| In 1969 at the age of seventeen I bought a battery powered record player to play music in the parks of Oxford with my friends. A local sound system operator heard about me and invited me to operate his sound system. By 1970 we were travelling to other towns and cities who had a reasonable West Indian population promoting dances.
After a year or so we moved to Bedford and decided to start a club. Getting a club licence was difficult, so we started with a restaurant, after a short period we applied for a drinks licence to serve drinks with meals. Success! We then applied to get a dance licence. We did really well, except the boss forgot to pay the rent, so we had to close the club. The sound system was sold to a friend in Wellingborough; I stayed with it as the selector.
Around 1977, I often travelled to Leicester to the club Ron-di-voo, I was later offered a full time job as one of their selectors. The Ron-di-voo closed in the late 80’s for re-development; we continued to play at blues parties as well as dancehalls. I left the sound system circle around 1990 to pursue my interest in photography, with some success working for Channel 4 the BBC and many theatre companies as a stills/production photographer.
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