CLASSIC CLUBS: Sub Club

22 Jamaica St, Glasgow, 1987-present

‘The music still batters the senses, pushing boundaries, constantly reinventing and setting the tone for what’s coming round the next corner,’ says Mike Grieve, head honcho at Glasgow’s Sub Club, possibly the world’s longest-running club of its kind. ‘This is the space where underground clubs really exist, breaking new music, creating new energies, inspiring new ideas, and forging new friendships all along the way.’ With this level of excitement after almost thirty years, it’s not difficult to see why the Sub Club has firmly established itself as a Glasgow, dare we say Scottish, dance music institution.

Located on 22 Jamaica Street, the Sub Club, or ‘Subbie’, became central to the club culture explosion in ’90s Glasgow. The scene had been set thirty years before when it opened as afterhours speakeasy Le Cave – supposedly graced by the likes of Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong. By the early ’80s the same dancefloor was playing host to the likes of Primal Scream as the indie-centric Lucifer’s. In 1986 DJ Harri – who is still resident all these years later – moved in armed with his record box of dub, hip-hop and soul, and a year later in 1987 the Sub Club opened its doors.

But it was the advent of house music that really changed everything as Glasgow (along with the rest of the UK) began to experience a monumental shift in dancefloor culture. Within a couple of years, the Sub Club had become a beacon for every top house DJ in the world. Larry Heard, Derrick Carter, Sneak, Juan Atkins – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But it wasn’t just the guest appearances that made the Sub what it was. It was what it created. It was here that Slam found a home and it provided the birthplace for Optimo’s beloved Espacio. It’s hard to understate the importance of the Sub.

Back when it opened in 1987, house music domination was a little way away. With its rise seemingly less engineered than elsewhere in the UK, house began to seep into the consciousness of Scottish clubbers via a less direct route – gay clubs, hi-energy and Italo-disco. ‘My first encounters with house music were in gay clubs, because they were the best places to hear good music,’ explained Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch of Optimo in 2018. ‘There was a club called Bennetts, which lasted until relatively recently… hi-energy and Italo was the dominant sound in gay clubs but also in mainstream straight clubs.’ This led to a more organic rise of party culture. ‘I think initially the DJs who were playing it perhaps weren’t even aware this was this new thing, it was just that these records coming from Chicago fitted in and didn’t sound rabidly different from the Italo-disco they’d been playing.’  Around the same time, people started creating their own raves. ‘Before any house clubs per se, there was a lot of house parties… people would throw big parties, put up a few UV lights, get a load of ecstasy. Those were the first proper house music parties in Glasgow that I went to.’

The attitude to playing music was also changing. ‘I was always interested in mixing myself but the musical styles at the time were more eclectic and it wasn’t always possible until house took hold,’ remembered Stuart McMillan, one half of techno pioneers Slam. Key inspiration at this time was local mixmaster prodigy Paul Welsh: ‘I took part in the DMC mixing championships in the early ’80s. I started DJing when I was 12 at the local youth club, so that would’ve been late ’70s and I don’t even know if mixing was a big thing then – I was just learning the ropes.’ One of the judges was the legendary James Hamilton of Record Mirror – who had inadvertently introduced the young Welsh to the concept. ‘I had a good long chat with him because he was my hero. He used to do that page in Record Mirror and give you the BPM, so he saved you all the work!’ says Welsh. ‘It was trial and error when I started mixing records myself, but I didn’t fully understand that to get good at it you had to have a good understanding of tempos.’ All the same, he soon became the man to learn from when he played 22 Jamaica Street in one of its earlier incarnations – the Jamaica Inn. ‘He blew me away with how he could put records together in such a smooth fashion,’ says Harri, Sub Club legend and long-time resident. ‘He said you’re really good at holding down the beat, but you’re missing the bars. Pointing that out to me was a total revelation.’

It wasn’t long before this spread to the dancefloor. ‘Sunday night in a place called Fury Murry’s,’ remembers Harri. ‘It was fifty pence to get in and it was called Ten Bob Bop. They were playing a fair bit of house. It was probably the first exclusively acid and house night.’ Fury Murry’s also put on another night called Black Market – an early home for pre-Slam McMillan and Meikle. ‘When they started that night, I was still playing a cross section of things and then there was a deluge of house and also learning how to mix it properly,’ says Harri. ‘It started to take over, in tandem with ecstasy arriving. The two things together just made sense and went hand in hand.’

