2000 - 2001 :.... |
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Prehistory A long time ago in a galaxy far far away… Well… many moons ago, around the millennium to be precise, Dill & Greg had been involved in a Sheffield party crew called Dionysus along with Gareth (Bacchus), John (JohnnyM), Ghandi, Kim, Saint and Bill (Unity Dub). Dionysus had put on various parties in and around Sheffield including a big all nighter called Destination Venus at the NMB. The night was a joint venture with Beamish & Oberon who were big on the London party circuit and wanted to do their own night, bringing the London trance techno sound and London style production to North of Watford. Destination Venus threw some amazing parties, but the nights were hard work to put on, with setting up starting at lunchtime and taking down ending well into the next morning. |
| Dill asked Greg if he fancied doing a small fun night that they could just turn up & play their tunes to their mates. John knew Mutley who ran Corporation, a rock club, with a little bar next door called the Otherside he was looking to develop into a small venue. A few conversations later and the plans were made for the first night. But what to call it? Dill was rummaging through his drawers (I’m sure you were wondering when we’d come to that) and found his very first ever mix tape called "Planet Zogg, the cheese and onion mix". The “Cheese & Onion mix” part was ditched and the lads had a very apt name, not too serious and a little cosmic, a name to take the galaxy by storm! |  |
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The birth of Planet Zogg (2000 – 2001) Saturday 9th September 2000 saw the birth of Planet Zogg at the Otherside with Dill & Greg plus Diablo, a resident at the Torture Garden as special guest (whatever happened to him?). The first party set the scene for early Zoggs with décor sneakily put up at tea time, and then when the bar full of bikers and rockers supped up at 11pm to go next door to Corp, a burst of activity to get the place space ship shape for blast off to Zogg at 11:30. It was then full throttle to 4am (get their early, we don’t f*ck around warming up as one flyer succinctly put it!). The décor was by Dill and Ruth. Kim (Asura) did the visuals bringing lots and lots of TV monitors, as well as later (as the flyer pointed out) doing the cloakroom (!). The night started off small and intimate with around 60 or 70 friends and a few curious folk all getting well into the spirit of things. Despite moving on & growing as a party, that same friendly vibe has remained with Zogg down the years, probably because the night grew organically from this first friends get together ... |
The next few months continued in a similar vein with Justin Swales, Refresher and DJ Fog all playing and Nick providing the quirky and cosmic flyers. But you can only go so far with just your mates turning up ... New Years Eve 2000/2001 saw one of the most memorable Zoggs with a special party at the Otherside. It was ticket only with last entry by 10pm, meaning by midnight and the first bars of 2001 a Space Odyssey, the place was rammed. |
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December 2000 had seen the last Destination Venus mainly due to the respectably sized regular crowd (about 400) not being enough to pay for the lavish production. With Dill & Greg able to concentrate on just one event per month, Zogg continued into 2001 with monthly parties featuring (the notorious) Lazerbill, LSDJ, OS1 (the crazy live act featuring Gordie who’d later help out with the techie stuff at Zogg), Beard and Morpheus, all playing variations on the Zogg trance techno crossover, with a good dollop of psychedelia. Around this time Greg got his first London gig down at Undertow at the old Drome along with Unity Dub who was a resident down there. As the rolling ball developed momentum, plans were afoot for Beamish to come and play in April and to follow this with a big Bank Holiday Sunday bash at the Corporation main venue. Unfortunately the first (but sadly not the last) of many unexpected Venue problems cropped up. Corporation was forced to leave its Bank St location by 'The Man' due to Offices being built there which meant that they, and so us, were homeless… |
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