I suppose that growing up in the sixties as a kid then a teenager I was lucky. This was the time when popular music was booming and sounds from all over were arriving. I remember going down to the youth club in Bilsthorpe, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, and hearing for the first time bluebeat and ska, great soul tracks from Stax, Chess & atlantic, and then the early Motown sounds. All these added to the homegrown pop made me want to get my hands on as much music as I could. One way was an early real to real tape recorder with the mike up against the radio, then my first cassette recorder and suddenly everything became portable.

My buying was still pretty restricted, so I started cleaning windows to earn some extra cash, most of which went on the latest singles.

Then in 1969, I was in the local scouts and a summer camp was being planned on the Isle of Wight for the following year. It was suggested that we scouts should help raise some funds for the camp and one idea was a one off disco in the scout hut. A bunch of us got together and using two old record players and a mike fed into a borrowed Vox AC30 amp with some very crude lighting effects and our pooled collection of records, one friday evening we opened the doors of the scout hut. The response was brilliant, nothing like it existed in the village and it was an instant success, so much so that a second followed and they soon became a regular event. It wasn't long before we got asked to do disco's for the church in the old church hall, wooden floor and all, then others wanted disco's in the village hall.

We carried on with them after the camp and for a couple of years, also going outside the village once transport was available in the shape of a moggy 1000 van.

Prior to this we had carted our gear around on a trolley.

This was also the time for parties, both in the village and the surrounding area. Some of the best parties were ones at Edwinstowe in the Church rooms on Mansfield Road. This was around the time of classic Led Zeppelin and other British Rock.

So it's a good excuse to have as tune of the day, Deep Purple "Black Night"