Man went on night out in Liverpool and said 'that's our future'

A Liverpool man saw the moonwalk on a night out and said "that's our future".

David Thomas AkA Davy T, formally Dave the Wave is a DJ and promoter who learned to body-pop which, he said, "opened the world to him". He learned the dance craze that took off in the UK in the 1980s.

Davy T won the UK Street Dancing competition in 1985 and made the top 10 of the best street dancers in the world. He went on to produce music after touring with a break dance group and performed at venues in the UK and Europe doing shows with Grandmaster Flash, Break Machine, Whodini, Kid n Play, Public Enemy and more.

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Davy T told the ECHO: "It all started probably 1981-82, we moved off Parliament Street. I was in the house; Top of the Pops was on, Shalamar, Jeffrey Daniel, Night to Remember tracks playing and he's doing the moonwalk. The guy floated, I could not believe what I was watching.

"We went to Rotters (nightclub) Thursday, it was 25p to get in with the pink ticket. We're about 16, I’m standing there with Vernon Gorman and this guy comes gliding past doing the moonwalk, and wow, all night he was just doing the moonwalk around that dance floor.

"Everyone knows Stephen Mulrooney (Muller) and I said to Vernon ‘we need to learn that. That’s our future’. I said ‘that will get us out of here'." Muller later taught them the moonwalk and body-popping.

Davy T said: "I swear from about 1982 to 1984, eight hours a day, seven days a week I practised and practised, body-popping, that’s where Dave the Wave comes from, the body wave. You had to be flawless, as there’s nothing worse than looking at someone who can't do it.

"I would go to Church Street busking, as I needed to earn some money. I was so poor, back in the day, they used to say there’s poor people and then there’s Dave”.

Davy T and friends would perform on Church Street or St Johns Market. Some of them (Vernon, Muller, Wayne Freeman and Nathan Hazel) formed Liverpool break dance group Eastwood Rockers and Davy T joined the Manchester break-dancers, Broken Glass.

He said: "I went to Wigan Pier on a Tuesday, when they had soul nights. A guy, Greg, and Broken Glass was there, I was dancing, they asked me to join, it was as simple as that. That was it, then boom, we went everywhere.

"I did a tour with Renee and Renato (1985 Saudi Arabia), me and Stephen Morris (from Broken Glass) went, the rest of the team did a UK tour. We did shows with Madonna, (Holiday when she came over in 85 to do that) the Hacienda, TV and movies. It was absolutely huge up to about 1987 when it faded out and died."

He added: "We did big shows, everyday you would do a rehearsal, there would be DJs like the Whizkid, Public Enemy, and Kid n Play. Doing shows with them in massive events. There would be 20 acts on, and we were like an act as well.

"The DJs would scratch, I'd ask, ‘show me how to do that?’ You have hours to spare before the show and I learned to scratch-mix off all those big stars and that’s how I became a DJ."

Dave the Wave became Davy T. He was DJ in the State in Liverpool and said: "I set it up by myself, opened it and made it successful after being closed.

"I started making music (with Porn Kings) and had hit records all over the world, it's on YouTube. In Europe, events we did, like 80,000 people, gigantic shows, America, Australia".

During Covid, Davy T said he started watching people live on Facebook and thought "I’m going to create a thing from this, so I started doing Soul Train live on Facebook", an idea he already had but delayed due to Covid. This made him decide to focus on Old Skool music from his youth.

He said: "Getting 20 - 30,000 views every week playing the old tunes from Quinns, Cagneys, Saturdays, it just went viral. The audience was gigantic."

In July, Soul Train will be three years old and it had to move premises on Seel Street, down the road, to a bigger venue as it grew.

Davy T said: "You open at nine, finish at two or three, it's not just an hour. Most DJs do an hour (DJ) set. I do it all myself because I was there in the old days.

"Soul Train is an Old Skool club, just Saturdays. I wanted a night out too, because there’s nowhere for people over 40 to go. It had to be authentic, you can't just play the obvious ones like Run DMC and Sister Sledge, there’s a lot more to it than that and if you don't know, you’ll never know."

Davy T was a Radio City DJ for about 18 months with Phil Bowker on the Welcome to the Jungle show later rebranded to No Sellout Live and they got James Klass to work with them. He also played on TCR (Toxteth Community Radio).

For the future, he said: "Mid July I’ll tell people about a big project launch, but I can't say anything right now. Some of my old Porn King songs are getting released, that might work, if not I’ve given it a go."

For information visit Soul Train HERE

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