2Klub - Good Greef

Good Greef
@ Philips Park Hall
Manchester.

Good Greef, started life on January 15th. 2000 as Totally Mashed at Club North in Manchester. The brainchild of then 19 year old Barry, he picked his moment beautifully.

Apart from excellent timing, the club got its start from the well-established connections the promoter had with his clubbers, and the dire nature of the Manchester market .

As we entered the Twenty First Century, Manchester's nightlife was still struggling to recover from its self-inflicted gangland wounds. Gang violence inside and outside clubs had closed the famous Hacienda, and robbed the city of its position as a, (if not "the"?), leading clubland city. People were afraid to go out, promoters were afraid to start up nights, and established venues were closed rather than new ones being opened.

Hence so many Manchester kids made the coach treck across the Pennines to Sheffield to go to 'crasher, or to Liverpool to Cream, each Saturday - there was little for them in their much bigger home city.

Barry had been involved in running coaches to Gatecrasher for some time. He's a dynamo of enterprise, coming from a family with connections in the licensed trade, and wherever I went in 1999 and 2000, be it 'crasher, Insoms, or Cream, Barry was there. As a result, he was, and is, very well known amongst the hard dance crowd, especially in the North.

Mid and late 1999 saw Gatecrasher going through one of its periodic cyber-kid bashing phases. Cyber-gear was denounced, rumours were that it was banned, dummies were frowned upon, glowsticks banned, bounc... oops... security staff intermittently barred and banned various cyber kids etc. etc. This seemed to be part of an attempt by 'crasher to avoid being labelled as a cyber club, (something which mystified the cyberkids who felt that they had MADE the club what it was), and to redefine its image as something more ... er... well... what... sophisticated??? Their eventual answer was in part to open Bed in the same city, Sheffield, aimed at an older crowd, but that's another story.

In the meantime 'crasher had alienated a goodly portion of their most loyal customers. That's where Barry came to the rescue.

In the style of an old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland film, where the kids put on their own show in a barn, Barry capitalised on the disaffection and basically proposed that if 'crasher don't want us, then we'll run our own bloody club.

After the overblown, and expensive events of the Millenium Eve, two weeks later Totally Mashed offered a new, fun night out, for all those in the know who wanted to keep the party going during an otherwise dead month, (from the venue-owner's perspective). His DJs were all mates, and the cover price for the launch night was a whole £1.

The opening night was packed, with two rooms playing hard house and trance, a music policy which the club has retained. After the success of the opening night, aided by coverage Barry had arranged from Ministry magazine, he soon wisely moved the club away from North and to Philips Park Hall. He was joined in running the club by a colleague and the club changed its' name to the less blatant Good Greef shortly afterwards.

Eddie Halliwell, was offered a residency, and the club has made a name for itself in promoting other good resident local DJs like Andy Bonner, Elliott Tordoff and Alex Kid.

The hard work and energy was rewarded by MixMag in 2002, when Good Greef was named by them as one of a handful of the best new clubs.

Click here for Good Greef's website.