We spoke to the brothers behind Gio-Goi and Manchester's illegal Acid House raves
Christopher and Anthony talk about the good and bad times, as well as the re-launch of Gio-Goi
What’s some of your most memorable times from running parties?
Anthony: We threw a party for Chris’ 21st birthday, which we based the video for Chase & Status’ 'Blind Faith' on, when we were asked to direct it. The lights we hired went so we used a sun bed to light the venue.
You must have experienced a lot of backlash?
Christopher: The government bought a law out that if their more than 10 people in a room dancing it was classed as an Acid House party, which really fucked us up. We started a protest with Tony Colston-Hayter and Biology when we heard.
Anthony: After that we had to move away from the events because of it. We tried to do some legal ones and police would turn up and threaten to revoke the club's licence, so we thought it’s time to move on. Which I suppose took us into the launch of Gio-Goi in 1988.
What were the first steps you took to launch the brand?
Christopher: We’d done the Happy Mondays bootleg thing and become close with two kids who did all the artwork for the Mondays. We didn’t have any training in clothing except what we liked to wear, so we got them to do the graphics and got a couple of other people together from Central Saint Martins who knew how to construct clothes.
Anthony: We put a range together and booked ourselves in for a show called Men And Boys at Earl's Court. We built a wacky stand and were like a new energy in among loads of boring corporate brands. Straight away we got loads of interest, somebody asked to put in an order with us for £3 million pound.
That’s not a bad way to launch a label.
Anthony: No, but it didn’t help that somebody asked to put in a £3 million pound order when we didn’t have any initial stock. I thought, shit. We’re going to need about £1.2 million pounds to produce the order and at this point we didn’t have 1.2 pence. I had to tell them that they weren’t cool enough for us to get rid of the order.
Christopher: We started taking cash before we could afford to produce the clothing, so I bought a load of plain T-shirts and got Gio-Goi printed and embroiled onto them.
