the narrow coffee bars and darkened cellars with the kids packed tight.

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer 

Guy Stevens never sought to label himself a mod, but the desire of the mods to be seen somewhere semi-secret, to search out the best tunes, the original versions, black dance music, drew them to his disc-only nights. At the Scene, customers would go downstairs, through a door wedged open with a brick into a bare room. The walls and floor were concrete. The sound was reputed to be poor, the rumour being that the speakers had been liberated from a fairground. Very basic. Dark, just a couple of lightbulbs and speed. The trade in pills in Soho was lucrative, and in clubs like the Scene you could buy Drinamyl pills  for around 7d, although – given that a common drug intake was probably three or four purple hearts near the beginning of the evening, topped up with a couple more every time energy levels flagged – they were usually bought in batches of five or ten. For a while, two cousins ran the door at the Scene and rigorously searched the customers who came in, confiscated pills, then passed them on to approved dealers who recycled them in the club.