17/10/2025
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’ve been selling some of my records for the past 18 months or so, through my agent, and a very good job he’s doing of it too.
I’ve collected records for over 60 years, so I’d got quite a few. There comes a time when you have to think about facing up to your own mortality, and what might happen to all your junk, if one day, you just wasn’t here any more. So, for as much as it pains me to do it, I’ve set a course to pass them on, so that another generation can enjoy them, and my agent can enjoy something from it along the way too.
We’ve come to a point, where I thought it might be nice to expand on a particular collection of tunes.
I think many will know that I used to drive Sasha around, in the years before, and after the Millennium.
I didn’t go looking for the job, it sort of came to me…….
After Golden moved to The Void, Sasha was the hottest ticket in town, and rapidly becoming the first Super Star DJ. Everyone wanted him to play for them, as his name on the bill was a guaranteed sell out.
The Golden crew were no exception, and were doing their best to persuade him to come to The Void, as often as possible!
But Sasha had moved to a remote location in Marlow, past Oxford, down the M40, by George Harrison’s house, up past a pig farm. A bit remote to say the least. And Sasha doesn’t drive.
There were no shortage of volunteers to drive him around, but Sasha wasn’t dead keen on the double excited, ravey Davey types, doing his head in whilst in the car.
I already knew Sasha from The Hacienda, Shelley’s and Venus. He knew I didn’t take no s**t, and wouldn’t batter his head with 20 questions for mile after mile, so he agreed to play for Golden, so long as I went down to pick him up. So that’s how I got the job.
I could write a good couple of chapters about what comes next but I won’t. Maybe I’ll save it for another day? Let’s just say we had a shared interest in music, and over the time we swapped various records, and he gave me a few, I gave him some, every now and again.
Sasha’s record box was always chaotic. He was always late, and while he was being late, I’d try and sort his tunes out, sort of get them back into the sleeves, or at least into any sleeve, to try and save them from damage. He’d amassed a good record collection, but because he’d moved around a lot, they had been put into storage, which wasn’t too accessible, so sometimes he’d borrow some of mine.
Sasha has started to sell a few of his records, via an auction, earlier this year, and they’ve drawn astronomic prices!
Which has sort of inspired me to write this little piece.
I have a few records that are related to this period with Sasha. Unfortunately, they’re not autographed like his, although I did have some signed copies, which I (stupidly) gave away over the years. (I had both the ones in the signed auction photo, and gave them away!) I never did autographs and I never did photos, that was sort of why I had the job driving him around.
It’s just a random collection of tunes linked to Sasha. Some that he gave me, some that were the actual copies played by him, particularly on the millennium night. And my two copies of Xpander, as I was actually there when that was recorded.
I wrote the story of the Millennium weekend, for Mixmag, and DJ Mag, at the time, I got paid for these stories, and still have the cheques. I have a photocopy of the writing, and I’ve managed to find the actual magazines! My story was much longer and more detailed than the printed articles though. I still have memorabilia by way of documents etc, from the epic night, 25 years ago.
So if you might fancy a little piece of dance music history, follow the link to Discogs. They’re not signed, you’ll just have the joy of knowing that these were the actual ones played at many of the Sasha gigs, around that time. Some, actually on the Millenium!
There’s only a few, and when they’re gone, they’re gone………..
https://www.discogs.com/seller/carlos_villa33/profile
