In late 74 the little shop we had was getting too small for what we needed. Was getting really busy. And we were on the cusp of moving to the Merrion Centre. And I was still doing quite a bit of work for Mecca. And I was doing a Monday night which attracted lots of kids to the new Mecca in the Merrion Centre. And the crowds kept growing and growing. I also worked in Samantha’s which was above there with a separate entrance. And I had quite a big black crowd coming to that cos I was playing lots of upfront soul music. Upfront, I used to get records from Jamaica. And reggae records. People were coming ‘What’s this Hunter?! What are you playing now?’ So that was why the shop was going better.

But the manager, of the Mecca at the time, didn’t particularly like too many black people in the club. And I don’t think it was that he was racist so much as… he believed that black people tended to go to a club or a disco to dance and they didn’t really drink much alcohol. They might buy the odd soft drink or something like that but they were there to pull and to dance. Not drink. And of course that doesn’t do anything for the bar takings.

And it seemed to be building up. I got warned a couple of times. You know, ‘You really need to change the sort of music you’re playing a little bit.’ But everyone asked for the records that were popular to dance to. And the popular records to dance to were a lot of soul music and reggae music.

And one day I got a phone call when I was at home and a guy, one of the staff, just said we don’t want you to come in tonight. That’s it. And I found out later from other people that worked at Mecca that, in actual fact, they’d been counting how many black people were coming in on the doors and it was getting too much. I was probably getting too popular or whatever, but in the wrong way. And that was it. I never went back to Mecca again. I didn’t get any official explanations or anything like that. I only found out from other DJs, and people that actually worked there, what was actually going on.

But, it actually worked out okay for me because I still had my mobile equipment, which I’d actually made a lot better. I had a lot better equipment. I still had my double decks. And I had been on and off doing mobile work and the other two DJs had moved on to other cities and left me the gear. And the reason the shop was called Jumbo records is because the three of us when we started the mobile disco called it Jumbo Mobile Disco. And we used the logo that the shop still uses today. Yeah. So I actually went on to do a lot more specialist work just with my own equipment. Working at the University, the Polytechnic, as it was then. I did lots of gigs in Chapeltown. It was quite a big black… not everybody was black, it was just people that really liked soul and dance music came along. Yeah.