Meet Hot Ice – otherwise known as Iain Menzies; the DJ who provided the thumping soundtrack for generations of Tayside and Fife clubbers.
Iain – who was also a well-known disco dancer – started out behind the decks in 1983.
Nightspots where he spun the vinyl included Bally’s, Buddies, De Vito’s, Fat Sam’s (for a short spell), the Fountain, the Lizard Lounge and Rule before hanging up his headphones.
Now, aged 63, Iain has been looking back on his time spinning records during the glory days of nightlife in Courier Country.
Aged 22, Iain stepped into the world of DJing in 1983.
His family were always involved in music; his sister was a talented pianist; and his father was the church organist.
Iain, however, couldn’t – and still can’t – play a musical instrument!
But his knowledge of music was second-to-none despite those limitations and stood him in good stead when he embarked on his new career as a DJ.
Iain said: “Ask me anything about music from the ’60s to the present day, and I’ll be able to tell you.
“My sister used to phone me to ask: ‘Iain who sang this?’, and I could tell her immediately.
“Whatever request people gave me I’d be able to play it.
“That’s all down to my knowledge of music.”
Iain took a gamble in 1983 when he bought himself a mobile disco from Thomson’s music centre in Dundee and was immediately in demand.
He said: “I called myself Hot Ice back in the day.
“I was booked up solid. It was the best time of my life.
“I was in clubs, pubs, everything.
“One day I had to go back to the music centre to get some lights.
“The owner said: ‘How are you getting on?’, and I told him I was booked up solid for two years. He just couldn’t believe it.
“Then I wrote a letter to a nightclub in Dundee that was called the Fountain in those days.”
The Fountain on Brown Street was famous for its lightshow in the ’80s.
The club then changed its name to Dirty Den’s in 1988 and later became known as Oscars, the Coliseum and Zara’s before its closure in 2016.
Iain said: “That club changed names more times than I changed my socks!
“After my time at the Fountain I got head-hunted for Buddies nightclub in Broughty Ferry.
“I was there for two years. I was taken on as a light operator – I was more into the lights at that point than actual DJing.
“But after a while I did start to really get into the DJing too.
“When I was still at Buddies in 1985, house music kicked in.
“From Buddies, I went to London for a while. I lived there for about four years.
“I just wanted to see what it was like to live there, but it was too expensive so I came home.”
Iain returned from the Big Smoke to take a job on the decks at De Vito’s in Arbroath.
“Everybody associates me with De Vito’s,” he said.
“I was there for 18 years, four nights a week.
“I still run into people who used to go to De Vito’s when I was there.
“They always stop me and say: ‘Iain, those years were the best time of my life’.
“From De Vito’s I went to the Lizard Lounge in St Andrews for 10 years.
“I was there until in closed in 2016.
“Then I ended up in Rule on South Street until 2020.
“When I got the job in the Rule, a lot of the other DJs were students who had been using their laptops.
“Nowadays everybody wants to be a DJ, but not everybody is.
“When they hired me, they had to go out and buy proper decks and everything so that I could play the CDs.
“The manager said: ‘I’ve never had to do this before – buy decks for a DJ?’
“But they wanted me to play because I’d been recommended to them.
“Being a DJ is more than just pushing a button on a laptop. It’s the using the mic and the dancing and the proper music that the people want.
“Nobody ever taught me anything, either.
“I learned it all myself.”
Could Iain have been a record-breaker but for the pandemic?
Apparently so.
He said: “I was aiming for the Guinness Record of longest-serving club DJ in Scotland, but then the virus kicked in and that was it.”
Iain calls himself a “personality DJ” – and he’s got plenty of it, which is why he’s been so popular for four decades.
But what does he think made him stand out from the rest?
“I still use a mic,” he said.
“A lot of DJs don’t do that anymore but I still did.
“In the Lizard Lounge I’d stop the music and sing happy birthday to people – they’re going to remember that when they’re older.
“To be a good DJ, you have to get on with the people.
“It’s not just about the music. I played to the people – not for me.
“When I was doing De Vito’s and Fat Sam’s, the DJ booth was in the middle of the floor.
“I used to play stuff like The Clash and the bartender said she’d never heard that song played in there before – but they loved it!
“People now get force-fed music in clubs, rather than getting to hear what they really want.”
End of the road?
So are the days of clubbing over?
He said: “I think the club thing is kind of dying out at the minute.
“It’s more a lot of late-night bars nowadays. Now, you go to a pub and the DJ is in the corner and people just get up to dance in the bar. The Rule was like that.
“I’ve never had that before, people dancing around the tables and down the aisles and stuff.
The YMCA dance – that wasn’t in the video. It started in nightclubs and just caught on.”
“But if people like the music, they’ll get up.
“The ’80s music has always been a popular era. Blondie, Soft Cell, the dancefloor is always heaving.
“That stuff is still so popular, it’s stood the test of time, and that’s because when it first came out it was original.
“It’s one of a kind.
“ABBA, Come On Eileen, YMCA, all these classics. People still love them.”
Despite dwindling interest in a night on the town, Iain said nightclubs had their uses and were where a lot of popular culture stemmed from.
He said: “The YMCA dance – that wasn’t in the video.
“It started in nightclubs and just caught on.
“Before you know it, everyone was doing it.”
Now aged 63, will Hot Ice ever return to the decks or will he instead remain in cold storage?
“I can still move like I did when I was young,” he said. “But I think 40 years was enough.
“However, if something came up now, I’d probably be inclined to do it – even just as a one off.
“Once a DJ, always a DJ.”
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