After Hour Show - EPISODE 33 (Kevin Taylor)

I started Djing in my mid teens, around 13 as I recall. My Dad was a mobile DJ for many years and ran a youth club, which is were I started. Working with my Dad and before I became of age to legally attend clubs we had several residencies as wedding & party DJs. Heard my first House tune in 1986. I remember it like it was yesterday. Marshall Jefferson House Music Anthem, Adonis No Way Back and Mr Fingers Washing Machine. I was immediately hooked. Saved up and got my first set of Technics shortly after turning 18, started in the clubs very soon after that. My first club residency was a small place called 5th Avenue, it was a proper little sweatbox in the middle of nowhere (a place called Market drayton). It soon became packed, people travelling some distance to come. Great times. I moved around and guest DJd a few places before landing main residency at The Buttermarket in Shrewsbury. Massive club with capacity of 1800 – here I started my own night called Essence – it was a success from the first night and by night 3 we were locking out at full 1800 people capacity. After a couple of years I was offered the job as general manager as well as main DJ and became the youngest licencee at that time. During this 9 year period (1994-2003) I worked with many of the bigger club nights and A list DJs, from Cream to Gatecrasher, Sundissential to Gods Kitchen, Manumission to Mixmag Tour. It was a great time and it was my full time career. I stopped when my first wife got pregnant, which I promised I would do. When my daughter was born I turned my back on the industry, it was also around the time vinyl stopped and this broke my heart to a degree. At that time it seemed to me the real art of DJing was dying and rudely being replaced by auto-sync digital button pushers. Of course I was wrong but thats how I saw it at the time. Therefore decided that was that and followed a business career path. Many years later a friend of mine’s brother, who owned a pub, asked me to dust off my turntables and play some old skool stuff for N