Was very lucky to get to this interview…….he doesnt do them very often
Have provided you with some of the answers….if you would like to read the rest pls follow
this LINK
Interview by John Kidson & Vinyl Vera
What was your 1st memory of Fantazia?
Having a blast at the first one at the Eclipse. James (my brother) had been running a small club night in our home town of Cheltenham called Trance during much of 1990 and it had been pulling sell out capacity crowds each week. His original partners were Chris Griffin (founder of Perception, Vision, Mythology,Gods Kitchen and Gideon Dawson (later founded Obsession). Chris left to set up Perception which James helped fund before deciding to hold his own big events. They chose the Eclipse for the first one which was a massive success. It was an amazing venue and the atmosphere really was something else. So many pretty girls, great music and an all night license to dance. Carl Cox & Ellis Dee were 2 of the acts and I spent the next few months playing their set in my car stereo.
What has been your proudest moment so far?
There are so many. The rush seeing the crowd at Summertime in Bournemouth in 1992 as the sun rose on a beautiful May morning takes some beating. Also reading pages in the main news paper like The News of the World, really tell you that people are noticing what you are involved in and that we had achieved something that no other promoter had. Selling several million copies of our album series was great to. But the best bit is when we used to receive letters and now when we get emails from people or posts on our forum saying what an impact those events had on peoples lives. It makes it all worth the effort. Priceless.
In your eyes, what makes a good promoter?
We have always strived to do something just a little bit different and bigger than the norm. We stayed away from doing the safe route of doing the same venues as other promoters time and again. Big one offs whilst actually harder and less profitable where always more exciting and I think that showed through with crowds that came to our events. We also packed in more events. In 1992 we pulled off more large one off events than anyone else has even attempted before or will ever do so again. So I guess to answer your questions. Think big & take chances. For instance we did 1 million flyers for One Step Beyond. That got our flyers everywhere and dwarfed what anyone else would have done.
Any tips for budding promoters out there?
