PSV~ ‘77 – ‘92

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1. I went to the PSV Club in ‘77 as a nervous teenager straying outside my home turf and off the beaten track into Hulme M15. It played the best reggae sounds and allowed me and girl gang to buy drinks there and score sensemilla weed even though we were underage. It was our debut introduction to Soundsystem Culchur – Babylon. The Shitstem. Ishen. Rastafari Dreads.
   Then it became The Factory hosting Punk and Reggae bands live. I saw Dillinger, Big Youth, U-Roy, Jah Shaka Soundsystem. Tony Wilson, a TV presenter used to go and this gave him the inspiration to start Factory Records with the club promoter Alan Erasmus, Producer Martin Hannett of Rabid Records, Graphic Design graduate Peter Savile and Rob Gretton manager of Warsaw/ Joy Division.

   Late ‘70s it morphed into The Russell Club run by promoter Alan Wise of Wise Chemists. He promoted Nico, ex-Velvet Underground on tour and she loved Hulme so much that she moved there for several years. She loved the area’s multiethnic vibes and shabby dereliction. It was still the best club in Manchester. The city centre had more plush velvet, lighting and mirrors but The Russell had the boho crowd, musicians and art students plus dreads and locals.

   Then in the late ‘80s it sprang to life again as Acid Rave and House were bubbling up. It was known as the PSV once more although the bus drivers and transport staff had moved on, getting older and retiring to a quieter life. It held lock-ins that went on all-night.
   I didn’t go by this time because I wasn’t a raver, preferring chill 70s dub & bass, Film soundtrax and silence. And I didn’t indulge in the drug of choice Ecstacy either. I was at art college and trying to focus on developing my audiovisual skills. I would stay up well into the early hours and watch dawn rise over the fields behind The Martenscroft Centre and eat breakfast at my balcony table. But I couldn’t burn the candle at both ends and party like it was 1999 if I was going to take getting an Arts degree seriously.
   Plus I was co-habitating and he was a Furniture Maker who worked with heavy industrial machinery every day so he needed to have his wits about him.
   The only time we sampled some legendary E, He suggested that we each only take a quarter. It did nothing for me except set off tinnitus in my ears from the D&B bursting out the speakers. So I left early and went home to sleep it off leaving him at his friend’s party.
   I caught the train to college early so didn’t return to our Hulme flat until after 9pm on some nights. When I got home he told me that he’d had an accident at work on the machines and lopped off the top of his middle finger. He’d been to hospital and had it stitched and bandaged but he was on a high dose of painkillers to cope. In the moment I forgot that he’d ingested a psychotropic substance recently. It was weeks later before he admitted he’d taken the rest of our tab and his mates had pressganged him to join them in taking more. He didn’t think about the consequences, how it might affect his machine skills on the morrow. And they’d ended up at The PSV in a rave lock-in. Music. Dance. Lights.
   By that time we had grown out of his former student mates and I think it was his last farewell to them as he moved into his artisan lifestyle and they stayed entrenched in theirs. They hadn’t changed much since leaving University and moving to Hulme, living in a similar way.

   We went to the PSV one last time in the early ‘90s, to a Soundsystem Clash. The place was rocking, packed and smoky with a sharp-dressed African Caribbean crew and crowd. We stood in the Pool area swaying with the dreads to the riddim. A burst of gunshot and the place was Panic. Everyone ran from the gunman and he stalked the crowd finally firing at someone on the dance floor. We ducked down behind the pool table and peeked at the action from low. The victim staggered outside leaving a trail of blood while the gunman ran off back into the night. The po-po arrived about an hour later and asked stupid questions to a ruffled and fearful crowd. We left and decided to call time on hanging out at the PSV. It was too dangerous moving round Hulme after nightfall. But it was snug and comfortable inside the flats. That’s why many people had stayed and squatted there.
   ‘’24/7 Student heaven.
   In Hulme even the Dogs are in Heaven.’’ – Lemn Sissay, former Hulme resident, Poet, Chancellor of Manchester University

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