The Birth of Doctor Hall

Digging further and further into music my tastes and genres expanded. I was one of 3 brothers, both older, Christopher being 6 days short of ten years older and Stuart 8 ½ years my senior.
Like me, Christopher would buy alot of second hand music, mostly albums, these were predominantly purchased when he was a student in Bristol. When he moved back to Plymouth in the mid 70’s and I would go around his house and record a lot of his albums, these ranged from Moody Blues, Spooky Tooth, The Nice and various compilations. Listening to these my musical horizons broadened, I still loved the chart music but there was so much more to get into.
On the other hand my other brother Stuart also liked music but not in the same depth. However, what he did do was become a DJ for a short while. Stuart was the wheeler and dealer of the family, an Entrepreneurial type looking how he could make some money. Due to his mechanical apprenticeship most of this was based around doing up and buying and selling cars. Consiquently he now does this as a full time business and has had his business for over 20 years.
So you can start to see where my musical path had taken me, but having so much to listen to I had a deep desire to give other people the opportunity to share what I was experiencing. It wasn’t only that but I wanted to present it and make something to remember. You see I couldn’t just settle for inviting the odd friend around and play him a record, I wanted as many people as possible to have that experience.
5 years had gone by from the first time I walked into a record shop to buy my first records. It was 1978, my music collection was a mix of singles and albums, it was the summer and I was just about to have my first ‘official’ DJ booking. The venue was a garage (just remember where Google started), sadly I can see his face but for the life of me I cannot remember his name. What I do remember was he lived with his parents in a very large detached house located only a couple hundred yards from my terraced home. I think it was his birthday and his parents had agreed to letting him have a disco in their garage. All of my equipment (only one record deck) including my records were carried from my back door, up the lane and along the road to the venue.
That first night was nothing special, the disco lasted about 3 hours but from it I knew this was something I really wanted to do. It gave me the chance to interact with other human beings, develop my ideas and give people the opportunity to have a good time. The Entrepreneur in me was born!