Memorabilia celebrating the eighties and nineties dance music scene features in a new exhibition at Stirling’s Smith Art Gallery and Museum this summer.
The material – including flyers, posters and gig tickets – had been collated during research carried out by Bannockburn DJ Stuart ‘Scoobz’ Cochrane for his 2018 book The Glory of the Ride.
The pioneering DJ and producer had helped take music, clubs, and rave culture to new levels in the 1980s and 1990s, only to slide into a mental abyss when his hedonistic lifestyle took over.
Stuart, who has since turned his life around, said this week the exhibition’s origin had been a chance conversation with staff at the Smith.
He added: “I had never kept anything during my time as a DJ. Things would just be discarded, so it’s great to see all these things together under one roof.
“While I was writing the book. I bought a tape recorder, C90 cassettes and a Polaroid camera and interviewed 40 people.
“I asked if they had any old memorabilia. Some had posters, tickets and flyers. There was a sensational amount of artwork.
Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.
“My friend Terry O’Hare digitised it to look sharp. There was a lot of work involved in that.
“It snowballed from there. There was no thought of an exhibition at that point.
“However, the Smith had been selling the book and I got into a conversation with them and that’s how the whole thing came about.”
With close friends, Javier and Caroline Anadon, Scoobz had helped establish the fabled Cafe Mambo in Ibiza in the 1990s.
He took Rozalla’s song ‘Everybody’s Free’ into the Top 10 in the dance charts and fought a legal battle to be declared the true mastermind behind Dario G’s worldwide smash, ‘Sunchyme’.
A highlight of the exhibition for Scoobz is a musical mix - lasting four and half hours - of all the tracks he produced throughout his career.
He said: “It was remastered by my friend Gregor ‘G-Man’ McPhie. I’m really proud of it.
“Visitors to the exhibition can listen by using a QR code on their phones.”
Scoobz still lives in Bannockburn and after years of hiatus is getting back to the music scene.
As well as the critically acclaimed autobiography co-written with former Daily Record journalist Gary Ralston, his life and career have been documented in the BBC Scotland documentary, Scoobs and the Rave Years (2019).
The exhibition, The Glory of the Ride - Posters in the Golden Age of Rave, runs at the Smith until Sunday June 24.
- A Stay Glidin event featuring DJs (Scoobz, Leon Moodie, G-Man and Barry Fraser), a bar and food truck, will take place in the Smith’s garden on Saturday, July 16 from 2pm to 8pm. Tickets priced £5 are available from the museum or online (£6).
