25TH BIRTHDAY
SUB CLUB T he Sub Club opened in April 1987, just a year and a half after the appearance of our first issue. The basement venue’s resident DJs quickly set about bringing the early sound of house to Glasgow, though it was DJ Harri and Slam promoter Dave Clarke’s Atlantis night that set the tone for the venue, running for four seminal years between 1990-1994, and establishing the Subbie as one of most pioneering dance music clubs in the country.
Atlantis was followed by the equally influential Subculture (still helmed by Harri to this day) then added to in 1997 by Keith McIvor and Jonnie Wilkes’ Sunday residency, Optimo. On the cusp of the millenium, with everything going right, a fire broke out in the next-door building, disastrously wiping out the Sub Club with it. ‘It was a disaster,’ admits
22 THE LIST 23 Sep–7 Oct 2010
Photos: Brian Sweeney Make up: Lyndsey Reilly
owner Mike Grieve. ‘I’d been trying to build up the club for years and 1999 was the best year we’d ever had.’
After three years of rebuilding and innovations, Sub Club was back in 2002, with a new sound system and more great nights, fitting back into the heart of Glasgow, and of Scottish culture. ‘It’s part of the fabric of the city,’ agrees Dave Clarke. ‘It’s had an influence on the rest of Scotland – people from Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh come down. For such a small space it’s had this dramatic effect.’ For our 25th birthday we’ve unearthed 25 of the best Sub Club T- shirts (provided by the venue and its most famous nights) from the 1980s to the present, which are modelled here by some of the venue’s regulars.