GETTING down, back to its roots, Disco Inferno returns to the Voodoo Rooms tomorrow, the place where the legendary Edinburgh disco club first started out, back in 1993.
Then, the whole Seventies retro thing had yet to kick off in the big way it did; house and techno ruled on the dancefloors; the function suites above the Cafe Royal had not yet been turned into the Voodoo Rooms; and a couple of DJs by the stage names
of Love and Silver linked up with one Otis Orteseh to start playing out a few of the hot tunes which had influenced their youth.
Now, both MC Otis and DJ Love look back with nostalgia to those early Disco Inferno nights.
"We didn't think it was going to be something big," says Orteseh. "Suddenly it took off and after a few months it became too big for the space and we moved down to the Venue."
"Everywhere was doing house and techno or as it was known in those days, rave clubs," explains DJ Love. "We thought it would be nice to do something a little bit different. That was before the big Seventies comeback, before it all got packaged and commercialised and sold back to the people as something it wasn't intended to be.
"There was an element of camp and tongue-in-cheek to Disco Inferno," he admits. "But back in 1993 I guess it was so out-there that people didn't know what we were trying to do."
For Orteseh, becoming MC Otis seems to have been a very small step. Born in Nigeria into a church family, his father was a church minister and two of his three brothers had followed in their father's footsteps.
"One was a Roman Catholic Reverent and the other one was a Protestant Minister," he explains. "I was expected to follow these steps as well and go the church way. But I kind of moved away from that, into music. It is the same way of getting people together I think. Basically you can say we were in the same path."
Having joined the Royal Navy in the Seventies, Orteseh was stationed around the UK, spending his leave in London and Liverpool where he bumped into a group of lads who were just about to make the step up into something bigger.
"I met one or two of the chaps who were just starting out and they said 'why don't you join us'," he says. "I said I couldn't, I'm on holiday, I'm with the Royal Navy.
"Later on they called themselves the Real Thing and became a very big group - but they were one of the groups that ended up coming up to do a concert with us at Disco Inferno here in Edinburgh."
That was in the Assembly Rooms, where the big Disco Inferno nights were held that brought the likes of Odyssey, Heat Wave, Jocelyn Brown and other Seventies legends to Edinburgh.
"My best memory was with Sister Sledge - they were the first big Seventies act we brought," remembers Orteseh. "After Sister Sledge it took off, it became a kind of movement and we brought in so many of the groups. I emcee'd at all of them, I did my own show for an hour and then introduced the groups on stage. Everyone would drag me on stage to do one of their numbers on stage with them, live. It was something!"
Seeing MC Otis in full flow certainly was something, as anyone who has been to a Disco Inferno can testify. Such brilliant bons mots as "The air is on fire - but don't worry people, it is only the music that is burning you!" tend to stick in the memory.
So what is it like, being an on-stage MC at Disco Inferno? "It kind of transforms you," he says, his eyes twinkling and his face creasing with the memories. "What can I say? You are into a different dimension. Every record that is played you are in with it. When you see the people dancing to the music and they are responding to you, I can't describe it - it is your whole world, your whole being is there.
"It is not a question of mimicking the artist. You might perform some of the music but in most cases you are dancing and singing with it, you are part of the audience. You are motivating people to get down, to do their own thing and they are also in a trance with you."
• Disco Inferno, The Voodoo Rooms, West Register Street, tomorrow, 8.30pm, £5, 0131-556 7060
