Heightened Sense of Awareness: It had been six or seven months since I joined a social media platform in 2008. At that time, I did not put up a picture of myself, which naturally worked well with what I was doing mysteriously.
I used YouTube music videos from the eighties and nineties, and hip-hop and R&B selections linked to my page. I also created links with other groups and invited strangers to join my party groups, None of D Above and Fully Fledge Funky.
Confused, I couldn’t call it paranoia, or was I delusional?
My perception of the following was questionable. A social media platform was suspending my page, and the company was having file-sharing copyright problems.
Then, after I sent emails to the Prime Minister and the President, the Labour Party email scandal came to light. There was also a music site called Pirate Bay, which didn’t help my efforts as a promoter.
It made me wonder if Pirate Bay were linked to my page and if I was part of the social media company’s problem.
With the emergence of the Swine Flu in the air, I felt that the powers that be were getting prepared for what I had to offer the world.
Subsequently, I waited patiently for an official to contact me, which didn’t occur, but I kept doing what my mind said: keeping writing.
I'm frustrated here waiting, tediously yet patiently hoping, praying. If only someone could hear what I’m saying, we could achieve peace with a bright new rainbow. Being kind with a new frame of mind, feeling fine, now we are wise.
In the following chapter, we flip the clock back to his first party night out as a young adult.
Chapter 10
First Night’s Raving.
Academically, if I succeeded, I averaged out in most subjects. Music was a lesson I wanted to take up in primary school.
I was taught by a teacher who was as impatient as a hungry dog held back from its dinner bowl. Like a donkey that doesn’t want to move. She was pig-headed and a British bulldog bully.
Miss Morris is a tall, white, greying blonde woman in her fifties. She smelled of stale, cheap perfume.
The worn-out, poor excuse for a teacher slammed the piano lid down on my small, six-year-old black hands. My quick reaction kept my fingers on my hands.
I was very reluctant to take up music after that. Looking back, could that have been a racist act?
Being a six-year-old black boy, what am I to know or understand about a white adult’s motives?
**Boogie Wonderland**
When my mates invited me to a party, many years later. When I was thirteen, they were involved in the high school steel band, performing a show.
I arrived at one of their gigs timidly, with a few other schoolmates. They performed nights of exciting, pulsating, entertaining weekends at community centres, garden parties for staff members, and vibrant carnivals in Manchester when it didn’t rain.
During a lively party I attended, the young school girls were hot to trot, and the steel band was stealing the crowd with an energising musical vibe.
It all fell apart when one of the band members mentioned he’d seen Mr Brown. A proud, tall Scottish man and a history teacher at a high school who coached the football team.
He also organised the steel band event and received cash one night after the band’s performance.
When the band confronted Mr. Brown, he looked over the group of small adolescents with his tense, beady eyes and imposing stature. He told the band members, ‘£200 paid goes to the school fund.’
The band disagreed, rightly so. The group split up, never being paid for any event performed, entertainment done for free and fun.
During school hours, you would see students dancing in the corridors, dub-stepping to UB40, Madness, Two Tone, and roots reggae music from ghetto blasters. Echoing deep rumbling bass around the hallway and gymnasium.
Irate teachers look like hungry, snapping piranhas, rushing around the corridors, screaming blue murder for order amid unruly, chaotic kids. In time, the students would settle down to lessons.
It wasn’t long before the music scene called my friends and me to the youth clubs. New musical sounds such as Extra T’s E.T. Boogie, Grandmaster Flash, and White Lines entertained my eardrums. Some of my mates formed a Jazz Fusion group.
Then bang, on the scene, electro dance groups, body popping in shopping centres, and with the added pastime of playing pool at youth clubs, adventure playgrounds were getting boring. At sixteen, the lure of the city clubs was too much of a pull just before leaving school.
On Wednesdays, we would walk to Legends nightclub, one of many venues on Princess Street, central Manchester.
The big, spacious mirrored venue provided a long bar, quenching the thirst of five hundred plus party people. Spinning glitter balls, reflecting laser lights, giving a futuristic scene from Star Wars.
Deejays Greg Wilson, Chad Jackson, and Mike Shaft, fifty pence for members to get in.
Being young and inexperienced, girls were not the first thing on my mind. I was interested in dancing to riveting drumbeats, heart-beating bass, and futuristic electronic sounds.
On Wednesday nights, they brought in coaches from Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds to Legends, where they parked up to hear high-tempo jazz fusion. Art Blakely, Miles Davis, tunes from Loose Ends, Luther Vandross, and Leer.
Men sweated vigorously while displaying street-fusion tap-dancing moves. Admiring flocks of sexy ladies flirted with any guy who smiled back.
Throbbing beats and pounding bass created a vibrant atmosphere, which was fuelled by an enthusiastic crowd. I was amazed and hooked on the club scene.
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