The Sub Club started off as a night at Lucifer’s but just a year later on April Fool’s Day 1987, 22 Jamaica Street re-opened as the Sub Club. All the vital ingredients were in place. Harri had joined in 1986 with his mate Gerri MacLaughlin when it was Lucifer’s. ‘We called the night ”Deep Box.” At the start of the night, we’d play reggae and northern soul and then stuff like “Rhythim Is Rhythim” mixed in with it, but it wasn’t exclusively house.‘ Paul Welsh was there too. ‘We used to do a Friday night. Harri would play mainly house and I’d play hip hop and jazz. I know this was going on in London cos I used to go to London regularly on record buying trips and I met people like Patrick Forge and Gilles Peterson and Paul Murphy.’ Current owners Mike Grieve and Paul Crawford remember the transition on their site. ‘At first it was a mix of soul, funk and hip hop with an occasional house track thrown in, then acid house blew up and that was just crazy – smiley t-shirts, kaftans, flares, whistles, smoke, strobes and a full night of acid house music. It completely changed clubbing and that was certainly a defining moment.’

Slam arrived in 1989 and things really began to change. Both regulars, McMillan remembers that it wasn’t really about the club itself back then so much as the nights that they put on. ‘Harri and Gerry had a night called Deep Box. and Graham Wilson and Nick Peacock were the residents at Lucifer’s. I was always that kid standing at the side watching. Trying to find out what the records were called.’ By this point the pair were playing Fury Murry’s. ‘It was a real mish-mash of music from House to disco rare groove and some cool hip-hop cuts like Spoony G’s the Godfather,’ McMillan said. ‘The only night the club could give us was a Wednesday night, but when you’re keen, you’re keen. We managed to fill that quite a few times.’ Steven Sweetman then started his UFO night at Tin Pan Alley where Jon DaSilva and Harri were residents and coaxed Macmillan and Orde across giving birth to their reinvention as Slam. ‘I never really liked the name,’ says McMillan, ‘but it was ideal for the night as the name was taken from Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’ EP. We ran that for about 5-6 months and now has become a legendary night…the scene went from quite underground to utter hysteria in the space of months. You really could feel you were living through some sort of revolution.’

By 1990, the Sub Club was thriving – Slam’s JOY became a Friday night banker from 1989, while Harri took over the Saturday night residency a year later. And it wasn’t long before the two joined forces. ‘They started a new night at the Sub Club called Atlantis, which was all about house, acid house with a slight Balearic feel,’ says McIvor. But it took a while to get going. ‘For the first few months it wasn’t that busy and then we got these UV lights and big white drapes and the club felt like you were in a big tent,’ remembers Harri. ‘The night that really kicked off for us in that club was Stuart and myself warming up for Stone Roses. They played at Glasgow Green and asked Stuart and I to do the warm-up for them and we’d never heard of them. Then we did the after party at Atlantis and we had a queue round the block and from that night on we had a queue every Saturday for the next four years.’

This all coincided with a novel time in the City’s history. ‘Glasgow was the European Capital of Culture, so we had a 5am license for the whole year, which was unheard of in those days,’ Slam told Do Music Yourself. ‘We quickly attracted a second wave of new house music fans to join the acid house early adopters who had lasted the pace. It was at a special point in time for the scene – a point where indie bands were just as likely to get on one and join the party as ravers and clubbers.’ McIvor remembers the change. ‘The nights in the Sub Club were the ones were you felt something revolutionary was happening and everything’s changing. The dress code is changing, the attitude is changing. Before then it had been very much about what you were wearing, fashion, looking a bit moody and suddenly it was all wiped away.’

