative to Manchester's house-obsessed, muscled-up Gay Village and hit on the unthinkable – a club night where indie kids and pop queens came together to dance, drink and get leathered while dancing their favourite tunes.

David Hoyle (born in the seaside town of Blackpool, Lancashire, England) first became known as a British performance artist, actor and comedian. He has lived in Manchester and been a regular on the alt-gay club circuit here or many years.

He became notable for his 1999 arts TV show Divine David Presents on Channel 4 under his stage persona The Divine David. This was followed a year later by the series The Divine David Heals. Hoyle is openly gay.

Hoyle publicly killed off this character in 2000 and put his career on hold to cope with a nervous breakdown. After many years as a recluse, David began to make occasional appearances as he says he finds his artistic expression "therapeutic and cathartic".

His two series of shows, Magazine and Magazine the Reprint, in London have played to capacity audiences. In a recent episode of Magazine the Reprint, David Hoyle raised the issue of HIV and AIDS, presenting a film of his own HIV test, taken earlier that day.

His most notable acting role to date was in the comedy Nathan Barley (Channel 4), although he also gave a cameo in Todd Haynes's film Velvet Goldmine, playing a member of Brian Slade's entourage.

He also appeared prominently in the music video for Faith No More's cover of I Started a Joke.

Hoyle performed in ensemble theatre piece For All The Wrong Reasons, a collaboration with Contact Theatre (Manchester) & Victoria Theatre Co. (Belgium) alongside other work. From November 2007, David wrote a column for Gay Times magazine, called "David's Debateables"
In October and November 2009 David presented two new pieces of work - On The Couch with David Hoyle and David Hoyle's Theatre of Therapy - at Chelsea Theatre as part of their SACRED season.

(Wikipedia)

Black Angel was a night promoted by DJ Claud Cunningham, specialising in RnB; Hip Hop, Old Skool, Bollywood, Banghra & Arabic.

Black Angel attempted to confront the lack of visibility of black and Asian women within Manchester's predominantly white, male, house music-orientated gay scene.

After a long hiatus Black Angel is returning to Bangkok Bar on February 28th 2015.

A piece by Abigail Ward taken from the 'Strange Trees' story book, based on a night at Club Brenda:

"Club Brenda began back in the 20th century – 1999 to be precise, after a drunken conversation between DJ Jayne Compton and her friend, the performance poet, Chloe Poems. They were on the night train back from Cream in Liverpool.

‘Imagine’, mused our heroines, unimpressed with the evening’s entertainment, ‘what a club would be like if it combined bands, stand-up, performance art and a deliberately eclectic music policy…if it reached out to everyone: gay, straight, black, blue; but in particular, welcomed life’s uglier ducklings - the outsiders, the strange ones…’

So this is how Brenda, Manchester’s ugliest duckling, hatched. Inspired by Hulme’s after-hours shebeen scene, Jayne wanted her night to embody the same spirit: people coming together to party in spite of their musical or cultural differences. It would be open and gay friendly. The vibe was 'lay down your weapons; have a good time’.

This ethos, combined with a passion for performance art and breaking bands, set the tone for he early Brenda nights. People would just grab the mike and recite poetry. Anything could happen. Performers like Tracy Elizabeth, Fiona Bowker and Veba all contributed, inspiring Jayne to start the highly successful Switchflicker label, which captured the best of these moments on limited seven inches.

As Switchflicker went from strength to strength, eventually launching Ting Tings, The Divine David and Magic Arm, Brenda nights grew broader in scope and sophistication. Jayne spread her wings and dragged the whole shebang over to Berlin’s ‘West Germany’ club for two parties that are still spoken about in debauched whispers. Venues that have hosted the night across Manchester have included The Star and Garter, Islington Mill, The Music Box, and current home The Deaf Institute. There are plans to invade New York.

Ten years on, Club Brenda is still minimally promoted and succeeds due to word of mouth from its misfit crowd. It is a genuinely uncompromising underground art-punk happening in the mould of Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Rabid at the Squat or Don Letts at The Roxy. The punters are as important as the acts. So is the feeling is that everyone knows each other. It's built on friendship and love."

Jayne Compton now runs Kraak club space and gallery.

Black Angel was a night promoted by DJ Claud Cunningham, specialising in RnB; Hip Hop, Old Skool, Bollywood, Banghra & Arabic.

Black Angel attempted to confront the lack of visibility of black and Asian women within Manchester's predominantly white, male, house music-orientated gay scene.

After a long hiatus Black Angel returned to Bangkok Bar on February 28th 2015.

I can't remember whether or not I even attended this particular night. Oooh, it's all a blur.

One of the main things I do recall about Homo Electric at Follies was the mysterious DJ ‘booth’ (basically a velvet curtain) behind which a variety of hi-jinks would take place.

DJs for this evening were Kath McDermott, Philippa (Dancefloor) Jarman and Marc Rowlands.

Design by Paula McNamara.

Issue #3 of the Homo Electric Chronicle. I remember this period of time very clearly. There's list of records on the inside that includes Dub Tribe Sound System 'Equatorial' and and Isolee 'Beau Mot Plage' - two colossal bombs by anyone's standards!

On the back is a brilliant anti-Mardi Gras diatribe by Ryan Minchin.

DJ Kath McDermott writes:

"Homoelectric Chronicle #3 and Ryan Minchin is eloquently venting spleen for the rest of us. Many people felt disenfranchised by Canal Street and were incensed that the bars were using Mardi Gras to cash in, without donating any serious money to the HIV charities that it was supposed to be in aid of. It had become part of the corporate machinery that we were rejecting. At this stage in the proceedings, 'why be defined by your sexuality?' indeed."

In this issue lays into the mainstream gay scene, Mardi Gras and the “pride’ rhetoric that had been such an important aspect of ‘Gaychester’.

“‘Pride’ is all too often based on the false sense of self gay people acquire when they allow their entire identities as human beings to be subsumed by their sexuality – I fuck, therefore I am’.

Like being black, or a woman, being gay isn’t something IN ITSELF to be proud of.

Being born wasn’t your doing."

Press article about Homoelectric and an appearance by 'The Alpinestars'.

Black Angel is a 'culturally diverse club night for lesbians and gay men, throwing down the best R'n'B, soul & old skool'. It was started by DJ Claud Cunningham, partly as a response to the white-orientated house-driven post-Hacienda gay scene.

This was a fundraiser for Women's Aid.

Switchflicker Records launch. The debut single was Mildmanjan Feat. Mark E Smith and My Mate Mark feat. Veba.

The Switchflicker label was created by Club Brenda's Jayne Compton and launched the careers of artists like Ting Tings and Magic Arm.

Back in 2000, a group of naughty Homo Electric fans stole the club's no-expense-spared foil sign, which would usually be seen swaying over the sweaty dancefloor.

They then took a picture of themselves displaying their bounty outside Piccadilly Records and sent it via a Christmas card to Piccadilly co-owner and and Homo Electric DJ, Philippa Jarman.

The shady ladies even took a picture of themselves in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with the sign, again mailing the evidence anonymously to Philippa.

Hilarious!

One-off alternative queer punk zine written by members of local queercore band Stephen Nancy.

The first ever flyer by queercore band Stephen Nancy.

Manchester Evening News piece on Manchester queercore band Stephen Nancy. Photo taken by local personality Marie-Luce, who sadly died of cancer a few years later, and is sadly missed.