BACK when Mancunians were getting hot and bothered with Antony H. Wilson and his buddies at the Hacienda, here in Liverpool the superclubbing phenomenon was being born inside a club in Bootle.
That club was Quadrant Park ... The Quad. The Quad opened in 1986 as a million pound club and leisure complex. But it was when owner Jim Spencer decided to open the doors to its Pavillion section - at the height of the acid house scene - to throw the country's first legal raves that it began its journey to notoriety.
Over the next two years some of the biggest names in today's dance scene would grace its decks with Sasha, Carl Cox, Laurent Garnier and Liverpool's own John Kelly entertaining the thousands of clubbers who travelled from across the north west and beyond.
Sadly, following rows over licencing laws, reports of violence and drug-dealing, not to mention one of the country's first high profile drugs deaths, the party at the Park was all but over by Christmas 1991. A couple of months later the club went into receivership.
But by then the Quad had already secured its place in dance history.
Ask any seasoned clubber in the city and they will tell you Quad tales to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up just as their own did when they first heard Mike Knowler, Andy Carroll and co. laying down the finest Italian piano tracks there more than 15 years ago.
So when Liverpool old school promoter Ian Kenyon first started bouncing around the idea of a back to the Quad night everyone could see he was on to a winner.
No-one could have possibly predicted how big it would become.