Sadly, it wasn’t long before Slam started to lose interest in big parties and moved back underground, heading to the nearby Arches and shifting to a more techno-centric focus. Harri stayed put, launching his new night Subculture in 1994 with Domenic and Oscar Fullone and which, remarkably, is still going strong to this day. ‘The owners of the club offered me the Saturday night with whoever I wanted to do it with,’ explained Harri in 2018. ‘After a few years Oscar left to do Mish Mash, so for the last 22 years Dominic and I have been doing it on our own. We’ve had our peaks and troughs, but they’ve always stood by us.’

Troughs indeed including a fire (started in the pub next door) in 1999 that wiped the club out for three years. ‘Paul got a phone call that the building next door was on fire and we headed straight there,’ remembered Mike Grieve in 2007 (Previously a promoter in Aberdeen and long-time associate of Harri’s Grieve took over the club in the early 1990s). ‘We never thought it was going to be that bad. In fact, we all went into MacSorleys bar for a pint while the fire brigade put it out … or so we thought.’ Three years later the club reopened. ‘It allowed us to reopen the venue with brand new fit-out and an unbelievable sound system.’

It wasn’t the first time the Sub had had a revamp. In 1997 they had a second bar installed and ‘the sticky carpet’ removed and then nine years later they had a Bodysonic dancefloor installed – road tested by Derrick Carter no less. But the Sub was far from being showy. In fact, that was a large part of its appeal particular in the era of the superclub. ‘Our punters preferred the intimacy and community of the Sub Club,’ explained Grieve and Crawford. ‘The club has always had a strong policy of inclusion – if you come down for a party, with a friendly attitude, then you’re in. It’s not about following fads or fashion. The DJs are constantly pushing music forward, seeking new tunes and sounds that will keep people dancing.’ Harri agrees on that front. ‘I might only be playing four hours a week but I’m certainly putting in a lot more than that trying to find a new music.’ And for a while it was the place everyone wanted to be. ‘I remember the captain of the Scottish football team, off his face, trying to order drinks at the cloakroom.’

Today the Sub Club’s most celebrated residents are Optimo, aka JD Twitch and JG Wilkes, with their much-loved Espacio night, which ran every Sunday until 2010.  Named after the Liquid Liquid song, the duo’s big appeal was their ability to take tracks from any genre and work them together – which wowed crowds and became their calling card. Both Wilkes and Twitch had cut their teeth playing techno, but by 1997 were ready for more musical freedom. As DJmag put it, alongside techno and house you might expect to hear anything from post-punk and new wave, to dub, electroclash, Afrobeat and more. ‘Ambient Eno cuts could slot in seamlessly alongside an industrial Cabaret Voltaire banger, a Fela Kuti jam or a straight-up classic pop hit.’

It took time for the word to spread but by the time Optimo returned to the venue after the fire, queues would form around the block. ‘Their musical policy had a huge influence on my DJing and my taste in music,’ Richard Birchard aka Hudson Mohawke, who worked the Sub Club bar in Optimo’s heyday, told The Guardian. ‘The way they crafted their sets opened me up to so many things. Their influence spreads far, but they don’t often get the credit they deserve – there are plenty of people out there now doing pretend versions of Optimo sets to huge festival crowds.’ As their reputation grew, a who’s who of established names played: from good mate James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, through to Franz Ferdinand, Peaches, the Pop Group, Gang of Four, ESG and even Rachel Stevens. But rather than let the rot set in, the duo decided to call it a day in 2010 – parodying a David Cameron campaign poster for the announcement: ‘Optimo (Espacio) 1997-2010: Getting out before the Tories get in.’

Other residencies included the The Yard with Stuart McCorisken and Gareth Sommerville in 1995, Sensu from 2007, techno residency Animal Farm, The I AM, Thunder Disco, Don’t Drop – all local faces mixed with a list of A-Class musical guests as long as your arm including Carl Cox, Green Velvet, Juan Atkins, Kerri Chandler and of course, Liquid Liquid.

Still going strong today and showing no signs of tiring, it seems that the Sub has come to represent everything that’s so vibrant and unique about the Scottish club scene. ‘I love the Sub Club. I’ve had some amazing nights there over the years,’ says Irvine Welsh. ‘Whatever genre of music it hosts, it always pulls along a great crowd of party animals who really know their stuff. Sometimes, the perception on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall is that Scotland just do the Highland fling of a weekend.’

© Sarah Gregory