Many years ago in a town not that far away lay a town called Coalville. A town with a with a Bingo hall, a working men’s club, an ex mine, lots of spit and sawdust pubs and a chippie, it even had a nightclub that had been a dance hall in the 1920’s which had a basement vault that was so naturally cold it once housed dead bodies during the war. This nightclub had seen various guises of the years in
cluding Phase 3, Tiffanys and Central park however in the early 90’s two young entrepreneurs called Eric Schofield and Mark Walsh bought the venue and changed its name to the ground breaking ‘Crystals!’
The music policy was mainly commercial and cheese and as the dance scene was just starting to take shape a new local DJ called ‘Jason Kinch’ (not yet JFK) whom had just returned from five year stint on the island of Rhodes was commissioned to be the dance music specialist who would play a house set for one hour during the Saturday night session. Although the refurbished venue had been reaching capacity of 1000 in the opening few months around, figures had dropped significantly buy 1994 and crisis talks led to management looking for new angles to keep the club alive. Jason Kinch had long been a student of the evolving dance scene and mentioned to Mark Walsh (one of the owners) that the unique layout of ‘Crystals’ was excellent for dance music as the focus and multi levelled platforms was perfect for the new DJ culture. Mark was also a huge dance music fan and persuaded his partner Eric Schofield to try something new. They commissioned the London promoter of ‘Club UK’ Chris Hall to venture north and be involved in a new club night. After meetings with the owners and Jason Kinch the venue name was changed to ‘The Emporium’ which would take on Roman Emporium theme due to its Gladiatorial layout and the name of the first ever dance night would be called ‘Passion’ as this tied up with the mid 90’s loved up feel. Chris used his connections in the dance industry and booked the New York legend Todd Terry to play the opening night and on Friday February 24th 1995 and Passion was born. Around 700 turned out for this opening two roomed event, The Arena was the main room (later known as the blue room) and the spa was the first floor above the what was later became known as the white room and had a space where you could see through to the down stairs bar (the redroom at this time was a snooker room and the green room was still a car park)
Jason Kinch played the famous first ever record ‘Alison Limericks – Where love lives’ and history came alive. The event was deemed a success and the next month, March 1995 saw the launch of Passion on a weekly basis every Saturday. A very brave move for the owners. This strategy wasn’t the instant success the owners had hoped for and the first few months were worrying times with numbers well below what was being paid for the new high DJ bill that the owners were not used to:
In fact the owners were famously quoted as saying that if things didn’t pick up after six months the money would not be available to fund it further. The promotion was intensified, the shop flyers were finally being seen (no internet or facebook promotion in 1995) and slowly the unfashionable town of Coalville a former mining town started to become ‘COOLVILLE’,
A town so unfashionable it was becoming THE place to be seen. Soon dance culture took off in every midlands city, Derby had ‘Progress’ Nottingham had ‘The Garage’ ‘Venus’ and ‘The House’, Birmingham had ‘Moneypennys’, Sheffield had ‘Gatecrasher’ and in between all these big cities was a small mining town called ‘Coalville’ that was putting on a dance night called ‘Passion’. Disaster was averted and people started to attend on a weekly basis making it just about viable for the next few years. Changes in the management meant an opportunity for the now newly named JFK and he took over the promotions job in 1998, tweaks to the artwork were made, a revamp of the club commissioned, a new logo and artwork introduced, a fresh approach taken and things seemed to move along faster. On paper it should never have worked. A nightclub in a sleepy town in Coalville! But on paper it didn’t account for the people that lived around that area. By day it would be fair to say most of the people that would attend Passion would be working class, great natured hard working good people with aspirations of a party lifestyle. The salt of the earth who would share their life, drink and drugs with you! They would ask you where you were from and what you were on. Passion was about ‘no vips’ but all ‘vips’ and the party didn’t stop in the club it continued in the car park, and then service station and then at people houses, in fact it went on all week until they were back at the club for ‘one more’
A club that opened at 9pm and closed at 2am with everyone screaming for ‘One more’
The Passion spirit was passed on from person to person, it became a movement, a feeling. JFK once quoted it as ‘The middle of nowhere, but the centre of everywhere’
Judge Jules famously called the M1, M42 and M6 ‘the golden triangle’ , the place in the midlands where DJs could play three gigs in one night and still head home for 6 am! It was the right place at the right time, but to the management we still felt like ‘Wimbledon playing in the Premier League’, we shouldn’t have been succeeding but somehow we were. JFK accidently introduced a Passion salute that was copied by thousands, tattoos of the logo was adorned by the new followers nicknamed ‘The Dedicated Followers of Passion’
In the hedonistic later 90s the need for an increased capacity meant that the ‘Arena’ became ‘The Blueroom’ and was home to the sound of Trance. The snooker room became ‘The Redroom’ and was born out of necessity for pure house music and the staff car park was converted into the ‘Green room’ which became Europe’s largest chilled room with a massive curved ceiling that changed colour throughout the night. This room also had a temperature drop by ten degrees and really was chilled! Inspired by a trip to Miami the Green room toilets featured a huge fish tank and the men could see through this into the ladies! MTV’s dancefloor chart was invited to attend, this grew the audience massively and ITVS clubavision various trips spread the word nationwide before the internet became a phenomenon. However it was the DJs that spread the word that ‘Passion’ was the place to be in the UK as the atmosphere felt raw and was like no other in Britain. Little Coalville was put in the international map. In 2024, PaSSion left The Emporium and moved to The O2 Academy in Leicester.
