– who did a ‘private’ dance for Carl in front of the entire club as he took over the decks, as I almost slipped out of the giant birthday cake which was being carried over the swimming pool so I could burst out of it singing ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ wearing nothing but a Marilyn wig, a fake fur coat and a pair of cream vintage YSL heels.
We had visions of thousands of clubbers wrapped in bedsheets, liberated from their hotel beds! – much to our dismay the audience failed to come in costume, even though it was Carl Cox’s 35th birthday party for Manumission The Movie in ‘97, and we had a girl on the poster dressed as a Bedouin for the blatant theme ‘Laurence of Arabia’s B.Y.O Bedsheet Toga Party’. Carl was the only one who turned up in a toga!
He wore it right through the night and all through CARRY ON in Space for the afterhours the following morning, where we topped it off with a Tina Turner wig that suited him a little too well – I remember thinking, as we had a disco dance off on the terrace that ended with me and my sister falling into a bush…
Carl was there to witness, enjoy, experience and be inspired as well have the time of his life, DJ in the main room of Manumission and the inside for Carry On in Space, then to go away and make a track inspired by all the above, for the sound track of Manumission The Movie.
The track Carl made for the movie was amazing. Here’s Carl talking about it in his own words – in a quote taken from @DJMagazine.
‘As our conversation draws to an inevitable conclusion, we decide to throw a couple of quick-fire questions his way, but it’s when we quiz him on his favourite island memory that we finally manage to briefly stop him in his tracks. For a man with over three decades of experience on the island, it’s an answer he understandably doesn’t tackle lightly.
“Well…” he pauses. “It’s hard to put into words just how great Manumission was. I’ll never forget the birthday party they threw for me. I’d just turned 35 and somehow it went on for five consecutive days! [Manumission owners] Claire and Mike went all out and were just amazing hosts, and going to Space on the Tuesday after for the carry-on was just epic. Getting into that party spirit that Ibiza was known for was really amazing, and I’ll never forget those truly hedonistic times.”’
A Manumission Life 